Lords of the North Part 42

"Sittin' on the coffin!" blurted out the voice of an English youth as the weight of the priest again came down heavily on my prison; and again I breathed easily.

"Come on, men!" shouted Hamilton, apprehensive of more curiosity. "We're wasting time! He may be escaping by the bas.e.m.e.nt window!"

"_Jam hiems transiit, imber abiit et recessit; surge, amica mea, et veni!_" droned the priest, and the whole company clattered downstairs.

"Quick!--Out with you!" commanded Father Holland. "Speed to y'r heels, and blessing on the last o' ye!"

I dashed down the stairs and was bolting through the doorway when some one shouted, "There he is!"

"Run, Gillespie!" cried some one else--one of our men, I suppose--and I had plunged into the storm and raced for the ladders at the rear stockades with a pack of pursuers at my heels. The snow drifts were in my favor, for with my moccasins, I leaped lightly forward, while the booted soldiers floundered deep. I eluded my pursuers and was half-way up a ladder when a soldier's head suddenly appeared above the wall on the other side. Then a bayonet prodded me in the chest and I fell heavily backwards to the ground.

I was captured.

That is all there is to say. No man dilates with pleasure over that part of his life when he was vanquished. It is not pleasant to have weapons of defence wrested from one's hands, to feel soldiers standing upon one's wrists and rifling pockets.

It is hard to feel every inch the man on the horizontal.

In truth, when the soldiers picked me up without ceremony, or gentleness, and bundling me up the stairs of the main hall, flung me into a miserable pen, with windows iron-barred to mid-sash, I was but a sorry hero. My tormentors did not shackle me; I was spared that humiliation.

"There!" exclaimed a Hudson's Bay man, throwing lantern-light across the dismal low roof as I fell sprawling into the room. "That'll cool the young hot-head," and all the French soldiers laughed at my discomfiture.

They chained and locked the door on the outside. I heard the soldiers'

steps reverberating through the empty pa.s.sages, and was alone in a sort of prison-room, used during the regime of the petty tyrant McDonell. It was cold enough to cool any hot-head, and mine was very hot indeed. I knew the apartment well. Nor'-Westers had used it as a fur storeroom.

The wind came through the crevices of the board walls and piled miniature drifts on the floor-cracks, all the while rattling loose timbers like a saw-mill. The roof was but a few feet high, and I crept to the window, finding all the small panes coated with two inches of h.o.a.r-frost. Whether the iron bars outside ran across, or up and down, I could not remember; but the fact would make a difference to a man trying to escape. Much as I disliked to break the gla.s.s letting in more cold, there was only one way of finding out about those bars. I raised my foot for an outward kick, but remembering I wore only the moccasins with which I had been snowshoeing, I struck my fist through instead, and shattered the whole upper half of the window. I broke away cross-pieces that might obstruct outward pa.s.sage, and leaning down put my hand on the sharp points of upright spikes. So intense was the frost, the skin of my finger tips stuck to the iron, and I drew my hand in, with the sting of a fresh burn.

It was unfortunate about those bars. I could not possibly get past them down to the ground without making a ladder from my great-coat. I groped round the room hoping that some of the canvas in which we tied the peltries, might be lying about. There was nothing of the sort, or I missed it in the dark. Quickly tearing my coat into strips, I knotted triple plies together and fastened the upper end to the crosspiece of the lower window. Feet first, I poked myself out, caught the strands with both hands, and like a flash struck ground below with badly skinned palms. That reminded me I had left my mits in the prison room.

The storm had driven the soldiers inside. I did not encounter a soul in the courtyard, and had no difficulty in letting myself out by the main gate.

I whistled for the dogs. They came huddling from the ladders where I had left them, the sleigh still trailing at their heels. One poor animal was so benumbed I cut him from the traces and left him to die. Gathering up the robes, I shook them free of snow, replaced them in the sleigh and led the string of dogs down to the river. It would be bitterly cold facing that sweep of unbroken wind in mid-river; but the trail over ice would permit greater speed, and with the high banks on each side the dogs could not go astray.

To an overruling Providence, and to the instincts of the dogs, I owe my life. The creatures had not gone ten sleigh-lengths when I felt the loss of my coat, and giving one final shout to them, I lay back on the sleigh and covered myself, head and all, under the robes, trusting the huskies to find their way home.

I do not like to recall that return to the Sutherlands. The man, who is frozen to death, knows nothing of the cruelties of northern cold. The icy hand, that takes his life, does not torture, but deadens the victim into an everlasting, easy, painless sleep. This I know, for I felt the deadly frost-slumber, and fought against it. Aching hands and feet stopped paining and became utterly feelingless; and the deadening thing began creeping inch by inch up the stiffening limbs the life centres, till a great drowsiness began to overpower body and mind. Realizing what this meant, I sprang from the sleigh and stopped the dogs. I tried to grip the empty traces of the dead one, but my hands were too feeble; so I twisted the rope round my arm, gave the word, and raced off abreast the dog train. The creatures went faster with lightened sleigh, but every step I took was a knife-thrust through half-frozen awakening limbs. Not the man who is frozen to death, but the man who is half-frozen and thawed back to life, knows the cruelties of northern cold.

In a stupefied way, I was aware the dogs had taken a sudden turn to the left and were scrambling up the bank. Here my strength failed or I tripped; for I only remember being dragged through the snow, rolling over and over, to a doorway, where the huskies stopped and set up a great whining. Somehow, I floundered to my feet. With a blaze of light that blinded me, the door flew open and I fell across the threshold unconscious.

Need I say what door opened, what hands drew me in and chafed life into the benumbed being?

"What was the matter, Rufus Gillespie?" asked a bluff voice the next morning. I had awakened from what seemed a long, troubled sleep and vaguely wondered where I was.

"What happened to ye, Rufus Gillespie?" and the man's hand took hold of my wrist to feel my pulse.

"Don't, father! you'll hurt him!" said a voice that was music to my ears, and a woman's hand, whose touch was healing, began bathing my blistered palms.

At once I knew where I was and forgot pain. In few and confused words I tried to relate what had happened.

"The country's yours, Mr. Sutherland," said I, too weak, thick-tongued and deliriously happy for speech.

"Much to be thankful for," was the Scotchman's comment. "Seven Oaks is avenged. It would ill 'a' become a Sutherland to give his daughter's hand to a conqueror, but I would na' say I'd refuse a wife to a man beaten as you were, Rufus Gillespie," and he strode off to attend to outdoor work.

And what next took place, I refrain from relating; for lovers' eloquence is only eloquent to lovers.

CHAPTER XXVII

UNDER ONE ROOF

Nature is not unlike a bank. When drafts exceed deposits comes a protest, and not infrequently, after the protest, bankruptcy. From the buffalo hunt to the recapture of Fort Douglas by the Hudson's Bay soldiers, drafts on that essential part of a human being called stamina had been very heavy with me. Now came the casting-up of accounts, and my bill was minus reserve strength, with a balance of debt on the wrong side.

The morning after the escape from Fort Douglas, when Mr. Sutherland strode off, leaving his daughter alone with me, I remember very well that Frances abruptly began putting my pillow to rights. Instead of keeping wide awake, as I should by all the codes of romance and common sense, I--poor fool--at once swooned, with a vague, glimmering consciousness that I was dying and this, perhaps, was the first blissful glimpse into paradise. When I came to my senses, Mr. Sutherland was again standing by the bedside with a half-shamed look of compa.s.sion under his s.h.a.ggy brows.

"How far," I began, with a curious inability to use my wits and tongue, "how far--I mean how long have I been asleep, sir?"

"Hoots, mon! Dinna claver in that f.e.c.kless fashion! It's months, lad, sin' ye opened y'r mouth wi' onything but daft gab."

"Months!" I gasped out. "Have I been here for months?"

"Aye, months. The plain was snaw-white when ye began y'r bit nappie.

Noo, d'ye no hear the clack o' the geese through yon open window?"

I tried to turn to that side of the little room, where a great wave of fresh, clear air blew from the prairie. For some reason my head refused to revolve. Stooping, the elder man gently raised the sheet and rolled me over so that I faced the sweet freshness of an open, sunny view.

"Did I rive ye sore, lad?" asked the voice with a gruffness in strange contradiction to the gentleness of the touch.

Now I hold that however rasping a man's words may be, if he handle the sick with gentleness, there is much goodness under the rough surface.

Thoughtlessness and stupidity, I know, are patent excuses for half the unkindness and sorrow of life. But thoughtlessness and stupidity are also responsible for most of life's brutality and crime. Not spiteful intentions alone, but the dulled, brutalized, deadened sensibilities--that go under the names of thoughtlessness and stupidity--make a man treat something weaker than himself with roughness, or in an excessive degree, qualify for murder. When the harsh voice asked, "Do I rive ye sore?" I began to understand how surface roughness is as often caused by life's asperities as by the inner dullness akin to the brute.

Indeed, if my thoughts had not been so intent on the daughter, I could have found Mr. Sutherland's character a wonderfully interesting study.

The infinite capacity of a canny Scot for keeping his mouth shut I never realized till I knew Mr. Sutherland. For instance, now that consciousness had returned, I noticed that the father himself, and not the daughter, did all the waiting on me even to the carrying of my meals.

"How is your daughter, Mr. Sutherland?" I asked, surely a natural enough question to merit a civil reply.

"Aye--is it Frances y'r speerin' after?" he answered, meeting my question with a question; and he deigned not another word. But I lay in wait for him at the next meal.

"I haven't seen your daughter yet, Mr. Sutherland," I stuttered out with a deal of blushing. "I haven't even heard her about the house."

"No?" he asked with a show of surprise. "Have ye no seen Frances?" And that was all the satisfaction I got.

Between the dinner hour and supper time I conjured up various plots to hoodwink paternal caution.

"Mr. Sutherland," I began, "I have a message for your daughter."