The Barrier Part 24

"The soldier is right. You can't blame a dinge for stealing," and another: "Sure! Hogs and chickens are legitimate prey."

Lee was helped back to his stand, and called for order; but the crowd poked fun at him, and began moving about restlessly till some one shouted a motion to adjourn, and there arose a chorus of seconders. A few dissenting voices opposed them, but in the meantime Burrell was gone, and with him the cause of the tumult; so the meeting broke up of its own weight a moment later.

As Poleon and Gale walked home, the Frenchman said, "Dat was nervy t'ing to do."

The trader made no answer, and the other continued, "Stark is goin' for kill 'im, sure."

"It's a cinch," agreed Gale, "unless somebody gets Stark first."

When they were come to his door the trader paused, and, looking back over the glowing tents and up at the star-sprinkled heavens, remarked, as if concluding some train of thought, "If that boy has got the nerve to take a n.i.g.g.e.r thief out of a miners' meeting and hold him against this whole town, he wouldn't hesitate much at taking a white man, would he?"

"Wal," hesitated the other, "mebbe dat would depen' on de crime."

"Suppose it was--murder?"

"Ha! We ain' got no men lak' dat in Flambeau."

They said good-night, and the old man entered his house to find Alluna waiting for him, a look of worry on her stolid face.

"What's wrong?" he inquired.

"All night Necia has been weeping."

"Is she sick?" He started for the girl's door, but Alluna stopped him.

"No! It is not that kind of weeping; this comes from the heart. It is there she is sick. I went to her, but she grew angry, and said I had a black skin and could not understand; then she went out-doors and has not returned."

Gale sat down dejectedly. "Yes, she's sick in her heart, all right, and so am I, Alluna. When did she go out?"

"An hour ago."

"Where is she?"

"Out by the river-bank--I followed her in the shadows. It is best for her to stay there till she is calm."

"I know what ails her," said the father. "She's found that she's not like other girls. She's found that a white soul doesn't count with white people; they never go below the skin." Then he told her of the scene that morning in the store, adding that he believed she loved Lieutenant Burrell.

"Did she say so?"

"No, she denied it, now that she knows she hasn't got his kind of blood in her."

"Blood makes no difference," said the woman, stubbornly. "If he loves her, he will take her; if he does not--that is all."

Gale looked up at her, and was about to explain, when the utter impossibility of her comprehending him made him desist, and he fell moody again. At last he said, "I've got to tell her, Alluna."

"No, no!" cried the woman, aghast. "Don't tell her the truth! Nothing could be worse than that!"

But he continued, deliberately: "Love is the biggest thing in the world; it's the only thing worth while, and she has got to have a fair show at it. This has been on my mind for weeks, and I've put it away, hoping I wouldn't have to do it; but to-day I came face to face with it again, and it's up to me. She'll have to know some time, so the sooner the better."

"She would not believe you," said the woman, at which he started.

"I never thought of that. I wonder if she would doubt! I couldn't stand that."

"There is no proof, and it would mean your life. A good man's life is a great price to pay for the happiness of one girl--"

"I gave it once before," said Gale, a trifle bitterly, "and now that the game is started I've got to play the string out; but--I wonder if she would doubt--" He paused for a long moment. "Well, I'll have to risk it. However, I've got a lot of things to do first--you and the youngsters must be taken care of."

"And Stark?" said Alluna.

"Yes, and Stark."

Burrell took his prisoner to the barracks, where he placed him under guard, giving instructions to hold him at any cost, not knowing what wild and reckless humor the new citizens of Flambeau might develop during the night, for it is men who have always lived with the halter of the law tight upon their necks who run wildest when it is removed.

Men grown old on the frontier adhere more closely to a rigid code than do tenderfeet who feel for the first time the liberty and license of utter unrestraint, and it was these strangers whom the soldier feared rather than men like Gale and "No Creek" Lee, who would recognize the mercy of his intervention and let the matter drop.

After he had taken every precaution he went out into the night again, and fought with himself as he had fought all that day and all the night before; in fact, ever since old Thomas had come to him after leaving Necia, and had so cunningly shaped his talk that Burrell never suspected his object until he perceived his position in such a clear light that the young man looked back upon his work with startled eyes.

The Corporal had spoken garrulously of his officer's family; of their pride, and of their love for his profession; had dwelt enthusiastically upon the Lieutenant's future and the length he was sure to go, and finally drifted into the same story he had told Necia. Burrell at last sensed the meaning of the crafty old soldier's strategy and dismissed him, but not before his work had been accomplished. If a coa.r.s.e-fibred, calloused old campaigner like Corporal Thomas could recognize the impossibility of a union between Necia and himself, then the young man must have been blind indeed not to have seen it for himself. The Kentuckian was a man of strong and virile pa.s.sions, but he was also well balanced, and had ever followed his head rather than his heart, holding, as he did, a deep-seated contempt for weak men who laid their courses otherwise. The generations of discipline back of him spoke to his conscience. He had allowed himself to become attached to this girl until--yes, he knew now he loved her. If only he had not awakened her and himself with that first hot kiss; if only--But there was no going back now, no use for regrets, only the greater necessity of mapping out a course that would cause her least unhappiness. If he could have run away he would have done so gladly, but he was bound here to this camp, with no possibility of avoiding her.

When he drove his reason with firm hands he saw but one course to follow; but, when his mind went slack for a moment, the old desire to have her returned more strongly than ever, and he heard voices arguing, pleading, persuading--she was the equal of any woman in the world, they said, in mind, in purity, and in innocence. He hated himself for hesitating; he railed at his own indecision; and then, when he had justified his love and persuaded himself that he was right in seeking this union, there would rise again the picture of his people, their chagrin, and what would result from such a marriage. He knew how they would take it; he knew what his friends would say, and how he would be treated as the husband of a half-breed Indian; for in his country one drop of colored blood made a negro, and his people saw but little difference between the red and the black. It would mean his social ostracism; he would be shunned by his brother officers, and his career would be at an end. He swore aloud in the darkness that this was too great a price to pay for love, that he owed it to himself and to his dear ones at home to give up this dark-eyed maid who had bewitched him.

He had wandered far during this debate, clear past the town, and out through the Indian village; but now that he believed he had come to an understanding with himself, he turned back towards his quarters. He knew it would be hard to give her up; but he had irrevocably decided, and his path began to unfold itself so clear and straight that he marvelled how he could have failed to see it. He was glad he had conquered, although the pain was still sharp. He felt a better man for it, and, wrapped in this complacent optimism, he pa.s.sed close by the front of the trader's store, where Necia had crept to be alone with her misery.

The high moon cast a deep, wide shadow upon the store steps where the girl sat huddled, staring out into the unreal world, waiting for the night wind to blow away the fears and forebodings that would not let her sleep. It was late, and the hush of a summer midnight lay upon the distant hills. Burrell had almost pa.s.sed her when he was startled by the sound of his name breathed softly; then, to his amazement, he saw her come forth like a spirit into the silver sheen.

"Necia!" he cried, "what are you doing here at this hour?" She looked up at him sadly; he saw that her cheeks were wet, and something inside him snapped and broke. Without a word he took her in his arms, meeting her lips in a long kiss, while she, trembling with the joy of his strong embrace, drew closer and closer and rested her body wearily against his.

"Little girl! little girl!" he whispered, over and over, his tone conveying every shade of sympathy, love, and understanding she had craved. He knew what had made her sad, and she knew that he knew. There was no need for words; the anguish of this long day had whetted the edge of their desire, and they were too deeply, too utterly lost in the ecstasy of meeting to care for speech.

As she lay cradled in his arms, which alternately held her with the soft tenderness of a mother and crushed her with the fierce ardor of a lover, she lost herself in the bliss of a woman's surrender, and forgot all her terrifying doubts and fears. What were questions of breed or birth or color now, when she knew he loved her? Mere vapors that vanished with the first flutter of warm wings.

Nor did Meade Burrell recall his recent self-conquest or pause to reason why he should not love this little wisp of the wilderness. The barriers he had built went down in the sight and touch of his love and disappeared; his hesitation and infirmity seemed childish now--yes, more than that, cowardly. He realized all in a moment that he had been supremely selfish, that his love was a covenant, a compact, which he had entered into with her and had no right to dissolve without her consent, and, strangely enough, now that he acknowledged the bond to himself, it became very sweet and satisfying.

"Your lips cling so that I can't get free," sighed the girl, at last.

"You never shall," he whispered. But when she smiled up at him piteously, her eyes swimming, and said, "I must," he wrenched himself away and let her go.

As he went lightly towards the barracks through the far-stretching shadows, for the moon was yellow now, Meade Burrell sighed gladly to himself. Again his course ran clear and straight before him though wholly at variance with the one he had decided upon so recently. But he knew not that his vision was obscured and that the moon-madness was upon him.

CHAPTER XI

WHERE THE PATH LED

By daylight next morning every man and most of the women among the new arrivals had disappeared into the hills--the women in spite of the by-laws of Lee's Creek, which discriminated against their s.e.x. When a stampede starts it does not end with the location of one stream-bed, nor of two; every foot of valley ground for miles on every hand is pre-empted, in the hope that more gold will be found; each creek forms a new district, and its discoverers adopt laws to suit their whims. The women, therefore, hastened to partic.i.p.ate in the discovery of new territory and in the shaping of its government, leaving but few of either s.e.x to guard the tents and piles of provisions standing by the river-bank. In two days they began to return, and straggled in at intervals for a week thereafter, for many had gone far.

And now began a new era for Flambeau--an era of industry such as the frontier town had never known. The woods behind rang with the resounding discords of axes and saws and crashing timber, and new cabins appeared on every hand, rising in a day. The sluggish air was noisy with voices, and the edge of the forest receded gradually before the busy pioneers, replacing the tall timbers with little, high-banked homes of spruce and white-papered birch. From dawn till dark arose the rhythmic rasp of men whip-sawing floor lumber to the tune of two hundred dollars per thousand; and with the second steamer came a little steam sawmill, which raised its shrill complaint within a week, punctuating the busy day with its piping whistle.