The Heart of Unaga Part 31

But it was none of these. Despite the fur-lined tunic almost to the knees, despite the tough, warm nether garments, and the felt leggings, and beaded moccasins, and the well-strung snow-shoes, there remained no doubt in his startled mind. None whatsoever. It was a woman! A girl!

Alroy ran a hand across his astonished eyes. He pushed back his fur cap and stared. The girl was moving down the trail towards him. He had a full view of the face looking out of the fur hood which surrounded it. A white girl, with the heightened colour and brightening eyes of youth and perfect health and strength. She was tall, beautifully tall, and as she swept on past him in her gliding snow-shoes he had a fleeting vision of a strand of fair hair escaped from beneath her fur hood, and a pair of beautiful blue eyes, and pretty, parted lips which left him hugging himself.

The vision had rewarded him for his early rising.

CHAPTER II

THE SPRING OF LIFE

It was a moment when memories were stirring. An-ina searched the distance with eyes untroubled and full of a glad content. Had she not every reason for content? Oh, yes. She knew.

It was the same scene she had gazed upon for many seasons, for many years, and the limit of her vision had become practically the limits of her world. There stretched the white snow-clad valley with the still frozen river winding its way throughout its length to the north and south. There were the far-off hills beyond, white, grey; and purpling as the distance gained. Dark forest patches chequered the prospect. It was the same all ways, north, south, and west.

For all the few changings of aspect with the pa.s.sing of the seasons there was no weariness in the woman's heart. She was bound up to the exclusion of all else with the human a.s.sociations which were hers. No prison could hold bondage for her, so long as those a.s.sociations were not denied her.

Out of the tail of her eyes she glanced at the great figure that was standing near her in the gateway of the fort. It was a figure, the sight of which filled her with a great sense of pride, and joy, and grat.i.tude.

In her simple way she understood something of the debt owed her for her years of untiring, watchful care of the small body which had grown to such splendid manhood. But the thought of its discharge never occurred to her uncalculating mind. That which she beheld more than repaid.

Marcel was great for Indian eyes to gaze upon. Tall as was the woman, comely in her maturing years, she was left dwarfed beside the youthful manhood she had watched grow from its earliest days. The young man had the erect, supple, muscular body of a trained athlete and the face of the mother who had long since been laid to rest in the woods of the Sleeper Indians. He had moreover the strength of the father's unspoiled character, and all the purposeful method which the patient upbringing of "Uncle Steve" had been capable of inspiring. He was a simple human product, unspoiled by contamination with the evil which lurks under the veneer of civilization, yet he possessed all the trained mind that both Steve and he had been able to achieve from the wealth of learning which his father's laboratory had been found to contain.

Beyond this, the bubbling springs of youth were in full flood, and the tide ran strong in his rich veins. A pa.s.sionate enthusiasm was the outlet for this tide. A buoyant, fearless energy, a youthful pride in strenuous achievement. It was with these he faced the bitterness of the cruel Northland which he had grown to look upon like the Indians, who knew no better, as the whole setting of human life and all that was to be desired.

He was a hunter and a man of the trail before all things. His every thought was wrapt up in the immensity of the striving. He had absorbed the teachings of Steve, and added to them his own natural instincts. And in all this he had raised himself to that ideal of manhood which nature had implanted in An-ina's Indian heart. If she had thought of him as she would have thought of him years ago in the teepees of her race, she would have been content that he was a great "brave" and a "mighty hunter." As it was her feelings were restricted to an immense pride that she had been permitted the inestimable privilege of raising a real white child to well-nigh perfect manhood.

Marcel knocked out the pipe he was smoking. It was with something like reluctance he withdrew his gaze from the far distance.

"I've only two days more, An-ina," he said. "The outfit's ready to the last ounce of tea and the filling of the last cartridge. The Sleepers are wide awake, and squatting around waiting for the word to 'mush.' We just daren't lose the snow for the run to our headquarters. I wish Uncle Steve would get around. I just can't quit till he comes."

"No."

The squaw's reply was one of complete agreement. She understood. The long summer trail was claiming the man. The hunter in him was clamouring for the silent forests, where King Moose reigned supreme, the racing mountain streams alive with trout and an untold wealth of salmon, the open stretches of plain where the caribou browsed upon the weedy, tufted Northern gra.s.s, the marsh land and lakes, where the beavers spend the open season preparing their winter quarters. Then the traps, and the wealth of fox pelts they would yield, while the eternal dazzle of the much-prized black fox was always before his eyes. But stronger than all was his thought for Steve. No pa.s.sion, so far, was greater in his life than his regard for this man who had been father, mother, and mentor to him in the years of his helplessness.

An-ina pointed down the course of the winding river where it came out of the southern hills.

"He come that way," she said. Then she smiled. "The same he come always.

The same he come long time gone, when Marcel hide by waters and make big shout. Him much scared. Marcel think? Oh, yes."

The man laughed in a happy boyish way.

"I'd like to, but I just can't," he said. Then he added: "You always think of that, An-ina. No," he went on with a shake of the head. "I remember riding Uncle Steve's back. Seems it was for days and days. I sort of remember sitting around and watching him while he looked down at a pair of feet like raw meat, with the flies all trying to settle on them. The sort of way flies have. Then there were his eyes. I've still got the picture of 'em in my mind. They were red--red with blood, it seemed. They were sort of straining, too. And they shone--shone like the blazing coals of a camp-fire."

An-ina nodded, and into her dark eyes came a look of the dread of the days he had recalled.

"That so," she said, in a tone of suppressed emotion. "It was bad--so bad. Him carry Marcel. Oh, yes. Carry all time, like the squaw carry pappoose. So you live,--and An-ina glad."

"Yes." The man bestirred himself abruptly. He stood up from his lounging against the gatepost, and his great height and breadth of muscular shoulders seemed suddenly to have grown. "So I live. And you are glad.

That's it. So I live. It's always that way--with you and Uncle Steve.

It's for me. All the time for me. Not a thing for yourselves--ever."

The woman's eyes were suddenly filled with startled questioning and solicitude.

"Oh, yes? That so," she said simply. "Why not? You all Uncle Steve got.

You all An-ina got. So."

"And aren't you both all--I've got?" The man's smile disarmed the sudden pa.s.sionate force which had taken possession of his voice and manner.

"Can't I act that way, too? Can't I sort of carry you and Uncle Steve on my back? Can't I come along and say, 'Here, you've done all this for me when I couldn't act for myself, now it's my turn? You sit around and look on, and act foolish, like I've done all the time, while I get busy.' Can't I say this, same as you've acted all these years? No. You two great creatures won't let me. And sometimes it makes me mad. And sometimes it makes me want to stretch out these fool arms of mine and hug you for the kindest, bravest, and best in the world."

An-ina laughed in her silent Indian fashion, and the delight in her eyes was a reflection of the joy in her soul.

"You say all those. It make no matter," she said.

"But it does make matter." The man's handsome face flushed, and his keen blue eyes shone with a half angry, half impatient light. With a curious gesture of suppressed feeling he pa.s.sed a hand over his clean-shaven mouth, as though to smooth the whiskers that had never been permitted to disfigure it. "It makes me feel a darn selfish, useless hulk of a man.

And I'm not," he cried. "I'm neither those things. Say An-ina," he went on, more calmly, and with a light of humour in his eyes, "Don't you dare to laff at me. Don't you dare deny the things I'm saying. I won't stand for it. For all you're my old nurse I'll just pick you up like nothing and throw you to the dogs back in the yard there. And maybe that'll let you see I can do the things I figure to. I'm a grown man, and Uncle Steve says 'no' every time I ask to take on the work of locating where the weed grows, which he hasn't found in fourteen years, and which my father was yearning to find before he died. 'No,' he says. 'This is for me. It's my work. It's the thing I set out to do--for you.' When I ask to do the trade at Seal Bay, it's the same. He guesses the 'sharps'

would beat me. Me! who could break a dozen of their heads in as many minutes. So I'm left to the trail--the summer trail--to gather pelts, and learn a craft I know by heart. I keep the Sleeper boys busy, and in good heart. I'm the big hunter they like to follow. I'm the son of a great white chief they say, and, for me, they're sort of fool dolls I pull the strings of, while Uncle Steve does the big man's work. Can you beat it? It's all wrong. You and Uncle Steve are twice my age. You've crowded a life's work--for me. You both reckon to go on--always for me.

While I sit around guessing I'm a man because I know a jack-rabbit from a bull-moose. It's got to alter. It's going to alter--after the summer.

I want the big sc.r.a.p, An-ina. The real sc.r.a.p life can hand a feller that can write 'man' to his name. I'm out for it all. I want it all. And if Uncle Steve's right, and I'm wrong, and I go under, I'm ready to take the med'cine however it comes."

The smile of the woman was full of the mother. It was full of the Indian, too.

"Oh, yes," she said quickly. "What you call him, 'chance.' The 'big chance.' So it is. It good. So very, very good for the big man. Marcel the big man. I know. Oh, yes. I know. The chance it come. Maybe easy.

Maybe not. It come. So it is always. It come, you take it. You not must look, or you find trouble. You take it. Always take it when it come.

That how An-ina think."

Marcel laughed. His impatience had vanished before the sun of his happy temperament.

"You've dodged the dogs, An-ina," he cried. "You're too cute for me.

You've agreed with me, and haven't handed an inch of ground. But I tell you right here, you dear old second mother of mine, I'm going to play the man as I see the game. And I'm going to play it good."

The expression on the man's dusky face was deadly earnest. His lean brown hands were spread out over the fire for warmth. His fur-clad body was hunched upon his quarters, as near to the glowing embers as safety permitted. And as he talked a look of awe and apprehension dilated his usually unexpressive eyes.

"The fire run this way--that way," he cried, in a voice of monotonous cadence, but with a note of urgency behind it. "The man stand by dogs.

He look--look all the time. Fire all same everywhere. It burn up all.

Nothing left. Only two men. Boss Steve and Julyman. Oh, yes. They stan'.

They look, too. They no fear. So they not burn all up. The man by the dogs much scare. He left him club, an' beat all dogs. So they all crazed with him club. They run. Oh, yes. An' the man turn. He run, too. Then Oolak see him face. Oh, yes. Him face of Oolak. Him eyes big with fear.

Him cry out. So him run lak h.e.l.l so the fire not get him."

The silent Oolak had committed himself to speech. He had talked long out of the superst.i.tious dread that beset his Indian heart. He had dreamed a dream that filled him with fear of the future, towards which he looked for its fulfilment.

The grey dawn was searching the obscurity of the fringe of woody shelter in which the camp was made--the last camp on the return journey from Seal Bay to the fort. The smell of cooked meat rose from the pan which Julyman held over the fire. Steve sat on a fallen log, smoking, and listening tolerantly to the man's recital, while the sharp yapping of the dogs near by suggested the usual altercation over their daily meal of frozen fish. The cold was intense, but the cracking, splitting booming which came up out of the heart of the woods told of the reluctant yielding of the tenacious grip of winter.

Something of Oolak's awe found reflection in the eyes of Julyman. He, too, was an easy prey to the other's primitive superst.i.tion. Steve alone seemed untroubled. He understood these men. They were comrades on the trail. There was no distinction. There was no master and servant here.

They fought the battle together, the Indians only looking to him for leadership. Thus he restrained the lurking smile of irony as he listened to the awesome recital of a dream that filled the dreamer with serious apprehension.