The Heart of Unaga Part 46

An-ina's voice was low and soft. But for all her halting use of the white man's tongue, with which she found so much difficulty, there was decision and earnest in every word she uttered. There was the force, too, of a brave, clear-thinking mind in it. And it left Steve with difficulty in answering her. Besides for all his desire to protest, he knew he must go, or sacrifice that thing which had brought him to Unaga.

With characteristic decision he accepted her protest. He knew her generosity and courage. But a sense of shame was not lacking at the thought that the very position he had used to convince Marcel could not be allowed to stand where his purpose was threatened.

"I've got to go," he said almost doggedly. "But I hate the thought of leaving you, An-ina. If Marcel would only get around now, I'd feel easy.

But there's not a sign of him. He's late--late and--Psha! It's no sort of use. I must pull out right away."

He stood up from the counter and came over to the stove. An-ina's dark eyes watched him. Even in her untutored mind she understood the strength of character which overrode his every scruple, his every sentiment. Her regard for him was something of idolatry, and deep in her soul she knew that the gleanings in his heart left by that white woman were hers.

Maybe they were only gleanings, but she asked no more. She was content.

She knew no distinction between mistress and wife. The natural laws were sufficient. He was the joy of her savage heart, and she was the only woman in his life. It was as she would have it.

He came up to her and stood gazing down at the long, thin hands outspread to the warmth. Then with an unaccustomed display of feeling he thrust one arm through hers, and his strong hand clasped itself over both of hers.

"Say, An-ina, I'm going a h.e.l.l of a long trail. It's so long we just can't figure the end. It's a winter trail northward, and I don't need to tell you a thing of what that means. I'd say anyone but you and Marcel would guess I'm crazy. Well, I'm not. But it's a mighty desperate chance we're taking. If we win through, and get what we're chasing, it means the end of this country for all of us. Maybe you'll be glad. I don't know. If we fail--well, I can't just figure on failure. I never have and I don't reckon to start that way now. But I got to hand you 'good-bye'

this time. It's not that way with us usually. But this time I sort of feel I want to. You're just a great woman, and you've been mostly the whole meaning of things to me since--since--Anyway, I've done the best I know to hand you all the happiness lying around in a territory there's nothing much to in that way. But all that's nothing to what you've been to me. Well, my dear, I don't guess it's our way talking these things, but I got that inside me makes me want to say a whole heap about how I feel and what I think. Guess I'm not going to try though. It wouldn't amount to anything if I talked a day through. I wouldn't have said half I needed to. You and Marcel are all I've got, and you two dear folk'll be the last thought I have in life. You'll help him, my dear, won't you? You're just Marcel's mother, and if I don't get back you'll need to be his father, too. Good-bye."

An-ina made no reply. She had listened to him with a heart that was overflowing. As he said "good-bye" she turned her head, and the speechlessness of their farewell was deep with simple human pa.s.sion.

A moment later they had moved apart. It was Steve's initiative.

"Now? You go--now?"

An-ina's voice was heroic in its steadiness. There was not a sign of tears in her shining eyes. She followed him to the door as though his going were an ordinary incident in their day's routine, and stood there, while he pa.s.sed out, the very embodiment of that stoicism for which her race is so renowned.

An-ina was alone. Only the skeleton of her life at the fort remained to keep her company. The flesh was shorn from the bone. That flesh which had made her life an existence of joy which the greatest terror of Unaga was powerless to rob her of. It is true there were a few of the trail dogs left behind, and some of the reindeer. But what were these half wild creatures in exchange for a human companionship in which her whole soul was bound up?

But An-ina was free of the vain imaginings which curse the lives of those who boast the culture of civilization. She was content in her woman's memory, in her looking forward, and the present was full of an hundred and one occupations which held her mind to the exclusion of everything but the contemplation of the coming joy of reunion.

She had claimed to herself a bravery equal to that of her men folk. She might well have claimed more. She possessed, in addition to that active courage which belongs to the adventurer, the pa.s.sive, courageous endurance of the woman. So, with an unruffled calm, she set about the daily "ch.o.r.es" that were hers, and added to them all those labours which were necessary that this outland home should lack nothing in its welcome to her men.

For the moment the world about her was still and silent. It was as though Nature remained suspended in doubt between the seasons. The open season was pa.s.sed, when the earth lay bare to the lukewarm sun of summer. A white shroud covered the nakedness of the world, and already ice was spread out over the waters. But winter had not yet made its great onslaught.

It was coming. Oh, yes. It was near. The brief hours of daylight warned that. So did the mock-suns which hovered in the sky, chained by the radiant circle which held the dying sun prisoned. Then in the north the heavy clouds were gathering. They gathered and dispersed. Then they gathered again. And always they banked deeper and darker. The wind was rising. That fitful, patchy wind which is so full of threat, and which bears in its breath the cutting slash of a whip.

There were moments in her solitude when An-ina read these warnings with some misgivings. They were not for herself. They were not even for Steve. The winter trail was no new thing to her great man. Besides, he was equipped against anything the Northern winter could display.

Accident alone could hurt him. That was her creed. Marcel was different.

He was only equipped for summer, and he should have returned before that first snowfall. How could his canoes make the waters of the river when they were already frozen?

Thus it was she speculated as each dawn she sought the sign of his return, and at the close of each day, with the last of the vanishing light.

For a week she went on with her endless labours in that cheerful spirit of confidence which never seemed to fail her. Then there came a change.

She sought the gates of the fort more often, and stood gazing out longer, and with eyes that were not quite easy. Her unease was growing.

She spurned it, she refused to admit her fears. And, in her defence, she redoubled her labours.

Thus ten days from the moment of Steve's going pa.s.sed. It was the evening of the tenth day.

With a desperate resolve she had refused to allow herself her last evening vigil. Snow was in the air and had already begun to fall. So she sat over the great stove in the store, and plied her needle, threaded with gut, upon the shirt that was some day to cover Steve's body. Not once did she look up. It was almost as if she dared not. She was fighting a little battle with herself in which hope and confidence were hard pressed.

It was in the midst of this that the door was thrust open wide, and, with the opening, a flurry of snow swept in upon the warm atmosphere.

But that which caused her to start to her feet, and drop the treasured garment perilously near to the stove, was the figure that appeared in the white cloud that blew about it. It was Marcel, with snow and ice about his mouth and chin, and upon his eye-lashes, and with his thick pea-jacket changed from its faded hue to the virgin whiteness of the elements through which he had succeeded in battling his way.

"An-ina!"

It was the glad cry of greeting she had yearned for in the big voice of a man whose delight is unmeasured.

"Marcel!" The woman's reply was full of joy. Then, with a sigh that was a deep expression of relief: "An-ina glad--so glad!"

Marcel turned and closed the outer storm door. Then he shut the inner door securely. A moment later he was freeing himself from icicles and snow at the stove.

"Say, I had to beat it like h.e.l.l," he declared with a great laugh, while An-ina gathered up her sewing and laid it aside. Her mother mind was running upon a hot supper for her boy. "I was just worried to death at you folks sitting around guessing. Winter got me beat by just two weeks, and now the snow's falling in lumps, and it's mighty near down to zero.

Where's Uncle Steve?"

"Gone." An-ina had forgotten the supper. "Him gone where you know. Him gone days. Maybe ten. No wait. Oh, no. Him guess you come soon. So him go."

"And Julyman? And Oolak?"

"All gone. All him gone by land of fire. Oh, yes."

An-ina sighed. It was her only means of expressing the feelings she could not deny.

Marcel's eyes had sobered. He flung off his pea-jacket and possessed himself of An-ina's chair. He sat there with his great hands spread out to the warmth, enduring the sharp cold-aches it inspired. He was gazing steadily at the glowing patch where the side of the stove was red hot.

His mind was busy with thoughts which robbed him of half the joy of his return.

The thought of supper returned to the woman.

"So. I mak' him supper," she said. "Him boys. They come too?"

"Oh, yes," Marcel laughed shortly "Guess they're back in the woods there, doping like h.e.l.l so they shan't lose any sleep. They were kind of mad with me getting back late. I had to rawhide two of them, or the whole darn lot would have bolted. You see, I was held up."

An-ina would have questioned further but there was no encouragement in Marcel's tone or manner. He had not turned to reply. His att.i.tude was one the squaw recognized. He wanted to think. So she moved silently away and pa.s.sed to the old kitchen to prepare his food.

Marcel sat on. He was thinking, thinking hard. But not in any direction that An-ina would have guessed. For once there was confusion of thought and feeling that was quite foreign to his nature. He was thinking of Keeko, he was thinking of Uncle Steve, and he was thinking of An-ina. He was angry with himself and as nearly angry with Uncle Steve as he could be. He cursed himself that through his delay An-ina should have been left alone for two weeks. He was troubled at the thought that Uncle Steve saw fit to leave her, and refused to await his return. And towards An-ina he felt that contrition which his deep regard for her made so poignant. But through all, above all, floated the spirit of Keeko, and he knew that whatever might have befallen nothing would have made him act differently. He was troubled to realize that for the first time in his life Uncle Steve and An-ina had only second place in his thought.

His reflections were broken by An-ina's quiet return.

"Supper--him all fixed. Marcel come?"

Marcel started up. And the shadows pa.s.sed out of his handsome eyes. The gentle humility with which An-ina addressed him was irresistible. He was smiling again. His deep affection for this mother woman was shining in his eyes.

"Will I come?" he cried. "Say, you just see."

Marcel had eaten his fill. He had been well-nigh famishing when he arrived, and the simple cooking and wholesome food that An-ina set before him was like a banquet compared to the fare of the trail, on which he had subsisted all the open season.

Now he was lounging back in the rawhide-seated chair with his pipe aglow. He was ready to talk, more than ready. And An-ina's soft eyes were observing him, and reading him in her own wise way.