The Honor of the Big Snows Part 12

"Jan, Jan--my Jan!"

Words choked in c.u.mmins' throat when he saw the white-faced figure clutching Melisse to its breast.

At last he gasped "Jan!" and threw out his arms, so that both were caught in their embrace.

For an instant Jan turned his face up to the light The other stared and understood.

"You have been sick," he said, "but it has left no marks."

"Thank G.o.d!" breathed Jan.

Melisse raised her head, and stroked his cheeks with her two hands.

That night she remembered her prayer, and at its end she added:

"Dear Father in Heaven, thank you for sending back Jan!"

CHAPTER XV

ALMOST A WOMAN

Peace followed in the blighted trails of the Red Terror. Again the forest world breathed without fear; but from Hudson's Bay to Athabasca, and as far south as the thousand waters of the Reindeer country, the winds whispered of a terrible grief that would remain until babes were men and men went to their graves.

Life had been torn and broken in a cataclysm more fearful than that which levels cities and disrupts the earth. Slowly it began its readjustment. There was no other life to give aid or sympathy; and just as they had suffered alone, so now the forest people struggled back into life alone, building up from the wreck of what had been, the things that were to be.

For months the Crees wailed their death dirges as they sought out the bones of their dead. Men dragged themselves into the posts, wifeless and childless, leaving deep in the wilderness all that they had known to love and give them comfort. Now and then came a woman, and around the black scars of burned cabins and teepees dogs howled mournfully for masters that were gone.

The plague had taken a thousand souls, and yet the laughing, dancing millions in that other big world beyond the edge of the wilderness caught only a pa.s.sing rumor of what had happened.

Lac Bain suffered least of the far northern posts, with the exception of Churchill, where the icy winds down-pouring from the Arctic had sent the Red Terror shivering to the westward. In the late snows, word came that c.u.mmins was to take Williams' place as factor, and Per-ee at once set off for the Fond du Lac to bring back Jean de Gravois as "chief man." Croisset gave up his fox-hunting to fill Mukee's place.

The changes brought new happiness to Melisse. Croisset's wife was a good woman who had spent her girlhood in Montreal, and Iowaka, now the mother of a fire-eating little Jean and a handsome daughter, was a soft-voiced young Venus who had grown sweeter and prettier with her years--which is not usually the case with half-breed women.

"But it's good blood in her, beautiful blood," vaunted Jean proudly, whenever the opportunity came. "Her mother was a princess, and her father a pure Frenchman, whose father's father was a chef de bataillon.

What better than that, eh? I say, what better could there be than that?"

So, for the first time in her life, Melisse discovered the joys of companionship with those of her own kind.

This new companionship, pleasant as it was, did not come between her and Jan. If anything, they were more to each other than ever. The terrible months through which they had pa.s.sed had changed them both, and had given them, according to their years, the fruits which are often ripened in the black gloom of disaster rather than in the sunshine of prosperity.

To Melisse they had opened up a new world of thought, a new vision of the things that existed about her. The sternest teacher of all had brought to her the knowledge that comes of grief, of terror, and of death, and she had pa.s.sed beyond her years, just as the c.u.mulative processes of generations made the Indian children pa.s.s beyond theirs.

She no longer looked upon Jan as a mere playmate, a being whose diversion was to amuse and to love her. He had become a man. In her eyes he was a hero, who had gone forth to fight the death of which she still heard word and whisper all about her. Croisset's wife and Iowaka told her that he had done the bravest thing that a man might do on earth. She spoke proudly of him to the Indian children, who called him the "torch-bearer." She noticed that he was as tall as Croisset, and taller by half a head than Jean, and that he lifted her now with one arm as easily as if she were no heavier than a stick of wood.

Together they resumed their studies, devoting hours to them each day, and through all that summer he taught her to play upon his violin. The warm months were a time of idleness at Lac Bain, and Jan made the most of them in his teaching of Melisse. She learned to read the books which he had used at Fort Churchill, and by midsummer she could read those which he had used at York Factory. At night they wrote letters to each other and delivered them across the table in the cabin, while c.u.mmins looked on and smoked, laughing happily at what they read aloud to him.

One night, late enough in the season for a fire to be crackling merrily in the stove, Jan was reading one of these letters, when Melisse cried:

"Stop, Jan--stop THERE!"

Jan caught himself, and he blushed mightily when he read the next lines:

"'I think you have beautiful eyes. I love them.'"

"What is it?" cried c.u.mmins interestedly. "Read on, Jan."

"Don't!" commanded Melisse, springing to her feet and running around the table. "I didn't mean you to read that!"

She s.n.a.t.c.hed the paper from Jan's hand and threw it into the fire.

Jan's blood filled with pleasure, and at the bottom of his next letter he wrote back:

"I think you have beautiful hair. I love it."

That winter Jan was appointed post hunter, and this gave him much time at home, for meat was plentiful along the edge of the barrens. The two continued at their books until they came to the end of what Jan knew in them. After that, like searchers in strange places, they felt their way onward, slowly and with caution. During the next summer they labored through all the books which were in the little box in the corner of the cabin.

It was Melisse who now played most on the violin, and Jan listened, his eyes glowing proudly as he saw how cleverly her little fingers danced over the strings, his face flushed with a joy that was growing stronger in him every day. One day she looked curiously into the F-hole of the instrument, and her pretty mouth puckered itself into a round, red "O"

of astonishment when Jan quickly s.n.a.t.c.hed the violin from her hands.

"Excuses-moi, ma belle Melisse," he laughed at her in French. "I am going to play you something new!"

That same day he took the little cloth-covered roll from the violin and gave it another hiding-place. It recalled to him the strange spirit which had once moved him at Fort Churchill, and which had remained with him for a time at Lac Bain. That spirit was now gone, luring him no longer. Time had drawn a softening veil over things that had pa.s.sed. He was happy.

The wilderness became more beautiful to him as Melisse grew older. Each summer increased his happiness; each succeeding winter made it larger and more complete. Every fiber of his being sang in joyful response as he watched Melisse pa.s.s from childhood into young girlhood. He marked every turn in her development, the slightest change in her transformation, as if she had been a beautiful flower.

He possessed none of the quick impetuosity of Jean de Gravois. Years gave the silence of the North to his tongue, and his exultation was quiet and deep in his own heart. With an eagerness which no one guessed he watched the growing beauty of her hair, marked its brightening l.u.s.ter when he saw it falling in thick waves over her shoulders, and he knew that at last it had come to be like the woman's. The changing lights in her eyes fascinated him, and he rejoiced again when he saw that they were deepening into the violet blue of the bakneesh flowers that bloomed on the tops of the ridges.

To him, Melisse was growing into everything that was beautiful. She was his world, his life, and at Post Lac Bain there was nothing to come between the two. Jan noticed that in her thirteenth year she could barely stand under his outstretched arm. The next year she had grown so tall that she could not stand there at all. Very soon she would be a woman!

The thought leaped from his heart, and he spoke it aloud. It was on the girl's fifteenth birthday. They had come up to the top of the ridge on which he had fought the missionary, to gather red sprigs of the bakneesh for the festival that they were to have in the cabin that night. High up on the face of a jagged rock, Jan saw a bit of the crimson vine thrusting itself out into the sun, and, with Melisse laughing and encouraging him from below, he climbed up until he had secured it. He tossed it down to her.

"It's the last one," she cried, seeing his disadvantage, "and I'm going home. You can't catch me!"

She darted away swiftly along the snow-covered ridge, taunting him with merry laughter as she left him clambering in cautious descent down the rock. Jan followed in pursuit, shouting to her in French, in Cree, and in English, and their two voices echoed happily in their wild frolic.

Jan slackened his steps. It was a joy to see Melisse springing from rock to rock and darting across the thin openings close ahead of him, her hair loosening and sweeping out in the sun, her slender figure fleeing with the lightness of the pale sun-shadows that ran up and down the mountain.

He would not have overtaken her of his own choosing, but at the foot of the ridge Melisse gave up. She returned toward him, panting and laughing, shimmering like a sea-naiad under the glistening veil of her disheveled hair. Her face glowed with excitement; her eyes, filled with the light of the sun, dazzled Jan in their laughing defiance. Before her he stopped, and made no effort to catch her. Never had he seen her so beautiful, still daring him with her laugh, quivering and panting, flinging back her hair. Half reaching out his arms, he cried:

"Melisse, you are beautiful--you are almost a woman!"

The flush deepened in her cheeks, and there was no longer the sweet, taunting mischief in her eyes. She made no effort to run from him when he came to her.

"Do you think so, Brother Jan?"

"If you did your hair up like the pictures we have in the books, you would be a woman," he answered softly. "You are more beautiful than the pictures!"