The Honor of the Big Snows Part 15

He went on until he came to where the beaten trail swept up and away from a swamp. As vividly as if it had happened but yesterday, he remembered how he had dragged himself through this swamp, bleeding and starving, his violin clutched to his breast, guided by the barking of dogs, which seemed to come from a million miles away. He plunged into it now, picking his tangled way until he stood upon a giant ridge, from which he looked out through the white night into the limitless barrens to the north.

Along the edge of those barrens he had come, daring the hundred deaths between hunter's cabin and Indian wigwam, starving at times, almost dying of cold, building fires to keep the wolves back, and playing--always playing to keep up his courage, until he found Melisse.

Fifteen years had pa.s.sed since then, and the c.u.mulative force of the things that had grown out of those years had fallen upon him this day.

He had felt it first when Melisse turned upon him at the foot of the mountain; and after that in the cabin, in every breath he drew, in every look that he gave her. For him she had changed for all time. She was no longer the little Melisse, his sister. And yet--

He was almost saying her last words aloud:

"Good night, Brother Jan!"

She had come to him that day to let him kiss her, as she had come to him a thousand times before; but he had not kissed her in the old way.

It was a different love that his lips had given, and even now the hot blood surged again into his face as he thought of what he had done. His was a different idea of honor from that held by men born to the ways of pa.s.sion.

In that which had stirred his blood, thrilling him with strange joy as he held her in his arms, he saw more than the shadow of sin--sacrilege against a thing which was more precious to him than life. Melisse came to him still as his sister, abiding in her glorious faith in him, unaware of his temptation; while he, Jan Th.o.r.eau--

He thrust a hand inside his coat and clutched at the papers that Jean de Gravois had read. Then he drew them forth, slowly, and held them crumpled in his fingers, while for many minutes he stared straight out into the gray gloom of the treeless plain.

His eyes shifted. Searchingly they traveled up the face of the crags behind him. They hunted where the starlight made deep pits of gloom in the twisting edge of the mountains. They went from rock to rock and from tree to tree until at last they rested upon a giant spruce which hung out over the precipitous wall of the ridge, its thick top beckoning and sighing to the black rocks that shot up out of the snow five hundred feet below.

It was a strange tree, weird and black, free of stub or bough for a hundred feet, and from far out on the barrens those who traveled their solitary ways east and west knew that it was a monument shaped by men.

Mukee had told Jan its story. In the first autumn of the woman's life at Lac Bain, he and Per-ee had climbed the old spruce, lopping off its branches until only the black cap remained; and after that it was known far and wide as the "lobstick" of c.u.mmins' wife. It was a voiceless cenotaph which signified that all the honor and love known to the wilderness people had been given to her.

To it went Jan, the papers still held in his hand. He had seen a pair of whisky-jacks storing food in the b.u.t.t of the tree, two or three summers before, and now his fingers groped for the hole. When he found it, he thrust in the papers, crowded them down, and filled the hole with chunks of bark.

"Always my sister--and never anything more to Jan Th.o.r.eau," he said gently in French, as if he were speaking to a spirit in the old tree.

"That is the honor of these snows; it is what the great G.o.d means us to be." The strife had gone from his voice; it rose strong and clear as he stretched his arms high up along the shorn side of the spruce, his eyes upon the silent plume that heard his oath. "I swear that Jan Th.o.r.eau will never do wrong to the little Melisse!"

With a face white and set in its determination, he turned slowly away from the tree. Far away, from the lonely depths of the swamp, there came the wailing howl of a wolf--a cry of hungerful savageness that died away in echoes of infinite sadness. It was like the howling of a dog at the door of a cabin in which his master lay dead, and the sound of it swept a flood of loneliness into Jan's heart. It was the death-wail of his own last hope, which had gone out of him for ever that night.

He listened, and it came again; but in the middle of it, when the long, moaning grief of the voice was rising to its full despair, there broke in a sharp interruption--a shrieking, yelping cry, such as a dog makes when it is suddenly struck. In another moment the forest thrilled with the deep-throated pack-call of the wolf who has started a fresh kill.

Hardly had its echoes died away when, from deeper in the swamp, there came another cry, and still another from the mountain; and up and out of the desolation rose the calls of others of the scattered pack, in quick response to the comrade who had first found meat.

All the cries were alike, filled with that first wailing grief, except that of the swelling throat which was sending forth the call to food. A few minutes, and another of the mournful howls changed into the fierce hunt-cry; then a second, a third, and a fourth, and the sound of the chase swept swiftly from the swamp to the mountain, up the mountain and down into the barrens.

"A caribou!" cried Jan softly. "A caribou, and he is going into the barrens. There is no water, and he is lost!"

He ran and leaned over beside the old tree, so that the great plain stretched out below him. Into the west turned the pack, the hunt-cry growing fainter until it almost died away. Then, slowly, it grew again in volume, swinging into the north, then to the east--approaching nearer and nearer until Jan saw a dark, swiftly moving blot in the white gloom.

The caribou pa.s.sed by within half a rifle-shot of him; another half rifle-shot behind followed the wolves, flung out fan-shape, their gray bodies moving like specters in a half-moon cordon, and their leaders almost abreast the caribou a dozen rods to each side.

There was no sound now. Below him, Jan could see the pale glimmer of ice and snow, where in summer there was a small lake. Desperately the caribou made an effort to reach this lake. The wolves drew in. The moon-shape of their bodies shrunk until it was nearer a circle. From the plain side the leading wolf closed until he was running at the caribou's forelegs. The mountain wolf responded on the opposite side.

Then came the end, quick, decisive, and without sound.

After a few moments there came faintly the snapping of jaws and the crunching of bones. Torn and bleeding, and yet quivering with life, the caribou was given up to the feast.

Jan turned away from the scene. Torn and bleeding at his own heart, he went back to Lac Bain.

CHAPTER XVIII

BROTHER JAN

When he came into the cabin for breakfast that morning, Jan's face showed signs of the struggle through which he had gone. c.u.mmins had already finished, and he found Melisse alone. Her hair was brushed back in its old, smooth way; and when she heard him, she flung her long braid over her shoulder, so that it fell down in front of her. He saw the movement, and smiled his thanks without speaking.

"You don't look well, Jan," she said anxiously. "You are pale, and your eyes are bloodshot."

"I am not feeling right," he admitted, trying to appear cheerful, "but this coffee will make a new man of me. You make the best coffee in the world, Melisse?"

"How do you know, brother?" she asked. "Have you drunk any other than mine since years ago at Churchill and York Factory?"

"Only Iowaka's. But I know that yours is best, from what I remember of the coffee at the bay."

"It was a long time ago, wasn't it?" she asked gently, looking at him across the table. "I dreamed of those days last night, Jan, though I don't remember anything about your going to Churchill. I must have been too young; but I remember when you went to Nelson House, and how lonely I was. Last night I dreamed that we both went, and that we stood together, looking out over the bay, where the tides are washing away the gun case coffins. I saw the ship that you described to me, too, and thought that we wanted to go out to it, but couldn't. Do you suppose we'll ever go to Churchill together, Jan, and ride on a wonderful ship like that?"

"It may be, Melisse."

"And then I dreamed that you were gone, and I was alone; and some one else came to me, whom I didn't like at all, and tried to MAKE me go to the ship. Wasn't that strange?" She laughed softly, as she rose to give him another cup of coffee. "What did you mean, Jan Th.o.r.eau, by running away from me like that?"

"To get even with you for running away from me on the mountain," he replied quickly.

She paused, the cup half filled, and Jan, looking up, caught her eyes full of mock astonishment.

"And were you sorry I ran away from you?"

Despite himself, his pale cheeks flushed.

"Do you think I was?" he replied equivocally.

"I--don't--know," she answered slowly, filling his cup. "What are you going to do to-day, Jan?"

"Drive out on the Churchill trail. Ledoq wants supplies, and he's too busy with his trap-lines to come in."

"Will you take me?"

"I'm afraid not, Melisse. It's a twelve-mile run and a heavy load."

"Very well. I'll get ready immediately."

She jumped up from the table, darting fun at him with her eyes, and ran to her room.

"It's too far, Melisse," he called after her. "It's too far, and I've a heavy load--"

"Didn't I take that twenty-mile run with you over to--Oh, dear! Jan, have you seen my new lynx-skin cap?"

"It's out here, hanging on the wall," replied Jan, falling into her humor despite himself. "But I say, Melisse--"

"Are the dogs ready?" she called. "If they're not, I'll be dressed before you can harness them, Jan."