The Honor of the Big Snows Part 26

Isn't that fair?"

The plate dropped between them. Over it their hands met in a great, clutching grip, and up from Jan's heart there welled words which almost burst from his lips in voice, words which rang in his brain, and which were an unspoken prayer--"Melisse, I thank the great G.o.d that it is this man whom you love!" But it was in silence that he staggered to his feet and went out into the gloom.

"This may be only a lull in the storm," he said. "We must lose no time.

How long did you travel before you made this camp?"

"About ten hours," said Dixon. "I made due west by compa.s.s until I knew that I had pa.s.sed Lac Bain, and then struck north."

"Ah, you have the compa.s.s," cried Jan, his eyes lighting up. "M'seur Dixon, we are very near to the post if you camped so soon! Tell me which is north."

"That is north."

"Then we go south--south and east. If you traveled ten hours, first west and then north, we are northwest of Lac Bain."

Jan spoke no more, but got his rifle from the shelter and put only the tea and two pails in his pack; leaving the remaining blanket upon the snow. The Englishman followed close behind him, bending weakly under the weight of his gun. Tediously they struggled to the top of the ridge, and as Jan stopped to look through the gray day about him, Dixon sank down into the snow. When the other turned toward him he grinned up feebly into his face.

"Bushed," he gasped. "Don't believe I can make it through this snow, Th.o.r.eau."

There was no fear in his eyes; there was even a cheerful ring in his voice.

A sudden glow leaped into Jan's face.

"I know this ridge," he exclaimed. "It runs within a mile of Lac Bain.

You'd better leave your rifle behind."

Dixon made an effort to rise and Jan helped him. They went on slowly, resting every few hundred yards, and each time that he rose from these periods of rest, Dixon's face was twisted with pain.

"It's the flour and water anch.o.r.ed amidships," he smiled grimly.

"Cramps--Ugh!"

"We'll make it by supper-time," a.s.sured Jan cheerfully.

Dixon leaned heavily on his arm.

"I wish you'd go on alone," he urged. "You could send help--"

"I promised Melisse that I would bring you back if I found you,"

replied Jan, his face turned away. "If the storm broke again, you would be lost."

"Tell me--tell me--" he heard Dixon pant eagerly, "did she send you to hunt for me, Th.o.r.eau?"

Something in the Englishman's voice drew his eyes to him. There was an excited flush in his starved cheeks; his eyes shone.

"Did she send you?"

Jan struggled hard to speak calmly.

"Not in words, M'seur Dixon. But I know that if I get you safely back to Lac Bain she will be very happy."

Something came in Dixon's sobbing breath which Jan did not hear. A little later he stopped and built a fire over which he melted more snow and boiled tea. The drink stimulated them, and they went on. A little later still and Jan hung his rifle in the crotch of a sapling.

"We will return for the guns in a day or so," he said.

Dixon leaned upon him more heavily now, and the distances they traveled between resting periods became shorter and shorter. Three times they stopped to build fires and cook tea. It was night when they descended from the ridge to the snow-covered ice of Lac Bain. It was past midnight when Jan dragged Dixon from the spruce forest into the opening at the post. There were no lights burning, and he went with his half-conscious burden to the company's store. He awakened Croisset, who let them in.

"Take care of Dixon," said Jan, "and don't arouse any of the people to-night. It will be time enough to tell what has happened in the morning."

Over the stove in his own room he cooked meat and coffee, and for a long time sat silent before the fire. He had brought back Dixon. In the morning Melisse would know. First she would go to the Englishman, then--then--she would come to him!

He rose and went to the rude board table in the corner of his room.

"No, Melisse must not come to me in the morning," he whispered to himself. "She must never again look upon Jan Th.o.r.eau."

He took pencil and paper and wrote. Page after page he crumpled in his hand and flung into the fire. At last, swiftly and despairingly, he ended with half a dozen lines. What he said came from his heart, in French:

"I have brought him back to you, my Melisse, and pray that the good G.o.d may give you happiness. I leave you the old violin, and always when you play, it will tell you of the love of Jan Th.o.r.eau."

He folded the page and sealed it in one of the company's envelopes.

Very quietly he went from his room down into the deserted store.

Without striking a light he found a new pack, a few articles of food, and ammunition. The envelope, addressed to Melisse, he left where Croisset or the factor would find it in the morning. His dogs were housed in a shack behind the store, and he called out their names softly and warningly as he went among them. As stealthily as their master they trailed behind him to the edge of the forest, and close under the old spruce that guarded the grave Jan stopped, and silently he stretched out his arms to the little cabin.

The dogs watched him. Kazan, the one-eyed leader, glared from him into the dimness of the night, whining softly. A low, mourning wind swept through the spruce tops, and from Jan's throat there burst sobbingly words which he had heard beside this same grave more than seventeen years before, when Williams' choking voice had risen in a last prayer for the woman.

"May the great G.o.d care for Melisse!"

He turned into the trail upon which Jean de Gravois had fought the Englishman, led his dogs and sledge in a twisting path through the caribou swamp, and stood at last beside the lob-stick tree that leaned out over the edge of the white barrens. With his knife he dug out the papers which he had concealed in that whisky-jack hole.

It was near dawn when he recovered the rifle which he had abandoned on the mountain top. A little later it began to snow. He was glad, for it would conceal his trail.

For thirteen days he forced his dogs through the deep snows into the south. On the fourteenth they came to Le Pas, which is the edge of civilization. It was night when he came out of the forest, so that he could see the faint glow of lights beyond the Saskatchewan.

For a few moments, before crossing, he stopped his tired dogs and turned his face back into the grim desolation of the North, where the aurora was playing feebly in the skies, and beckoning to him, and telling him that the old life of centuries and centuries ago would wait for him always at the dome of the earth.

"The good G.o.d bless you, and keep you, and care for you ever more, my Melisse," he whispered; and he walked slowly ahead of his dogs, across the river, and into the Other World.

CHAPTER XXV

JACK THORNTON

There was music that night in Le Pas. Jan heard it before he came to the first of the scattered lights, and the dogs p.r.i.c.ked up their ears.

Kazan, the one-eyed, whined under his breath, and the weight at Jan's heart grew heavier as the dog turned up his head to him in the starlight. It was strange music, nothing like Jan had ever heard. It was strange to Kazan, and set him whining, and he thrust his muzzle up to his master's touch inquiringly. They pa.s.sed on like shadows, close to a big, lighted log building from which the music came, and with it a tumult of laughter, of shuffling and stamping feet, of coa.r.s.e singing and loud voices. A door opened and a man and a woman came out. The man was cursing, and the woman was laughing at him--laughing as Jan had never heard a woman laugh before, and he held his breath as he listened to the taunting mockery in it. Others followed the first man and the first woman. Some pa.s.sed quietly. A woman, escorted between two men, screamed with merriment as she flung toward his shadowy figure an object which fell with a crash against the sledge. It was a bottle.

Kazan snarled. The trace-dogs slunk close to the leader's heels. With a low word Jan led them on.

Close down to the river, where the Saskatchewan swung in a half-moon to the south and west, he found a low, squat building with a light hung over the door illuminating a bit of humor in the form of a printed legend which said that it was "King Edward's Hotel." The scrub bush of the forest grew within a hundred yards of it, and in this bush Jan tied his dogs and left his sledge. It did not occur to him that now, when he had entered civilization, he had come also into the land of lock and bolt, of robbers and thieves. It was loneliness, and not suspicion, that sent him back to unleash Kazan and take him with him.