The Honor of the Big Snows Part 30

"And--and Jean de Gravois, the chief man?"

"He was away. Mon Dieu, listen to that! The dogs are fighting out there!"

"A moment, m'sieur," begged Jan, as the Frenchman made a movement as if to run in the direction of the tumult. "The factor had a daughter--Melisse--"

"She left Lac Bain a long time ago, m'sieur," interrupted the trapper, making a tremendous effort to be polite as he edged toward the sound of battle. "M'sieur c.u.mmins told me that he had not seen her in a long time--I believe it was almost a year. Sacre, listen to that! They are tearing one another to bits, and they are MY dogs, m'sieur, for I can tell their voices among a thousand!"

He sprang through the darkness and Jan made a movement to follow. Then he stopped, and turned instead to the company's store. He took his pack to the sledge and dogs in the edge of the spruce, and Kazan leaped to greet him at the end of his babiche. This night as Jan traveled through the forest he did not notice the stars or the friendly shadows.

"A year," he repeated to himself, again and again, and once, when Kazan rubbed against his leg and looked up into his face, he said, "Ah, Kazan, our Melisse went away with the Englishman. May the Great G.o.d give them happiness!"

The forest claimed him more than ever after this. He did not go back to Oxford House in the spring but sold his furs to a pa.s.sing half-breed, and wandered through all of that spring and summer in the country to the west. It was January when he returned to his cabin, when the snows were deepest, and three days later he set out to outfit at the Hudson's Bay post on G.o.d's Lake instead of at Oxford House. It was while they were crossing a part of the lake that Kazan leaped aside for an instant in his traces and snapped at something in the snow.

Jan saw the movement but gave no attention to it until a little later, when Kazan stopped and fell upon his belly, biting at the harness and whining in pain. The thought of Kazan's sudden snap at the snow came to him then like a knife-thrust, and with a low cry of horror and fear he fell upon his knees beside the dog. Kazan whimpered and his bushy tail swept the snow as Jan lifted his great wolfish head between his two hands. No other sound came from Jan's lips now, and slowly he drew the dog up to him until he held him in his arms as he might have held a child, Kazan stilled the whimpering sounds in his throat. His one eye rested on his master's face, faithful, watching for some sign--for some language there, even as the burning fires of a strange torture gnawed at his life, and in that eye Jan saw the deepening reddish film which he had seen a hundred times before in the eyes of foxes and wolves killed by poison bait.

A moan of anguish burst from Jan's lips and he held his face close down against Kazan's head, and sobbed now like a child, while Kazan rubbed his hot muzzle against his cheek and his muscles hardened in a last desire to give battle to whatever was giving his master grief. It was a long time before Jan lifted his face from the s.h.a.ggy head, and when he did he knew that the last of all love, of all companionship, of all that bound him to flesh and blood in his lonely world, was gone. Kazan was dead.

From the sledge he took a blanket and wrapped Kazan in it, and carried him a hundred yards back from the trail. With bowed head he came behind his four dogs into G.o.d's House. Half an hour later he turned back into the wilderness with his supplies. It was dark when he returned to where he had left Kazan. He placed him upon the sledge and the four huskies whined as they dragged on their burden, from which the smell of death came to them. They stopped in the deep forests beyond the lake and Jan built a fire.

This night, as on all nights in his lonely life, Jan drew Kazan close to him, and he shivered as the other dogs slunk back from him suspiciously and the fire and the spruce tops broke the stillness of the forest. He looked at the crackling flames, at the fitful shadows which they set dancing and grimacing about him, and it seemed to him now that they were no longer friends, but were taunting him--gloating in Kazan's death, and telling him that he was alone, alone, alone. He let the fire die down, stirring it into life only when the cold stiffened him, and when at last he fell into an unquiet slumber it was still to hear the spruce tops whispering to him that Kazan was dead, and that in dying he had broken the last fragile link between Jan Th.o.r.eau and Melisse.

He went on at dawn, with Kazan wrapped in his blanket on the sledge. He planned to reach the cabin that night, and the next day he would bury his old comrade. It was dark when he came to the narrow plain that lay between him and the river. The sky was brilliant with stars when he slowly climbed the big, barren ridge at the foot of which was his home.

At the summit he stopped and seated himself on the edge of a rock, with nothing but a thousand miles of s.p.a.ce between him and the pale glow of the northern lights. At his feet lay the forest, black and silent, and he looked down to where he knew his cabin was waiting for him, black and silent, too.

For the first time it came upon him that THIS was home--that the forest, and the silence, and the little cabin hidden under the spruce tops below held a deeper meaning for him than a few hours before, when Kazan was a leaping, living comrade at his side. Kazan was dead. Down there he would bury him. And he had loved Kazan;--he knew, now, as he clutched his hands to his aching breast, that he would have fought for Kazan--given up his life for him--as he would have done for a brother.

Down there, under the silent spruce, he would bury the last that had remained to him of the old life, and there swelled up in his heart a longing, almost a prayer, that Melisse might know that he, Jan Th.o.r.eau, would have nothing left to him to-morrow but a grave, and that in that grave was their old chum, their old playmate--Kazan. Hot tears blinded Jan's eyes and he covered his face with his hands, and sobbed as he had sobbed years before, when in the southern wilderness word came to him that Melisse was dying.

"Melisse--Melisse--" He moaned her name aloud, and stared through the hot film in his eyes away into the north, sobbing to her, calling to her in his grief, and looking through that thousand miles of starlit s.p.a.ce as though from out of it her sweet face would come to him once more. And as he called there seemed to come to him from out of that s.p.a.ce a sound, so sweet, and low, and tender that his heart stood still and he stood up straight and stretched his arms up to Heaven, for Jan Th.o.r.eau knew that it was the sound of a violin that came to him from out of the north--that Melisse, an infinity away, had heard his call, his prayer, and was playing for him and Kazan!

And suddenly, as he listened, his arms fell to his sides, and there shot into his eyes all of the concentrated light of the stars, for the music came nearer and nearer, and still nearer to him, until he caught Kazan in his arms and ran with him down the side of the mountain. It died now in the forest--then rose again, softer and more distant it seemed to him, luring him on into the forest gloom. For a few moments consciousness of all else but that sound remained with him only in a dazed, half real way, and as John c.u.mmins had called upon the angels at Lac Bain many years ago when he, too, had gone out into the night to meet this wonderful music, so Jan Th.o.r.eau's soul cried to them now as he clutched Kazan to him, and stumbled on. Then, suddenly, he came upon the cabin, and in the cabin there was a light!

Gently he laid Kazan down upon the snow, and for a full minute he stood and listened, and heard, lower and sweeter still, the gentle music, of the violin. Some one was in his cabin--living hands were playing! After all it was not the spirit of Melisse that had come to him in the hour of his deepest grief, and a sob rose in his throat. He went on, step by step, and at the door he stopped again, wondering if he was mad, if the spirits of the forest were taunting him still, if--if--

One step more--

The Great G.o.d, he heard it now--the low, sweet music of the old Cree love song, played in the old, old way, with all of its old sadness, its whispering joy, its weeping song of life, of death, of love! With a great cry he flung open the door and leaped in, with his arms reaching out, his eyes blinded for a moment by the sudden light--and with a cry as piercing as his own, something ran through that light to meet him--Melisse, the old, glorious Melisse, crushing her arms about his neck, sobbing his name, pleading with him in her old, sweet voice to kiss her, kiss her, kiss her--while Jan Th.o.r.eau for the first time in his life felt sweeping over him a resistless weakness, and in this vision he knew that Jean de Gravois came to him, too, and held him in his arms, and that as the light faded away from about him he still heard Melisse calling to him, felt her arms about him, her face crushed to his own. And as the deep gloom enveloped him more densely, and he felt himself slipping down through it, he whispered to the faces which he could no longer see,

"Kazan--died--to-night--"

For a long time Jan fought to throw off the darkness, and when he succeeded, and opened his eyes again, he knew that it was Melisse who was sitting beside him, and that it was Melisse who flung her arms about him when he awoke from his strange sleep, and held his wild head pressed against her bosom--Melisse, with her glorious hair flowing about her as he had loved it in their old days, and with the old love shining in her eyes, only more glorious now, as he heard her voice.

"Jan--Jan--we have been hunting for you--so long," she cried softly.

"We have been searching--ever since you left Lac Bain. Jan, dear Jan, I loved you so--and you almost broke my heart. Dear, dear Jan," she sobbed, stroking his face now, "I know why you ran away--I know, and I love you so that--that I will die if--you go away again."

"You know!" breathed Jan. He was in his cot, and raised himself, clasping her beautiful face between his two hands, staring at her with the old horror in his eyes. "You know--and you come--to me!"

"I love you," said Melisse. She slipped up to him and laid her face upon his breast, and with her fingers clutched in his long hair she leaned over to him and kissed him. "I love you!"

Jan's arms closed about her, and he bowed his face so that it was smothered in her hair and he felt against it the joyous tremble of her bosom.

"I love you," she whispered again, and under her cloud of hair their lips met, and she whispered again, with her sweet breath still upon his lips, "I love you."

Outside Jean de Gravois was dancing up and down in the starlit edge of the forest, and Iowaka was looking at him.

"And NOW what do you think of your Jean de Gravois?" cried Jean for the hundredth time at least. "NOW what do you think of him, my beautiful one?" and he caught Iowaka's head in his arms, for the hundredth time, too, and kissed her until she pushed him away. "Was it not right for me to break my oath to the Blessed Virgin and tell Melisse why Jan Th.o.r.eau had gone mad? Was it not right, I say? And did not Melisse do as I told that fool of a Jan that she WOULD do? And didn't she HATE the Englishman all of the time? Eh? Can you not speak, my raven-haired angel?"

He hugged Iowaka again in his arms, and this time he did not let her go, but turned her face so that the starlight fell upon it.

"And NOW what if Jan Th.o.r.eau still feels that the curse is upon him?"

he asked softly. "Ho, ho, we have fixed that--you, my sweet Iowaka, and your husband, Jean de Gravois. I have it--here--in my pocket--the letter signed by the sub-commissioner at Prince Albert, to whom I told Jan's story when I followed his trail down there--the letter which says that the other woman died BEFORE the man who was to be Jan Th.o.r.eau's father married the woman who was to be his mother. And NOW do you understand why I did not tell Melisse of this letter, ma cherie? It was to prove to that fool of a Jan Th.o.r.eau that she loved him--WHATEVER HE WAS. NOW what do you think of Jean de Gravois, you daughter of a princess, you--you--"

"Wife of the greatest man in the world," laughed Iowaka softly. "Come, my foolish Jean, we can not stand out for ever. I am growing cold. And besides, do you not suppose that Jan would like to see ME?"

"Foolish--foolish--foolish--" murmured Jean as they walked hand in hand through the starlight. "She, my Iowaka, my beloved, says that I am foolish--AND AFTER THIS! Mon Dieu, what can a man do to make himself great in the eyes of his wife?"

THE END