The Honor of the Big Snows Part 8

A Cree trapper had found Jan's violin in the snow, and had brought it to Maballa. Before c.u.mmins finished his supper, the boy began to play, and he continued to play until the lights at the post went out and both the man and the child were deep in sleep. Then Jan stopped. There was the fire of a keen wakefulness in his eyes as he carefully unfastened the strings of his instrument, and held it close to the oil lamp, so that he could peer down through the narrow aperture in the box.

He looked again at c.u.mmins. The man was sleeping with his face to the wall. With the hooked wire which he used for cleaning his revolver Jan fished gently at the very end of the box, and after three or four efforts the wire caught in something soft, which he pulled toward him.

Through the bulge in the F-hole he dragged forth a small, tightly rolled cylinder of faded red cloth.

For a few moments he sat watching the deep breathing of c.u.mmins, unrolling the cloth as he watched, until he had spread out upon the table before him a number of closely written pages of paper. He weighted them at one end with his violin, and held them down at the other with his hands. The writing was in French. Several of the pages were in a heavy masculine hand, the words running one upon another so closely that in places they seemed to be connected; and from them Jan took his fingers, so that they rolled up like a spring. Over the others he bent his head, and there came from him a low, sobbing breath.

On these pages the writing was that of a woman, and from the paper there still rose a faint, sweet scent of heliotrope. For half an hour Jan gazed upon them, reading the words slowly, until he came to the last page.

When there came a movement from over against the wall, he lifted for an instant a pair of startled eyes. c.u.mmins was turning in his sleep.

Soundlessly Jan tiptoed across the floor, opened the door, without disturbing the slumbering man and went out into the night. In the south and east there glowed a soft blaze of fire where the big spring moon was coming up over the forest. As Jan turned his face toward it, a new and strange longing crept into his heart. He stretched out his arms, with the papers and his violin clutched in his hands, as if from out of that growing glory a wonderful spirit was calling to him.

For the first time in his lonely life it came to him--this call of the great world beyond the wilderness; and suddenly he crushed the woman's letter to his lips, and his voice burst from him in whispering, thrilling eagerness:

"I will come to you--some day--w'en ze leetle Melisse come too!"

He rolled the written pages together, wrapped them in the faded red cloth, and concealed them again in the box of his violin before he reentered the cabin.

The next morning c.u.mmins stood in the door, and said:

"How warm the sun is! The snow and ice are going, Jan. It's spring.

We'll house the sledges to-day, and begin feeding the dogs on fish."

Each day thereafter the sun rose earlier, the day was longer, and the air was warmer; and with the warmth there now came the sweet scents of the budding earth and the myriad sounds of the deep, unseen life of the forest, awakening from its long slumber in its bed of snow. Moose-birds chirped their mating songs and flirted from morning until night in bough and air; ravens fluffed themselves in the sun; and s...o...b..rds--little black-and-white beauties that were wont to whisk about like so many flashing gems--changed their color from day to day until they became new creatures in a new world.

The poplar buds swelled in their joy until they split like over fat peas. The mother bears come out of their winter dens, accompanied by little ones born weeks before, and taught them how to pull down the slender saplings for these same buds. The moose returned from the blizzardy tops of the great ridges, where for good reasons they had pa.s.sed the winter, followed by the wolves who fed upon their weak and sick. Everywhere were the rushing torrents of melting snow, the crackle of crumbling ice, the dying frost-cries of rock and earth and tree; and each night the pale glow of the aurora borealis crept farther and farther toward the pole in its fading glory.

The post fell back into its old ways. Now and then a visitor came in from out of the forest, but he remained for only a day or two, taking back into the solitude with him a few of the necessaries of life.

Williams was busy preparing his books for the coming of the company's chief agent from London, and c.u.mmins, who was helping the factor, had a good deal of extra time on his hands.

Before the last of the snow was gone, he and Jan began dragging in logs for an addition which they planned for the little cabin. Basking out in the sun, with a huge bearskin for a floor, Melisse looked upon the new home-building with wonderful demonstrations of interest. c.u.mmins' face glowed with pleasure as she kicked and scrambled on the bearskin and gave shrill-voiced approval of their efforts.

Jan was the happiest youth in the world. It was certain that the little Melisse understood what they were doing, and the word pa.s.sed from c.u.mmins and Jan to the others at the post, so that it happened frequently during the building operations that Mukee and Per-ee, and even Williams himself, would squat for an hour at a time in the snow near Melisse, marveling at the early knowledge which the great G.o.d saw fit to put into a white baby's brain. This miracle came to be a matter of deep discussion, in which there were the few words but much thought of men born to silence. One day Mukee brought two little Indian babies and set them on the bearskin, where they continued to sit in stoic indifference--a clear proof of the superior development of Melisse.

"I wouldn't be surprised to hear her begin talking at any time,"

confided c.u.mmins to Jan, one evening when the boy was tuning his violin. "She is nearly six months old."

"Do you suppose she would begin in French?" asked Jan, suddenly stopping the tightening of his strings.

c.u.mmins stared.

"Why?"

Jan dropped his voice to an impressive whisper.

"Because I have heard her many times say, 'Bon-bon--bonbon--bonbon'--which means candee; and always I have given her candee, an' now ze leetle Melisse say 'Bonbon' all of ze time."

"Well," said c.u.mmins, eying him in half belief. "Could it happen?"

Like a shot Jan replied:

"I began in Engleesh, an' Jan Th.o.r.eau is French!"

He began playing, but c.u.mmins did not hear much of the music. He went to the door, and stared in lonely grief at the top of the tall spruce over the grave. Later he said to Jan:

"It would be bad if that were so. Give her no more sweet stuff when she says 'Bonbon,' Jan. She must forget!"

The next day Jan tore down the sapling barricade around the woman's grave, and from noon until almost sunset he skirted the sunny side of a great ridge to the south. When he came back he brought with him a basket of the early red snow-flowers, with earth clinging to their roots. These he planted thickly over the mound under the spruce, and around its edge he put rows of the young shoots of Labrador tea and backneesh.

As the weather grew warmer, and spring changed into summer, he took Melisse upon short excursions with him into the forests, and together they picked great armfuls of flowers and Arctic ferns. The grave was never without fresh offerings, and the cabin, with its new addition complete, was always filled with the beautiful things that spring up out of the earth.

Jan and Melisse were happy; and in the joys of these two there was pleasure for the others of the post, as there had been happiness in the presence of the woman. Only upon c.u.mmins had there settled a deep grief. The changes of spring and summer, bringing with them all that this desolate world held of warmth and beauty, filled him with the excruciating pain of his great grief, as if the woman had died but yesterday.

When he first saw the red flowers glowing upon her grave, he buried his head in his arms and sobbed like a child. The woman had loved them. She had always watched for the first red blooms to shoot up out of the wet earth. A hundred times he had gone with her to search for them, and had fastened the first flower in the soft beauty of her hair. Those were the days when, like happy children, they had romped and laughed together out there beyond the black spruce. Often he had caught her up in his strong arms and carried her, tired and hungry but gloriously happy, back to their little home in the clearing, where she would sit and laugh at him as he clumsily prepared their supper.

Thoughts and pictures like these choked him and drove him off alone into the depths of the wilderness. When this spirit impelled him his moccasined feet would softly tread the paths they had taken in their wanderings; and at every turn a new memory would spring up before him, and he longed to fling himself down there with the sweet spirit of the woman and die.

Little did he dream, at these times, that Jan and Melisse were to cherish these same paths, that out of the old, dead joys there were to spring new joys, and that the new joys were to wither and die, even as his own--for a time. Beyond his own great sorrow he saw nothing in the future. He gave up Melisse to Jan.

At last, his gaunt frame thinned by sleepless nights and days of mental torture, he said that the company's business was calling him to Churchill, and early in August he left for the bay.

CHAPTER XI

FOR HER

Upon Jan now fell a great responsibility. Melisse was his own. Days pa.s.sed before he could realize the fullness of his possession. He had meant to go by the Athabasca water route to see Jean de Gravois, leaving Melisse to c.u.mmins for a fortnight or so. Now he gave this up.

Day and night he guarded the child; and to Jan's great joy it soon came to pa.s.s that whenever he was compelled to leave her for a short time, Melisse would cry for him. At least Maballa a.s.sured him that this was so, and Melisse gave evidence of it by her ecstatic joy when he returned.

When c.u.mmins came back from Fort Churchill in the autumn, he brought with him a pack full of things for Melisse, including new books and papers, for which he had spent a share of his season's earnings. As he was freeing these treasures from their wrapping of soft caribou skin, with Jan and Melisse both looking on, he stopped suddenly and glanced from his knees up at the boy.

"They're wondering over at Churchill what became of the missionary who left with the mail, Jan. They say he was last seen at the Etawney."

"And not here?" replied Jan quickly.

"Not that they know of," said c.u.mmins, still keeping his eyes on the boy. "The man who drove him never got back to Churchill. They're wondering where the driver went, too. A company officer has gone up to the Etawney, and it is possible he may come over to Lac Bain. I don't believe he'll find the missionary."

"Neither do I," said Jan quite coolly. "He is probably dead, and the wolves and foxes have eaten him before this--or mebby ze feesh!"

c.u.mmins resumed his task of unpacking, and among the books which he brought forth there were two which he gave to Jan.

"The supply ship from London came in while I was at Churchill, and those came with it," he explained. "They're school-books. There's going to be a school at Churchill next winter, and the winter after that it will be at York Factory, down on the Hayes." He settled back on his heels and looked at Jan. "It's the first school that has ever come nearer than four hundred miles of us. That's at Prince Albert."

For many succeeding days Jan took long walks alone in the forest trails, and silently thrashed out the two problems which c.u.mmins had brought back from Churchill for him. Should he warn Jean de Gravois that a company officer was investigating the disappearance of the missionary?

At first his impulse was to go at once into Jean's haunts beyond the Fond du Lac, and give him the news. But even if the officer did come to Post Lac Bain, how would he know that the missionary was at the bottom of the lake, and that Jean de Gravois was accountable for it? So in the end Jan decided that it would be folly to stir up the little hunter's fears, and he thought no more of the company's investigator who had gone up to the Etawney.