The Huntress Part 68

At any other time Sam would have lingered and marvelled; now, seeing some huts below, he frowned and thought: "I'll have to submit to be questioned there."

This was Spirit River Crossing. The buildings consisted of a little company store, a tiny branch of the French outfit, kept by a native, and the police "barracks," which housed a solitary corporal.

The coming of a white man was an event here, and when Sam got down the hill the company man and the policeman made him heartily welcome, glancing curiously at the slenderness of his outfit. They wanted to hear the latest news of the settlement, and Sam gave it, suppressing only the princ.i.p.al bit. He left that to be told by the next traveller.

In the meantime he hoped to bury himself farther in the wilderness. As soon as he told his name Sam saw by their eyes that they were acquainted with his earlier adventures. Everything is known up north.

In answer to Sam's questions, they informed him there was first-rate bottom-land fifteen miles up the river on the other side. This was the famous Spirit River land, eighteen inches of black loam on a sandy subsoil.

A white man, Ed Chaney, had already squatted on a piece of it, a lonely soul. There were some Indians nearer in.

Naturally, they were keen to know what Sam had come for. The last time they had heard of him he was a freighter. His reticence stimulated their curiosity.

"Come to look over the land before you bring your outfit in, I suppose?" suggested Sollers, the trader.

"No, I'm going to stop," said Sam.

"How are you going to farm with an axe and a gun?"

"I'll build me a shack, and hunt and fish till I have a bit of luck,"

said Sam.

The two exchanged a look which said either this young man was concealing something or he hadn't good sense.

"Luck doesn't come to a man up here," said the trader. "Nothing ever happens of itself. You've got to turn in and make it."

Declining invitations to stop a night or a few days, or all summer, Sam got the trader to put him across the river in a canoe. There was also a scow to transport heavier loads. Landing, he turned up-stream.

Their description of the utter lonesomeness of that neighbourhood had appealed to him.

The sun was growing low when he spied a little tent in the meadow, rising from the river. The faint trail he was following ended at the gate of a corral beside it. There was a cultivated field beyond. These objects made an oddly artificial note in a world of untouched nature.

At the door of the tent stood a white man, gazing. A shout reached Sam's ears. He was lucky in his man. Though he and Ed Chaney had had but the briefest of meetings when the latter pa.s.sed through the settlement, Ed hailed him like a brother. He was a simple soul, overflowing with kindness.

"h.e.l.lo! h.e.l.lo!" he cried. "Blest if I didn't think you was a ghost!

Ain't seen one of my own colour since I come. Gee! a fellow's tongue gets rusty for the lack of wagging. Come on in. Ain't got much to show, but what there is is yours. I'll have supper for you in two shakes. It certainly was white of you to come on to me for the night."

Ed seemed to see nothing strange in Sam's situation, nor was he in the least curious concerning the gossip of the country. This comforted Sam strangely. Ed was a little, trim, round-headed man, with a cropped thatch of white, and dancing brown eyes. Sixty years had in nowise impaired his vigour. He was an incorrigible optimist and a dreamer.

His long-pent tongue ran like a mechanical toy when the spring is released. He had a thousand schemes for the future, into all of which, as a matter of course, he immediately incorporated Sam. Sam had come to be his partner. That was settled without discussion. Sam, weary in body and mind, was content to let somebody run him.

"West of me, on the other side of the gully yonder, there's another handsome piece of land. Slopes down from the hills to the river-bank smooth as a lady's bosom! Not a stick on it, either; all ready to turn over. Now you take that and put up a shack on it, and we'll work the two pieces together with my tools.

"In the meantime, till you get a little ahead, you work for me for wages, see? I've got my crop in, all right--potatoes and barley; now I've got to build me a house. I need help with it. I'll pay you in grub."

"That certainly is decent of you," murmured Sam.

"Cut it out!" cried Ed. "A man has got to have a partner. Say, in a month already I'm near gibbering with the lonesomeness. It was a lucky stroke for both of us that brought you to my door."

They talked until late--that is to say, Ed talked. Sam warmed gratefully to his friendliness--it was genuine friendliness, that demanded nothing in return; but in the end the uninterrupted stream of talk confused his dulled faculties.

He could neither take it in properly nor answer intelligently. When Ed suggested turning in, therefore, he declined to share the tent.

"I like to lie by myself," he said.

"That's all right!" cried Ed. "Many is like that. Maybe you wouldn't get much sleep with me anyhow. I ain't half talked out yet."

"I'll go lie in my own field," said Sam with a wry smile.

So he had made the little shelter of leaves, facing the river, and built a fire in front. But to-night he could not win forgetfulness.

In three days he had walked close on a hundred miles, and the last long day had overtaxed his strength. He was in that most wretched of states, too fatigued to sleep. His body ached all over, and his mind was filled with black hopelessness.

As long as he had been on the road he had been buoyed up by movement, by the pa.s.sing scene. To youth a journey always suggests escape from oneself. Now that he had arrived he found that he had brought his burden along with him.

There was no more fight left in him. He was conscious only of an immense desire for something he would not acknowledge to himself.

When at last he did fall asleep it was only to dream of Bela. By the irony of fate he saw Bela as she might have been, wistful, honest, and tender; anything but the sullen, designing liar his anger had built up in the daytime. In dreams she smiled on him, and soothed his weariness with an angel's touch.

He awoke with all his defences undermined and fallen. He could have wept with vexation at the scurvy tricks sleep played him. Then he would drop off and dream of her again; combing her hair in the firelight; leading him by the hand through forests; paddling him down rivers; but always transfigured with tenderness.

That was why he found no zest in the morning sunshine.

Ed Chaney, casting a glance at him, said: "You've overdone it. Better lay off for a couple of days."

"I'm able to work," replied Sam. "I want to work."

"All right!" agreed Ed cheerfully. "You can hoe the garden. I'll go to the piny ridge and chop."

All day Sam kept himself doggedly at work, though as soon as Ed disappeared he had to fight the impulse to drop everything and fly farther. It did not matter where he went, so he kept moving. It seemed to him that only in movement was any escape to be had from the weight pressing on his brain. He wanted to be alone. In his disorganized state of nerves even Ed's friendliness was a kind of torture.

Nevertheless, when night came, another reaction set in, and he elected to sleep with Ed because he could not face such another night alone.

They lay down side by side in their blankets. Ed babbled on as inconsequentially as a child. He required no answers.

"We'll build a two-room house so's you can be by yourself when you want. Two men living together get on each other's nerves sometimes, though both are good fellows, and friends, too. Begin to grouse and snarl like man and wife. Why, up here they tell of a man who up and murdered his partner for no reason but he was tired looking at him.

"Afterward we will build you a house of your own, so you can hold your land proper. Expect there'll be quite a rush next spring. This year most of them is stopping by Caribou Lake. But I want a river. I love a flowing river at my door; it seems to bring you new thoughts. This river is navigable for six hundred miles up and down. Some day we'll see the steamboats puffing in front here. I'll put out a wharf for them to land at.

"And you and me's got the best piece of land the whole way! Eighteen inches of black loam! We'll be rich men before we die. Wheat ought to be the best. When others come around us we will put in a little mill to grind the crop. The company would buy all our flour. What do you think of that for a scheme, eh?... Bless my soul, he's dropped off!"

In the middle of the night Sam awoke to find the moon shining in his face through the open door of the tent. He had had a real sleep. He felt better. He was irresistibly drawn to look outside.

In the pale sky the great, full moon shone with an extraordinary transparency. The field sloping down to the water was powdered with silver dust. The river was like a steel shield with a bar of shining gold athwart it.

On the other side the heights crouched like black beasts at the feet of the moon. The night seemed to be holding its breath under the spell of beauty. Only a subtle murmur arose from the moving river.

So much loveliness was like a knife in Sam's breast. The pain surprised him. It was as if nature had rested him with sleep only to enable him to suffer more keenly.

"What's the use of it if a man must be alone!" his heart cried. "No beauty, no happiness, no peace ever for me! I want her! I want her! I want her!"

Terrified by the trend of his own thoughts, he turned inside and shook Ed Chaney by the shoulder. Ed, with many a snort and grunt, slowly came back to consciousness.