The Promise Part 48

The violence of the storm precluded the use of horses about the camp, and the trail that slanted from the clearing to the water-hole was soon drifted high with snow, rendering useless the heavy tank-sled. Fallon, who had been placed in temporary charge of the camp, told the men into water-shifts; barrels were lashed to strong sleds and man-hauled to the top of the bank, where the guide-rope had been run to the water-hole.

The men of the shift formed a long line reaching from the sled to the river, and the water dipped from the hole cut in the ice was pa.s.sed from man to man in buckets to be dumped into the barrels and distributed between the stables, cook-shack, bunk-house, and "house."

Darkness had fallen when the men of the afternoon shift wallowed toward the river upon the last trip of the second day of the great blizzard.

The roar of the wind as it hurled the frozen particles against their cold-benumbed faces drowned their muttered curses as, thirty strong, they pushed and hauled the c.u.mbersome sled to the top of the bank.

Seizing the buckets, they strung out, making their way down the steep slope with one hand on the guide-rope.

Suddenly the foremost man stumbled and fell. He scrambled profanely to his knees and began feeling about in the thick darkness for his bucket.

His mittened hand came into contact with the object which, protruding from the snow, had tripped him, and with a vicious wrench he endeavored to remove it from the trail. It yielded a little, but remained firmly imbedded.

With a wild yell he forgot his bucket and began digging and clawing in the snow, for the object he grasped was the bent ash edge of a snowshoe, and firmly lashed in the center of the webbing was the moccasined foot of a man.

Other men came, floundering and sprawling over each other in the darkness, and the word was bellowed from lips to listening ear that a man lay buried beneath the drift.

"Dig! Ye tarriers!" roared Fallon as his heavy mittens gouged into the snow. "Dig! Ut's th' boss!" he yelled into the ear of the nearest man.

"Oi know thim rackets!"

And from lip to bearded lip the word pa.s.sed, and the big men of the logs redoubled their efforts; but the fine snow had packed hard around the prostrate form, and it was many minutes before they had uncovered him sufficiently to note the smaller body lashed tightly upon his back.

The frozen lash was soon severed and the two exanimate bodies lifted in eager hands.

Buckets were left to snow under as the men crowded up the bank, howling into each other's ears. Big Stromberg, who bore the boss in his arms, was propelled up the steep slope by the men who crowded about him, pushing, pulling, hauling--the ground-gaining, revolving wedge of the old days of ma.s.s formation in football.

"To th' office wid um!" roared Fallon in Stromberg's ear as they milled across the clearing. "Th' b'ys'll crowd th' bunk-house till they hindher more thin hilp!"

The boy responded quickly to vigorous treatment and stimulants and was removed to his own bunk and placed under the able care of his Aunt Margaret and Mrs. Sheridan.

In the office Ethel Manton, white-faced and silent, watched breathlessly the efforts of Appleton and Blood River Jack to revive the exhausted and half-frozen foreman. The lumber magnate unscrewed the silver cap from a morocco-covered flask and poured out a generous dose of liquor; but before it reached the unconscious man's lips the half-breed stayed his hand.

"M's'u' Bill drinks no whisky," he said. "Even in the time of his great sickness would he drink no whisky; and if you give him whisky he will be very angry."

Appleton paused and glanced curiously from the face of the half-breed to the still form upon the bunk, and the other continued:

"It is strange--I do not know--but he told it to Jeanne one day--that, in the great city of the white man is a girl he loves. He used to drink much whisky, and for that reason she sent him from her--and now he drinks no whisky--even though this girl has married another."

Ethel stared at the speaker, wide-eyed, and the pallor of her face increased.

"Married another!" she gasped.

Jacques regarded her gravely. "I know nothing except it was told me by Jeanne," he returned--"how he talked in the voice of the fever-spirit, that this girl would marry another. In the paper he read it--but even so, will he drink no whisky. One week ago did he not hear how one night in the bunk-house Leduc tried to make the little boy drink whisky? And did he not hunt up Leduc the next morning, and, upon the skidway, smash the nose of him and knock four teeth from his jaw?"

The guide paused, and Appleton slowly screwed the silver top to his flask and returned it to his pocket.

"Upon the stove is a pot of very strong coffee which Daddy Dunnigan told me to bring," Jacques went on; "and he is even now making broth in the cook-shack. M's'u' Bill cannot die. The strong coffee and the good broth will bring him back to life; for he is called in the woods The-Man-Who-Cannot-Die.

"If he could die he would die in the blizzard. For, since blizzards were known, has no man done a thing like this--to search for two days and a night for one boy lost in the snow, and carry him home in safety."

The half-breed finished, and the girl, with a low cry, sank into a chair and, leaning forward upon the desk, buried her face in her arms while her shoulders shook with the violence of her sobbing.

Appleton crossed to her side and laid a hand gently upon her shoulder.

"Come, Ethel," he said; "this has been too much for you. Let me take you to the house."

But the girl shook her head. She raised her eyes, wet with tears, and with an effort controlled her voice.

"My place is here--with _him_," she said softly as she arose, and, walking to the side of the cot, looked down at the set face of the unconscious man. "Leave me alone now. There is nothing you can do. I will stay with him while you sleep. Draw your cot close to the wall, and if I need you I will knock. Jacques will go to the cook-shack," she added, turning to the half-breed, "and when the broth is ready bring it to me."

The men obeyed without question, and as the office door closed behind them the girl dropped to her knees beside the bunk and, throwing her arms about the man's neck, pressed her soft cheek close against his bearded face.

The little tin lamp in its bracket beside the row of books on the top of the desk was turned low and its yellow light illuminated dimly the interior of the rough room. She slipped into an easier position and, seated upon the floor at the edge of the low bunk, drew his head close against her breast. At the touch--the feel of this strong man lying helpless in her arms--the long-pent yearning of her soul burst the studied bonds of its restraint and through her whole body swept the torrent of a mighty love.

Resistlessly it engulfed every nerve and fiber of her--wave upon wave of wild, primitive pa.s.sion surged through her veins until her heart seemed bursting with the sweet, intense pain of it. Fiercely, in the hot, quick flame of pa.s.sion, she strained him to her breast and her lips sought his in an abandon of feverish kisses.

And in that moment she knew that, in all the world of men, this man was _her_ man. Always he had dominated her life--always she had known this great love, had fought against it, and feared it--and always she had held it in check.

But now, alone in the night, with the man lying helpless in her arms, this mighty pa.s.sion welled to the bursting of restraint.

Her heart, subservient no longer to the will of her brain nor to creeds nor the tenets of convention, had this night come into its own, and she loved with the hot, savage mate-love of her pristine forebears.

The man's lips moved feebly upon hers and the closed eyelids fluttered.

The girl sprang to the stove and returned a second later bearing a thick porcelain cup steaming with strong, black coffee.

She raised his head upon her arm and, holding the cup, let part of its contents trickle between his lips. He strangled weakly and swallowed.

Again she tilted the cup and again he swallowed. "My darling! My darling!" she sobbed as the fluttering eyelids half opened and the lips moved, and then leaned close to catch their faintest murmur.

"Jeanne," he whispered, "Jeanne, little girl----" and then the lips ceased to move, he shuddered slightly through the length of him, his eyes closed, and he slept.

The thick cup thudded heavily upon the floor and its contents splashed unheeded over her gown, as the girl sat motionless, staring past the bunk at the blank wall of logs.

The little nickel-plated alarm-clock ticked loudly in sharp, insistent threes, as she sat, white of face, with set lips and unwinking eyes staring stonily at the parallel logs of the wall.

Centuries of supercultivation and the refinement of breeding were concentrated in that white-lipped, cold-eyed stare, which is the heart-mask of the _recherche_ woman of empire. And then--the mask dropped.

The inevitable artificiality of years of unconscious eugenic selection melted in a breath before the fierce onrush of savage emotion. The girl sprang to her feet as the hot blood surged to her face and paced frantically back and forth in a fume of primordial hate. Her small fists clenched till pink nails bit deep into soft, pink palms. Her nostrils dilated, quivering; her eyes flashed, and the breath hissed through her lips in deep sobs of impotent rage against the woman who had robbed her of this man's love and whose name was upon his lips in the first moment of his awakening.

She paused and gazed into the face of the man who was the hero of her fondest dreams--the man who had overcome obstacles, who defied danger and death, and had won, with his two hands and the great force of his personality, the respect and devotion of the big men of the rough country.

And he was hers--never had he been aught else but hers--and she had lost him! Wildly she resumed her restless pacing, while the words of the half-breed rang in her ears: "She is beautiful, and she loves him."

She halted abruptly, and in her eye flashed a momentary ray of hope; the man had said, not "He loves her," but, "She loves him." Could it be--but, no, there were his own words, spoken at the time of their first meeting in the gloom of this very room: "I forgot that I have not the right--that there is another."

And was it not _her_ name that sprang to his lips in the half-consciousness of a few moments ago? In her mind she pictured the wild, dark beauty of the other girl, and in the jealous fury of her heart could have torn her in pieces with her two hands.

"M's'u' Bill drinks no whisky"--the dream of her life had been realized, but in the realization she had been beaten--all her hopes and prayers, the long, bitter hours of her soul-anguish, which burned and gnawed beneath the stoicism and apathy her environment demanded, had gone for naught, and she, who had borne the brunt of the long battle, was brushed aside and forgotten.

The spoils belonged to another--and that other, an _Indian_!