The Silent Places Part 8

"You know," Sam reminded him, significantly, "we don't really need that Injun."

"I know," d.i.c.k had replied, grimly.

Now Sam Bolton sat near the fire waiting for the sound of a shot. From time to time he spread his gnarled, carved-mahogany hands to the blaze.

Under his narrow hat his kindly gray-blue eyes, wrinkled at the corners with speculation and good humour, gazed unblinking into the light. As always he smoked.

Time went on. The moon climbed, then descended again. Finally it shone almost horizontally through the tree-trunks, growing larger and larger until its field was crackled across with a frostwork of twigs and leaves. By and by it reached the edge of a hill-bank, visible through an opening, and paused. It had become huge, gigantic, big with mystery. A wolf sat directly before it, silhouetted sharply. Presently he raised his pointed nose, howling mournfully across the waste.

The fire died down to coals. Sam piled on fresh wood. It hissed spitefully, smoked voluminously, then leaped into flame. The old woodsman sat as though carved from patience, waiting calmly the issue.

Then through the shadows, dancing ever more gigantic as they became more distant, Sam Bolton caught the solidity of something moving. The object was as yet indefinite, mysterious, flashing momentarily into view and into eclipse as the tree-trunks intervened or the shadows flickered. The woodsman did not stir; only his eyes narrowed with attention. Then a branch snapped, noisy, carelessly broken. Sam's expectancy flagged.

Whoever it was did not care to hide his approach.

But in a moment the watcher could make out that the figures were two; one erect and dominant, the other stooping in surrender. Sam could not understand. A prisoner would be awkward. But he waited without a motion, without apparent interest, in the indifferent att.i.tude of the woods-runner.

Now the two neared the outer circle of light; they stepped within it; they stopped at the fire's edge. Sam Bolton looked up straight into the face of d.i.c.k's prisoner.

It was May-may-gwan, the Ojibway girl.

CHAPTER TEN

d.i.c.k pulled the girl roughly to the fireside, where he dropped her arm, leaving her downcast and submissive. He was angry all through with the powerless rage of the man whose attentions a woman has taken more seriously than he had intended. Suddenly he was involved more deeply than he had meant.

"Well, what do you think of that?" he cried.

"What you doing here?" asked Sam in Ojibway, although he knew what the answer would be.

She did not reply, however.

"h.e.l.l!" burst out d.i.c.k.

"Well, keep your hair on," advised Sam Bolton, with a grin. "You shouldn't be so attractive, d.i.c.ky."

The latter growled.

"Now you've got her, what you going to do with her?" pursued the older man.

"Do with her?" exploded d.i.c.k; "what in h.e.l.l do you mean? I don't want her; she's none of my funeral. She's got to go back, of course."

"Oh, sure!" agreed Sam. "She's got to go back. Sure thing! It's only two days down stream, and then the Crees would have only four days' start and getting farther every minute. A mere ten days in the woods without an outfit. Too easy; especially for a woman. But of course you'll give her your outfit, d.i.c.k."

He mused, gazing into the flames, his eyes droll over this new complication introduced by his thoughtless comrade.

"Well, we can't have her with us," objected d.i.c.k, obstinately. "She'd hinder us, and bother us, and get in our way, and we'd have to feed her--we may have to starve ourselves;--and she's no d.a.m.n _use_ to us.

She can't go. I won't have it; I didn't bargain to lug a lot of squaws around on this trip. She came; I didn't ask her to. Let her get out of it the best way she can. She's an Injun. She can make it all right through the woods. And if she has a hard time, she _ought_ to."

"Nice mess, isn't it, d.i.c.k?" grinned the other.

"No mess about it. I haven't anything to do with such a fool trick. What did she expect to gain tagging us through the woods that way half a mile to the rear? She was just waiting 'till we got so far away from th'

Crees that we couldn't send her back. I'll fool her on that, d.a.m.n her!"

He kicked a log back into place, sending the sparks eddying.

"I wonder if she's had anything to eat lately?" said Bolton.

"I don't care a d.a.m.n whether she has or not," said d.i.c.k.

"Keep your hair on, my son," advised Sam again. "You're hot because you thought you'd got shut of th' whole affair, and now you find you haven't."

"You make me sick," commented d.i.c.k.

"Mebbe," admitted the woodsman. He fell silent, staring straight before him, emitting short puffs from his pipe. The girl stood where she had been thrust.

"I'll start her back in the morning," proffered d.i.c.k after a few moments. Then, as this elicited no remark, "We can stock her up with jerky, and there's no reason she shouldn't make it." Sam remained grimly silent. "Is there?" insisted d.i.c.k. He waited a minute for a reply.

Then, as none came, "h.e.l.l!" he exclaimed, disgustedly, and turned away to sit on a log the other side of the fire with all the petulance of a child.

"Now look here, Sam," he broke out, after an interval. "We might as well get at this thing straight. We can't keep her with us, now, can we?"

Sam removed his pipe, blew a cloud straight before him, and replaced it.

d.i.c.k reddened slowly, got up with an incidental remark about d.a.m.n fools, and began to spread his blankets beneath the lean-to shelter. He muttered to himself, angered at the dead opposition of circ.u.mstance which he could not push aside. Suddenly he seized the girl again by the arm.

"Why you come?" he demanded in Ojibway. "Where you get your blankets?

Where you get your grub? How you make the Long Trail? What you do when we go far and fast? What we do with you now?" Then meeting nothing but the stolidity with which the Indian always conceals pain, he flung her aside. "Stupid owl!" he growled.

He sat on the ground and began to take off his moccasins with ostentatious deliberation, abruptly indifferent to it all. Slowly he prepared for the night, yawning often, looking at the sky, arranging the fire, emphasising and delaying each of his movements as though to prove to himself that he acknowledged only the habitual. At last he turned in, his shoulder thrust aggressively toward the two motionless figures by the fire.

It was by now close to midnight. The big moon had long since slipped from behind the solitary wolf on the hill. Yet Sam Bolton made no move toward his blankets, and the girl did not stir from the downcast att.i.tude into which she had first fallen. The old woodsman looked at the situation with steady eyes. He realised to the full what d.i.c.k Herron's thoughtlessness had brought on them. A woman, even a savage woman inured to the wilderness, was a hindrance. She could not travel as fast nor as far; she could not bear the same burdens, endure the same hardship; she would consume her share of the provisions. And before this expedition into the Silent Places should be finished the journeying might require the speed of a course after quarry, the packing would come finally to the men's back, the winter would have to be met in the open, and the North, lavish during these summer months, sold her sustenance dear when the snows fell. The time might come when these men would have to arm for the struggle. Cruelty, harshness, relentlessness, selfishness, singleness of purpose, hardness of heart they would have perforce to a.s.sume. And when they stripped for such a struggle, Sam Bolton knew that among other things this woman would have to go. If the need arose, she would have to die; for this quest was greater than the life of any woman or any man. Would it not be better to send her back through certain hardship now, rather than carry her on to a possible death in the White Silence. For the North as yet but skirmished. Her true power lay behind the snows and the ice.

The girl stood in the same att.i.tude. Sam Bolton spoke to her.

"May-may-gwan."

"Little Father."

"Why have you followed us?"

The girl did not reply.

"Sister," said the woodsman, kindly, "I am an old man. You have called me Father. Why have you followed us?"

"I found Jibiwanisi good in my sight," she said, with a simple dignity, "and he looked on me."

"It was a foolish thing to do."