The Honor of the Big Snows
by
James Oliver Curwood
Part 3 out of 4
He sprang from the sledge and again ran with the team, urging them on
faster and faster until they dropped into a panting walk when they
came to the ridge along which Ledoq, two hours before, had seen the
strangers hurrying toward Lac Bain.
"Stop!" cried Mélisse, taking this first opportunity to scramble from
the sledge. "You're cruel to the dogs, Jan! Look at their jaws--see
them pant! Jan Thoreau, I've never seen you drive like that since the
night we were chased in from the barrens by the wolves!"
"And did you ever see me run any faster?" He struggled, dropping
exhausted upon the sledge. "I remember only one other time."
He took a long breath, flinging back his arms to bring greater volume
of air into his lungs.
"Wasn't that the night we heard the wolves howling behind us?" Mélisse
asked.
"No, it was many years ago, when I heard, far to the south, that my
little Mélisse was dying of the plague."
Mélisse sat down upon the sledge beside him without speaking, and
nestled one of her hands a little timidly in one of his big, brown
palms.
"Tell me about it, Jan."
"That was all--I ran."
"You wouldn't run as fast for me now, would you?"
He looked at her boldly, and saw that there was not half of the
brilliant flush in her cheeks.
"I ran for you, just now--and you didn't like it," he replied.
"I don't mean that." She looked up at him, and her fingers tightened
round his own. "Away back--years and years and years ago, Jan--you
went out to fight the plague, and nearly died in it, for me. Would you
do that much again?"
"I would do more, Mélisse."
She looked at him doubtfully, her eyes searching him as if in quest of
something in his face which she scarce believed in his words. Slowly
he rose to his feet, lifting her with him; and when he had done this
he took her face between his two hands and looked straight into her
eyes.
"Some day I will do a great deal more for you than that, Mélisse, and
then--"
"What?" she questioned, as he hesitated.
"Then you will know whether I love you as much now as I did years and
years and years ago," he finished, gently repeating her words.
There was something in his voice that held Mélisse silent as he turned
to straighten out the dogs; but when he came back, making her
comfortable on the sledge, she whispered:
"I wish you would do it SOON, Brother Jan!"
CHAPTER XIX
THE NEW AGENT AND HIS SON
They did not lunch on the trail, but drove into the post in time for
dinner. Jean de Gravois and Croisset came forth from the store to meet
them.
"You have company, my dear!" cried Jean to Mélisse. "Two gentlemen
fresh from London on the last boat, and one of them younger and
handsomer than your own Jan Thoreau. They are waiting for you in the
cabin, where mon pere is getting them dinner, and telling them how
beautifully you would have made the coffee if you were there."
"Two!" said Jan, as Mélisse left them. "Who are they?"
"The new agent, M. Timothy Dixon, as red as the plague, and fatter
than a spawning fish! And his son, who has come along for fun, he
says; and I believe he will get what he's after if he remains here
very long, Jan Thoreau, for he looked a little too boldly at my Iowaka
when she came into the store just now!"
"Mon Dieu!" laughed Jan, as Gravois took in the four quarters of the
earth with a terrible gesture. "Can you blame him, Jean? I tell you
that I look at Iowaka whenever I get the chance!"
"Is she not worth it?" cried Jean in rapture. "You are welcome to
every look that you can get, Jan Thoreau. But the foreigner--I will
skin him alive and spit him with devil-thorn if he so much as peeps at
her out of the wrong way of his eye!"
Croisset spoke.
"There was once a foreigner who came. You remember?"
"I remember," said Jan.
He looked to the white cross which marked Mukee's grave in the edge of
the forest, where the shadow of the big spruce fell across it at the
end of summer evenings.
"And--he--died," said Jean de Gravois, his dark hands clenched. "God
forgive me, but I hate these red-necked men from across the sea."
Croisset shrugged his shoulders.
"Breeders of two-legged carrion-eaters!" he exclaimed fiercely. "La
charogne! There are two at Nelson House, and two on the Wholdaia, and
one--"
A sharp cry fell from Jan's lips. When Croisset whirled toward him, he
stood among his dogs, as white as death, his black eyes blazing as if
just beyond him he saw something which filled him with terror.
As the man turned, startled by the look, Jean sprang to his side.
"Saints preserve us, but that was an ugly twist of the hand!" he cried
shrilly. "Next time, turn your sledge by the rib instead of the nose,
when your dogs are still in the traces!" Under his breath he
whispered, as he made pretense of looking at Jan's hand: "Le diable,
do you want to tell HIM?" Jan tried to laugh as Croisset came to see
what had happened.
"Will you care for the dogs, Henri?" asked Jean. "It's only a trifling
sprain of the wrist, which Iowaka can cure with one dose of her
liniment."
As they walked away, Jan's face still as pallid as the gray snow under
their feet, Gravois added: "You're a fool, Jan Thoreau. There's a
crowd at your cabin, and you'll have dinner with me."
"La charogne!" muttered Jan. "Les bętes de charogne!"
Jean gripped him by the arm.
"I tell you that it means nothing--nothing!" he said, repeating his
words of the previous day in the cabin. "You are a man. You must fight
it down, and forget. No one knows but you and me."
"You will never tell what you read in the papers?" cried Jan quickly.
"You swear it?"
"By the blessed Virgin, I swear it!"
"Then," said Jan softly, "Mélisse will never know!"
"Never," said Jean. His dark face flashed joyously as Iowaka's sweet
voice came to them, singing a Cree lullaby in the little home. "Some
day Mélisse will be singing that same way over there; and it will be
for you, Jan Thoreau, as my Iowaka is now singing for me!"
An hour later Jan went slowly across the open to Cummins' cabin. As he
paused for an instant at the door he heard a laugh that was strange to
him, and when he opened it to enter he stood perplexed and undecided.
Mélisse had risen from the table at the sound of his approach, and his
eyes quickly passed from her flushed face to the young man who was
sitting opposite her. He caught a nervous tremble in her voice when
she said:
"Mr. Dixon, this is my brother, Jan."
The stranger jumped to his feet and held out a hand.
"I'm glad to know you, Cummins."
"Thoreau," corrected Jan quietly, as he took the extended hand. "Jan
Thoreau."
"Oh, I beg your pardon. I thought--" He turned inquiringly to Mélisse.
The flush deepened in her cheeks as she began to gather up the dishes.
"We are of no relation," continued Jan, something impelling him to
speak the words with cool precision. "Only we have lived under the
same roof since she was a baby, and so we have come to be like brother
and sister."
"Miss Mélisse has been telling me about your wonderful run this
morning," exclaimed the young Englishman, his face reddening slightly
as he detected the girl's embarrassment. "I wish I had seen it!"
"There will be plenty of it very soon," replied Jan, caught by the
frankness of the other's manner. "Our runners will be going out among
the trappers within a fortnight."
"And will they take me?"
"You may go with me, if you can run. I leave the day after to-morrow."
"Thanks," said Dixon, moving toward the door.
Mélisse did not lift her head as he went out. Faintly she said:
"I've kept your dinner for you, Jan. Why didn't you come sooner?"
"I had dinner with Gravois," he replied. "Jean said that you would
hardly be prepared for five, Mélisse, so I accepted his invitation."
He took down from the wall a fur sledge-coat, in which Mélisse had
mended a rent a day or two before, and, throwing it over his arm,
turned to leave.
"Jan!"
He faced her slowly, knowing that in spite of himself there was a
strangeness in his manner which she would not understand.
"Why are you going away the day after to-morrow--two weeks before the
others? You didn't tell me."
"I'm going a hundred miles into the South," he answered.
"Over the Nelson House trail?"
"Yes."
"Oh!" Her lips curled slightly as she looked at him. Then she laughed,
and a bright spot leaped into either cheek. "I understand, brother,"
she said softly. "Pardon me for questioning you so. I had forgotten
that the MacVeigh girl lives on the Nelson trail. Iowaka says that she
is as sweet as a wild flower. I wish you would have her come up and
visit us some time, Jan."
Jan's face went red, then white, but Mélisse saw only the first effect
of her random shot, and was briskly gathering up the dishes.
"I turn off into the Cree Lake country before I reach MacVeighs'." he
was on the point of saying; but the words hung upon his lips, and he
remained silent.
A few minutes later he was talking with Jean de Gravois. The little
Frenchman's face was ominously dark, and he puffed furiously upon his
pipe when Jan told him why he was leaving at once for the South.
"Running away!" he repeated for the tenth time in French, his thin
lips curling in a sneer. "I am sorry that I gave you my oath, Jan
Thoreau, else I would go myself and tell Mélisse what I read in the
papers. Pish! Why can't you forget?"
"I may--some day," said Jan. "That is why I am going into the South
two weeks early, and I shall be gone until after the big roast. If I
remain here another week, I shall tell Mélisse, and then--"
He shrugged his shoulders despairingly.
"And then--what?"
"I should go away for ever."
Jean snapped his fingers with a low laugh.
"Then remain another week, Jan Thoreau, and if it turns out as you
say, I swear I will abandon my two Iowakas and little Jean to the
wolves!"
"I am going the day after to-morrow."
The next morning Iowaka complained to Mélisse that Gravois was as
surly as a bear.
"A wonderful change has come over him," she said. "He does nothing but
shrug his shoulders and say 'Le diable!' and 'The fool!' Last night I
could hardly sleep because of his growling. I wonder what bad spirit
has come into my Jean?"
Mélisse was wondering the same of Jan. She saw little of him during
the day. At noon, Dixon told her that he had made up his mind not to
accompany Thoreau on the trip south.
The following morning, before she was up, Jan had gone. She was deeply
hurt. Never before had he left on one of his long trips without
spending his last moments with her. She had purposely told her father
to entertain the agent and his son at the store that evening, so that
Jan might have an opportunity of bidding her good-by alone.
Outside of her thoughts of Jan, the days and evenings that followed
were pleasant ones for her. The new agent was as jolly as he was fat,
and took an immense liking to Mélisse. Young Dixon was good-looking
and brimming with life, and spent a great deal of his time in her
company. For hours at a time she listened to his stories of the
wonderful world across the sea. As MacDonald had described that life
to Jan at Fort Churchill, so he told of it to Mélisse, filling her
with visions of great cities, painting picture after picture, until
her imagination was riot with the beauty and the marvel of it all, and
she listened, with flaming cheeks and glowing eyes.
One day, a week after Jan had gone, he told her about the women in the
world which had come to be a fairy-land to Mélisse.
"They are all beautiful over there?" she asked wonderingly, when he
had finished.
"Many of them are beautiful, but none so beautiful as you, Mélisse,"
he replied, leaning near to her, his eyes shining. "Do you know that
you are beautiful?"
His words frightened her so much that she bowed her head to hide the
signs of it in her face. Jan had often spoken those same words--a
thousand times he had told her that she was beautiful--but there bad
never been this fluttering of her heart before.
There were few things which Iowaka and she did not hold in secret
between them, and a day or two later Mélisse told her friend what
Dixon had said. For the first time Iowaka abused the confidence placed
in her, and told Jean.
"Le diable!" gritted Jean, his face blackening.
He said no more until night, when the children were asleep. Then he
drew Iowaka close beside him on a bench near the stove, and asked
carelessly:
"Mon ange, if one makes an oath to the blessed Virgin, and breaks it,
what happens?"
He evaded the startled look in his wife's big black eyes.
"It means that one will be for ever damned unless he confesses to a
priest soon after, doesn't it ma chérie? And if there is no priest
nearer than four hundred miles, it is a dangerous thing to do, is it
not? But--" He did not wait for an answer. "If one might have the oath
broken, and not do it himself, what then?"
"I don't know," said Iowaka simply, staring at him in amazed
questioning.
"Nor do I," said Jean, lighting his pipe. "But there is enough of the
devil in Jean de Gravois to make him break a thousand oaths if it was
for you, my Iowaka!"
Her eyes glowed upon him softly.
"A maiden's soul leaves her body when she becomes the wife of the man
she loves," she whispered tenderly in Cree, resting her dark head on
Jean's shoulder. "That is what my people believe, Jean; and if I have
given my soul to you, why should I not break oath for you?"
"For me alone, Iowaka?"
"For you alone."
"And not for a friend?"
"For no one else in the world, Jean. You are the only one to whom the
god of my people bids me make all sacrifice."
"But you do not believe in that god, Iowaka!"
"Sometimes it is better to believe in the god of my people than in
yours," she replied gently. "I believed in him fifteen years ago at
Churchill. Do you wish me to take back what I gave to you then?"
With a low cry of happiness Jean crushed his face against her soft
cheek.
"Believe in him always, my Iowaka, and Jean de Gravois will cut the
throat of any missioner who says you will not go to Paradise! But--
this other. You are sure that you would break oath for none but me?"
"And the children. They are a part of you, Jean."
A fierce snarling and barking of dogs brought Gravois to the door.
They could hear Croisset's raucous voice and the loud cracking of his
big whip.
"I'll be back soon," said Jean, closing the door after him; but
instead of approaching Croisset and the fighting dogs he went in the
direction of Cummins' cabin. "Devil take an oath!" he growled under
his breath. "Neither one God nor the other will let me break it, and
Iowaka least of all!" He gritted his teeth as young Dixon's laugh
sounded loudly in the cabin. "Two fools!" he went on communing with
himself. "Cummins--Jan Thoreau--both fools!"
CHAPTER XX
A KISS AND THE CONSEQUENCES
During the week that followed, Jean's little black eyes were never far
distant from Cummins' cabin. Without being observed, he watched
Mélisse and Dixon, and not even to Iowaka did he give hint of his
growing suspicions. Dixon was a man whom most other men liked. There
were a fascinating frankness in his voice and manner, strength in his
broad shoulders, and a general air of comradeship about him which won
all but Jean.
The trap-line runners began leaving the post at the end of the second
week, and after this Mélisse and the young Englishman were more
together than ever. Dixon showed no inclination to accompany the
sledges, and when they were gone he and Mélisse began taking walks in
the forest, when the sun was high and warm.
It was on one of these days that Jean had gone along the edge of the
caribou swamp that lay between the barrens and the higher forest. As
he stopped to examine a fresh lynx trail that cut across the path
beaten down by dog and sledge, he heard the sound of voices ahead of
him; and a moment later he recognized them as those of Mélisse and
Dixon. His face clouded, and his eyes snapped fire.
"Ah, if I was only Jan Thoreau--a Jan Thoreau with the heart of Jean
de Gravois--what a surprise I'd give that foreigner!" he said to
himself, leaping quickly from the trail into the thicket.
He peered forth from the bushes, his loyal heart beating a wrathful
tattoo when he saw that Dixon dared put his hand on Mélisse’s arm.
They were coming very slowly, the Englishman bending low over the
girl's bowed head, talking to her with strange earnestness. Suddenly
he stopped, and before Jean could comprehend what had happened he had
bent down and kissed her.
With a low cry, Mélisse tore herself free. For an instant she faced
Dixon, who stood laughing into her blazing eyes. Then she turned and
ran swiftly down the trail.
A second cry fell from her startled lips when she found herself face
to face with Jean de Gravois. The little Frenchman was smiling. His
eyes glittered like black diamonds.
"Jean, Jean!" she sobbed, running to him.
"He has insulted you," he said softly, smiling into her white face.
"Run along to the post, ma belle Mélisse."
He watched her, half turned from the astonished Englishman, until she
disappeared in a twist of the trail a hundred yards away. Then he
faced Dixon.
"It is the first time that our Mélisse has ever suffered insult," he
said, speaking as coolly as if to a child. "If Jan Thoreau were here,
he would kill you. He is gone, and I will kill you in his place!"
He advanced, his white teeth still gleaming in a smile, and not until
he launched himself like a cat at Dixon's throat was the Englishman
convinced that he meant attack. In a flash Dixon stepped a little to
one side, and sent out a crashing blow that caught Jean on the side of
the head and sent him flat upon his back in the trail.
Half stunned, Gravois came to his feet. He did not hear the shrill cry
of terror from the twist in the trail. He did not look back to see
Mélisse standing there. But Dixon both saw and heard, and he laughed
tauntingly over Jean's head as the little Frenchman came toward him
again, more cautiously than before.
It was the first time that Jean had ever come into contact with
science. He darted in again, in his quick, cat-like way, and received
a blow that dazed him. This time he held to his feet.
"Bah, this is like striking a baby!" exclaimed Dixon. "What are you
fighting about, Gravois? Is it a crime up here to kiss a pretty girl?"
"I am going to kill you!" said Jean as coolly as before.
There was something terribly calm and decisive in his voice. He was
not excited. He was not afraid. His fingers did not go near the long
knife in his belt. Slowly the laugh faded from Dixon's face, and tense
lines gathered around his mouth as Jean circled about him.
"Come, we don't want trouble like this," he urged. "I'm sorry--if
Mélisse didn't like it."
"I am going to kill you!" repeated Jean.
There was an appalling confidence in his eyes. From those eyes Dixon
found himself retreating rather than from the man. They followed him,
never taking themselves from his face. The fire in them grew deeper.
Two dull red spots began to glow in Jean's cheeks, and he laughed
softly when he suddenly leaped in so that the Englishman struck at
him--and missed.
It was the science of the forest man pitted against that of another
world. For sport Jean had played with wounded lynx; his was the
quickness of sight, of instinct--without the other's science; the
quickness of the great loon that had often played this same game with
his rifle-fire, of the sledge-dog whose ripping fangs carried death so
quickly that eyes could not follow.
A third and a fourth time he came within striking distance, and
escaped. He half drew his knife, and at the movement Dixon sprang back
until his shoulders touched the brush. Smilingly Gravois unsheathed
the blade and tossed it behind him in the trail. His eyes were like a
serpent's in their steadiness, and the muscles of his body were drawn
as tight as steel springs, ready to loose themselves when the chance
came.
There were tricks in his fighting as well as in the other's, and a
dawning of it began to grow upon Dixon. He dropped his arms to his
side, inviting Jean within reach. Suddenly the little Frenchman
straightened. His glittering eyes shot from the Englishman's face to
the brush behind him, and a piercing yell burst from his lips.
Involuntarily Dixon started, half turning his face, and before he had
come to his guard Gravois flung himself under his arms, striking with
the full force of his body against his antagonist's knees.
Together they went down in the trail. There was only one science now--
that of the forest man. The lithe, brown fingers, that could have
crushed the life of a lynx, fastened themselves around the
Englishman's man's throat, and there came one gasping, quickly
throttled cry as they tightened in their neck-breaking grip.
"I will kill you!" said Jean again.
Dixon's arms fell limply to his side. His eyes bulged from their
sockets, his mouth was agape, but Jean did not see. His face was
buried on the other's shoulder, the whole life of him in the grip. He
would not have raised his head for a full minute longer had there not
come a sudden interruption--the terrified voice of Mélisse, the
frantic tearing of her hands at his hands.
"He is dead!" she shrieked. "You have killed him, Jean!"
He loosed his fingers and sat up. Mélisse staggered back, clutching
with her hands at her breast, her face as white as the snow.
"You have killed him!"
Jean looked into Dixon's eyes.
"He is not dead," he said, rising and going to her side. "Come, ma
chčre, run home to Iowaka. I will not kill him." Her slender form
shook with agonized sobs as he led her to the turn in the trail. "Run
home to Iowaka," he repeated gently. "I will not kill him, Mélisse."
He went back to Dixon and rubbed snow over the man's face.
"Mon Dieu, but it was near to it!" he exclaimed, as there came a
flicker of life into the eyes. "A little more, and he would have been
with the missioner!"
He dragged the Englishman to the side of the trail, and set his back
to a tree. When he saw that fallen foeman's breath was coming more
strongly, he followed slowly after Mélisse.
Unobserved, he went into the store and washed the blood from his face,
chuckling with huge satisfaction when he looked at himself in the
little glass which hung over the wash-basin.
"Ah, my sweet Iowaka, but would you guess now that Jean de Gravois had
received two clouts on the side of the head that almost sent him into
the blessed hereafter? I would not have had you see it for all the
gold in this world!"
A little later he went to the cabin. Iowaka and the children were at
Croisset's, and he sat down to smoke a pipe. Scarce had he begun
sending up blue clouds of smoke when the door opened and Mélisse came
in.
"Hello, ma chčre," he cried gaily, laughing at her with a wave of his
pipe.
In an instant she had flung the shawl from her head and was upon her
knees at his feet, her white face turned up to him pleadingly, her
breath falling upon him in panting, sobbing excitement.
"Jean, Jean!" she whispered, stretching up her hands to his face.
"Please tell me that you will never tell Jan--please tell me that you
never will, Jean--never, never, never!"
"I will say nothing, Mélisse."
"Never, Jean?"
"Never."
For a sobbing breath she dropped her head upon his knees. Then,
suddenly, she drew down his face and kissed him.
"Thank you, Jean, for what you have done!"
"Mon Dieu!" gasped Jean when she had gone. "What if Iowaka had been
here then?"
CHAPTER XXI
A BROKEN HEART
The day following the fight in the forest, Dixon found Jean de Gravois
alone, and came up to him.
"Gravois, will you shake hands with me?" he said. "I want to thank you
for what you did to me yesterday. I deserved it. I have asked Miss
Mélisse to forgive me--and I want to shake hands with you."
Jean was thunderstruck. He had never met this kind of man.
"Que diantre!" he ejaculated, when he had come to his senses. "Yes, I
will shake hands!"
For several days after this Jean could see that Mélisse made an effort
to evade him. She did not visit Iowaka when he was in the cabin.
Neither did she and Dixon go again into the forest. The young
Englishman spent more of his time at the store; and just before the
trappers began coming in, he went on a three-days' sledge-trip with
Croisset.
The change delighted Jean. The first time he met Mélisse after the
fight, his eyes flashed pleasure.
"Jan will surely be coming home soon," he greeted her. "What if the
birds tell him what happened out there on the trail?"
She flushed scarlet.
"Perhaps the same birds will tell us what has happened down on the
Nelson House trail, Jean," she retorted.
"Pouf! Jan Thoreau doesn't give the snap of his small finger for the
MacVeigh girl!" Jean replied, warm in defense of his friend.
"She is pretty," laughed Mélisse, "and I have just learned that is why
men like to--like them, I mean."
Jean strutted before her like a peacock.
"Am I pretty, Mélisse?"
"No-o-o-o."
"Then why"--he shrugged his shoulders suggestively--"in the cabin--"
"Because you were brave, Jean. I love brave men!"
"You were glad that I pummeled the stranger, then?"
Mélisse did not answer, but he caught a laughing sparkle in the corner
of her eye as she left him.
"Come home, Jan Thoreau," he hummed softly, as he went to the store.
"Come home, come home, come home, for the little Mélisse has grown
into a woman, and is learning to use her eyes!"
Among the first of the trappers to come in with his furs was MacVeigh.
He brought word that Jan had gone south, to spend the annual holiday
at Nelson House, and Cummings told Mélisse whence the message came. He
did not observe the slight change that came into her face, and went
on:
"I don't understand this in Jan. He is needed here for the carnival.
Did you know that he was going to Nelson House?"
Mélisse shook her head.
"MacVeigh says they have made him an offer to go down there as chief
man," continued the factor. "It is strange that he has sent no
explanation to me!"
It was a week after the big caribou roast before Jan returned to Lac
Bain. Mélisse saw him drive in from the Churchill trail; but while her
heart fluttered excitedly, she steeled herself to meet him with at
least an equal show of the calm indifference with which he had left
her six weeks before. The coolness of his leave-taking still rankled
bitterly in her bosom. He had not kissed her; he had not even passed
his last evening with her.
But she was not prepared for the changed Jan Thoreau who came slowly
through the cabin door. His hair and beard had grown, covering the
smooth cheeks which he had always kept closely shaven. His eyes glowed
with dull pleasure as she stood waiting for him, but there was none of
the old flash and fire in them. There was a strangeness in his manner,
an uneasiness in the shifting of his eyes, which caused the half-
defiant flush to fade slowly from her cheeks before either had spoken.
She had never known this Jan before, and her fortitude left her as she
approached him, wonderingly, silent, her hands reaching out to him.
"Jan!" she said.
Her voice trembled; her lips quivered. There was the old glorious
pleading in her eyes, and before it Jan bowed his unkempt head, and
crushed her hands tightly in his own. For a half-minute there was
silence, and in that half-minute there came a century between them. At
last Jan spoke.
"I'm glad to see you again, Mélisse. It has seemed like a very long
time!"
He lifted his eyes. Before them the girl involuntarily shrank back,
and Jan freed her hands. In them she saw none of the old love-glow,
nothing of their old comradeship. Inscrutable, reflecting no visible
emotion, they passed from her to the violin hanging on the wall.
"I have not played in so long," he said, turning from her, "that I
believe I have forgotten."
He took down the instrument, and his fingers traveled clumsily over
the strings. His teeth gleamed at her from out his half-inch growth of
beard, as he said:
"Ah, you must play for me now, Mélisse! It has surely gone from Jan
Thoreau."
He held out the violin to her.
"Not now, Jan," she said tremulously. "I will play for you to-night."
She went to the door of her room, hesitating for a moment, with her
back to him. "You will come to supper, Jan?"
"Surely, Mélisse, if you are prepared."
He hung up the violin as she closed the door, and went from the cabin.
Jean de Gravois and Iowaka were watching for him, and Jean hurried
across the open to meet him.
"I am coming to offer you the loan of my razor," he cried gaily.
"Iowaka says that you will be taken for a bear if the trappers see
you."
"A beard is good to keep off the black flies," replied Jan. "It is
approaching summer, and the black flies love to feast upon me. Let us
go down the trail, Jean. I want to speak with you."
Where there had been wood-cutting in the deep spruce they sat down,
facing each other. Jan spoke in French.
"I have traveled far since leaving Lac Bain," he said. "I went first
to Nelson House, and from here to the Wholdaia. I found them at Nelson
House, but not on the Wholdaia."
"What?" asked Jean, though he knew well what the other meant.
"My brothers, Jean de Gravois," answered Jan, drawing his lips until
his teeth gleamed in a sneering smile. "My brothers, les bętes de
charogne!"
"Devil take Croisset for telling you where they were!" muttered Jean
under his breath.
"I saw the two at Nelson House," continued Jan. "One of them is a
half-wit, and the other"--he hunched his shoulders--"is worse.
Petraud, one of the two who were at Wholdaia, was killed by a Cree
father last winter for dishonoring his daughter. The other
disappeared."
Jean was silent, his head leaning forward, his face resting in his
hands.
"So you see, Jean de Gravois, what sort of creature is your friend Jan
Thoreau!"
Jean raised his head until his eyes were on a level with those of his
companion.
"I see that you are a bigger fool than ever," he said quietly. "Jan
Thoreau, what if I should break my oath--and tell Mélisse?"
Unflinching the men's eyes met. A dull glare came into Jan's. Slowly
he unsheathed his long knife, and placed it upon the snow between his
feet, with the gleaming end of the blade pointing toward Gravois. With
a low cry Jean sprang to his feet.
"Do you mean that, Jan Thoreau? Do you mean to give the knife-
challenge to one who has staked his life for you and who loves you as
a brother?"
"Yes," said Jan deliberately. "I love you, Jean more than any other
man in the world; and yet I will kill you if you betray me to
Mélisse!" He rose to his feet and stretched out his hands to the
little Frenchman. "Jean, wouldn't you do as I am doing? Wouldn't you
have done as much for Iowaka?"
For a moment Gravois was silent.
"I would not have taken her love without telling her," he said then.
"That is not what you and I know as honor, Jan Thoreau. But I would
have gone to her, as you should now go to Mélisse, and she would have
opened her arms to me, as Mélisse would opens hers to you. That is
what I would have done."
"And that is what I shall never do," said Jan decisively, turning
toward the post. "I could kill myself more easily. That is what I
wanted to tell you, Jean. No one but you and I must ever know!"
"I would like to choke that fool of a Croisset for sending you to hunt
up those people at Nelson House and Wholdaia!" grumbled Jean.
"It was best for me."
They saw Mélisse leaving Iowaka's home when they came from the forest.
Both waved their hands to her, and Jan cut across the open to the
store.
Jean went to the Cummins cabin as soon as he was sure that he was not
observed. There was little of the old vivacity in his manner as he
greeted Mélisse. He noted, too, that the girl was not her natural
self. There was a redness under her eyes which told him that she had
been crying.
"Mélisse," he said at last, speaking to her with his eyes fixed on the
cap he was twisting in his fingers, "there has come a great change
over Jan."
"A very great change, Jean. If I were to guess, I should say that his
heart has been broken down on the Nelson trail."
Gravois caught the sharp meaning in her voice, which trembled a little
as she spoke. He was before her in an instant, his cap fallen to the
floor, his eyes blazing as he caught her by the arms.
"Yes, the heart of Jan Thoreau is broken!" he cried. "But it has been
broken by nothing that lives on the Nelson House trail. It is broken
because of--YOU!"
"I!" Mélisse drew back from him with a breathless cry. "I--I have
broken--"
"I did not say that," interrupted Jean. "I say that it is broken
because of you. Mon Dieu, if only I might tell you!"
"Do-DO, Jean! Please tell me!" She put her hands on his shoulders. Her
eyes implored him. "Tell me what I have done--what I can do, Jean!"
"I can say that much to you, and no more," he said quietly. "Only know
this, ma chčre--that there is a great grief eating at the soul of Jan
Thoreau, and that because of this grief he is changed. I know what
this grief is, but I am pledged never to reveal it. It is for you to
find out, and to do this, above all else--let him know that you love
him!"
The color had faded from her startled face, but now it came back again
in a swift flood.
"That I love him?"
"Yes. Not as a sister any longer, Mélisse, but as a WOMAN!"
CHAPTER XXII
HER PROMISE
Gravois did not stay to see the effect of his last words. Only he
knew, as he went through the door, that her eyes were following him,
and that if he looked at her she would call him back. So he shut the
door quickly behind him, fearing that he had already said too much.
Cummins and Jan came in together at suppertime. The factor was in
high humor. An Indian from the Porcupine had brought in two silver fox
that morning, and he was immensely pleased at Jan's return--a
combination of incidents which put him in the best of moods.
Mélisse sat opposite Jan at the table. She had twisted a sprig of red
bakneesh into her glossy braid, and a cluster of it nestled at her
throat, but Jan gave no sign that he had noticed this little favor,
which was meant entirely for him. He smiled at her, but there was a
clear coolness in the depths of his dark eyes which checked any of the
old familiarity on her part.
"Has MacVeigh put in his new trap-line?" Cummins inquired, after
asking Jan many questions about his trip.
"I don't know," replied Jan. "I didn't go to MacVeighs'."
Purposely he held his eyes from Mélisse. She understood his effort,
and a quick flush gathered in her cheeks.
"It was MacVeigh who brought in word of you," persisted the factor,
oblivious of the effect of his questions.
"I met him in the Cree Lake country, but he said nothing of his trap-
lines."
He rose from the table with Cummins, and started to follow him from
the cabin. Mélisse came between. For a moment her hand rested upon his
arm.
"You are going to stay with me, Jan," she smiled. "I want your help
with the dishes, and then we're going to play on the violin."
She pulled him into a chair as Cummins left, and tied an apron about
his shoulders.
"Close your eyes--and don't move!" she commanded, laughing into his
surprised face as she ran into her room.
A moment later she returned with one hand held behind her back. The
hot blood surged through Jan's veins when he felt her fingers running
gently through his long hair. There came the snip of scissors, a
little nervous laugh close to his head, and then again the snip, snip,
snip of the scissors.
"It's terribly long, Jan!" Her soft hand brushed his bearded cheek.
"Ugh!" she shuddered. "You must take that off your face. If you don't--"
"Why?" he asked, through lack of anything else to say.
She lowered her head until her cheek pressed against his own.
"Because it feels like bristles," she whispered.
She reddened fiercely when he remained silent, and the scissors
snipped more rapidly between her fingers.
"I'm going to prospect the big swamp along the edge of the Barrens
this summer," he explained soon, laughing to relieve the tension. "A
beard will protect me from the black flies."
"You can grow another."
She took the apron from about his shoulders, and held it so that he
could see the result of her work. He looked up, smiling.
"Thank you, Mélisse. Do you remember when you last cut my hair?"
"Yes--it was over on the mountain. We had taken the scissors along for
cutting bakneesh, and you looked so like a wild Indian that I made you
sit on a rock and let me trim it."
"And you cut my ear," he reminded.
"For which you made me pay," she retorted quickly, almost under her
breath.
She went to the cupboard behind the stove, and brought out her
father's shaving-mug and razor.
"I insist that you shall use them," she said, stirring the soap into a
lather, and noting the indecision in his face. "I am afraid of you!"
"Afraid of me?"
He stood for a moment in front of the little mirror, turning his face
from side to side. Mélisse handed him the razor and cup.
"You don't seem like the Jan that I used to know once upon a time.
There has been a great change in you since--since--"
She hesitated.
"Since when, Mélisse?"
"Since the day we came in from the mountain and I put up my hair."
With timid sweetness she added: "I haven't had it up again, Jan."
She caught a glimpse of his lathered face in the glass, staring at her
with big, seeking eyes. He turned them quickly away when he saw that
she was looking, and Mélisse set to work at the dishes. She had washed
them before he finished shaving. Then she took down the old violin
from the wall and began to play, her low, sweet voice accompanying the
instrument in a Cree melody which Iowaka had taught her during Jan's
absence at Nelson House and the Wholdaia.
Surprised, he faced her, his eyes glowing as there fell from her lips
the gentle love-song of a heart-broken Indian maiden, filled with its
infinite sadness and despair. He knew the song. It was a lyric of the
Crees. He had heard it before, but never as it came to him now,
sobbing its grief in the low notes of the violin, speaking to him with
immeasurable pathos from the trembling throat of Mélisse.
He stood silent until she had finished, staring down upon her bowed
head. When she lifted her eyes to him, he saw that her long lashes
were wet and glistening in the lamp-glow.
"It is wonderful, Mélisse! You have made beautiful music for it."
"Thank you, Jan."
She played again, her voice humming with exquisite sweetness the
wordless music which he had taught her. At last she gave him the
violin.
"Now you must play for me."
"I have forgotten a great deal, Mélisse."
She was astonished to see how clumsily his brown fingers traveled over
the strings. As she watched him, her heart thrilled uneasily. It was
not the old Jan who was playing for her now, but a new Jan, whose eyes
shone dull and passionless, in whom there was no stir of the old
spirit of the violin. He wandered listlessly from one thing to
another, and after a few minutes gave her the instrument again.
Without speaking, she rose from her chair and hung the violin upon the
wall.
"You must practise a great deal," she said quietly.
At her movement he, too, rose from his seat; and when she turned to
him again he had his cap in his hand. A flash of surprise shot into
her eyes.
"Are you going so soon, Jan?"
"I am tired," he said in excuse. "It has been two days since I have
slept, Mélisse. Good night!"
He smiled at her from the door, but the "Good night" which fell from
her lips was lifeless and unmeaning. Jan shivered when he went out.
Under the cold stars he clenched his hands, knowing that he had come
from the cabin none too soon.
Choking back the grief of this last meeting with Mélisse, he crossed
to the company store.
It was late when Cummins returned home. Mélisse was still up. He
looked at her sharply over his shoulder as he hung up his coat and
hat.
"Has anything come between you and Jan?" he asked suddenly. "Why have
you been crying?"
"Sometimes the tears come when I am playing the violin, father. I know
of nothing that has come between Jan and me, only I--I don't
understand--"
She stopped, struggling hard to keep back the sobs that were trembling
in her throat.
"Neither do I understand," exclaimed the factor, going to the stove to
light his pipe. "He gave me his resignation as a paid servant of the
company tonight!"
"He is not going--to leave--the post?" breathed Mélisse.
"He is leaving the service," reiterated her father. "That means he can
not long live at Lac Bain. He says he is going into the woods, perhaps
into Jean's country of the Athabasca. Has he told you more?"
"Nothing," said Mélisse.
She was upon her knees in front of the little bookcase. A blinding
film burned in her eyes. She caught her breath, struggling hard to
master herself before she faced her father again. For a moment the
factor went into his room, and she took this opportunity of slipping
into her own, calling "Good night" to him from the partly closed door.
The next day it was Croisset who went along the edge of the Barrens
for meat. Gravois found Jan filling a new shoulder-pack with supplies.
It was their first encounter since he had learned that Jan had given
up the service.
"Diable!" he fairly hissed, standing over him as he packed his flour
and salt in a rubber bag. "Diable, I say, M. Jan Thoreau!"
Jan looked up, smiling, to see the little Frenchman fairly quivering
with rage.
"Bon jour, M. Jean de Gravois!" he laughed back. "You see I am going
out among the foxes."
"The devils!" snapped Jean.
"No, the foxes, my dear Jean. I am tired of the post. I can make
better wage for my time in the swamps to the west. Think of it, Jean!
It has been many years since you have trapped there, and the foxes
must be eating up the country!"
Jean's thin lips were almost snarling. "Blessed saints, and it was I
who--"
He spun upon his heels without another word, and went straight to
Mélisse.
"Jan Thoreau is going to leave the post," he announced fiercely,
throwing out his chest and glaring at her accusingly.
"So father has told me," said Mélisse.
Her cheeks were colorless, and there were purplish lines under her
eyes, but she spoke with exceeding calmness.
"Mon Dieu!" exclaimed Jean, whirling again, "you take it coolly!"
A little later Mélisse saw Jan coming from the store. When he entered
the cabin his dark face betrayed the strain under which he was
laboring, but his voice was unnaturally calm.
"I have come to say good-by, Mélisse," he said. "I am going to
prospect for a good trap-line among the Barrens."
"I hope you will have good luck, Jan."
In her voice, too, was a firmness almost metallic.
For the first time in his life Jan held out his hand to her. She
started, and for an instant the blood surged from her heart to her
face. Then she gave him her own and looked him squarely and
unflinchingly in the eyes.
"Will you wait a moment?" she asked.
She hurried into her room, and scarcely had she gone before she
reappeared again, this time with a flush burning in her cheeks and her
eyes shining brightly. She had unbraided her hair, and it lay coiled
upon the crown of her head, glistening with crimson sprigs of
bakneesh. She came to him a second time, and once more gave him her
hand.
"I don't suppose you care now," she said coldly, and yet laughing in
his face. "I have not broken my promise. It was silly, wasn't it?"
He felt as if his blood had been suddenly chilled to water, and he
fought to choke back the thick throbbing in his throat.
"You promised--" He could not go further.
"I promised that I would not do up my hair again until you had
forgotten to love me," she finished for him. "I will do it up now."
He bowed his head, and she could see his shoulders quiver under their
thick caribou coat. Her tense lips parted, and she raised her arms as
if on the point of stretching them out to him; but his voice came
evenly, without a quiver, yet filled with the dispassionate truth of
what he spoke.
"I have not forgotten to love you, Mélisse. I shall never cease to
love my little sister. But you are older now, and it is time for you
to do up your hair."
He turned, without looking at her again, leaving her standing with her
arms still half stretched out to him, and went from the cabin.
"Good-by, Jan!"
The words fell in a sobbing whisper from her, but he had gone too far
to hear. Through the window she saw him shake hands with Cummins in
front of the company's store. She watched him as he went to the cabin
of Iowaka and Jean. Then she saw him shoulder his pack, and, with
bowed head, disappear slowly into the depths of the black spruce
forest.
CHAPTER XXIII
JAN RETURNS
All that spring and summer Jan spent in the thick caribou swamps and
low ridge-mountains along the Barrens. It was two months before he
appeared at the post again, and then he remained only long enough to
patch himself up and secure fresh supplies.
Mélisse had suffered quietly during these two months, a grief and
loneliness filling her heart which none knew but herself. Even from
Iowaka she kept her unhappiness a secret; and yet when the gloom had
settled heaviest upon her, she was still buoyed up by a persistent
hope. Until Jan's last visit to Lac Bain this hope never quite went
out.
The first evening after his arrival from the swamps to the west, he
came to the cabin. His beard had grown again. His hair was long and
shaggy, and fell in shining dishevelment upon his shoulders. The
sensitive beauty of his great eyes, once responsive to every passing
humor in Mélisse, flashing fun at her laughter, glowing softly in
their devotion, was gone. His face was filled with the age-old silence
of the forest man. Firmly and yet gently, it repelled whatever of the
old things she might have said and done, holding her away from him as
if by power of a strong hand.
This time Mélisse knew that there was left not even the last
comforting spark of hope within her bosom. Jan had gone out of her
life for ever, leaving to her, as a haunting ghost of what they two
had once been to each other, the old violin on the cabin wall.
After he went away again, the violin became more and more to her what
it had once been to him. She played it as he had played it, sobbing
her loneliness and her heart-break through its strings, in lone hours
clasping it to her breast and speaking to it as Jan had talked to it
in years gone by.
"If you could only tell me--if you only could!" she whispered to it
one day, when the autumn was drawing near. "If you could tell me about
him, and what I might do--dear old violin!"
Once during the autumn Jan came in for supplies and traps, and his
dogs and sledge. He was planning to spend the winter two hundred miles
to the west, in the country of the Athabasca. He was at Lac Bain for a
week, and during this time a mail-runner came in from Fort Churchill.
The runner brought a new experience into the life of Mélisse--her
first letter. It was from young Dixon--twenty or more closely written
pages of it, in which he informed her that he was going to spend a
part of the approaching winter at Lac Bain.
She was reading the last page when Jan came into the cabin. Her cheeks
were slightly flushed by this new excitement, which was reflected in
her eyes as she looked at Jan.
"A letter!" she cried, holding out her two hands filled with the
pages. "A letter--to me, Jan, all the way from Fort Churchill!"
"Who in the world--" he began, smiling at her; and stopped.
"It's from Mr. Dixon," she said, the flush deepening in her cheeks.
"He's going to spend part of the winter with us."
"I'm glad of that, Mélisse," said Jan quietly. "I like him, and would
like to know him better. I hope he will bring you some more books--and
strings." He glanced at the old violin. "Do you play much?"
"A great deal," she replied. "Won't you play for me, Jan?"
"My hands are too rough; and besides, I've forgotten all that I ever
knew."
"Even the things you played when I was a baby?"
"I think I have, Mélisse. But you must never forget them."
"I shall remember them--always," she answered softly. "Some day it may
be that I will teach them to you again."
He did not see her again until six months later, when he came in to
the caribou roast, with his furs. Then he learned that another letter
had come to Mélisse, and that Dixon had gone to London instead of
coming to Lac Bain.
The day after the carnival he went back into the country of the
Athabasca. Spring did not see him at Lac Bain. Early summer brought no
news of him. In the floods, Jean went by the water-way to the
Athabasca, and found Thoreau's cabin abandoned. There had not been
life in it for a long time. The Indians said that since the melting
snows they had not seen Jan. A half-breed whom Jean met at Fond du Lac
said that he had found the bones of a white man on the Beaver, with a
Hudson's Bay gun and a horn-handled knife beside them.
Jean came back to Lac Bain heavy at heart.
"There is no doubt but that he is dead," he told Iowaka. "I do not
believe that it will hurt very much if you tell Mélisse."
One day early in September a lone figure came in to the post at noon,
when the company people were at dinner. He carried a pack, and six
dogs trailed at his heels. It was Jan Thoreau.
"I have been down to civilization," was his explanation. "I have
returned to spend this winter at Lac Bain."
CHAPTER XXIV
THE RESCUE
On the first snow came young Dixon from Fort Churchill. Jean de
Gravois met him on the trail near Ledoq's. When the Englishman
recognized the little Frenchman he leaped from his sledge and advanced
with outstretched hand, his face lighting up with pleasure.
"Bless me, if it isn't my old friend, Jean!" he cried. "I was just
thinking of you, Gravois, and how you trimmed me to a finish two
winters ago. I've learned a lot about you people up here in the snows
since then, and I'll never do anything like that again." He laughed
into Jean's face as they shook hands, and his voice was filled with
unbounded sincerity. "How is Mrs. Gravois, and the little Gravois--and
Mélisse?" he added, before Jean had spoken.
"All well, M'seur Dixon," replied Jean. "Only the little Gravois have
almost grown into a man and woman."
An hour or so later he said to Iowaka:
"I can't help liking this man Dixon, and yet I don't want to. Why is
it, do you suppose?"
"Is it because you are afraid that Mélisse will like him?" asked his
wife, smiling over her shoulder.
"Blessed saints, I believe that it is!" said Jean frankly. "I hate
foreigners--and Mélisse belongs to Jan."
"She did, once, but that was a long time ago, Jean."
"It may be, and yet I doubt it, ma bien aimée. If Jan would tell her--"
"A woman will not wait always," interrupted Iowaka softly. "Jan
Thoreau has waited too long!"
A week later, as they stood together in front of their door, they saw
Dixon and Mélisse walking slowly in the edge of the forest. The woman
laughed into Jean's face.
"Did I not say that Jan had waited too long?"
Jean's face was black with disapprobation.
"Then you would have taken up with some foreigner if I had remained in
the Athabasca country another year or two?" he demanded questioningly.
"Very likely," retorted Iowaka mischievously, running into the cabin.
"The devil!" said Jean sourly, stalking in the direction of the store.
He was angered at the coolness with which Jan accepted the situation.
"This Dixon is with Mélisse afternoon and evening, and they walk
together every day in the bush," he said to him. "Soon there will be a
wedding at Lac Bain!"
"Mélisse deserves a good man," replied Jan, unmoved. "I like Dixon."
Deep down in his soul he knew that each day was bringing the end of it
all much nearer for him. He did not tell Mélisse that he had returned
to Lac Bain to be near her once more, nor did he confide in Jean. He
had anticipated that this winter at the post would be filled with a
certain painful pleasure for him--but he had not anticipated Dixon.
Day after day he saw Mélisse and the Englishman together, and while
they awakened in him none of the fiery jealousy which might have
rankled in the bosom of Jean de Gravois, the knowledge that the girl
was at last passing from him for ever added a deeper grief to that
which was already eating at his heart.
Dixon made no effort to conceal his feelings. He loved Mélisse.
Frankly he told this to Jean one day, when they were on the Churchill
trail. In his honest way he said things which broke down the last of
Jean's hereditary prejudices, and compelled him to admit that this was
a different sort of foreigner than he had ever known before.
"Diable, I like him," he said to himself; "and yet I would rather see
him in the blessed hereafter than have him take Mélisse from Jan!"
The big snow decided.
It came early in December. Dixon had set out alone for Ledoq's early
in the morning. By noon the sky was a leaden black, and a little later
one could not see a dozen paces ahead of him for the snow. The
Englishman did not return that day. The next day he was still gone,
and Gravois drove along the top of the mountain ridge until he came to
the Frenchman's, where he found that Dixon had started for Lac Bain
the preceding afternoon. He brought word back to the post. Then he
went to Mélisse.
"It is as good as death to go out in search of him," he said. "We can
no longer use the dogs. Snowshoes will sink like leaden bullets by
morning, and to go ten miles from the post means that there will be
bones to be picked by the foxes when the crust comes!"
It was dark when Jan came into the cabin. Mélisse started to her feet
with a little cry when he entered, covered white with the snow. A
light pack was strapped to his back, and he carried his rifle in his
hand.
"I am going to hunt for him," he said softly. "If he is alive, I will
bring him back to you."
She came to him slowly, and the beating of Jan's heart sounded to him
like the distant thrumming of partridge-wings. Ah, would he ever
forget that look? The old glory was in her eyes, her arms were
reaching out, her lips parted. Jan knew how the Great Spirit had once
appeared to Mukee, and how a white mist, like a snow-veil, had come
between the half-breed's eyes and the wondrous Thing he beheld. That
same veil drifted between Jan and the girl. As in a vision, he saw her
face so near to him that he felt the touch of her sweet breath, and he
knew that one of his rough hands was clasped in both of her own, and
that after a moment it was crushed tightly against her bosom.
"Jan, my hero--"
He struggled back, almost sobbing, as he plunged out into the night
again. He heard her voice crying after him, but the wild wailing of
the spruce, and the storm in his brain, drowned its words. He had seen
the glorious light of love in her eyes--her love for Dixon! And he
would find him! At last he, Jan Thoreau, would prove that the old love
was not dead within him; he would do for Mélisse this night--to-
morrow--the next day, and until he fell down to die--what he had
promised to do on their sledge-ride to Ledoq's. And then--
He went to Ledoq's now, following the top of the mountain, and reached
his cabin in the late dawn. The Frenchman stared at him in amazement
when he learned that he was about to set out on a search for Dixon.
"You will not find him," he said slowly in French; "but if you are
determined to go, I will hunt with you. It is a big chance that we
will not come back."
"I don't want you to go," objected Jan. "One will do as much as two,
unless we search alone. I came your way to find if it had begun to
snow before Dixon left."
"An hour after he had gone, you could not see your hand before your
face," replied Ledoq, preparing his pack. "There is no doubt but that
he circled out over Lac Bain. We will go that far together, and then
search alone."
They went back over the mountain, and stopped when instinct told them
that they were opposite the spruce forests of the lake. There they
separated, Jan going as nearly as he could guess into the northwest,
Ledoq trailing slowly and hopelessly into the south.
It was no great sacrifice for Jan, this struggle with the big snows
for the happiness of Mélisse. What it was to Ledoq no man ever guessed
or knew, for it was not until the late spring snows had gone that the
people at Lac Bain found what the foxes and the wolves had left of
him, far to the south.
Fearlessly Jan plunged into the white world of the lake. There was
neither rock nor tree to guide him, for everywhere was the heavy
ghost-raiment of the Indian god. The balsams were bending under it,
the spruces were breaking into hunchback forms, the whole world was
twisted in noiseless torture under its increasing weight. Out through
the still terror of it all Jan's voice went in wild, echoing shouts.
Now and then he fired his rifle, and always he listened long and
intently. The echoes came back to him, laughing, taunting, and then
each time fell the mirthless silence of the storm.
Day came, only a little lighter than the night. He crossed the lake,
his snow-shoes sinking ankle-deep at every step, and once each half-
hour he fired a single shot from his rifle. He heard shots to the
south, and knew that it was Ledoq; each report coming to him more
faintly than the last, until they had died away entirely.
Across the lake he struck the forest again, and his shouts echoed in
futile inquiry in its weird depths. About him there was no sign of
life, no sound except the faint fluttering of falling snow. Under five
feet of this snow the four-footed creatures of the wilderness were
snugly buried; close against the trunks of the spruces, sheltered
within their tent-like coverings, the birds waited like lifeless
things for the breaking of the storm.
At noon Jan stopped and ate his lunch. Then he went on, carrying his
rifle always upon his right shoulder, so that the steps of his right
leg would be shortened, and he would travel in a circle, as he
believed Dixon had done.
The storm thickened with the falling of night, and he burrowed himself
a great hole in the soft snow and filled it with balsam boughs for a
bed. When he awakened, hours later, he stood up, and thrust out his
head, and found himself buried to the arm-pits. With the aid of his
broad snow-shoes he drew himself out, until he stood knee-deep in the
surface.
He lifted his pack. As he swung it before him, one arm thrust through
a strap, he gave a startled cry. Half of one side of the pack was
eaten away! He thrust his hands through the breach, and a moan of
despair sobbed on his lips when he found that his food was gone. A
thin trickle of flour ran through his fingers upon the snow. He pulled
out a gnawed pound of bacon, a little tea--and that was all.
Frantically he ripped the rent wider in his search, and when he stood
up, his wild face staring into the chaos about him, he held only the
bit of bacon in his hand. In it were the imprints of tiny teeth--sharp
little razor-edged teeth that told him what had happened. While he had
slept a mink had robbed him of his food!
With one of his shoes he began digging furiously in the snow. He tore
his balsam bed to pieces. Somewhere--somewhere not very far away--the
little animal must have cached its theft. He dug down until he came to
the frozen earth. For an hour he worked and found nothing.
Then he stopped. Over a small fire he melted snow for tea and broiled
a slice of the bacon, which he ate with the few biscuit crumbs he
found in the pack. Every particle of flour that he could find he
scraped up with his knife and put into one of the deep pockets of his
caribou coat. After that he set cut in the direction in which he
thought he would find Lac Bain.
Still he shouted for Dixon, and fired an occasional shot from his
rifle. By noon he should have struck the lake. Noon came and passed;
the gloom of a second night fell upon him. He built himself a fire,
and ate two-thirds of what remained of the bacon. The handful of flour
in his pocket he did not disturb.
It was still night when he broke his rest and struggled on. His first
fears were gone. In place of them, there filled him now a grim sort of
pleasure. A second time he was battling with death for Mélisse. And
this, after all, was not a very hard fight for him. He had feared
death in the red plague, but he did not fear the thought of this death
that threatened him in the big snows. It thrilled him, instead, with a
strange sort of exhilaration. If he died, it would be for Mélisse, and
for all time she would remember him for what he had done.
When he ate the last bit of his bacon, he made up his mind what he
would do when the end came. In the stock of his rifle he would scratch
a few last words to Mélisse. He even arranged the words in his brain--
four of them--"Mélisse, I love you." He repeated them to himself as he
staggered on, and that night, beside the fire he built, he began by
carving her name.
"To-morrow," he said softly, "I will do the rest."
He was growing very hungry, but he did not touch the flour. For six
hours he slept, and then drank his fill of hot tea.
"We will travel until day, Jan Thoreau," he informed himself, "and
then, if nothing turns up, we will build our last camp, and eat the
flour. It will be the last of us, for there will be no meat above this
snow for days."
His snow-shoes were an impediment now, and he left them behind, along
with one of his two blankets, which had grown to be like lead upon his
shoulders. He counted his cartridges--ten of them. One of these he
fired into the air.
Was that an echo he heard?
A sudden thrill shot through him. He strained his ears to catch a
repetition of the sound. In a moment it came again--clearly no echo
this time.
"Ledoq!" he cried aloud.
He fired again.
Back to him came the distant, splitting crack of a rifle. He forced
his way toward it. After a little he heard the signal again, much
nearer than before, and he fired in response. A few hundred yards
farther on he came to a low mountain ridge, and lifted his voice in a
loud shout. A shot came from just over the mountain.
Waist deep in the light snow he began the ascent, dragging himself up
by the tops of the slender saplings, stopping every few yards to half-
stretch himself out in the soft mass through which he was struggling,
panting with exhaustion. He shouted when he gained the top of the
ridge. Up through the white blur of snow on the other side there came
to him faintly a shout; yet, in spite of its faintness, Jan knew that
it was very near.
"Something has happened to Ledoq," he told himself, "but he surely has
food, and we can live it out until the storm is over."
It was easier going down the ridge, and he went quickly in the
direction from which the voice had come, until a mass of huge boulders
loomed up before him. There was a faint odor of smoke in the air, and
he followed it in among the rocks, where it grew stronger.
"Ho, Ledoq!" he shouted.
A voice replied a dozen yards away. Slowly, as he advanced, he made
out the dim shadow of life in the white gloom--a bit of smoke climbing
weakly in the storm, the black opening of a brush shelter--and then,
between the opening and the spiral of smoke, a living thing that came
creeping toward him on all fours, like an animal.
He plunged toward it, and the shadow staggered upward, and would have
fallen had it not been for the support of the deep snow. Another step,
and a sharp cry fell from Jan's lips. It was not Ledoq, but Dixon, who
stood there with white, starved face and staring eyes in the snow
gloom!
"My God, I am starving--and dying for a drink of water!" gasped the
Englishman chokingly, thrusting out his arms. "Thoreau, God be
praised--"
He staggered, and fell in the snow. Jan dragged him back to the
shelter.
"I will have water for you--and something to eat--very soon," he said.
His voice sounded unreal. There was a mistiness before his eyes which
was not caused by the storm, a twisting of strange shadows that
bothered his vision, and made him sway dizzily when he threw off his
pack to stir the fire. He suspended his two small pails over the
embers, which he coaxed into a blaze. Both he filled with snow; into
one he emptied the handful of flour that he had carried in his pocket
--into the other he put tea. Fifteen minutes later he carried them to
the Englishman.
Dixon sat up, a glazed passion filling his eyes. He drank the hot tea
greedily, and as greedily ate the boiled flour-pudding. Jan watched
him hungrily until the last crumb of it was gone. He refilled the
pails with snow, added more tea, and then rejoined the Englishman. New
life was already shining in Dixon's eyes.
"Not a moment too soon, Thoreau," he said thankfully, reaching over to
grip the other's hand.
"Another night and--" Suddenly he stopped. "Great Heaven, what is the
matter?"
He noticed for the first time the pinched torture in his companion's
face. Jan's head dropped weakly upon his breast. His hands were icy
cold.
"Nothing," he murmured drowsily, "only--I'm starving, too, Dixon!" He
recovered himself with an effort, and smiled into Dixon's startled
face. "There is nothing to eat," he continued, as he saw the other
direct his gaze toward the pack. "I gave you the last of the flour.
There is nothing--but salt and tea." He rolled over upon the balsam
boughs with a restful sigh. "Let me sleep!"
Dixon went to the pack. One by one, in his search for food, he took
out the few articles that it contained. After that he drank more tea,
crawled back into the balsam shelter, and lay down beside Jan. It was
broad day when he awoke, and he called hoarsely to his companion when
he saw that the snow had ceased falling.
Jan did not stir. For a moment Dixon leaned over to listen to his
breathing, and then dragged himself slowly and painfully out into the
day. The fire was out. A leaden blackness still filled the sky; deep,
silent gloom hung in the wake of the storm.
Suddenly there came to Dixon's ears a sound. It was a sound that would
have been unheard in the gentle whispering of a wind, in the swaying
of the spruce-tops; but in this silence it fell upon the starving
man's hearing with a distinctness that drew his muscles rigid and set
his eyes staring about him in wild search. Just beyond the hanging
pails a moose-bird hopped out upon the snow. It chirped hungrily, its
big, owl-like eyes scrutinizing Dixon. The man stared back, fearing to
move. Slowly he forced his right foot through the snow to the rear of
his left, and as cautiously brought his left behind his right, working
himself backward step by step until he reached the shelter. Just
inside was his rifle. He drew it out and sank upon his knees in the
snow to aim. At the report of the rifle, Jan stirred but did not open
his eyes; he made no movement when Dixon called out in shrill joy that
he had killed meat. He heard, he strove to arouse himself, but
something more powerful than his own will seemed pulling him down into
oblivion. It seemed an eternity before he was conscious of a voice
again. He felt himself lifted, and opened his eyes with his head
resting against the Englishman's shoulder.
"Drink this, Thoreau," he heard.
He drank, and knew that it was not tea that ran down his throat.
"Whisky-jack soup," he heard again. "How is it?"
He became wide-awake. Dixon was offering him a dozen small bits of
meat on a tin plate, and he ate without questioning. Suddenly, when
there were only two or three of the smallest scraps left, he stopped.
"Mon Dieu, it was whisky-jack!" he cried. "I have eaten it all!"
The young Englishman's white face grinned at him.
"I've got the flour inside of me, Thoreau--you've got the moose-bird.
Isn't that fair?"
The plate dropped between them. Over it their hands met in a great,
clutching grip, and up from Jan's heart there welled words which
almost burst from his lips in voice, words which rang in his brain,
and which were an unspoken prayer--"Mélisse, I thank the great God
that it is this man whom you love!" But it was in silence that he
staggered to his feet and went out into the gloom.
"This may be only a lull in the storm," he said. "We must lose no
time. How long did you travel before you made this camp?"
"About ten hours," said Dixon. "I made due west by compass until I
knew that I had passed Lac Bain, and then struck north."
"Ah, you have the compass," cried Jan, his eyes lighting up. "M'seur
Dixon, we are very near to the post if you camped so soon! Tell me
which is north."
"That is north."
"Then we go south--south and east. If you traveled ten hours, first
west and then north, we are northwest of Lac Bain."
Jan spoke no more, but got his rifle from the shelter and put only the
tea and two pails in his pack; leaving the remaining blanket upon the
snow. The Englishman followed close behind him, bending weakly under
the weight of his gun. Tediously they struggled to the top of the
ridge, and as Jan stopped to look through the gray day about him,
Dixon sank down into the snow. When the other turned toward him he
grinned up feebly into his face.
"Bushed," he gasped. "Don't believe I can make it through this snow,
Thoreau."
There was no fear in his eyes; there was even a cheerful ring in his
voice.
A sudden glow leaped into Jan's face.
"I know this ridge," he exclaimed. "It runs within a mile of Lac Bain.
You'd better leave your rifle behind."
Dixon made an effort to rise and Jan helped him. They went on slowly,
resting every few hundred yards, and each time that he rose from these
periods of rest, Dixon's face was twisted with pain.
"It's the flour and water anchored amidships," he smiled grimly.
"Cramps--Ugh!"
"We'll make it by supper-time," assured Jan cheerfully.
Dixon leaned heavily on his arm.
"I wish you'd go on alone," he urged. "You could send help--"
"I promised Mélisse that I would bring you back if I found you,"
replied Jan, his face turned away. "If the storm broke again, you
would be lost."
"Tell me--tell me--" he heard Dixon pant eagerly, "did she send you to
hunt for me, Thoreau?"
Something in the Englishman's voice drew his eyes to him. There was an
excited flush in his starved cheeks; his eyes shone.
"Did she send you?"
Jan struggled hard to speak calmly.
"Not in words, M'seur Dixon. But I know that if I get you safely back
to Lac Bain she will be very happy."
Something came in Dixon's sobbing breath which Jan did not hear. A
little later he stopped and built a fire over which he melted more
snow and boiled tea. The drink stimulated them, and they went on. A
little later still and Jan hung his rifle in the crotch of a sapling.
"We will return for the guns in a day or so," he said.
Dixon leaned upon him more heavily now, and the distances they
traveled between resting periods became shorter and shorter. Three
times they stopped to build fires and cook tea. It was night when they
descended from the ridge to the snow-covered ice of Lac Bain. It was
past midnight when Jan dragged Dixon from the spruce forest into the
opening at the post. There were no lights burning, and he went with
his half-conscious burden to the company's store. He awakened
Croisset, who let them in.
"Take care of Dixon," said Jan, "and don't arouse any of the people
to-night. It will be time enough to tell what has happened in the
morning."
Over the stove in his own room he cooked meat and coffee, and for a
long time sat silent before the fire. He had brought back Dixon. In
the morning Mélisse would know. First she would go to the Englishman,
then--then--she would come to him!
He rose and went to the rude board table in the corner of his room.
"No, Mélisse must not come to me in the morning," he whispered to
himself. "She must never again look upon Jan Thoreau."
He took pencil and paper and wrote. Page after page he crumpled in his
hand and flung into the fire. At last, swiftly and despairingly, he
ended with half a dozen lines. What he said came from his heart, in
French:
"I have brought him back to you, my Mélisse, and pray that the good
God may give you happiness. I leave you the old violin, and always
when you play, it will tell you of the love of Jan Thoreau."
He folded the page and sealed it in one of the company's envelopes.
Very quietly he went from his room down into the deserted store.
Without striking a light he found a new pack, a few articles of food,
and ammunition. The envelope, addressed to Mélisse, he left where
Croisset or the factor would find it in the morning. His dogs were
housed in a shack behind the store, and he called out their names
softly and warningly as he went among them. As stealthily as their
master they trailed behind him to the edge of the forest, and close
under the old spruce that guarded the grave Jan stopped, and silently
he stretched out his arms to the little cabin.
The dogs watched him. Kazan, the one-eyed leader, glared from him into
the dimness of the night, whining softly. A low, mourning wind swept
through the spruce tops, and from Jan's throat there burst sobbingly
words which he had heard beside this same grave more than seventeen
years before, when Williams' choking voice had risen in a last prayer
for the woman.
"May the great God care for Mélisse!"
He turned into the trail upon which Jean de Gravois had fought the
Englishman, led his dogs and sledge in a twisting path through the
caribou swamp, and stood at last beside the lob-stick tree that leaned
out over the edge of the white barrens. With his knife he dug out the
papers which he had concealed in that whisky-jack hole.
It was near dawn when he recovered the rifle which he had abandoned on
the mountain top. A little later it began to snow. He was glad, for it
would conceal his trail.
For thirteen days he forced his dogs through the deep snows into the
south. On the fourteenth they came to Le Pas, which is the edge of
civilization. It was night when he came out of the forest, so that he
could see the faint glow of lights beyond the Saskatchewan.
For a few moments, before crossing, he stopped his tired dogs and
turned his face back into the grim desolation of the North, where the
aurora was playing feebly in the skies, and beckoning to him, and
telling him that the old life of centuries and centuries ago would
wait for him always at the dome of the earth.
"The good God bless you, and keep you, and care for you ever more, my
Mélisse," he whispered; and he walked slowly ahead of his dogs, across
the river, and into the Other World.
CHAPTER XXV
JACK THORNTON
There was music that night in Le Pas. Jan heard it before he came to
the first of the scattered lights, and the dogs pricked up their ears.
Kazan, the one-eyed, whined under his breath, and the weight at Jan's
heart grew heavier as the dog turned up his head to him in the
starlight. It was strange music, nothing like Jan had ever heard. It
was strange to Kazan, and set him whining, and he thrust his muzzle up
to his master's touch inquiringly. They passed on like shadows, close
to a big, lighted log building from which the music came, and with it
a tumult of laughter, of shuffling and stamping feet, of coarse
singing and loud voices. A door opened and a man and a woman came out.
The man was cursing, and the woman was laughing at him--laughing as
Jan had never heard a woman laugh before, and he held his breath as he
listened to the taunting mockery in it. Others followed the first man
and the first woman. Some passed quietly. A woman, escorted between
two men, screamed with merriment as she flung toward his shadowy
figure an object which fell with a crash against the sledge. It was a
bottle. Kazan snarled. The trace-dogs slunk close to the leader's
heels. With a low word Jan led them on.
Close down to the river, where the Saskatchewan swung in a half-moon
to the south and west, he found a low, squat building with a light
hung over the door illuminating a bit of humor in the form of a
printed legend which said that it was "King Edward's Hotel." The scrub
bush of the forest grew within a hundred yards of it, and in this bush
Jan tied his dogs and left his sledge. It did not occur to him that
now, when he had entered civilization, he had come also into the land
of lock and bolt, of robbers and thieves. It was loneliness, and not
suspicion, that sent him back to unleash Kazan and take him with him.
They entered the hotel, Kazan with suspicious caution. The door opened
into a big room lighted by an oil lamp, turned low. The room was empty
except for a solitary figure sitting in a chair, facing a wide window
which looked into the north. Making no sound, that he might not
disturb this other occupant, Jan also seated himself before the
window. Kazan laid his wolfish head across his master's knees, his one
eye upon him steadily and questioningly. Never in all his years of
life had Jan felt the depth of loneliness that swept upon him now, as
he looked into the North. Below him the Saskatchewan lay white and
silent; beyond it he could see the dark edge of the forest, and far,
far, beyond that, hovering low in the sky, the polar star. It burned
faintly now, almost like a thousand other stars that he saw, and the
aurora was only a fading glow.
Something rose up in Jan's throat and choked him, and he closed his
eyes, with his fingers clutching Kazan's head. In spite of the battle
that he had fought, his mind swept back--back through the endless
silent spaces, over mountains and through forests, swift, resistless,
until once more the polar star flashed in all its glory over his head,
and he was at Lac Bain. He did not know that he was surrendering to
hunger, exhaustion, the cumulative effects of his thirteen days' fight
in the forests. He was with Mélisse again, with the old violin, with
the things that they had loved. He forgot in these moments that there
was another in the room; he heard no sound as the man shifted his
position so that he looked steadily at him and Kazan. It was the low,
heart-broken sob of grief that fell from his own lips that awakened
him again to a consciousness of the present.
He jerked himself erect, and found Kazan with his fangs gleaming. The
stranger had risen. He was standing close to him, leaning down,
staring at him in the dim lamplight, and as Jan lifted his own eyes he
knew that in the pale, eager face of the man above him there was
written a grief which might have been a reflection of his own. For a
full breath or two they looked, neither speaking, and the hair along
Kazan's spine stood stiff. Something reached out to Jan and set his
tired blood tingling. He knew that this man was not a forest man. He
was not of his people. His face bore the stamp of the people to the
south, of civilization. And yet something passed between them, leaped
all barriers, and made them friends before they had spoken. The
stranger reached down his hand, and Jan reached up his. All of the
loneliness, the clinging to hope, the starving desire of two men for
companionship, passed in the long grip of their hands.
"You have just come down," said the man, half questioningly. "That was
your sledge--out there?"
"Yes," said Jan.
The stranger sat down in the chair next to Jan.
"From the camps?" he questioned eagerly.
"What camps, m'sieur?"
"The railroad camps, where they are putting the new line through,
beyond Wekusko."
"I know of no camps," said Jan simply. "I know of no railroad, except
this that comes to Le Pas. I come from Lac Bain, on the edge of the
barren lands."
"You have never been down before?" asked the stranger softly. Jan
wondered at the light in his eyes.
"A long time ago," he said, "for a day. I have passed all of my life--
up there." Jan pointed to the north, and the other's eyes turned to
where the polar star was fading low in the sky.
"And I have passed all of my life DOWN THERE," he replied, nodding his
head to the south. "A year ago I came up here for--for health and
happiness," he laughed nervously. "I found them both. But I'm leaving
them. I'm going back to-morrow. My name is Thornton," he added,
holding out his hand again. "I come from Chicago."
"My name is Thoreau--Jan Thoreau," said Jan. "I have read of Chicago
in a book, and have seen pictures of it. Is it larger than the city
that is called Winnipeg?"
He looked at Thornton, and Thornton turned his head a little so that
the light did not shine in his face. The grip of his fingers tightened
about Jan's hand.
"Yes, it is larger."
"The officers of the great company are at Winnipeg, and Le
Commissionaire, are they not, m'sieur?"
"Of the Hudson's Bay Company--yes."
"And if there was business to do--important business, m'sieur, would
it not be best to go to Le Commissionaire?" questioned Jan.
Thornton looked hard at the tense eagerness in Jan's face.
"There are nearer headquarters, at Prince Albert," he said.
"That is not far," exclaimed Jan, rising. "And they would do business
there--important business?" He dropped his hand to Kazan's head, and
half turned toward the door.
"Perhaps better than the Commissioner," replied Thornton. "It might
depend--on what your business is."
To them, as each stood for a moment in silence, there came the low
wailing of a dog out in the night.
"They are calling for Kazan," said Jan quietly, as though he had not
read the question in Thornton's last words. "Good night, m'sieur!"
The dogs were sitting upon their haunches, waiting, when Jan and Kazan
went back to them. Jan drew them farther back, where the thick spruce
shut them out from the clearing, and built a fire. Over this he hung
his coffee-pail and a big chunk of frozen caribou meat, and tossed
frozen fish to the hungry dogs. Then he pulled down spruce boughs and
spread his heavy blankets out near the fire, and waited for the coffee
and meat to cook. The huskies were through when he began eating, and
they lay on their bellies, close about his feet, ready to snap at the
scraps which he threw them. Jan noticed, as he ate, that there was
left in them none of the old, fierce, fighting spirit. They did not
snap or snarl. There was no quarreling when he threw bits of meat to
them, and he found himself wondering if they, too, were filled with
the sickness which was eating at his own heart.
With this sickness, this deathly feeling of loneliness and heartache,
there had entered into Jan now a strange sensation that was almost
excitement--an eagerness to fasten the dogs in their traces, to hurry
on, in spite of his exhaustion, to that place which Thornton had told
him of--Prince Albert, and to free himself there, for all time, of the
thing which had oppressed him since that night many years ago, when he
had staggered into Lac Bain to play his violin as Cummins' wife died.
He reached inside his skin coat and there he felt papers which he had
taken from the hole in the lob-stick tree. They were safe. For twenty
years he had guarded them. To-morrow he would take them to the great
company at Prince Albert. And after that--after he had done this
thing, what would there remain in life for Jan Thoreau? Perhaps the
company might take him, and he would remain in civilization. That
would be best--for him. He would fight against the call of his forests
as years and years ago he had fought against that call of the Other
World that had filled him with unrest for a time. He had killed THAT.
If he DID return to his forests, he would go far to the west, or far
to the east. No one that had ever known him would hear again of Jan
Thoreau.
Kazan had crept to his blanket, daring to encroach upon it inch by
inch, until his great wolf-head lay upon Jan's arm. It was ten years
ago that Jan had taken Kazan, a little half-blind puppy that he and
Mélisse had chosen from a litter of half a dozen stronger brothers and
sisters. Kazan was all that was left to him now. He loved the other
dogs, but they were not like Kazan. He tightened his arm about the
dog's head. Exhaustion, and the warmth of the fire, made him drowsy,
and, after a time, he slept, with his head thrown back against the
tree.
Something awoke him, hours afterward. He opened his eyes, and found
that the fire was still burning brightly. On the far side of it,
beyond the dogs, sat Thornton. A look at the sky, where the stars were
dying, and Jan knew that it was just before the gray break of dawn. He
sat upright. Thornton laughed softly at him, and puffed out clouds of
smoke from his pipe.
"You were freezing," he said, as Jan stared, "and sleeping like a dead
man. I waited for you back there, and then hunted you up. You know--I
thought--" He hesitated, and knocked the ash from his pipe bowl. Then
he looked frankly and squarely at Jan. "See here, old man, if you're
hard up--had trouble of any sort--bad luck--got no money--won't you
let me help you out?"
"Thank you, m'sieur--I have money," said Jan. "I prefer to sleep
outside with the dogs. Mon Dieu, I guess I would have been stiff with
the frost if you had not come. You have been here--all night?"
Thornton nodded.
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