The Woman from Outside
by Hulbert Footner · English · Gutenberg #25875 · 452,806 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Woman from Outside
Author: Hulbert Footner
Release date: June 22, 2008 [eBook #25875]
Most recently updated: January 3, 2021
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/25875
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WOMAN FROM OUTSIDE ***
Produced by Suzanne Shell, Scott Olson, and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
[Transcriber's Note: Obvious errors in the text have been corrected.
Changes have also been made to make spelling, hyphenation, and
punctuation use consistent. A full list of changes is at the end of the
text.]
THE WOMAN
_from_ "OUTSIDE"
[On Swan River]
By
HULBERT FOOTNER
Author of "The Fur Bringers" etc.
THE JAMES A. McCANN COMPANY
_Publishers_ _New York_
Copyright, 1921 by
THE JAMES A. McCANN COMPANY
All Rights Reserved
PRINTED IN THE U. S. A.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I THE WHITE MEDICINE MAN 1
II HOOLIAM 15
III THE UNEXPECTED VISITOR 24
IV MORE ABOUT CLARE 35
V THE FIRST STAGE 46
VI THE KAKISAS 59
VII ON THE RIVER 68
VIII THE LOG SHACK 83
IX THE FOOT 96
X THE START HOME 111
XI THE MYSTERY 129
XII IMBRIE 139
XIII THE RESCUE 154
XIV PURSUIT 172
XV UPS AND DOWNS 192
XVI THE LAST STAGE ON SWAN RIVER 212
XVII THE HEARING 243
XVIII A LETTER FROM MAJOR EGERTON TO HIS FRIEND ARTHUR
DONCOURT, ESQ. 256
EPILOGUE 264
THE WOMAN FROM OUTSIDE
CHAPTER I
THE WHITE MEDICINE MAN
On a January afternoon, as darkness was beginning to gather, the "gang"
sat around the stove in the Company store at Fort Enterprise discussing
that inexhaustible question, the probable arrival of the mail. The big
lofty store, with its glass front, its electric lights, its stock of
expensive goods set forth on varnished shelves, suggested a city
emporium rather than the Company's most north-westerly post, nearly a
thousand miles from civilization; but human energy accomplishes seeming
miracles in the North as elsewhere, and John Gaviller the trader was
above all an energetic man. Throughout the entire North they point with
pride to Gaviller's flour mill, his big steamboat, his great yellow
clap-boarded house--two storeys and attic, and a fence of palings around
it! Why, at Fort Enterprise they even have a sidewalk, the only one
north of fifty-five!
"I don't see why Hairy Ben can't come down," said Doc Giddings--Doc was
the grouch of the post--"the ice on the river has been fit for
travelling for a month now."
"Ben can't start from the Crossing until the mail comes through from
the Landing," said Gaviller. "It can't start from the Landing until the
ice is secure on the Big River, the Little River, and across Caribou
Lake." Gaviller was a handsome man of middle life, who took exceeding
good care of himself, and ruled his principality with an amiable
relentlessness. They called him the "Czar," and it did not displease
him.
"Everybody knows Caribou Lake freezes over first," grumbled the doctor.
"But the rivers down there are swift, and it's six hundred miles south
of here. Give them time."
"The trouble is, they wait until the horse-road is made over the ice
before starting the mail in. If the Government had the enterprise of a
ground-hog they'd send in dogs ahead."
"Nobody uses dogs down there any more."
"Well, I say 'tain't right to ask human beings to wait three months for
their mail. Who knows what may have happened since the freeze-up last
October?"
"What's happened has happened," said Father Goussard mildly, "and
knowing about it can't change it."
The doctor ignored the proffered consolation. "What we need is a new
mail-man," he went on bitterly. "I know Hairy Ben! I'll bet he's had the
mail at the Crossing for a week, and puts off starting every day for
fear of snow."
"Well, 'tain't a job as I'd envy any man," put in Captain Stinson of the
steamboat _Spirit River_, now hauled out on the shore. "Breaking a road
for three hundred and fifty mile, and not a stopping-house the whole way
till he gets to the Beaver Indians at Carcajou Point."
The doctor addressed himself to the policeman, who was mending a
snowshoe in the background. "Stonor, you've got the best dogs in the
post; why don't you go up after him?"
The young sergeant raised his head with a grin. He was a good-looking,
long-limbed youth with a notable blue eye, and a glance of mirthful
sobriety. "No, thanks," he drawled. The others gathered from his tone
that a joke was coming, and pricked up their ears accordingly. "No,
thanks. You forget that Sarge Lambert up at the Crossing is my senior.
When I drove up he'd say: 'What the hell are you doing up here?' And
when I told him he'd come back with his well-known embellishments of
language: 'Has the R.N.W.M.P. nothing better to do than tote Doc
Giddings' love-letters?'"
A great laugh greeted this sally: they are so grateful for the smallest
of jokes on winter afternoons up North.
Doc Giddings subsided, but the discussion went on without him.
"Well, he'll have easy going in from Carcajou; the Indians coming in and
out have beaten a good trail."
"Oh, when he gets to Carcajou he's here."
"If it don't snow. That bit over the prairie drifts badly."
"The barometer's falling."
And so on. And so on. They made the small change of conversation go far.
In the midst of it they were electrified by a shout from the land trail
and the sound of bells.
"Here he is!" they cried, jumping up to a man, and making for the door.
Ben Causton, conscious of his importance, made a dramatic entrance with
the mail-bags over his shoulder, and cast them magnificently on the
counter. Even up north, where every man cultivates his own peculiarities
unhindered, Ben was considered a "character." He was a short, thick man
of enormous physical strength, and he sported a beard like a quickset
hedge, hence his nickname. He was clad in an entire suit of fur like an
Eskimo, with a gaudy red worsted sash about his ample middle.
"Hello, Ben! Gee! but you're slow!"
"Hello, fellows! Keep your hair on! If you want to send out for
catalogues in the middle of winter you're lucky if I get here at all.
Next month, if the second class bag's as heavy as this, I'll drop it
through an air-hole--I swear I will! So now you're warned! I got somepin
better to do than tote catalogues. When I die and go to hell, I only
hope I meet the man who invented mail-order catalogues there, that's
all."
"You're getting feeble, Ben!"
"I got strength enough left to put your head in chancery!"
"What's the news of the world, Ben?"
"Sarge Lambert's got a bone felon. Ally Stiff lost a sow and a whole
litter through the ice up there. Mahooly of the French outfit at the
Settlement's gone out to get him a set of chiny teeth. Says he's going
to get blue ones to dazzle the Indians. Oh, and I almost forgot; down at
Ottawa the Grits are out and the Tories in."
"Bully!"
"God help Canada!"
While Gaviller unlocked the bags, Ben went out to tie up his dogs and
feed them. The trader handed out letters to the eager, extended hands,
that trembled a little. Brightening eyes pounced on the superscriptions.
Gaviller himself had a daughter outside being "finished," the apple of
his eye: Captain Stinson had a wife, and Mathews the engineer, an
elderly sweetheart. The dark-skinned Gordon Strange, Gaviller's clerk,
carried on an extensive correspondence, the purport of which was unknown
to the others, and Father Goussard was happy in the receipt of many
letters from his confreres. Even young Stonor was excited, who had no
one in the world to write to him but a married sister who sent him
long, dutiful chronicles of small beer. But it was from "home."
The second-class bag with the papers was scarcely less exciting. To
oblige Ben they only took one newspaper between them, and passed it
around, but in this mail three months' numbers had accumulated. As the
contents of the bag cascaded out on the counter, Stonor picked up an
unfamiliar-looking magazine.
"Hello, what's this?" he cried, reading the label in surprise. "Doctor
Ernest Imbrie. Who the deuce is he?"
"Must have come here by mistake," said Gaviller.
"Not a bit of it! Here's the whole story: Doctor Ernest Imbrie, Fort
Enterprise, Spirit River, Athabasca."
It passed around from hand to hand. A new name was something to catch
the attention at Fort Enterprise.
"Why, here's another!" cried Gaviller in excitement. "And another! Blest
if half the bag isn't for him! And all addressed just so!"
They looked at each other a little blankly. All this evidence had the
effect of creating an apparition there in their midst. There was an
appreciable silence.
"Must be somebody who started in last year and never got through," said
Mathews. He spoke with an air of relief at discovering so reasonable an
explanation.
"But we hear about everybody who comes north of the Landing," objected
Gaviller. "I would have been advised if he had a credit here."
"Another doctor!" said Doc Giddings bitterly. "If he expects to share my
practice he's welcome!"
At another time they would have laughed at this, but the mystery teased
them. They resented the fact that some rank outsider claimed Fort
Enterprise for his post-office, without first having made himself
known.
"If he went back outside, he'd stop all this stuff coming in, you'd
think."
"Maybe somebody's just putting up a joke on us."
"Funny kind of joke! Subscriptions to these magazines cost money."
Stonor read off the titles of the magazines: "_The Medical Record_; _The
American Medical Journal_; _The Physician's and Surgeon's Bulletin_."
"Quite a scientific guy," said Doctor Giddings, with curling lip.
"Strange, he gets so many papers and not a single letter!" remarked
Father Goussard. "A friendless man!"
Gaviller picked up a round tin, one of several packed and addressed
alike. He read the business card of a well-known tobacconist. "Smoking
tobacco!" he said indignantly. "If the Company's Dominion Mixture isn't
good enough for any man I'd like to know it! He has a cheek, if you ask
me, bringing in tobacco under my very nose!"
"Tobacco!" cried Stonor. "It's all very well about papers, but no man
would waste good tobacco! It must be somebody who started in before
Ben!"
Their own mail matter, that they had looked forward to so impatiently,
was forgotten now.
When Ben Causton came back they bombarded him with questions. But this
bag had come through locked all the way from Miwasa Landing, and Ben,
even Ben, the great purveyor of gossip in the North, had heard nothing
of any Doctor Imbrie on his way in. Ben was more excited and more
indignant than any of them. Somebody had got ahead of him in spreading a
sensation!
"It's a hoe-axe," said Ben. "It's them fellows down at the Landing
trying to get a rise out of me. Or if it ain't that, it's some guy
comin' in next spring, and sendin' in his outfit piecemeal ahead of him.
And me powerless to protect myself! Ain't that an outrage! But when I
meet him on the trail I'll put it to him!"
"There are newspapers here, too," Stonor pointed out. "No man coming in
next spring would send himself last year's papers."
"Where is he, then?" they asked.
The question was unanswerable.
"Well, I'd like to see any lily-handed doctor guy from the outside face
the river trail in the winter," said Ben bitterly. "If he'll do that,
I'll carry his outfit for him. But he'll need more than his diploma to
fit him for it."
At any rate they had a brand-new subject for conversation at the post.
* * * * *
About a week later, when Hairy Ben had started back up the river, the
routine at the post was broken by the arrival of a small party of Kakisa
Indians from the Kakisa or Swan River, a large unexplored stream off to
the north-west. The Kakisas, an uncivilized and shy race, rarely
appeared at Enterprise, and in order to get their trade Gaviller had
formerly sent out a half-breed clerk to the Swan River every winter. But
this man had lately died, and now the trade threatened to lapse for the
lack of an interpreter. None of the Kakisas could speak English, and
there was no company employee who could speak their uncouth tongue
except Gordon Strange the bookkeeper, who could not be spared from the
post.
Wherefore Gaviller welcomed these six, in the hope that they might prove
to be the vanguard of the main body. They were a wild and ragged lot,
under the leadership of a withered elder called Mahtsonza. They were
discovered by accident camping under cover of a poplar bluff across the
river. No one knew how long they had been there, and Gordon Strange had
a time persuading them to come the rest of the way. It was dusk when
they entered the store, and Gaviller, by pre-arrangement with Mathews,
clapped his hands and the electric lights went on. The effect surpassed
his expectations. The Kakisas, with a gasp of terror, fled, and could
not be tempted to return until daylight.
They brought a good little bundle of fur, including two silver fox
skins, the finest seen at Enterprise that season. They laid their fur on
the counter, and sidled about the store silent and abashed, like
children in a strange house. With perfectly wooden faces they took in
all the wonders out of the corners of their eyes; the scales, the stove,
the pictures on the canned goods, the show-cases of jewellery and candy.
Candy they recognized, and, again like children, they discussed the
respective merits of the different varieties in their own tongue.
Gaviller, warned by his first mistake, affected to take no notice of
them.
The Kakisas had been in the store above an hour when Mahtsonza, without
warning, produced a note from the inner folds of his dingy capote, and,
handling it gingerly between thumb and forefinger, silently offered it
to Gaviller. The trader's eyes almost started out of his head.
"A letter!" he cried stupidly. "Where the hell did you get that?--Boys!
Look here! A note from Swan River! Who in thunder at Swan River can
write a white man's hand?"
Stonor, Doc Giddings, Strange, and Mathews, who were in the store,
hastened to him.
"Who's it addressed to?" asked the policeman.
"Just to the Company. Whoever wrote it didn't have the politeness to put
my name down."
"Maybe he doesn't know you."
"How could that be?" asked Gaviller, with raised eyebrows.
"Open it! Open it!" said Doc Giddings irritably.
Gaviller did so, and his face expressed a still greater degree of
astonishment. "Ha! Here's our man!" he cried.
"Imbrie!" they exclaimed in unison.
"Listen!" He read from the note.
"GENTLEMEN--I am sending you two silver fox skins, for which
please give me credit. I enclose an order for supplies, to be
sent by bearer. Also be good enough to hand the bearer any mail
matter which may be waiting for me.
"Yours truly,
"ERNEST IMBRIE."
The silence of stupefaction descended on them. The only gateway to the
Swan River lay through Enterprise. How could a man have got there
without their knowing it? Stupefaction was succeeded by resentment.
"Will I be good enough to hand over his mail?" sneered Gaviller. "What
kind of elegant language is this from Swan River?"
"Sounds like a regular Percy," said Strange, who always echoed his
chief.
"Funny place for a Percy to set up," said Stonor drily.
"He orders flour, sugar, beans, rice, coffee, tea, baking-powder, salt,
and dried fruit," said Gaviller, as if that were a fresh cause of
offence.
"He has an appetite, then," said Stonor, "he's no ghost."
Suddenly they fell upon Mahtsonza with a bombardment of questions,
forgetting that the Indian could speak no English. He shrank back
affrighted.
"Wait a minute," said Strange. "Let me talk to him."
He conferred for awhile with Mahtsonza in the strange, clicking tongue
of the Kakisas. Gaviller soon became impatient.
"Tell us as he goes along," he said. "Never mind waiting for the end of
the story."
"They can't tell you anything directly," said Strange deprecatingly;
"there's nothing to do but let them tell a story in their own way. He's
telling me now that Etzooah, a man with much hair, who hunts down the
Swan River near the beginning of the swift water, came up to the village
at the end of the horse-track on snowshoes and dragging a little sled.
Etzooah had the letter for Gaviller, but he was tired out, so he handed
it to Mahtsonza, who had dogs, to bring it the rest of the way, and gave
Mahtsonza a mink-skin for his trouble."
"Never mind all that," said Gaviller impatiently. "What about the white
man?"
Strange conferred again with Mahtsonza, while Gaviller bit his nails.
"Mahtsonza says," he reported, "that Imbrie is a great White Medicine
Man who has done honour to the Kakisa people by coming among them to
heal the sick and do good. Mahtsonza says he has not seen Imbrie
himself, because when he came among the Indians last fall Mahtsonza was
off hunting on the upper Swan, but all the people talk about him and
what strong medicine he makes."
"Conjure tricks!" muttered Doc Giddings.
"Where does he live?" demanded Gaviller.
Strange asked the question and reported the answer. "He has built
himself a shack beside the Great Falls of the Swan River. Mahtsonza says
that the people know his medicine is strong because he is not afraid to
live with the voice of the Great Falls."
Stonor asked the next question. "What sort of man is he?"
Strange, after putting the question, said: "Mahtsonza says he's very
good-looking, or, as he puts it, a pretty man. He says he looks young,
but he may be as old as the world, because with such strong medicine he
could make himself look like anything he wanted. He says that the White
Medicine Man talks much with dried words in covers--I suppose he means
books."
"Ask him what proof he has given them that his medicine is strong,"
suggested Stonor.
Strange translated Mahtsonza's answer as follows: "Last year when the
bush berries were ripe (that's August) all the Indians down the river
got sick. Water came out of their eyes and nose; their skin got as red
as sumach and burned like fire."
"Measles," said Gaviller. "The Beavers had it, too. They take it hard."
Strange continued: "Mahtsonza says many of them died. They just lay down
and gave up hope. Etzooah was the only Kakisa who had seen the White
Medicine Man up to that time, and he went to him and asked him to make
medicine to cure the sick. So the White Medicine Man came back with
Etzooah to the village down the river. He had good words and a soft hand
to the sick. He made medicine, and, behold! the sick arose and were
well!"
"Faith cure!" muttered Doc Giddings.
"How long has Imbrie been down there by the Falls?" asked Gaviller.
"Mahtsonza says he came last summer when the ground berries were ripe.
That would be about July."
"Did he come down the river from the mountains?"
"Mahtsonza says no. Nobody on the river saw him go down."
"Where did he come from, then?"
"Mahtsonza says he doesn't know. Nobody knows. Some say he came from
under the falls where the white bones lie. Some say it is the voice of
the falls that comes among men in the shape of a man."
"Rubbish! A ghost doesn't subscribe to medical journals!" said Doc
Giddings.
"He orders flour, sugar, beans," said Gaviller.
When this was explained to Mahtsonza the Indian shrugged. Strange said:
"Mahtsonza says if he takes a man's shape he's got to feed it."
"Pshaw!" said Gaviller impatiently. "He must have come up the river. It
is known that the Swan River empties into Great Buffalo Lake. The Lake
can't be more than a hundred miles below the falls. No white man has
ever been through that way, but somebody's got to be the first."
"But we know every white man who ever went down to Great Buffalo Lake,"
said Doc Giddings. "Certainly there never was a doctor there except the
police doctor who makes the round with the treaty outfit every summer."
"Well, it's got me beat!" said Gaviller, scratching his head.
"Maybe it's someone wanted by the police outside," suggested Gordon
Strange, "who managed to sneak into the country without attracting
notice."
"He's picked out a bad place to hide," said Stonor grimly. "He'll be
well advertised up here."
* * * * *
Stonor had a room in the "quarters," a long, low barrack of logs on the
side of the quadrangle facing the river. It had been the trader's
residence before the days of the big clap-boarded villa. Stonor, tiring
of the conversation around the stove, frequently spent the evenings in
front of his own fire, and here he sometimes had a visitor, to wit, Tole
Grampierre, youngest son of Simon, the French half-breed farmer up the
river. Tole came of good, self-respecting native stock, and was in his
own person a comely, sensible youngster a few years younger than the
trooper. Tole was the nearest thing to a young friend that Stonor
possessed in the post. They were both young enough to have some
illusions left. They talked of things they would have blushed to expose
to the cynicism of the older men.
Stonor sat in his barrel chair that he had made himself, and Tole sat on
the floor nursing his knees. Both were smoking Dominion mixture.
Said Tole: "Stonor, what you make of this Swan River mystery?"
"Oh, anything can be a mystery until you learn the answer. I don't see
why a man shouldn't settle out on Swan River if he has a mind to."
"Why do all the white men talk against him?"
"Don't ask me. I doubt if they could tell you themselves. When men talk
in a crowd they get started on a certain line and go on from bad to
worse without thinking what they mean by it."
"Our people just the same that way, I guess," said Tole.
"I'm no better," said Stonor. "I don't know how it is, but fellows in a
crowd seem to be obliged to talk more foolishly than they think in
private."
"You don't talk against him, Stonor."
The policeman laughed. "No, I stick up for him. It gets the others
going. As a matter of fact, I'd like to know this Imbrie. For one thing,
he's young like ourselves, Tole. And he must be a decent sort, to cure
the Indians, and all that. They're a filthy lot, what we've seen of
them."
"Gaviller says he's going to send an outfit next spring to rout him out
of his hole. Gaviller says he's a cash trader."
Stonor chuckled. "Gaviller hates a cash trader worse than a devil with
horns. It's nonsense anyway. What would the Kakisas do with cash? This
talk of sending in an expedition will all blow over before spring."
"Stonor, what for do you think he lives like that by himself?"
"I don't know. Some yarn behind it, I suppose. Very likely a woman at
the bottom of it. He's young. Young men do foolish things. Perhaps he'd
be thankful for a friend now."
"White men got funny ideas about women, I think."
"I suppose it seems so. But where did you get that idea?"
"Not from the talk at the store. I have read books. Love-stories.
Pringle the missionary lend me a book call _Family Herald_ with many
love-stories in it. From that I see that white men always go crazy about
women."
Stonor laughed aloud.
"Stonor, were you ever real crazy about a woman?"
The trooper shook his head--almost regretfully, one might have said.
"The right one never came my way, Tole."
"You don't like the girls around here."
"Yes, I do. Nice girls. Pretty, too. But well, you see, they're not the
same colour as me."
"Just the same, they are crazy about you."
"Nonsense!"
"Yes, they are. Call you 'Gold-piece.' Us fellows got no chance if you
want them."
"Tell me about the stories you read, Tole."
Tole refused to be diverted from his subject. "Stonor, I think you would
like to be real crazy about a woman."
"Maybe," said the other dreamily. "Perhaps life would seem less empty
then."
"Would you go bury yourself among the Indians for a woman?"
"I hardly think so," said Stonor, smiling. "Though you never can tell
what you might do. But if I got turned down, I suppose I'd want to be as
busy as possible to help forget it."
"Well, I think that Imbrie is crazy for sure."
"It takes all kinds to make a world. If I can get permission I'm going
out to see him next summer."
CHAPTER II
HOOLIAM
When the spring days came around, Stonor, whose business it was to keep
watch on such things, began to perceive an undercurrent of waywardness
among the Indians and breeds of the post. Teachers know how an epidemic
of naughtiness will sweep a class; this was much the same thing. There
was no actual outbreak; it was chiefly evinced in defiant looks and an
impudent swagger. It was difficult to trace back, for the red people
hang together solidly; a man with even a trace of red blood will rarely
admit a white man into the secrets of the race. Under questioning they
maintain a bland front that it is almost impossible to break down.
Stonor had long ago learned the folly of trying to get at what he wanted
by direct questioning.
He finally, as he thought, succeeded in locating the source of the
infection at Carcajou Point. Parties from the post rode up there with
suspicious frequency, and came back with a noticeably lowered moral
tone, licking their lips, so to speak. All the signs pointed to whisky.
At dawn of a morning in May, Stonor, without having advertised his
intention, set off for Carcajou on horseback. The land trail cut across
a wide sweep of the river, and on horseback one could make it in a day,
whereas it was a three days' paddle up-stream. Unfortunately he couldn't
take them by surprise, for Carcajou was on the other side of the river
from Enterprise, and Stonor must wait on the shore until they came over
after him.
As soon as he left the buildings of the post behind him Stonor's heart
was greatly lifted up. It was his first long ride of the season. The
trail led him through the poplar bush back to the bench, thence in a
bee-line across the prairie. The sun rose as he climbed the bench. The
prairie was not the "bald-headed" so dear to those who know it, but was
diversified with poplar bluffs, clumps of willow, and wild-rose-scrub in
the hollows. The crocuses were in bloom, the poplar trees hanging out
millions of emerald pendants, and the sky showed that exquisite, tender
luminousness that only the northern sky knows when the sun travels
towards the north. Only singing-birds were lacking to complete the idyl
of spring. Stonor, all alone in a beautiful world, lifted up his voice
to supply the missing praise.
Towards sunset he approached the shore of the river opposite Carcajou
Point, but as he didn't wish to arrive at night, he camped within
shelter of the woods. In the morning he signalled for a boat. They came
after him in a dug-out, and he swam his horse across.
A preliminary survey of the place revealed nothing out of the way. The
people who called themselves Beaver Indians were in reality the
scourings of half the tribes in the country, and it is doubtful if there
was an individual of pure red race among them. Physically they were a
sad lot, for Nature revenges herself swiftly on the offspring of
hybrids. Quaint ethnological differences were exhibited in the same
family; one brother would have a French physiognomy, another a Scottish
cast of feature, and a third the thick lips and flattened nose of a
negro. Their village was no less nondescript than its inhabitants,
merely a straggling row of shacks, thrown together anyhow, and roofed
with sods, now putting forth a brave growth of weeds. These houses were
intended for a winter residence only. In summer they "pitched around."
At present they were putting their dug-outs and canoes in order for a
migration.
Stonor was received on the beach by Shose (Joseph) Cardinal, a fine,
up-standing ancient of better physique than his sons and grandsons. In a
community of hairless men he was further distinguished by a straggling
grey beard. His wits were beginning to fail, but not yet his cunning. He
was extremely anxious to learn the reason for the policeman's coming.
For Stonor to tell him would have been to defeat his object; to lie
would have been to lower himself in their eyes; so Stonor took refuge in
an inscrutability as polite as the old man's own.
Stonor made a house-to-house canvass of the village, inquiring as to the
health and well-being of each household, as is the custom of his
service, and keeping his eyes open on his own account. He satisfied
himself that if there had been whisky there, it was drunk up by now.
Some of the men showed the sullen depressed air that follows on a
prolonged spree, but all were sober at present.
He was in one of the last houses of the village, when, out of the tail
of his eye, he saw a man quietly issue from the house next in order,
and, covered by the crowd around the door, make his way back to a house
already visited. Stonor, without saying anything, went back to that
house and found himself face to face with a young white man, a stranger,
who greeted him with an insolent grin.
"Who are you?" demanded the policeman.
"Hooliam."
"You have a white man's name. What is it?"
"Smith"--this with inimitable insolence, and a look around that bid for
the applause of the natives.
Stonor's lip curled at the spectacle of a white man's thus lowering
himself. "Come outside," he said sternly. "I want to talk to you."
He led the way to a place apart on the river bank, and the other, not
daring to defy him openly, followed with a swagger. With a stern glance
Stonor kept the tatterdemalion crowd at bay. Stonor coolly surveyed his
man in the sunlight and saw that he was not white, as he had supposed,
but a quarter or eighth breed. He was an uncommonly good-looking young
fellow in the hey-day of his youth, say, twenty-six. With his clear
olive skin, straight features and curly dark hair he looked not so much
like a breed as a man of one of the darker peoples of the Caucasian
race, an Italian or a Greek. There was a falcon-like quality in the
poise of his head, in his gaze, but the effect was marred by the
consciousness of evil, the irreconcilable look in the fine eyes.
"Bad clear through!" was Stonor's instinctive verdict.
"Where did you come from?" he demanded.
"Up river," was the casual reply. The man's English was as good as
Stonor's own.
"Answer me fully."
"From Sah-ko-da-tah prairie, if you know where that is. I came into that
country by way of Grande Prairie. I came from Winnipeg."
Stonor didn't believe a word of this, but had no means of confuting the
man on the spot. "How long have you been here?" he asked.
"A week or so. I didn't keep track."
"What is your business here?"
"I'm looking for a job."
"Among the Beavers? Why didn't you come to the trading-post?"
"I was coming, but they tell me John Gaviller's a hard man to work fer.
Thought I better keep clear of him."
"Gaviller's the only employer of labour hereabouts. If you don't like
him you'll have to look elsewhere."
"I can take up land, can't I?"
"Not here. This is treaty land. Plenty of good surveyed homesteads
around the post."
"Thanks. I prefer to pick my own location."
"I'll give you your choice. You can either come down to the post where I
can keep an eye on your doings, or go back up the river where you came
from."
"Do you call this a free country?"
"Never mind that. You're getting off easy. If you'd rather, I'll put you
under arrest and carry you down to the post for trial."
"On what charge?"
"Furnishing whisky to the Indians."
"It's a lie!" cried the man, hoping to provoke Stonor into revealing the
extent of his information.
But the policeman shrugged, and remained mum.
The other suddenly changed his front. "All right, I'll go if I have to,"
he said, with a conciliatory air. "To-morrow."
"You'll leave within an hour," said Stonor, consulting his watch. "I'll
see you off. Better get your things together."
The man still lingered, and Stonor saw an unspoken question in his eye,
a desire to ingratiate himself. Now Stonor, under his stern port as an
officer of the law, was intensely curious about the fellow. With his
good looks, his impudent assurance, his command of English, he was a
notable figure in that remote district. The policeman permitted himself
to unbend a little.
"What are you travelling in?" he asked.
"Dug-out." Encouraged by the policeman's altered manner, the self-styled
Hooliam went on, with an air of taking Stonor into his confidence:
"These niggers here are a funny lot, aren't they? Still believe in
magic."
"In what way?"
"Why, they're always talking about a White Medicine Man who lives beside
a river off to the north-west. Ernest Imbrie they call him. Do you know
him?"
"No."
"He's been to the post, hasn't he?"
"No."
"Well, how did he get into the country?"
"I don't know."
"These people say he works magic."
"Well, if anyone wants to believe that--!"
"What do they say about him down at the post?"
"Plenty of foolishness."
"But what?"
"You don't expect me to repeat foolish gossip, do you?"
"No, but what do you think about him?"
"I don't think."
"They say that Gaviller's lodged a complaint against him, and you're
going out there to arrest him as soon as it's fit to travel."
"That's a lie. There's no complaint against the man."
"But you are going out there, aren't you?"
"I can't discuss my movements with you."
"That means you are going. Is it true he sent in a whole bale of silver
foxes to the post?"
"Say, what's your interest in this man, anyway?" said Stonor, losing
patience.
"Nothing at all," said the breed carelessly. "These Indians are always
talking about him. It roused my curiosity, that's all."
"Suppose you satisfy my curiosity about yourself," suggested Stonor
meaningly.
The old light of impudent mockery returned to the comely dark face. "Me?
Oh, I'm only a no-account hobo," he said. "I'll have to be getting ready
now."
And so Stonor's curiosity remained unsatisfied. To have questioned the
man further would only have been to lower his dignity. True, he might
have arrested him, and forced him to give an account of himself, but the
processes of justice are difficult and expensive so far north, and the
policemen are instructed not to make arrests except when unavoidable. At
the moment it did not occur to Stonor but that the man's questions about
Imbrie were actuated by an idle curiosity.
When the hour was up, the entire population of Carcajou Point gathered
on the shore to witness Hooliam's departure. Stonor was there, too, of
course, standing grimly apart from the rabble. Of what they thought of
this summary deportation he could not be sure, but he suspected that if
the whisky were all gone, they would not care much one way or the other.
Hooliam was throwing his belongings in a dug-out of a different style
from that used by the Beavers. It was ornamented with a curved prow and
stern, such as Stonor had not before seen.
"Where did you get that boat?" he asked.
"I didn't steal it," answered Hooliam impudently. "Traded my horse for
it and some grub at Fort Cardigan."
Cardigan was a Company post on the Spirit a hundred miles or so above
the Crossing. Stonor saw that Hooliam was well provided with blankets,
grub, ammunition, etc., and that it was not Company goods.
When Hooliam was ready to embark, he addressed the crowd in an Indian
tongue which strongly resembled Beaver, which Stonor spoke, but had
different inflections. Freely translated, his words were:
"I go, men. The moose-berry (_i. e._, red-coat) wills it. I don't like
moose-berries. Little juice and much stone. To eat moose-berries draws a
man's mouth up like a tobacco-bag when the string is pulled."
They laughed, with deprecatory side-glances at the policeman. They were
not aware that he spoke their tongue. Stonor had no intention of letting
them know it, and kept an inscrutable face. They pushed off the dug-out,
and Hooliam, with a derisive wave of the hand, headed up river. All
remained on the shore, and Stonor, seeing that they expected something
more of Hooliam, remained also.
He had gone about a third of a mile when Stonor saw him bring the
dug-out around and ground her on the beach. He made no move to get out,
but a woman appeared from out of the shrubbery and got in. She was too
far away for Stonor to distinguish anything of her features; her figure
looked matronly.
"Who is that?" he asked sharply.
Several voices answered. "Hooliam's woman. Hooliam got old woman for his
woman"--with scornful laughter. Now that Hooliam was gone, they were
prepared to curry favour with the policeman.
Stonor was careful not to show the uneasiness he felt. This was his
first intimation that Hooliam had a companion. He considered following
him in another dug-out, but finally decided against it. The fact that he
had taken the woman aboard in plain sight smacked merely of bravado. A
long experience of the red race had taught Stonor that they love to
shroud their movements in mystery from the whites, and that in their
most mysterious acts there is not necessarily any significance.
Hooliam, with a wave of his paddle, resumed his journey, and presently
disappeared around a bend. Stonor turned on his heel and left the beach,
followed by the people. They awaited his next move somewhat
apprehensively, displaying an anxiety to please which suggested bad
consciences. Stonor, however, contented himself with offering some
private admonitions to Shose Cardinal, who seemed to take them in good
part. He then prepared to return to the post. The people speeded his
departure with relieved faces.
That night Stonor camped on the prairie half-way home. As he lay wooing
sleep under the stars, his horse cropping companionably near by, a new
thought caused him to sit up suddenly in his blankets.
"He mentioned the name Ernest Imbrie. The Indians never call him
anything but the White Medicine Man. And even if they had picked up the
name Imbrie at the post, they never speak of a man by his Christian
name. If they had heard the name Ernest I doubt if they could pronounce
it. Sounds as if he knew the name beforehand. Queer if there should be
any connection there. I wish I hadn't let him go so easily.--Oh, well,
it's too late to worry about it now. The steamboat will get to the
Crossing before he does. I'll drop a line to Lambert to keep an eye on
him."
CHAPTER III
THE UNEXPECTED VISITOR
At Fort Enterprise a busy time followed. The big steamboat ("big" of
course only for lack of anything bigger than a launch to compare with)
had to be put in the water and outfitted, and the season's catch of fur
inventoried, baled and put aboard. By Victoria Day all was ready. They
took the day off to celebrate with games and oratory (chiefly for the
benefit of the helpless natives) followed by a big bonfire and dance at
Simon Grampierre's up the river.
Next morning the steamboat departed up-stream, taking Captain Stinson,
Mathews, and most of the native employees of the post in her crew. Doc
Giddings and Stonor watched her go, each with a little pain at the
breast; she was bound towards the great busy world, world of infinite
delight, of white women, lights, music, laughter and delicate feasting;
in short, to them the world of romance. They envied the very bales of
fur aboard that were bound for the world's great market-places. On the
other hand, John Gaviller watched the steamboat go with high
satisfaction. To him she represented Profit. He never knew homesickness,
because he was at home. For him the world revolved around Fort
Enterprise. As for Gordon Strange, the remaining member of the quartette
who watched her go, no one ever really knew what he thought.
The days that followed were the dullest in the whole year. The natives
had departed for their summer camps, and there was no one left around
the post but the few breed farmers. To Stonor, who was twenty-seven
years old, these days were filled with a strange unrest; for the coming
of summer with its universal blossoming was answered by a surge in his
own youthful blood--and he had no safety-valve. A healthy instinct urged
him to a ceaseless activity; he made a garden behind his quarters; he
built a canoe (none of your clumsy dug-outs, but a well-turned
Peterboro' model sheathed with bass-wood); he broke the colts of the
year. Each day he tired himself out and knew no satisfaction in his
work, and each morning he faced the shining world with a kind of groan.
Just now he had not even Tole Grampierre to talk to, for Tole, following
the universal law, was sitting up with Berta Thomas.
The steamboat's itinerary took her first to Spirit River Crossing, the
point of departure for "outside" where she discharged her fur and took
on supplies for the posts further up-stream. Proceeding up to Cardigan
and Fort Cheever, she got their fur and brought it back to the Crossing.
Then, putting on supplies for Fort Enterprise, she hustled down home
with the current. It took her twelve days to mount the stream and six to
return. Gaviller was immensely proud of the fact that she was the only
thing in the North that ran on a pre-arranged schedule. He even sent out
a timetable to the city for the benefit of intending tourists. She was
due back at Enterprise on June 15th.
When the morning of that day broke a delightful excitement filled the
breasts of those left at the post. As in most Company establishments, on
the most prominent point of the river-bank stood a tall flagstaff, with
a little brass cannon at its foot. The flag was run up and the cannon
loaded, and every five minutes during the day some one would be running
out to gaze up the river. Only Gaviller affected to be calm.
"You're wasting your time," he would say. "Stinson tied up at Tar Island
last night. If he comes right down he'll be here at three forty-five;
and if he has to land at Carcajou for wood it will be near supper-time."
The coming of the steamboat always held the potentialities of a dramatic
surprise, for they had no telegraph to warn them of whom or what she was
bringing. This year they expected quite a crowd. In addition to their
regular visitors, Duncan Seton, the Company inspector, and Bishop
Trudeau on his rounds, the government was sending in a party of
surveyors to lay off homesteads across the river, and Mr. Pringle, the
Episcopal missionary, was returning to resume his duties. An added spice
of anticipation was lent by the fact that the latter was expected to
bring his sister to keep house for him. There had been no white woman at
Fort Enterprise since the death of Mrs. Gaviller many years before. But,
as Miss Pringle was known to be forty years old, the excitement on her
account was not undue. Her mark would be Gaviller, the younger men said,
affecting not to notice the trader's annoyance.
Gaviller had put a big boat's whistle on his darling _Spirit River_, and
the mellow boom of it brought them on a run out of the store before she
hove in sight around the islands in front of Grampierre's. Gaviller had
his binoculars. He could no longer keep up his pretence of calmness.
"Three twenty-eight!" he cried, excitedly. "Didn't I tell you! Who says
we can't keep time up here! She'll run her plank ashore at three
forty-five to the dot!"
"There she is!" they cried, as she poked her nose around the islands.
"Good old tub!"
"By God! she's a pretty sight--white as a swan!"
"And floats like one!"
"Some class to that craft, sir!"
Meanwhile Gaviller was nervously focussing his binoculars. "By Golly!
there's a big crowd on deck!" he cried. "Must be ten or twelve beside
the crew!"
"Can you see the petticoat?" asked Doc Giddings. "Gee! I hope she can
cook!"
"Wait a minute! Yes--there she is!--Hello! By God, boys, there's two of
them!"
"Two!"
"Go on, you're stringing us!"
"The other must be a breed."
"No, sir, she's got a white woman's hat on, a stylish hat. And now I can
see her white face!"
"John, for the lova Mike let me look!"
But the trader held him off obdurately. "I believe she's young. She's a
little woman beside the other. I believe she's good-looking! All the men
are crowding around her."
Stonor's heart set up an unaccountable beating. "Ah, it'll be the wife
of one of the surveyors," he said, with the instinct of guarding against
a disappointment.
"No, sir! If her husband was aboard the other men wouldn't be crowding
around like that."
"No single woman under forty would dare venture up here. She'd be
mobbed."
"Might be a pleasant sort of experience for her."
Doc Giddings had at last secured possession of the glasses. "She _is_
good-looking!" he cried. "Glory be, she's a peach! I can see her smile!"
The boat was soon close enough for the binoculars to be dispensed with.
To Stonor the whole picture was blurred, save for the one slender,
fragile figure clad in the well-considered dress of a lady, perfect in
detail. Of her features he was aware at first only of a beaming, wistful
smile that plucked at his heartstrings with a strange sharpness. Even at
that distance she gave out something that changed him for ever, and he
knew it. He gazed, entirely self-forgetful, with rapt eyes and parted
lips that would have caused the other men to shout with laughter--had
they not been gazing, too. The man who dwells in a world full of
charming women never knows what they may mean to a man. Let him be
exiled, and he'll find out. In that moment the smouldering uneasiness
which had made Stonor a burden to himself of late burst into flame, and
he knew what was the matter. He beheld his desire.
As the steamboat swept by below them, Stonor automatically dipped the
flag, and Gaviller touched off the old muzzle-loader, which vented a
magnificent roar for its size. The whistle replied. The _Spirit River_
waltzed gracefully around in the stream, and, coming back against the
current, pushed her nose softly into the mud of the strand. They ran
down to meet her. Hawsers were passed ashore and made fast, and the
plank run out.
Gaviller and the others went aboard, and first greetings were exchanged
on the forward deck of the steamboat. Stonor, afflicted with a sudden
diffidence, hung in the background. He wished to approach her by
degrees. Meanwhile he was taking her in. He scarcely dared look at her
directly, but his gaze thirstily drank in her outlying details, so to
speak. Her small, well-shod feet were marvellous to him; likewise her
exquisite silken ankles. He observed that she walked with stiff, short,
delicate steps, like a high-bred filly. He was enchanted with the
slight, graceful gesticulation of her gloved hand. When he finally
brought himself to look at her eyes he was not disappointed; deep blue
were they, steady, benignant, and of a heart-disquieting wistfulness.
Other items, by the way, were a little straight nose, absurd and
lovable, and lips fresh and bright as a child's. All the men were
standing about her with deferential bared heads, and the finest thing
(in Stonor's mind) was that she displayed no self-consciousness in this
trying situation; none of the cooings, the gurglings, the flirtatious
flutterings that bring the sex into disrepute. Her back was as straight
as a plucky boy's and her chin up like the same.
When Stonor saw that his turn was approaching to be introduced, he was
seized outright with panic. He slipped inside the vessel and made his
way back to where the engineer was wiping his rods. He greeted Mathews
with a solicitude that surprised the dour Scotchman. He stood there
making conversation until he heard everybody in the bow go ashore.
Afterwards he was seized with fresh panic upon realizing that delaying
the inevitable introduction could not but have the effect of singling
him out and making him more conspicuous when it came about.
John Gaviller carried Miss Pringle and the charming unknown up to the
clap-boarded villa until the humble shack attached to the English
mission could be made fit to receive them. Stonor went for a long walk
to cool his fevered blood. He was thoroughly disgusted with himself. By
his timidity, not to use a stronger word, he had lost precious hours;
indeed, now that he had missed his first opportunity, he might be
overlooked altogether. The other men would not be likely to help him out
at all. A cold chill struck to his breast at the thought. He resolved to
march right up to the guns of her eyes on his return. But he made a
score of conflicting resolutions in the course of his walk. Meanwhile he
didn't yet know whether she were Miss or Mrs., or what was her errand at
Fort Enterprise. True, he could have gone back and asked any of the men
who came on the boat, but nothing in the world could have induced him to
speak of her to anyone just then.
When he got back, it was to find the post in a fever of preparation.
John Gaviller had asked every white man to his house to dinner to meet
the ladies. It was to be a real "outside" dinner party, and there was a
sudden, frantic demand for collars, cravats and presentable foot-wear.
Nobody at the post had a dress-suit but Gaviller himself.
Of them all only Stonor had no sartorial problems; his new uniform and
his Strathcona boots polished according to regulations were all he had
and all he needed. He surveyed the finished product in his little mirror
with strong dissatisfaction. "Ornery-looking cuss," he thought. But a
man is no judge of his own looks. A disinterested observer might have
given a different verdict. A young man less well favoured by nature
would have gazed at Stonor's long-limbed ease with helpless envy. He had
that rare type of figure that never becomes encumbered with fat. The
grace of youth and the strength of maturity met there. He would make a
pattern colonel if he lived. Under the simple lines of his uniform one
apprehended the ripple and play of unclogged muscles. If all men were
like Stonor the tailor's task would be a sinecure.
As to his face, mention has already been made of the sober gaze
lightened by a suggestion of sly mirthfulness. In a company where
sprightliness was the great desideratum, Stonor, no doubt, would have
been considered slow. Men with strong reserves are necessarily a little
slow in coming into action; they are apt, too, as a decent cover for
their feelings, to affect more slowness than they feel. A woman can
rarely look at that kind of man without feeling a secret desire to rouse
him; there is so clearly something to rouse. It was Stonor's hair which
had given rise to the quaint name the native maidens had applied to him,
the "Gold-piece." It was not yellow hair, as we call it, but a shiny
light brown, and under the savage attack of his brushes the shine was
accentuated.
The guests were received in the drawing-room of Enterprise House, which
was rarely opened nowadays. It had a charming air of slightly
old-fashioned gentility, just as its dead mistress had left it, and the
rough Northerners came in with an abashed air. John Gaviller,
resplendent in the dress-suit, stood by the piano, with the little lady
on one hand and the large lady on the other, and one after another the
men marched up and made their obeisances. The actual introduction proved
to be not so terrible an ordeal as Stonor had feared--or perhaps it is
more proper to say, that it was so terrible he was numbed and felt
nothing. It was all over in a minute. "Miss Starling!" the name rang
through his consciousness like the sound of silver bells.
Face to face Stonor saw her but dimly through the mist of too much
feeling. She treated him exactly the same as the others, that is to say,
she was kind, smiling, interested, and personally inscrutable. Stonor
was glad that there was another man pressing close at his heels, for he
felt that he could stand no more just then. He was passed on to Miss
Pringle. Of this lady it need only be said that she was a large-size
clergyman's sister, a good soul, pious and kindly. She has little to do
with this tale.
In Stonor's eyes she proved to have a great merit, for she was disposed
to talk exclusively about Miss Starling. Stonor's ears were long for
that. From her talk he gathered three main facts: (a) that Miss
Starling's given name was Clare (enchanting syllable!); (b) that the two
ladies had become acquainted for the first time on the way into the
country; (c) that Miss Starling was going back with the steamboat. "Of
course!" thought Stonor, with his heart sinking slowly like a
water-logged branch.
"Isn't she plucky!" said Miss Pringle enthusiastically.
"She looks it," said Stonor, with a sidelong glance at the object of her
encomium.
"To make this trip, I mean, all by herself."
"Is it just to see the country?" asked Stonor diffidently.
"Oh, don't you know? She's on the staff of the _Winnipeg News-Herald_,
and is writing up the trip for her paper."
Stonor instantly made up his mind to spend his next leave in Winnipeg.
His relief was due in October.
John Gaviller could do things in good style when he was moved to it. The
table was gay with silver under candle-light. Down the centre were
placed great bowls of painter's brush, the rose of the prairies. And
with the smiling ladies to grace the head of the board, it was like a
glimpse of a fairer world to the men of the North. Miss Pringle was on
Gaviller's right, Miss Starling on his left. Stonor was about half-way
down the table, and fortunately on the side opposite the younger lady,
where he could gaze his fill.
She was wearing a pink evening dress trimmed with silver, that to
Stonor's unaccustomed eyes seemed like gossamer and moonshine. He was
entranced by her throat and by the appealing loveliness of her thin
arms. "How could I ever have thought a fat woman beautiful!" he asked
himself. She talked with her arms and her delightfully restless
shoulders. Stonor had heard somewhere that this was a sign of a warm
heart. For the first time he had a view of her hair; it was dark and
warm and plentiful, and most cunningly arranged.
Stonor was totally unaware of what he was eating. From others, later, he
learned of the triumph of the kitchen--and all at three hours' notice.
Fortunately for him, everybody down the table was hanging on the talk at
the head, so that no efforts in that direction were required of him. He
was free to listen and dream.
"Somewhere in the world there is a man who will be privileged some day
to sit across the table from her at every meal! Not in a crowd like
this, but at their own table in their own house. Probably quite an
ordinary fellow, too, certainly not worthy of his luck. With her eyes
for him alone, and her lovely white arms!--While other men are batching
it alone. Things are not evenly divided in this world, for sure! If that
man went to hell afterwards it wouldn't any more than square things."
In answer to a question he heard her say: "Oh, don't ask me about
Winnipeg! All cities are so ordinary and usual! I want to hear about
your country. Tell me stories about the fascinating silent places."
"Well, as it happens," said Gaviller, speaking slowly to give his words
a proper effect, "we have a first-class mystery on hand just at
present."
"Oh, tell me all about it!" she said, as he meant her to.
"A fellow, a white man, has appeared from nowhere at all, and set
himself up beside the Swan River, an unexplored stream away to the
north-west of here. There he is, and no one knows how he got there.
We've never laid eyes on him, but the Indians bring us marvellous tales
of his 'strong medicine,' meaning magic, you know. They say he first
appeared from under the great falls of the Swan River. They describe him
as a sort of embodiment of the voice of the Falls, but we suspect there
is a more natural explanation, because he sends into the post for the
food of common humans, and gets a bundle of magazines and papers by
every mail. They come addressed to Doctor Ernest Imbrie. Our poor Doc
here is as jealous as a cat of his reputation as a healer!"
Gaviller was rewarded with a general laugh, in which her silvery tones
were heard.
"Oh, tell me more about him!" she cried.
Of all the men who were watching her there was not one who observed any
change in her face. Afterwards they remembered this with wonder. Yet
there was something in her voice, her manner, the way she kept her chin
up perhaps, that caused each man to think as her essential quality:
"She's game!"
The whole story of Imbrie as they knew it was told, with all the
embroidery that had been unconsciously added during the past months.
CHAPTER IV
MORE ABOUT CLARE
Determined to make the most of their rare feminine visitation at Fort
Enterprise, on the following day the fellows got up a chicken hunt on
the river bottom east of the post, to be followed by an _al fresco_
supper at which broiled chicken was to be the _piece de resistance_. The
ladies didn't shoot any prairie chicken, but they stimulated the hunters
with their presence, and afterwards condescended to partake of the
delicate flesh.
Stonor, though he was largely instrumental in getting the thing up, and
though he worked like a Trojan to make the affair go, still kept himself
personally in the background. He consorted with Captain Stinson and
Mathews, middle-aged individuals who were considered out of the running.
It was not so much shyness now, as an instinct of self-preservation.
"She'll be gone in a week," he told himself. "You mustn't let this thing
get too strong a hold on you, or life here after she has gone will be
hellish. You've got to put her out of your mind, my son--or just keep
her as a lovely dream not to be taken in earnest. Hardly likely, after
seeing the world, that she'd look twice at a sergeant of police!"
In his innocence Stonor adopted the best possible way of attracting her
attention to himself. More than once, when he was not looking, her eyes
sought him out curiously. In answer to her questions of the other men it
appeared that it was Stonor who had sent the natives out in advance to
drive the game past them: it was Stonor who surprised them with a cloth
already spread under a poplar tree: it was Stonor who cooked the birds
so deliciously. She was neither vain nor silly, but at the same time in
a company where every man lay down at her feet, so to speak, and begged
her to tread on him, it could not but seem peculiar to her that the
best-looking man of them all should so studiously avoid her.
Next day they all crossed the river and rode up to Simon Grampierre's
place, where the half-breeds repeated the Victoria Day games for the
amusement of the visitors. (These days are still talked of at Fort
Enterprise.) Stonor was finally induced to give an exhibition of
high-school riding as taught to the police recruits, and thereby threw
all the other events in the shade. But their plaudits overwhelmed him.
He disappeared and was seen no more that day.
Sunday followed. Mr. Pringle and his sister had got the little church in
order, and services were held there for the first time in many months.
The mission was half a mile east of the Company buildings, and after
church they walked home beside the fields of sprouting grain, in a
comfortable Sabbath peace that was much the same at Enterprise as
elsewhere in the world.
The procession travelled in the following order: First, four surveyors
marching with their heads over their shoulders, at imminent risk of an
undignified stumble in the trail; next, Clare Starling, flanked on one
side by Gaviller, on the other by Doc Giddings, with two more surveyors
on the outlying wings, peering forward to get a glimpse of her; then
Captain Stinson, Mathews, and Sergeant Stonor in a line, talking about
the state of the crops, and making believe to pay no attention to what
was going on ahead; lastly, Mr. Pringle and his sister hurrying to catch
up.
Half-way home Miss Starling, _a propos_ of nothing, suddenly stopped and
turned her head. "Sergeant Stonor," she said. He stepped to her side.
Since she clearly showed in her manner that she intended holding
converse with the policeman, there was nothing for Gaviller _et al._ to
do but proceed, which they did with none too good a grace. This left
Stonor and the girl walking together in the middle of the procession.
Stinson and Mathews, who were supposed to be out of it anyway, winked at
each other portentously.
"I wanted to ask you about that horse you rode yesterday, a beautiful
animal. What do you call him?"
"Miles Aroon," said Stonor, like a wooden man. He dreaded that she meant
to go on and enlarge on his riding tricks. In his modesty he now
regarded that he had made an awful ass of himself the day before. But
she stuck to horse-flesh.
"He's a beauty! Would he let me ride him?"
"Oh, yes! He has no bad tricks. I broke him myself. But of course he
knows nothing of side-saddles."
"I ride astride."
"I believe we're all going for a twilight ride to-night. I'll bring him
for you."
As a result of this Stonor's praiseworthy resolutions to keep out of
harm's way were much weakened. Indeed, late that night in his little
room in quarters he gave himself up to the most outrageous dreams of a
possible future happiness. Stonor was quite unversed in the ways of
modern ladies; all his information on the subject had been gleaned from
romances, which, as everybody knows, are always behind the times in such
matters, and it is possible that he banked too much on the simple fact
of her singling him out on the walk home.
There was a great obstacle in his way; the force sets its face against
matrimony during the term of service. Stonor in his single-mindedness
never thought that there were other careers. "I shall have to get a
commission," he thought. "An inspectorship is little enough to offer
her. But what an ornament she'd be to a post! And she'd love the life;
she loves horses. But Lord! it's difficult nowadays, with nothing going
on. If an Indian war would only break out!"--He was quite ready to
sacrifice the unfortunate red race.
On Monday night he was again bidden to dine at Enterprise House. As
Gaviller since the day before had been no more than decently polite,
Stonor ventured to hope that the invitation might have been instigated
by her. At any rate he was placed by her side this time, where he sat a
little dizzy with happiness, and totally oblivious to food. At the same
time it should be understood that the young lady had no veiled glances
or hidden meanings for him alone; she treated him, as she did all the
others, to perfect candour.
After dinner they had music in the drawing-room. The piano was
grotesquely out of tune, but what cared they for that? She touched it
and their souls were drawn out of their bodies. Probably the performer
suffered, but she played on with a smile. They listened entranced until
darkness fell, and when it is dark at Enterprise in June it is high time
to go to bed.
They all accompanied Stonor to the door. The long-drawn summer dusk of
the North is an ever fresh wonder to newcomers. At sight of the
exquisite half-light and the stars an exclamation of pleasure broke from
Clare.
"Much too fine a night to go to bed!" she cried. "Sergeant Stonor, take
me out to the bench beside the flagstaff for a few minutes."
As they sat down she said: "Don't you want to smoke?"
"Don't feel the need of it," he said. His voice was husky with feeling.
Would a man want to smoke in Paradise?
By glancing down and sideways he could take her in as far up as her neck
without appearing to stare rudely. She was sitting with her feet crossed
and her hands in her lap like a well-bred little girl. When he dared
glance at her eyes he saw that there was no consciousness of him there.
They were regarding something very far away. In the dusk the wistfulness
which hid behind a smile in daylight looked forth fully and broodingly.
Yet when she spoke the matter was ordinary enough. "All the men here
tell me about the mysterious stranger who lives on the Swan River. They
can't keep away from the subject. And the funny part of it is, they all
seem to be angry at him. Yet they know nothing of him. Why is that?"
"It means nothing," said Stonor, smiling. "You see, all the men pride
themselves on knowing every little thing that happens in the country.
It's all they have to talk about. In a way the whole country is like a
village. Well, it's only because this man has succeeded in defying their
curiosity that they're sore. It's a joke!"
"They tell me that you stand up for him," she said, with a peculiar
warmth in her voice.
"Oh, just to make the argument interesting," said Stonor lightly.
"Is that all?" she said, chilled.
"No, to tell the truth, I was attracted to the man from the first," he
said more honestly. "By what the Indians said about his healing the sick
and so on. And they said he was young. I have no friend of my own age up
here--I mean no real friend. So I thought--well, I would like to know
him."
"I like that," she said simply.
There was a silence.
"Why don't you--sometime--go to him?" she said, with what seemed almost
like a breathless air.
"I am going," said Stonor simply. "I received permission in the last
mail. The government wants me to look over the Kakisa Indians to see if
they are ready for a treaty. The policy is to leave the Indians alone as
long as they are able to maintain themselves under natural conditions.
But as soon as they need help the government takes charge; limits them
to a reservation; pays an annuity, furnishes medical attention, and so
on. This is called taking treaty. The Kakisas are one of the last wild
tribes left."
She seemed scarcely to hear him. "When are you going?" she asked with
the same air of breathlessness.
"As soon as the steamboat goes back."
"How far is it to Swan River?"
"Something under a hundred and fifty miles. Three days' hard riding or
four days' easy."
"And how far down to the great falls?"
"Accounts differ. From the known features of the map I should say about
two hundred miles. They say the river's as crooked as a ram's horn."
There was another silence. She was busy with her own thoughts, and
Stonor was content not to talk if he might look at her.
With her next speech she seemed to strike off at a tangent. She spoke
with a lightness that appeared to conceal a hint of pain. "They say the
mounted police are the guides, philosophers and friends of the people up
North. They say you have to do everything, from feeding babies to
reading the burial service."
"I'm afraid there's a good bit of romancing about the police," said
Stonor modestly.
"But they do make good friends, don't they?" she insisted.
"I hope so."
She gave him the full of her deep, starry eyes. It was not an
intoxicating glance, but one that moved him to the depths. "Will you be
my friend?" she asked simply.
Poor Stonor! With too great a need for speech, speech itself was
foundered. No words ever coined seemed strong enough to carry the weight
of his desire to assure her. He could only look at her, imploring her to
believe in him. In the end only two little words came; to him
wretchedly inadequate; but it is doubtful if they could have been
bettered.
"Try me!"
His look satisfied her. She lowered her eyes. The height of emotion was
too great to be maintained. She cast round in her mind for something to
let them down. "How far to the north the sunset glow is now."
Stonor understood. He answered in the same tone: "At this season it
doesn't fade out all night. The sun is such a little way below the rim
there, that the light just travels around the northern horizon, and
becomes the dawn in a little while."
For a while they talked of indifferent matters.
By and by she said casually: "When you go out to Swan River, take me
with you."
He thought she was joking. "I say, that would be a lark!"
She laughed a little nervously.
He tried to keep it up, though his heart set up a furious beating at the
bare idea of such a trip. "Can you bake bannock?"
"I can make good biscuits."
"What would we do for a chaperon?"
"Nobody has chaperons nowadays."
"You don't know what a moral community this is!"
"I meant it," she said suddenly, in a tone there was no mistaking.
All his jokes deserted him, and left him trembling a little. Indeed he
was scandalized, too, being less advanced, probably, in his ideas than
she. "It's--it's impossible!" he stammered at last.
"Why?" she asked calmly.
He could not give the real reason, of course. "To take the trail, you!
To ride all day and sleep on the hard ground! And the river trip, an
unknown river with Heaven knows what rapids and other difficulties! A
fragile little thing like you!"
Opposition stimulated her. "What you call my fragility is more apparent
than real," she said with spirit. "As a matter of fact I have more
endurance than most big women. I have less to carry. I am accustomed to
living and travelling in the open. I can ride all day--or walk if need
be."
"It's impossible!" he repeated. It was the policeman who spoke. The
man's blood was leaping, and his imagination painting the most alluring
pictures. How often on his lonely journeys had he not dreamed of the
wild delights of such companionship!
"What is your real reason?" she asked.
"Well, how could you go--with me, you know?" he said, blushing into the
dusk.
"I'm not afraid," she answered instantly. "Anyway, that's my look-out,
isn't it?"
"No," he said, "I have to think of it. The responsibility would be
mine." Here the man broke through--"Oh, I talk like a prig!" he cried.
"But don't you see, I'm not up here on my own. I can't do what I would
like. A policeman has got to be proper, hasn't he?"
She smiled at his _naivete_. "But if I have business out there?"
This sounded heartless to Stonor. It was the first and last time that he
ventured to criticize her. "Oh," he objected, "I don't know what reasons
the poor fellow has for burying himself--they must be good reasons, for
it's no joke to live alone! It doesn't seem quite fair, does it, to dig
him out and write him up in the papers?"
"Oh, what must you think of me!" she murmured in a quick, hurt tone.
He saw that he had made a mistake. "I--I beg your pardon," he stammered
contritely. "I thought that was what you meant by business."
"I'm not a reporter," she said.
"But they told me----"
"Yes, I know, I lied. I'm not apologizing for that. It was necessary to
lie to protect myself from vulgar curiosity."
He looked his question.
She was not quite ready to answer it yet. "Suppose I had the best of
reasons for going," she said, hurriedly, "a reason that Mrs. Grundy
would approve of; it would be your duty as a policeman, wouldn't it, to
help me?"
"Yes--but----?"
She turned imploring eyes on him, and unconsciously clasped her hands.
"I'm sure you're generous and steadfast," she said quickly. "I can trust
you, can't I, not to give me away? The gossip, the curious stares--it
would be more than I could bear! Promise me, whatever you may think of
it all, to respect my secret."
"I promise," he said a little stiffly. It hurt him that he was required
to protest his good faith. "The first thing we learn in the force is to
keep our mouths shut."
"Ah, now you're offended with me because I made you promise!"
"It doesn't matter. It's over now. What is your reason for wanting to go
out to Swan River?"
She answered low: "I am Ernest Imbrie's wife."
"Oh!" said Stonor in a flat tone. A sick disappointment filled him--yet
in the back of his mind he had expected something of the kind. An inner
voice whispered to him: "Not for you! It was too much to hope for!"
Presently she went on: "I injured him cruelly. That's why he buried
himself so far away."
Stonor turned horror-stricken eyes on her.
"Oh, not that," she said proudly and indifferently. "The injury I did
him was to his spirit; that is worse." Stonor turned hot for his
momentary suspicion.
"I can repair it by going to him," she went on. "I _must_ go to him. I
can never know peace until I have tried to make up to him a little of
what I have made him suffer."
She paused to give Stonor a chance to speak--but he was dumb.
Naturally she misunderstood. "Isn't that enough?" she cried painfully.
"I have told you the essential truth. Must I go into particulars? I
can't bear to speak of these things!"
"No! No!" he said, horrified. "It's not that. I don't want to hear any
more."
"Then you'll help me?"
"I will take you to him."
She began to cry in a pitiful shaken way.
"Ah, don't!" murmured Stonor. "I can't stand seeing you."
"It's--just from relief," she whispered.... "I've been under a
strain.... I think I should have gone out of my mind--if I had been
prevented from expiating the wrong I did.... I wish I could tell
you--he's the bravest man in the world, I think--and the most
unhappy!... And I heaped unhappiness on his head!"
This was hard for Stonor to listen to, but it was so obviously a relief
to her to speak, that he made no attempt to stop her.
She soon quieted down. "I shan't try to thank you," she said. "I'll show
you."
Stonor foresaw that the proposed journey would be attended with
difficulties.
"Would it be possible," she asked meekly, "for you to plan to leave a
day in advance of the steamboat, and say nothing about taking me?"
"You mean for us to leave the post secretly?" he said, a little aghast.
"When the truth came out it would be all right," she urged. "And it
would save me from becoming the object of general talk and commiseration
here. Why, if Mr. Gaviller knew in advance, he'd probably insist on
sending a regular expedition."
"Perhaps he would."
"And they'd all try to dissuade me. I'd have to talk them over one by
one--I haven't the strength of mind left for that. They'd say I ought to
wait here and send for him----"
"Well, wouldn't that be better?"
"No! No! Not the same thing at all. I doubt if he'd come. And what would
I be doing here--waiting--without news. I couldn't endure it. I must go
to him."
Stonor thought hard. Youth was pulling him one way, and his sense of
responsibility the other. Moreover, this kind of case was not provided
for in regulations. Finally he said:
"Couldn't you announce your intention of remaining over for one trip of
the steamboat? Miss Pringle would be glad to have you, I'm sure."
"I could do that. But you're not going to delay the start?"
"We can leave the day after the boat goes, as planned. But if we were
missed before the boat left she'd carry out some great scandalous tale
that we might never be able to correct. For if scandal gets a big enough
start you can never overtake it."
"You are right, of course. I never thought of that."
"Then I see no objection to leaving the post secretly, provided you are
willing to tell one reliable person in advance--say Pringle or his
sister, of our intention. You see we must leave someone behind us to
still the storm of gossip that will be let loose."
"You think of everything!"
CHAPTER V
THE FIRST STAGE
For two days Stonor went about his preparations with an air of dogged
determination. It seemed to him that all the light had gone out of his
life, and hope was dead. He told himself that the proposed trip could
not be otherwise than the stiffest kind of an ordeal to a man in his
position, an ordeal calling for well-nigh superhuman self-control. How
gladly would he have given it up, had he not given his word.
And then on the third day his spirits unaccountably began to rise. As a
matter of fact youthful spirits must seek their natural level no less
surely than water, but Stonor was angry with himself, accusing himself
of lightheadedness, inconstancy and what not. His spirits continued to
rise just the same. There was a delight in providing everything possible
for her comfort. The mere thought of going away with her, under any
circumstances whatsoever, made his heart sing.
John Gaviller was astonished by the size and variety of his requisition
for supplies. Besides the customary rations Stonor included all the
luxuries the store afforded: viz., tinned fish, vegetables and fruit;
condensed milk, marmalade and cocoa. And in quantities double what he
would ordinarily have taken.
"Getting luxurious in your old age, aren't you?" said the trader.
"Oh, I'm tired of an unrelieved diet of bannock and beans," said Stonor,
with a carelessness so apparent, they ought to have been warned; but of
course they never dreamed of anything so preposterous as the truth.
Stonor had two horses of his own. He engaged three more from Simon
Grampierre, horses that he knew, and from Tole Grampierre purchased a
fine rabbit-skin robe for Clare's bed on the trail. Tole, who had
secretly hoped to be taken on this expedition, was much disappointed
when no invitation was forthcoming. Stonor arranged with Tole to ride to
meet him with additional supplies on the date when he might expect to be
returning. Tole was to leave Enterprise on July 12th.
From Father Goussard Stonor borrowed a mosquito tent on the plea that
his own was torn. He smuggled a folding camp-cot into his outfit. Clare
fortunately had brought suitable clothes for the most part. How well
Stonor was to know that little suit cut like a boy's with Norfolk jacket
and divided skirt! What additional articles she needed Miss Pringle
bought at the store for a mythical destitute Indian boy. They had soon
found it necessary to take Miss Pringle into their confidence. She went
about charged with the secret like a soda-water-bottle with the cork
wired down.
Beside Gordon Strange, the only person around the post who could speak
the Kakisa tongue was a woman, Mary Moosa, herself a Kakisa who had
married a Cree. Her husband was a deck-hand on the steamboat. Stonor had
already engaged Mary Moosa to take this trip with him as interpreter,
and Mary, who had her own notions of propriety, had stipulated that her
oldest boy be taken along. Mary herself promised to be a godsend on the
trip; for she was just the comfortable dependable soul to look after
Clare, but the boy now became a problem, for the dug-out that Stonor
designed to use on the Swan River would only carry three persons
comfortably, with the necessary outfit. Yet Stonor could not speak to
Mary in advance about leaving the boy at home.
Such was Stonor's assiduity that everything was ready for the start two
days ahead of time--an unheard-of thing up North. Everybody at the post
gave up a morning to seeing the steamboat off. She carried with her a
report from Stonor to his inspector, telling of the proposed trip. Clare
was among those who waved to her from the shore. No surprise had been
occasioned by the announcement of her decision to remain over a trip.
Gaviller was already planning further entertainments. She had by this
time moved down to the Mission with the Pringles.
On the afternoon of that day Stonor transported his goods and swam his
horses across the river, to be ready for the start from the other side.
Mary Moosa and her son met him there, and camped beside the outfit for
the night. Stonor returned to Enterprise House for dinner. He had tried
to get out of it, knowing that the fact of this dinner would rankle in
the trader's breast afterwards, but Gaviller had insisted on giving him
a send-off. It was not a happy affair, for three of the guests were
wretchedly nervous. They could not help but see in their mind's eye
Gaviller's expression of indignant astonishment when the news should be
brought him next day.
Gaviller further insisted on taking everybody down to the shore to see
Stonor off, thus obliging the trooper to make an extra trip across the
river and back in order to maintain the fiction. Stonor slept in his own
camp for an hour, and then rowed down-stream and across, to land in
front of the Mission.
It is never perfectly dark at this season, and already day was beginning
to break. Stonor climbed the bank, and showed himself at the top,
knowing that they would be on the watch from within. The little grey log
mission-house crouched in its neglected garden behind a fence of broken
palings. But a touch of regeneration was already visible in Miss
Pringle's geranium slips in the windows, and her bits of white curtain.
The door was silently opened, and the two women kissed in the entry.
Stonor was never to forget that picture in the still grey light. Clare,
clad in the little Norfolk suit and the boy's stout boots and hat,
crossed the yard with the little mincing steps so characteristic of her,
and therefore so charming to the man who waited. Her face was pale, her
eyes bright. Miss Pringle stood in the doorway, massive and tearful, a
hand pressed to her mouth.
Stonor's breast received a surprising wrench. "It's like an elopement!"
he thought. "Ah, if she _were_ coming to me!"
She smiled at him without speaking, and handed over her bag. Stonor
closed the gate softly, and they made their way down the bank, and got
in the boat.
It was a good, stiff pull back against the current. They spoke little.
Clare studied his grim face with some concern.
"Regrets?" she asked.
He rested on his oars for a moment and his face softened. He smiled at
her frankly--and ruefully. "No regrets," he said, "but a certain amount
of anxiety."
His glance conveyed a good deal more than that--in spite of him. "I love
you with all my heart. Of course I clearly understand that you have
nothing for me. I am prepared to see this thing through, no matter what
the end means to me.--But be merciful!" All this was in his look.
Whether she got it or not, no man could have told. She looked away and
dabbled her hand in the water.
Mary Moosa was a self-respecting squaw who lived in a house with tables
and chairs and went to church and washed her children with soap. In her
plain black cotton dress, the skirt cut very full to allow her to ride
astride, her new moccasins and her black straw hat she made a figure of
matronly tidiness if not of beauty. She was cooking when they arrived.
Her inward astonishment, at beholding Stonor returning with the white
girl who had created such a sensation at the post, can be guessed; but,
true to her traditions, she betrayed nothing of it to the whites. After
a single glance in their direction her gaze returned to the frying-pan.
It was Stonor who was put out of countenance, "Miss Starling is going
with us," he said, with a heavy scowl.
Mary made no comment on the situation, but continued gravely frying the
flap-jacks to a delicate golden shade. Her son, aged about fourteen, who
had less command over his countenance, stood in the background staring,
with open eyes and mouth. It was a trying moment for Stonor and Clare.
They discussed the prospects of a good day for the journey in rather
strained voices.
However, it proved that Mary's silence had neither an unfriendly nor a
censorious intention. She merely required time to get her breath, so to
speak. She transferred the flap-jacks from the pan to a plate, and,
putting them in the ashes to keep hot, arose and came to Clare with
extended hand.
"How," she said, as she had been taught was manners to all.
Clare took her hand with a right good will.
It suddenly occurred to Mary that there was now no occasion for the boy
to accompany them. Mary was a woman of few words. "You go home," she
said calmly.
The boy broke into a howl of grief, proving that the delights of the
road are much the same to boys, red or white.
"Poor little fellow!" said Clare.
"Too young for travel," said Mary, impassively. "More trouble than
help."
Clare wished to intercede for him with Stonor, but the trooper shook his
head.
"No room in the dug-out," he said.
Toma Moosa departed along the shore with his arm over his eyes.
Mary was as good as a man on a trip. While Stonor and Clare ate she
packed the horses, and Stonor had only to throw the hitch and draw it
taut. Clare watched this operation with interest.
"They swell up just like babies when you're putting their bands on," she
remarked.
They were on the move shortly after sunrise, that is to say half-past
three. As they rode away over the flat, each took a last look at the
buildings of the post across the river, gilded by the horizontal rays,
each wondering privately what fortune had in store for them before they
should see the spot again.
They passed the last little shack and the last patch of grain before
anybody was astir. When they rode out into the open country everybody's
spirits rose. There is nothing like taking the trail to lift up the
heart--and on a June morning in the north! Troubles, heart-aches and
anxieties were left behind with the houses. Even Mary Moosa beamed in
her inscrutable way.
Stonor experienced a fresh access of confidence, and proceeded to
deceive himself all over again. "I'm cured!" he thought. "There's
nothing to mope about. She's my friend. Anything else is out of the
question, and I will not think of it again. We'll just be good pals like
two fellows. You can be a pal with the right kind of girl, and she is
that.--But better than any fellow, she's so damn good to look at!"
It was a lovely park-like country with graceful, white-stemmed poplars
standing about on the sward, and dark spruces in the hollows. The grass
was starred with flowers. When Nature sets out to make a park her style
has a charming abandon that no landscape-gardener can ever hope to
capture. After they mounted the low bench the country rolled shallowly,
flat in the prospect, with a single, long, low eminence, blue athwart
the horizon ahead.
"That's the divide between the Spirit and the Swan," said Stonor. "We'll
cross it to-morrow. From here it looks like quite a mountain, but the
ascent is so gradual we won't know we're over it until we see the water
flowing the other way."
Clare rode Miles Aroon, Stonor's sorrel gelding, and Stonor rode the
other police horse, a fine dark bay. These two animals fretted a good
deal at the necessity of accommodating their pace to the humble pack
animals. These latter had a stolid inscrutable look like their native
masters. One in particular looked so respectable and matter-of-fact that
Clare promptly christened her Lizzie.
Lizzie proved to be a horse of a strong, bourgeois character. If her
pack was not adjusted exactly to her liking, she calmly sat on her
haunches in the trail until it was fixed. Furthermore, she insisted on
bringing up the rear of the cavalcade. If she was put in the middle, she
simply fell out until the others had passed. In her chosen place she
proceeded to fall asleep, with her head hanging ever lower and feet
dragging, while the others went on. Stonor, who knew the horse, let her
have her way. There was no danger of losing her. When she awoke and
found herself alone, she would come tearing down the trail, screaming
for her beloved companions.
Stonor rode at the head of his little company with a leg athwart his
saddle, so he could hold converse with Clare behind.
Pointing to the trail stretching ahead of them like an endless brown
ribbon over prairie and through bush, he said: "I suppose trails are the
oldest things in America. Once thoroughly made they can never be
effaced--except by the plough. You see, they never can run quite
straight, though the country may be as flat as your hand, but the width
never varies; three and a half hands."
Travelling with horses is not all picnicking. Three times a day they
have to be unpacked and turned out to _graze_, and three times _caught_
and _packed again_; this in addition to the regular camp routine of
pitching tents, rustling wood, cooking, etc. Clare announced her
intention of taking over the cooking, but she found that baking biscuits
over an open fire in a drizzle of rain, offered a new set of problems to
the civilized cook, and Mary had to come to her rescue.
During this, their first spell by the trail, Stonor was highly amused to
watch Clare's way with Mary. She simply ignored Mary's discouraging
red-skin stolidity, and assumed that they were sisters under their
skins. She pretended that it was necessary for them to take sides
against Stonor in order to keep the man in his place. It was not long
before Mary was grinning broadly. Finally at some low-voiced sally of
Clare's she laughed outright. Stonor had never heard her laugh before.
Thereafter she was Clare's. Realizing that the wonderful white girl
really wished to make friends, Mary offered her a doglike devotion that
never faltered throughout the difficult days that followed.
They slept throughout the middle part of the day, and later, the sky
clearing, they rode until near sun-down in order to make a good
water-hole that Mary knew of. When they had supped and made all snug for
the night, Stonor let fall the piece of information that Mary was well
known as a teller of tales at the Post. Clare gave her no peace then
till she consented to tell a story. They sat in a row behind Stonor's
little mosquito-bar, for the insects were abroad, with the fire burning
before them, and Mary began.
"I tell you now how the people got the first medicine-pipe. This story
is about Thunder. Thunder is everywhere. He roar in the mountains, he
shout far out on the prairie. He strike the high rocks and they fall. He
hit a tree and split it like with a big axe. He strike people and they
die. He is bad. He like to strike down the tall things that stand. He is
ver' powerful. He is the most strong one. Sometimes he steals women.
"Long tam ago, almost in the beginning, a man and his wife sit in their
lodge when Thunder come and strike them. The man was not killed. At
first he is lak dead, but bam-bye he rise up again and look around him.
His wife not there. He say: 'Oh well, she gone to get wood or water,'
and he sit awhile. But when the sun had gone under, he go out and ask
the people where she go. Nobody see her. He look all over camp, but not
find her. Then he know Thunder steal her, and he go out alone on the
hills and mak' sorrow.
"When morning come he get up and go far away, and he ask all the animals
he meet where Thunder live. They laugh and not tell him. Wolf say: 'W'at
you think! We want go look for the one we fear? He is our danger. From
others we can run away. From him there is no running. He strike and
there we lie! Turn back! Go home! Do not look for the place of the
feared one.'
"But the man travel on. Travel very far. Now he come to a lodge, a funny
lodge, all made of stone. Here live the raven chief. The man go in.
"Raven chief say: 'Welcome, friend. Sit down. Sit down.' And food was
put before him.
"When he finish eating, Raven say: 'Why you come here?'
"Man say: 'Thunder steal my wife away. I want find his place so I get
her back.'
"Raven say: 'I think you be too scare to go in the lodge of that feared
one. It is close by here. His lodge is made of stone like this, and
hanging up inside are eyes--all the eyes of those he kill or steal away.
He take out their eyes and hang them in his lodge. Now, will you enter?'
"Man say: 'No. I am afraid. What man could look on such things of fear
and live?'
"Raven say: 'No common man can. There is only one old Thunder fears.
There is only one he cannot kill. It is I, the Raven. Now I will give
you medicine and he can't harm you. You go enter there, and look among
those eyes for your wife's eyes, and if you find them, tell that Thunder
why you come, and make him give them to you. Here now is a raven's wing.
You point it to him, and he jomp back quick. But if that is not strong
enough, take this. It is an arrow, and the stick is made of elk-horn.
Take it, I say, and shoot it through his lodge.'
"Man say: 'Why make a fool of me? My heart is sad. I am crying.' And he
cover up his head with his blanket and cry.
"Raven say: 'Wah! You do not believe me! Come out, come out, and I make
you believe!' When they stand outside Raven ask: 'Is the home of your
people far?'
"Man say: 'Very far!'
"'How many days' journey?'
"Man say: 'My heart is sad. I not count the days. The berries grow and
get ripe since I leave my lodge.'
"Raven say: 'Can you see your camp from here?'
"Man think that is foolish question and say nothing.
"Then the Raven rub some medicine on his eyes and say: 'Look!' The man
look and see his own camp. It was close. He see the people. He see the
smoke rising from the lodges. And at that wonderful thing the man
believe in the Raven's medicine.
"Then Raven say: 'Now take the wing and the arrow and go get your
wife.'
"So the man take those things and go to Thunder's lodge. He go in and
sit down by the door. Thunder sit inside and look at him with eyes of
lightning. But the man look up and see those many pairs of eyes hanging
up. And the eyes of his wife look at him, and he know them among all
those others.
"Thunder ask in a voice that shake the ground: 'Why you come here?'
"Man say: 'I looking for my wife that you steal from me. There hang her
eyes!'
"Thunder say: 'No man can enter my lodge and live!' He get up to strike
him. But the man point the raven's wing at him, and Thunder fall back on
his bed and shiver. But soon he is better, and get up again. Then the
man put the elk-horn arrow to his bow, and shoot it through the lodge of
rock. Right through that lodge of rock it make a crooked hole and let
the sunlight in.
"Thunder cry out: 'Stop! You are stronger! You have the great medicine.
You can have your wife. Take down her eyes.' So the man cut the string
that held them, and right away his wife stand beside him.
"Thunder say: 'Now you know me. I have great power. I live here in
summer, but when winter come I go far south where there is no winter.
Here is my pipe. It is medicine. Take it and keep it. When I come in
spring you fill and light this pipe, and you pray to me, you and all the
people. Because I bring the rain which make the berries big and ripe. I
bring the rain which make all things grow. So you must pray to me, you
and all the people.'
"That is how the people got the first medicine-pipe. It was long ago."
* * * * *
Mary went to her own little tent, and presently they heard her peaceful
snoring. The sound had the effect of giving body to the immensity of
stillness that surrounded them and held them. Sitting beside Clare,
looking out at the fire through the netting, Stonor felt his safeguards
slipping fast. There they were, the two of them, to all intents alone in
the world! How natural for them to draw close, and, while her head
dropped on his shoulder, for his arm to slip around her slender form and
hold her tight! He trembled a little, and his mouth went dry. If he had
been visiting her he could have got out, but he couldn't put her out.
There was nothing to do but sit tight and fight the thing. Moistening
his lips, he said:
"It's been a good day on the whole."
"Ah, splendid!" she said. "If one could only hit the trail for ever
without being obliged to arrive at a destination, and take up the
burdens of a stationary life!"
Stonor pondered on this answer. It sounded almost as if she dreaded
coming to the end of her journey.
Out of the breathless dusk came a long-drawn and inexpressibly mournful
ululation. Clare involuntarily drew a little closer to Stonor. Ah, but
it was hard to keep from seizing her then!
"Wolves?" she asked in an awe-struck tone.
He shook his head. "Only the wolf's little mongrel brother, coyote," he
said.
"All my travelling has been done in the mountains," she explained. She
shivered delicately. "The first night out is always a little terrible,
isn't it?"
"You're not afraid?" he asked anxiously.
"Not exactly afraid. Just a little quivery."
She got up, and he held up the mosquito-netting for her to pass. Outside
they instinctively lifted up their faces to the pale stars.
"It's safer and cleaner than a city," said Stonor simply.
"I know." She still lingered for a moment. "What's your name?" she asked
abruptly.
"Martin."
"Good-night, Martin."
"Good-night!"
Later, rolling on his hard bed, he thought: "She might have given me her
hand when she said it.--No, you fool! She did right not to! You've got
to get a grip on yourself. This is only the first day! If you begin like
this----!"
CHAPTER VI
THE KAKISAS
On the afternoon of the fourth day they suddenly issued out of big
timber to find themselves at the edge of a plateau overlooking a shallow
green valley, bare of trees in this place, and bisected by a
smoothly-flowing brown river bordered with willows. The flat contained
an Indian village.
"Here we are!" said Stonor, reining up.
"The unexplored river!" cried Clare. "How exciting! But how pretty and
peaceful it looks, just like an ordinary river. I suppose it doesn't
realize it's unexplored."
On the other side there was a bold point with a picturesque clump of
pines shading a number of the odd little gabled structures with which
the Indians cover the graves of their dead. On the nearer side from off
to left appeared a smaller stream which wound across the meadow and
emptied into the Swan. At intervals during the day their trail had
bordered this little river, which Clare had christened the Meander.
The tepees of the Indian village were strung along its banks, and the
stream itself was filled with canoes. On a grassy mound to the right
stood a little log shack which had a curiously impertinent look there in
the midst of Nature untouched. On the other hand the tepees sprang from
the ground as naturally as trees.
Their coming naturally had the effect of a thunderclap on the village.
They had scarcely shown themselves from among the trees when their
presence was discovered. A chorus of sharp cries was raised, and there
was much aimless running about like ants when the hill is disturbed. The
cries did not suggest a welcome, but excitement purely. Men, women, and
children gathered in a dense little crowd beside the trail where they
must pass. None wished to put themselves forward. Those who lived on the
other side of the little stream paddled frantically across to be in time
for a close view.
As they approached, absolute silence fell on the Indians, the silence of
breathless excitement. The red-coat they had heard of, and in a general
way they knew what he signified; but a white woman to them was as
fabulous a creature as a mermaid or a hamadryad. Their eyes were saved
for Clare. They fixed on her as hard, bright, and unwinking as jet
buttons. They conveyed nothing but an animal curiosity. Clare nodded and
smiled to them in her own way, but no muscle of any face relaxed.
"Their manners will bear improving," muttered Stonor.
"Oh, give them a chance," said Clare. "We've dropped on them out of a
clear sky."
Some of the tepees were still made of tanned skins decorated with rude
pictures; they saw bows and arrows and bark-canoes, things which have
almost passed from America. The dress of the inhabitants was less
picturesque; some of the older men still wore their picturesque blanket
capotes, but the younger were clad in machine-made shirts and pants from
the store, and the women in cotton dresses. They were a pure race, and
as such presented for the most part fine, characteristic faces; but in
body they were undersized and weedy, showing that their stock was
running out.
Stonor led the way across the flat and up a grassy rise to the little
shack that has been mentioned. It had been built for the Company clerk
who had formerly traded with the Kakisas, and Stonor designed it to
accommodate Clare for the night. They dismounted at the door. The
Indians followed them to within a distance of ten paces, where they
squatted on their heels or stood still, staring immovably. Stonor
resented their curiosity. Good manners are much the same the world over,
and a self-respecting people would not have acted so, he told himself.
None offered to stir hand or foot to assist them to unpack.
Stonor somewhat haughtily desired the head man to show himself. When one
stepped forward, he received him sitting in magisterial state on a box
at the door. Personally the most modest of men, he felt for the moment
that Authority had to be upheld in him. So the Indian was required to
stand.
His name was Ahchoogah (as near as a white man could get it) and he was
about forty years old. Though small and slight like all the Kakisas, he
had a comely face that somehow suggested race. He was better dressed
than the majority, in expensive "moleskin" trousers from the store, a
clean blue gingham shirt, a gaudy red sash, and an antique
gold-embroidered waistcoat that had originated Heaven knows where. On
his feet were fine white moccasins lavishly embroidered in coloured
silks.
"How," he said, the one universal English word. He added a more
elaborate greeting in his own tongue.
Mary translated. "Ahchoogah say he glad to see the red-coat, like he
glad to see the river run again after the winter. Where the red-coats
come there is peace and good feeling among all. No man does bad to
another man. Ahchoogah hope the red-coat come often to Swan River."
Stonor watched the man's face while he was speaking, and apprehended
hostility behind the smooth words. He was at a loss to account for it,
for the police are accustomed to being well received. "There's been some
bad influence at work here," he thought.
He said grimly to Mary: "Tell him that I hear his good words, but I do
not see from the faces of his people that we are welcome here."
This was repeated to Ahchoogah, who turned and objurgated his people
with every appearance of anger.
"What's he saying to them?" Stonor quietly asked Mary.
"Call bad names," said Mary. "Swear Kakisa swears. Tell them go back to
the tepees and not look like they never saw nothing before."
And sure enough the surrounding circle broke up and slunk away.
Ahchoogah turned a bland face back to the policeman, and through Mary
politely enquired what had brought him to Swan River.
"I will tell you," said Stonor. "I come bearing a message from the
mighty White Father across the great water to his Kakisa children. The
White Father sends a greeting and desires to know if it is the wish of
the Kakisas to take treaty like the Crees, the Beavers, and other
peoples to the East. If it is so, I will send word, and my officers and
the doctor will come next summer with the papers to be signed."
Ahchoogah replied in diplomatic language that so far as his particular
Kakisas were concerned they thought themselves better off as they were.
They had plenty to eat most years, and they didn't want to give up the
right to come and go as they chose. No bad white men coveted their lands
as yet, and they needed no protection from them. However, he would send
messengers to his brothers up and down the river, and all would be
guided by the wishes of the greatest number.
At the beginning of this talk Clare had gone inside to escape the
piercing stares. While he talked, Ahchoogah was continually trying to
peer around Stonor to get a glimpse of her. When the diplomatic
formalities were over, he said (according to Mary):
"I not know you got white wife. Nobody tell me that. She is very
pretty."
"Tell him she is not my wife," said Stonor, with a portentous scowl to
hide his blushes. "Tell him--Oh, the devil! he wouldn't understand. Tell
him her name is Miss Clare Starling."
"What she come for?" Ahchoogah coolly asked.
"Tell him she travels to please herself," said Stonor, letting him make
what he would of that.
"Ahchoogah say he want shake her by the hand."
Stonor was in a quandary. The thought of the grimy hand touching Clare's
was detestable yet, if the request had been made in innocence it seemed
churlish to object. Clare, who overheard, settled the question for him,
by coming out and offering her hand to the Indian with a smile.
To Mary she said: "Tell him to tell the women of his people that the
white woman wishes to be their sister."
Ahchoogah stared at her with a queer mixture of feelings. He was much
taken aback by her outspoken, unafraid air. He had expected to despise
her, as he had been taught to despise all women, but somehow she struck
respect into his soul. He resented it: he had taken pleasure in the
prospect of despising something white.
Clare went back into the shack. Ahchoogah, with a shrug, dismissed her
from his mind. He spoke again with his courteous air; meanwhile (or at
any rate so Stonor thought) his black eyes glittered with hostility.
Mary translated: "Ahchoogah say all very glad you come. He say to-morrow
night he going to give big tea-dance. He send for the Swan Lake people
to come. A man will ride all night to bring them in time. He say it will
be a big time."
"Say we thank him for the big time just as if we had had it," said
Stonor, not to be outdone in politeness. "But we must go on down the
river to-morrow morning."
When this was translated to Ahchoogah, he lost his self-possession for a
moment, and scowled blackly at Stonor. Quickly recovering himself, he
began suavely to protest.
"Ahchoogah say the messenger of the Great White Father mustn't go up and
down the river to the Kakisas and ask like a poor man for them to take
treaty. Let him stay here, and let the poor Kakisas come to him and make
respect."
"My instructions are to visit the people where they live," said Stonor
curtly. "I shall want the dug-out that the Company man left here last
Spring."
Ahchoogah scowled again. Mary translated: "Ahchoogah say, why you want
heavy dug-out when he got plenty nice light bark-canoes."
"I can't use bark-canoes in the rapids."
A startled look shot out of the Indian's eyes. Mary translated: "What
for you want go down rapids? No Kakisas live below the rapids."
"I'm going to visit the white man at the Great Falls."
When Ahchoogah got this he bent the look of a pure savage on Stonor,
walled and inscrutable. He sullenly muttered something that Mary
repeated as: "No can go."
"Why not?"
"Nobody ever go down there."
"Well, somebody's got to be the first to go."
"Rapids down there no boat can pass."
"The white man came up to the Indians when they were sick last fall. If
he can come up I can go down."
"He got plenty strong medicine."
Stonor laughed. "Well, I venture to say that my medicine is as strong as
his--in the rapids."
Ahchoogah raised a whole cloud of objections. "Plenty white-face bear
down there. Big as a horse. Kill man while he sleeps. Wolf down there.
Run in packs as many as all the Kakisas. Him starving this year."
"Women's talk!" said Stonor contemptuously.
"You get carry over those falls. Behind those falls is a great pile of
white bones. It is the bones of all the men and beasts that were carried
over in the past. Those falls have no voice to warn you above. The water
slip over so smooth and soft you not know there is any falls till you go
over."
"Tell Ahchoogah he cannot scare white men with such tales. Tell him to
bring me the dug-out to the river-shore below here."
Ahchoogah muttered sulkily. Mary translated: "Ahchoogah say got no
dug-out. Man take it up to Swan Lake."
"Very well, then; I'll take two bark-canoes and carry around the
rapids."
He still objected. "If you take our canoes, how we going to hunt and
fish for our families?"
"You offered me the canoes!" cried Stonor wrathfully.
"I forget then that every man got only one canoe."
Stonor stood up in his majesty; Ahchoogah was like a pigmy before him.
"Tell him to go!" cried the policeman. "His mouth is full of lies and
bad talk. Tell him to have the dug-out or the two canoes here by
to-morrow morning or I'll come and take them!"
The Indian now changed his tone, and endeavoured to soften the
policeman's anger, but Stonor turned on his heel and entered the shack.
Ahchoogah went away down-hill with a crestfallen air.
"What do you make of it all?" Clare asked anxiously.
Stonor spoke lightly. "Well, it's clear they don't want us to go down
the river, but what their reasons are I couldn't pretend to say. They
may have some sort of idea that for us to explode the mystery of the
river and the white medicine man whom they regard as their own would be
to lower their prestige as a tribe. It's hard to say. It's almost
impossible to get at their real reasons, and when you do, they generally
seem childish to us. I don't think it's anything we need bother our
heads about."
"I was watching him," said Clare. "He didn't seem to me like a bad man
so much as like a child who's got some wrong idea in his head."
"That's my idea too," said Stonor. "One feels somehow that there's been
a bad influence at work lately. But what influence could reach away out
here? It beats me! Their White Medicine Man ought to have done them
good."
"He couldn't do them otherwise than good--so far as they would listen to
him," she said quickly.
They hastily steered away from this uncomfortable subject.
"Maybe Mary can help us," said Stonor. "Mary, go among your people and
talk to them. Give them good talk. Let them understand that we have no
object but to be their friends. If there is a good reason why we
shouldn't go down the river let them speak it plainly. But this talk of
danger and magic simply makes white men laugh."
Mary dutifully took her way down to the tepees. She returned in time to
get supper--but threw no further light on the mystery.
"What about it, Mary?" asked Stonor.
"Don't go down the river," she said earnestly. "Plenty bad trip, I
think. I 'fraid for her. She can't paddle a canoe in the rapids nor
track up-stream. What if we capsize and lose our grub? Don't go!"
"Didn't the Kakisas give you any better reasons than that?"
Mary was doggedly silent.
"Ah, have they won you away from us too?"
This touched the red woman. Her face worked painfully. She did her best
to explain. "Kakisas my people," she said. "Maybe you think they foolish
people. All right. Maybe they are not a wise and strong people like the
old days. But they my people just the same. I can't tell white men their
things."
"She's right," put in Clare quickly. "Don't ask her any more."
"Well, what do you think?" he asked. "Do you not wish to go any
further?"
"Yes! Yes!" she cried. "I must go on!"
"Very good," he said grimly. "We'll start to-morrow."
"I not go," said Mary stolidly. "My people mad at me if I go."
Here was a difficulty! Stonor and Clare looked at each other blankly.
"What the devil----!" began the policeman.
"Hush! leave her to me," said Clare, urging him out of the shack.
By and by she rejoined him outside. "She'll come," she said briefly.
"What magic did you use?"
"No magic. Just woman talk."
CHAPTER VII
ON THE RIVER
Next morning they saw the dug-out pulled up on the shore below their
camp.
"The difference between a red man and a white man," said Stonor grimly,
"is that a red man doesn't mind being caught in a lie after the occasion
for it has passed, but a white man will spend half the rest of his life
trying to justify himself."
He regarded the craft dubiously. It was an antique affair, grey as an
old badger, warped and seamed by the sun and rotten in the bottom. But
it had a thin skin of sound wood on the outside, and on the whole it
seemed better suited to their purpose than the bark-canoes used by the
Kakisas.
As they carried their goods down and made ready to start the Indians
gathered around and watched with glum faces. None offered to help. It
must have been a trying situation for Mary Moosa. When Stonor was out of
hearing they did not spare her. She bore it with her customary stoicism.
Ahchoogah, less honest than the rank and file, sought to commend himself
to the policeman by a pretence of friendliness. Stonor, beyond telling
him that he would hold him responsible for the safety of the horses
during his absence, ignored him.
Having stowed their outfit, they gingerly got in. Their boat, though
over twenty feet long, was only about fifteen inches beam, and of the
log out of which she had been fashioned she still retained the tendency
to roll over. Mary took the bow paddle, and Stonor the stern; Clare sat
amidships facing the policeman.
"If we can only keep on top until we get around the first bend we'll
save our dignity, anyhow," said Stonor.
They pushed off without farewells. When they rounded the first point of
willows and passed out of sight of the crowd of lowering, dark faces,
they felt relieved. Stonor was able to drop the port of august
policeman.
Said he: "I'm going to call this craft the Serpent. She's got a fair
twist on her. Her head is pointed to port and her tail to starboard. It
takes a mathematical deduction to figure out which way she's going."
Clare was less ready than usual to answer his jokes. She was pale, and
there was a hint of strain in her eyes.
"You're not bothered about Ahchoogah's imaginary terrors, are you?" he
asked.
She shook her head. "Not that."
He wondered what it was then, but did not like to ask directly. It
suddenly struck him that she had been steadily losing tone since the
first day on the trail.
Her next words showed the direction her thoughts were taking. "You said
it was two hundred miles down the river. How long do you think it will
take us to make it?"
"Three days and a bit, if my guess as to the distance is right. We have
the current to help us, and now we don't have to stop for the horses to
graze."
"They will be hard days to put in," she said simply.
Stonor pondered for a long time on what she meant by this. Was she so
consumed by impatience to arrive that the dragging hours were a torture
to her? or was it simply the uncertainty of what awaited her, and a
longing to have it over with? That she had been eager for the journey
was clear, but it had not seemed like a joyful eagerness. He was aware
that there was something here he did not understand. Women had
unfathomable souls anyway.
As far as he was concerned he frankly dreaded the outcome of the
journey. How was he to bear himself at the meeting of this divided
couple? He could not avoid being a witness of it. He must hand her over
with a smile, he supposed, and make a graceful get-away. But suppose he
were prevented from leaving immediately. Or suppose, as was quite
likely, that they wished to return with him! He ground his teeth at the
thought of such an ordeal. Would he be able to carry it off? He must!
"What's the matter?" Clare asked suddenly. She had been studying his
face.
"Why did you ask?"
"You looked as if you had a sudden pain."
"I had," he said, with a rueful smile. "My knees. It's so long since I
paddled that they're not limbered up yet."
She appeared not altogether satisfied with this explanation.
This part of the river showed a succession of long smooth reaches with
low banks of a uniform height bordered with picturesque ragged
jack-pines, tall, thin, and sharply pointed. Here and there, where the
composition seemed to require it, a perfect island was planted in the
brown flood. At the foot of the pines along the edge of each bank grew
rows of berry bushes as regularly as if set out by a gardener. Already
the water was receding as a result of the summer drouth, but, as fast as
it fell, the muddy beach left at the foot of each bank was mantled with
the tender green of goose-grass, a diminutive cousin of the tropical
bamboo. Mile after mile the character of the stream showed no variance.
It was like a noble corridor through the pines.
At intervals during the day they met a few Kakisas, singly or in pairs,
in their beautifully-made little birch-bark canoes. These individuals,
when they came upon them suddenly, almost capsized in their astonishment
at beholding pale-faces on their river. No doubt, in the tepees behind
the willows, the coming of the whites had long been foretold as a
portent of dreadful things.
They displayed their feelings according to their various natures. The
first they met, a solitary youth, was frankly terrified. He hastened
ashore, the water fairly cascading from his paddle, and, squatting
behind the bushes, peered through at them like an animal. The next pair
stood their ground, clinging to an overhanging willow--too startled to
escape perhaps--where they stared with goggling eyes, and visibly
trembled. It gave Stonor and Clare a queer sense of power thus to have
their mere appearance create so great an excitement. Nothing could be
got out of these two; they would not even answer questions from Mary in
their own tongue.
The fourth Kakisa, however, an incredibly ragged and dirty old man with
a dingy cotton fillet around his snaky locks, hailed them with wild
shouts of laughter, paddled to meet them, and clung to the dug-out,
fondly stroking Stonor's sleeve. The sight of Clare caused him to go off
into fresh shrieks of good-natured merriment. His name, he informed
them, was Lookoovar, or so they understood it. He had a stomach-ache, he
said, and wished for some of the white man's wonderful stomach-warming
medicine of which he had heard.
"It seems that our principal claim to fame up here is whisky," said
Stonor.
He gave the old man a pill. Lookoovar swallowed it eagerly, but looked
disappointed at the absence of immediate results.
All these men were hunting their dinners. Close to the shore they
paddled softly against the current, or drifted silently down, searching
the bushes with their keen flat eyes for the least stir. Since
everything had to come down to the river sooner or later to drink, they
could have had no better point of vantage. Every man had a gun in his
canoe, but ammunition is expensive on the Swan River, and for small fry,
musk-rat, duck, fool-hen, or rabbit, they still used the prehistoric bow
and arrow.
"The Swan River is like the Kakisas' Main Street," said Stonor. "All day
they mosey up and down looking in the shop-windows for bargains in
feathers and furs."
They camped for the night on a cleared point occupied by the bare poles
of several tepees. The Indians left these poles standing at all the best
sites along the river, ready to use the next time they should spell that
way. They frequently left their caches too, that is to say, spare gear,
food and what-not, trustfully hanging from near-by branches in
birch-bark containers. The Kakisas even tote water in bark pails.
Next day the character of the river changed. It now eddied around
innumerable short bends right and left with an invariable regularity,
each bend so like the last they lost all track of the distance they had
come. Its course was as regularly crooked as a crimping-iron. On each
bend it ate under the bank on the outside, and deposited a bar on the
inside. On one side the pines toppled into the water as their footing
was undermined, while poplars sprang up on the other side in the
newly-made ground.
On the afternoon of this day they suddenly came upon the village of
which they had been told. It fronted on a little lagoon behind one of
the sand-bars. This was the village where Imbrie was said to have cured
the Kakisas of measles. At present most of the inhabitants were pitching
off up and down the river, and there were only half a dozen covered
tepees in sight, but the bare poles of many others showed the normal
extent of the village.
The usual furore of excitement was caused by their unheralded appearance
around the bend. For a moment the Indians completely lost their heads,
and there was a mad scurry for the tepees. Some mothers dragged their
screaming offspring into the bush for better shelter. Only one or two of
the bravest among the men dared show themselves. But with true savage
volatility they recovered from their panic as suddenly as they had been
seized. One by one they stole to the edge of the bank, where they stood
staring down at the travellers, with their shoe-button eyes empty of all
human expression.
Stonor had no intention of landing here. He waited with the nose of the
Serpent resting in the mud until the excitement died down. Then, through
Mary, he requested speech with the head man.
A bent old man tottered down the bank with the aid of a staff. He wore a
dirty blanket capote--and a bicycle cap! He faced them, his head wagging
with incipient palsy, and his dim eyes looking out bleared, indifferent,
and jaded. Sparse grey hairs decorated his chin. It was a picture of age
without reverence.
"How dreadful to grow old in a tepee!" murmured Clare.
The old man was accompanied by a comely youth with bold eyes, his
grandson, according to Mary. The elder's name was Ahcunazie, the boy's
Ahteeah.
Stonor, in the name of the Great White Father, harangued the chief in a
style similar to that he had used with Ahchoogah. Ahcunazie appeared
dazed and incapable of replying, so Stonor said:
"Talk with your people and find out what all desire. I will return in a
week for your answer."
When this was translated the young man spoke up sharply. Mary said:
"Ahteeah say, What for you want go down the river?"
Stonor said: "To see the white man," and watched close to see how they
would take it.
The scene in the other village was almost exactly repeated. Ahteeah
brought up all the reasons he could think of that would be likely to
dissuade Stonor. Other men, hearing what was going forward, came down to
support the boy. Stonor's boat was rotten, they pointed out, and the
waves in the rapids ran as high as a man. With vivid gestures they
illustrated what would happen to the dug-out in the rapids. If he
escaped the rapids he would surely be carried over the Falls; and if he
wasn't, how did he expect to get back up the rapids? And so on.
Old Ahcunazie stood through it all uncomprehending and indifferent. He
was too old even to betray any interest in the phenomenon of the white
woman.
One thing new the whites marked: "White Medicine Man don' like white
men. He say if white men come he goin' away." This suggested a possible
reason for the Indian's opposition.
Stonor still remaining unmoved, Ahteeah brought out as a clincher:
"White Medicine Man not home now."
Stonor and Clare looked at each other startled. This would be a calamity
after having travelled all that way. "Where is he?" Stonor demanded.
The young Indian, delighted at his apparent success, answered glibly:
"He say he goin' down to Great Buffalo Lake this summer."
An instant's reflection satisfied Stonor that if this were true it would
have been brought out first instead of last. "Oh, well, since we've come
as far as this we'll go the rest of the way to make sure," he said
calmly.
Ahteeah looked disappointed. They pushed off. The Indians watched them
go in sullen silence.
"Certainly we are not popular in this neighbourhood," said Stonor
lightly. "One can't get rid of the feeling that their minds have been
poisoned against us. Mary, can't you tell me why they give me such black
looks?"
She shook her head. "I think there is something," she said. "But they
not tell me because I with you."
"Maybe it has something to do with me?" said Clare.
"How could that be? They never heard of you."
"I think it is Stonor," said Mary.
Clare was harder to rouse out of herself to-day. Stonor did his best not
to show that he perceived anything amiss, and strove to cheer her with
chaff and foolishness--likewise to keep his own heart up, but not
altogether with success.
On one occasion Clare sought to reassure him by saying, _a propos_ of
nothing that had gone before: "The worst of having an imagination is,
that when you have anything to go through with, it keeps presenting the
most horrible alternatives in advance until you are almost incapable of
facing the thing. And after all it is never so bad as your imagination
pictures."
"I understand that," said Stonor, "though I don't suppose anybody would
accuse me of being imaginative."
"'Something to go through with!'" he thought. "'Horrible alternatives!'
'Never so bad as your imagination pictures!' What strange phrases for a
woman to use who is going to rejoin her husband!"
When they embarked after the second spell Clare asked if she might sit
facing forward in the dug-out, so she could see better where they were
going. But Stonor guessed this was merely an excuse to escape from
having his solicitous eyes on her face.
* * * * *
Next morning they overtook the last Kakisa that they were to see on the
way down. He was drifting along close to the shore, and behind him in
his canoe sat his little boy as still as a mouse, receiving his
education in hunter's lore. This man was a more intelligent specimen
than they had met hitherto. He was a comely little fellow with an
extraordinary head of hair cut _a la_ Buster Brown, and his name, he
said, was Etzooah. Stonor remembered having heard of him and his hair as
far away as Fort Enterprise. His manners were good. While naturally
astonished at their appearance, he did not on that account lose his
self-possession. They conversed politely while drifting down side by
side.
Etzooah, in sharp contrast to all the other Kakisas, appeared to see
nothing out of the way in their wish to visit the White Medicine Man,
nor did he try to dissuade them.
"How far is it to the Great Falls?" asked Stonor.
"One sleep."
"Are the rapids too bad for a boat?"
"Rapids bad, but not too bad. I go down in my bark-canoe, I guess you go
all right in dug-out. Long tam ago my fat'er tell me all the Kakisa
people go to the Big Falls ev'ry year at the time when the berries ripe.
By the Big Falls they meet the people from Great Buffalo Lake and make
big talk there and make dance to do honour to the Old Man under the
falls. And this people trade leather for fur with the people from Great
Buffalo Lake. But now this people is scare to go there. But I am not
scare. I go there. Three times I go there. Each time I leave a little
present of tobacco for the Old Man so he know my heart is good towards
him. I guess Old Man like a brave man better than a woman. No harm come
to me since I go. My wife, my children got plenty to eat; I catch good
fur. Bam-bye I take my boy there too. Some men say I crazy for that, but
I say no. It is a fine sight. It make a man's heart big to see that
sight."
This was a man after Stonor's own heart. "Tell him those are good
words," he said heartily.
When they asked him about the White Man who lived beside the falls,
Etzooah's eyes sparkled. "He say he my friend, and I proud. Since he say
that I think more of myself. I walk straight. I am not afraid. He is
good. He make the sick well. He give the people good talk. He tell how
to live clean and all, so there is no more sickness. He moch like
children. He good to my boy. Give him little face that say 'Ticky-ticky'
and follow the sun."
Etzooah issued a command to his small son, and the boy shyly exhibited a
large cheap nickel watch.
"No other Kakisa man or boy got that," said the parent proudly.
"Is it true that this white man hates other white men?" asked Stonor.
Etzooah made an emphatic negative. "He got no hate. He say red man white
man all the same man."
"Then he'll be glad to see us?"
"I think he glad. Got good heart to all."
"Is he at home now?"
"He is at home. I see him go down the river three sleeps ago."
Those in the dug-out exchanged looks of astonishment. "Ask him if he is
sure?" said Stonor.
Etzooah persisted in his statement. "I not speak him for cause I hiding
in bush watchin' bear. And he is across the river. But I see good. See
white face. I know him because he not paddle like Kakisa one side other
side; him paddle all time same side and turn the paddle so to make go
straight."
"Where had he been?"
"Up to Horse Track, I guess."
Horse Track, of course, was the trail from the river to Fort Enterprise.
The village at the end of the trail received the same designation. If
the tale of this visit was true it might have something to do with the
hostility they had met with above.
"But we have just come from the Horse Track," said Stonor, to feel the
man out. "Nobody told us he had been there."
Etzooah shrugged. "Maybe they scare. Not know what to say to white man."
But Stonor thought, if anything, they had known too well what to say.
"How long had he been up there?" he asked.
"I not know. I not know him gone up river till see him come back."
"Maybe he only went a little way up."
Etzooah shook his head vigorously. "His canoe was loaded heavy."
Etzooah accompanied them to the point where the current began to
increase its pace preparatory to the first rapid.
"This the end my hunting-ground," he said. "Too much work to come back
up the rapids." He saluted them courteously, and caused the little boy
to do likewise. His parting remark was: "Tell the White Medicine Man
Etzooah never forget he call him friend."
"Well, we've found one gentleman among the Kakisas," Stonor said to
Clare, as they paddled on.
The first rapid was no great affair. There was plenty of water, and they
were carried racing smoothly down between low rocky banks. Stonor named
the place the Grumbler from the deep throaty sound it gave forth.
In quiet water below they discussed what they had heard.
"It gets thicker and thicker," said Stonor. "It seems to me that
Imbrie's having been at the Horse Track lately must have had something
to do with the chilly reception we received."
"Why should it?" said Clare. "He has nothing to fear from the coming of
anybody."
"Then why did they say nothing about his visit?"
She shook her head. "You know I cannot fathom these people."
"Neither can I, for that matter. But it does seem as if he must have
told them not to tell anybody they had seen him."
"It is not like him."
"Ahteeah said Imbrie hated white men; Etzooah said his heart was kind to
all men: which is the truer description?"
"Etzooah's," she said instantly. "He has a simple, kind heart. He lives
up to the rule 'Love thy neighbour' better than any man I ever knew."
"Well, we'll know to-morrow," said Stonor, making haste to drop the
disconcerting subject. Privately he asked himself: "Why, if Imbrie is
such a good man, does she seem to dread meeting him?" There was no
answer forthcoming.
The rapids became progressively wilder and rougher as they went on down,
and Stonor was not without anxiety as to the coming back. Sometimes they
came on white water unexpectedly around a bend, but the river was not so
crooked now, and more often far ahead they saw the white rabbits dancing
in the sunshine, causing their breasts to constrict with a foretaste of
fear. As the current bore them inexorably closer, and they picked out
the rocks and the great white combers awaiting them, there was always a
moment when they longed to turn aside from their fate. But once having
plunged into the welter, fear vanished, and a great exhilaration took
its place. They shouted madly to each other--even stolid Mary, and were
sorry when they came to the bottom. Between rapids the smooth stretches
seemed insufferably tedious to pass.
Stonor's endeavour was to steer a middle course between the great
billows in the middle of the channel, which he feared might swamp the
Serpent or break her in half, and the rocks at each side which would
have smashed her to pieces. Luckily he had had a couple of days in which
to learn the vagaries of his craft. In descending a swift current one
has to bear in mind that any boat begins to answer her helm some yards
ahead of the spot where the impulse is applied.
As the day wore on he bethought himself that "one sleep" was an elastic
term of distance, and in order to avoid the possibility of being carried
over the falls he adopted the rule of landing at the head of each rapid,
and walking down the shore to pick his channel, and to make sure that
there was smooth water below. They had been told that there was no rapid
immediately above the falls, that the water slipped over without giving
warning, but Stonor dismissed this into the limbo of red-skin romancing.
He did not believe it possible for a river to go over a fall without
some preliminary disturbance.
As it happened, dusk descended on them in the middle of a smooth reach,
and they made camp for the last time on the descent, pitching the three
tents under the pines in the form of a little square open on the river
side. Clare was very silent during the meal, and Stonor's gaiety sounded
hollow in his own ears. They turned in immediately after eating.
Stonor awoke in the middle of the night without being able to tell what
had awakened him. He had a sense that something was wrong. It was a
breathless cool night. Under the pines it was very dark, but outside of
their shadow the river gleamed wanly. Such sounds as he heard, the
murmur of a far-off rapid, and a whisper in the topmost boughs of the
pines, conveyed a suggestion of empty immeasurable distances. The fire
had burned down to its last embers.
Suddenly he became aware of what was the matter; Clare was weeping. It
was the merest hint of a sound, softer than falling leaves, just a catch
of the breath that escaped her now and then. Stonor lay listening with
bated breath, as if terrified of losing that which tore his heartstrings
to hear. He was afflicted with a ghastly sense of impotence. He had no
right to intrude on her grief. Yet how could he lie supine when she was
in trouble, and make believe not to hear? He could not lie still. He got
up, taking no care to be quiet, and built up the fire. She could not
know, of course, that he had heard that broken breath. Perhaps she would
speak to him. Or, if she could not speak, perhaps she would take comfort
from the mere fact of his waking presence outside.
He heard no further sound from her tent.
After a while, because it was impossible for him not to say it, he
softly asked: "Are you asleep?"
There was no answer.
He sat down by the fire listening and brooding--humming a little tune
meanwhile to assure her of the blitheness of his spirits.
By and by a small voice issued from under her tent: "Please go back to
bed,"--and he knew at once that she saw through his poor shift to
deceive her.
"Honest, I don't feel like sleeping," he said cheerfully.
"Did I wake you?"
"No," he lied. "Were you up?"
"You were worrying about me," she said.
"Nothing to speak of. I thought perhaps the silence and the solitude had
got on your nerves a little. It's that kind of a night."
"I don't mind it," she said; "with you near--and Mary," she quickly
added. "Please go back to bed."
He crept to her tent. It was purely an involuntary act. He was on his
knees, but he did not think of that. "Ah, Clare, if I could only take
your trouble from you!" he murmured.
"Hush!" she whispered. "Put me and my troubles out of your head. It is
nothing. It is like the rapids; one loses one's nerve when they loom up
ahead. I shall be all right when I am in them."
"Clare, let me sit here on the ground beside you--not touching you."
"No--please! Go back to your tent. It will be easier for me."
* * * * *
In the morning they arose heavily, and set about the business of
breakfasting and breaking camp with little speech. Indeed, there was
nothing to say. Neither Stonor nor Clare could make believe now to be
otherwise than full of dread of what the day had in store. Embarking,
Clare took a paddle too, and all three laboured doggedly, careless alike
of rough water and smooth.
In the middle of the day they heard, for some minutes before the place
itself hove in view, the roar of a rapid greater than any they had
passed.
"This will be something!" said Stonor.
But as they swept around the bend above they never saw the rapid, for
among the trees on the bank at the beginning of the swift water there
stood a little new log shack. That sight struck them like a blow. There
was no one visible outside the shack, but the door stood open.
CHAPTER VIII
THE LOG SHACK
It struck them as odd that no one appeared out of the shack. For a man
living beside a river generally has his eye unconsciously on the stream,
just as a man who dwells by a lonely road lets few pass by unseen.
Stonor sent him a hail, as is the custom of the country--but no
surprised glad face showed itself.
"He is away," said Stonor, merely to break the racking silence between
him and Clare.
"Would he leave the door open?" she said.
They landed. On the beach lay two birch-bark canoes, Kakisa-made. One
had freshly-cut willow-branches lying in the bottom. Stonor happened to
notice that the bow-thwart of this canoe was notched in a peculiar way.
He was to remember it later. Ordinarily the Kakisa canoes are as like as
peas out of the same pod.
From the beach the shack was invisible by reason of the low bank
between. Stonor accompanied Clare half-way up the bank. "Mary and I will
wait here," he said.
She looked at him deeply without speaking. It had the effect of a
farewell. Stonor saw that she was breathing fast, and that her lips were
continually closing and parting again. Leaving him, she walked slowly
and stiffly to the door of the shack. Her little hands were clenched. He
waited, suffering torments of anxiety for her.
She knocked on the door-frame, and waited. She pushed the door further
open, and looked in. She went in, and was gone for a few seconds.
Reappearing, she shook her head at Stonor. He went up and joined her.
Mary, who, in spite of her stolidity, was as inquisitive as the next
woman, followed him without being bid.
They all entered the shack. Stonor sniffed.
"What is that smell?" asked Clare. "I noticed it at once."
"Kinni-kinnick."
She looked at him enquiringly.
"Native substitute for tobacco. It's made from the inner bark of the red
willow. He must have run out of white man's tobacco."
She pointed to a can standing on the table. Stonor, lifting it, found it
nearly full.
"Funny he should smoke kinni-kinnick when he has Kemble's mixture. He
must be saving that for a last resort."
Stonor looked around him with a strong curiosity. The room had a grace
that was astonishing to find in that far-removed spot; moreover,
everything had been contrived out of the rough materials at hand. Two
superb black bear-skins lay on the floor. The bed which stood against
the back wall was hidden under a beautiful robe made out of scores of
little skins cunningly sewed together, lynx-paws with a border of
marten. There were two workmanlike chairs fashioned out of willow; one
with a straight back at the desk, the other, comfortable and capacious,
before the fire. The principal piece of furniture was a birch desk or
table, put together with infinite patience with no other tools but an
axe and a knife, and rubbed with oil to a satiny finish. On it stood a
pair of carved wooden candlesticks holding candles of bears' tallow, a
wooden inkwell, and a carved frame displaying a little photograph--of
Clare!
Seeing it, her eyes filled with tears. "I'm glad I came," she murmured.
Stonor turned away.
A pen lay on the desk where it had been dropped, and beside it was a red
leather note-book or diary, of which Clare possessed herself. More than
anything else, what lent the room its air of amenity was a little shelf
of books and magazines above the table. There was no glass in the
window, of course, but a piece of gauze had been stretched over the
opening to keep out the insects at night. For cold weather there was a
heavy shutter swung on wooden hinges. The fireplace, built of stones and
clay, was in the corner. The arch was cunningly contrived out of thin
slabs of stone standing on edge. Stonor immediately noticed that the
ashes were still giving out heat.
The room they were in comprised only half the shack. There was a door
communicating with the other half. Opening it, they saw that this part
evidently served the owner as a work-room and store-room. Cut wood was
neatly piled against one wall. Snowshoes, roughly-fashioned fur
garments, steel traps and other winter gear were hanging from pegs.
There was a window facing the river, this one uncovered, and under it
was a work-bench on which lay the remains of a meal and unwashed
dishes--humble testimony to the near presence of another fellow-creature
in the wilderness. On the floor at one side was a heap of supplies; that
is to say, store-grub; evidently what Imbrie had lately brought down,
and had not yet put away. There was a door in the back wall of this
room, the side of the shack away from the river.
Stonor, looking around, said: "I suppose he used this as a sort of
vestibule in the winter, to keep the wind and the snow out of his
living-room."
"Where can he be?" said Clare nervously.
They both spoke instinctively in subdued tones, like intruders fearful
of being overheard.
"He can't have been gone long. He was smoking here just now. The
fireplace is still warm."
"He can't have intended to stay long, for he left everything open."
"Well, he would hardly expect to be disturbed up here."
"But animals?"
"No wild thing would venture close to the fresh man smell. Still, it's
natural to close up when you go away."
"What do you think?" she asked tremulously.
The sight of her wide, strained eyes, and the little teeth pressed into
her lower lip, were inexpressibly painful to him. Clearly it was too
much to ask of the high-strung woman, after she had nerved herself up to
the ordeal, to go on waiting indefinitely in suspense.
"There are dozens of natural explanations," he said quickly. "Very
likely he's just gone into the bush to hunt for his dinner."
Her hand involuntarily went to her breast. "I feel," she whispered, "as
if there were something dreadfully--dreadfully wrong."
Stonor went outside and lustily holloaed. He received no answer.
It was impossible for them to sit still while they waited. Having seen
everything in the house, they walked about outside. Off to the left
Imbrie had painstakingly cleared a little garden. Strange it was to see
the familiar potato, onion, turnip and cabbage sprouting in orderly rows
beside the unexplored river.
Time passed. From a sense of duty they prepared a meal on the shore, and
made a pretence of eating it, each for the other's benefit. Stonor did
his best to keep up Clare's spirits, while at the same time his own
mystification was growing. For in circling the shack he could find no
fresh track anywhere into the bush. Tracks there were in plenty, where
the man had gone for wood, or to hunt perhaps, but all more than
twenty-four hours old. To be sure, there was the river, but it was not
likely he had still a third canoe: and if he had gone up the river, how
could they have missed him? As for going down, no canoe could live in
that rapid, Stonor was sure; moreover, he supposed the falls were at the
foot of it.
Another thing; both his shot-gun and his rifle were leaning against the
fireplace. He might have another gun, but it was not likely. As the
hours passed, and the man neither returned nor answered Stonor's
frequent shouts, the policeman began to wonder if an accident could have
occurred to him. But he had certainly been alive and well within a
half-hour of their arrival, and it seemed too fortuitous a circumstance
that anything should have happened just at that juncture. A more
probable explanation was that the man had seen them coming, and had
reasons of his own for wishing to keep out of the way. After all, Stonor
had no precise knowledge of the situation existing between Imbrie and
Clare. But if he had hidden himself, where had he hidden himself?
While it was still full day Stonor persuaded Clare and Mary to remain in
the shack for a time, while he made a more careful search for Imbrie's
tracks. This time he thoroughly satisfied himself that that day no one
had struck into the bush surrounding the shack. He came upon the end of
the old carry trail around the falls, and followed it away. But it would
have been clear to even a tyro in the bush that no one had used it
lately. There remained the beach. It was possible to walk along the
stony beach without leaving a visible track. Stonor searched the beach
for half a mile in either direction without being able to find a single
track in any wet or muddy place, and without discovering any place
where one had struck up the bank into the bush. On the down-river side
he was halted by a low, sheer wall of rock washed by the current. He
made sure that no one had tried to climb around this miniature
precipice. From this point the rapids still swept on down out of sight.
He returned to the shack completely baffled, and hoping against hope to
find Imbrie returned. But Clare still sat huddled in the chair where he
had left her, and looked to him eagerly for news. He could only shake
his head.
Finally the sun went down.
"If he is not here by dark," said Clare with a kind of desperate
calmness, "we will know something is the matter. His hat, his
ammunition-belt, his hunting-knife are all here. He could not have
intended to remain away."
Darkness slowly gathered. Nothing happened. At intervals Stonor
shouted--only to be mocked by the silence. Just to be doing something he
built a great fire outside the shack. If Imbrie should be on the way
back it would at least warn him of the presence of visitors.
Stonor was suddenly struck by the fact that Mary had not expressed
herself as to the situation. It was impossible to tell from the smooth
copper mask of her face of what she was thinking.
"Mary, what do you make of it?" he asked.
She shrugged, declining to commit herself. "All the people say Eembrie
got ver' strong medicine," she said. "Say he make himself look like
anything he want."
Stonor and Clare exchanged a rueful smile. "I'm afraid that doesn't help
much," said the former.
Mosquitoes drove them indoors. Stonor closed the door of the shack, and
built up the fire in the fireplace. Stonor no longer expected the man to
return, but Clare was still tremulously on the _qui vive_ for the
slightest sound. Mary went off to bed in the store-room. The others
remained sitting before the fire in Imbrie's two chairs. For them sleep
was out of the question. Each had privately determined to sit up all
night.
For a long time they remained there without speaking.
Stonor had said nothing to Clare about the conclusions he had arrived at
concerning Imbrie, but she gathered from his attitude that he was
passing judgment against the man they had come in search of, and she
said at last:
"Did you notice that little book that I picked up off the desk?"
Stonor nodded.
"It was his diary. Shall I read you from it?"
"If you think it is right."
"Yes. Just an extract or two. To show you the kind of man he is."
The book was in the side pocket of her coat. Opening it, and leaning
forward to get the light of the fire, she read:
"April 29th: The ice is preparing to go out. Great booming cracks have
been issuing from the river all day at intervals. When the jam at the
head of the rapids goes it will be a great sight. To-morrow I'll take a
bite to eat with me, and go down to the falls to watch what happens.
Thank God for the coming of Spring! I'm pretty nearly at the end of my
resources. I've read and re-read my few books and papers until I can
almost repeat the contents by heart. I've finished my desk, and the
candlesticks, and the frame for Clare's picture. But now I'll be able to
make my garden. And I can sod a little lawn in front of the house with
buffalo-grass."
Clare looked at Stonor for an expression of opinion.
The policeman murmured diffidently: "A real good sort."
"Wait!" she said. "Listen to this. One of the first entries." She read
in a moved voice:
"They say that a man who lives cut off from his kind is bound to
degenerate swiftly, but, by God! I won't have it so in my case. I'll be
on my guard against the first symptoms. I shave every day and will
continue to do so. Shaving is a symbol. I will keep my person and my
house as trim as if I expected her to visit me hourly. Half of each day
I'll spend in useful manual labour of some kind, and half in reading and
contemplation. The power is mine to build or destroy myself with my
thoughts. Well, I choose to build!"
Clare looked at Stonor again.
"That is fine!" he said simply.
"So you see--why I had to come," she murmured.
He did not see why the one followed necessarily on the other, nor did he
understand why she felt impelled to explain it just then. But it seemed
better to hold his peace. This revealing of Imbrie's worthy nature
greatly perplexed Stonor. It had been so easy to believe that the two
must have been parted as a result of something evil in Imbrie. He could
not believe that it had been Clare's fault, however she might accuse
herself. He was not yet experienced enough to conceive of a situation
where two honest souls might come to a parting of the ways without
either being especially to blame.
For another long period they sat in silence. The influence of the night
made itself felt even through the log walls of the shack. They were
aware of solitude as of a physical presence. The fire had burned down to
still embers, and down the chimney floated the inexpressibly mournful
breath of the pines. The rapids made a hoarser note beyond. Clare
shivered, and leaned closer over the fire. Stonor made a move to put on
more wood, but she stopped him.
"Don't!" she said, with queer inconsistency. "It makes too much noise."
Suddenly the awful stillness was broken by a heavy thudding sound on the
ground outside. A gasping cry was forced from Clare. Stonor sprang up,
knocking over his chair, and made for the door. Getting it opened, he
ran outside. Off to his right he saw, or thought he saw, a suspicious
shadow, and he instantly made for it. Whereupon a sudden crashing into
the underbrush persuaded him it was no apparition.
Clare's voice, sharp with terror, arrested him. "Martin, don't leave
me!"
He went back to her, suddenly realizing that to chase an unknown thing
bare-handed through the bush at night was scarcely the part of prudence.
He got his gun, and flung himself down across the sill of the open door,
looking out. Nothing further was to be seen or heard. Beyond the little
clearing the river gleamed in the faint dusk. The canoes on the beach
were invisible from the door, being under the bank.
"What do you think it was?" whispered Clare.
"Something fell or jumped out of that big spruce nearest the back of the
house." To himself he added: "A natural place to hide. What a fool I was
not to think of that before!"
"But what?" said Clare.
Stonor said grimly: "There are only two tree-climbing animals in this
country heavy enough to make the sound we heard--bears and men."
"A bear?"
"Maybe. But I never heard of a bear climbing a tree beside a house, and
at night, too. Don't know what he went up for."
"Oh, it couldn't be----" Clare began. She never finished.
Stonor kept his vigil at the open door. He bade Clare throw ashes on the
embers, that no light from behind might show him up. When she had done
it she crept across the floor and sat close beside him. Mary,
apparently, had not been awakened.
Minutes passed, and they heard no sounds except the rapids and the
pines. Clare was perfectly quiet, and Stonor could not tell how she was
bearing the strain. He bethought himself that he had perhaps spoken his
mind too clearly. To reassure her he said:
"It must have been a bear."
"You do not think so really," she said. A despairing little wail escaped
her. "I don't understand! Oh, I don't understand! Why should he hide
from us?"
Stonor could find little of comfort to say. "Morning will make
everything clear, I expect. We shall be laughing at our fears then."
The minutes grew into hours, and they remained in the same positions.
Nature is merciful to humans, and little by little the strain was eased.
The sharpness of their anxiety was dulled. They were conscious only of a
dogged longing for the dawn. At intervals Stonor suggested to Clare that
she go lie down on the bed, but when she begged to remain beside him, he
had not the heart to insist. In all that time they heard nothing beyond
the natural sounds of the night; the stirrings of little furry footfalls
among the leaves; the distant bark of a fox.
And then without the slightest warning the night was shattered by a
blood-curdling shriek of terror from Mary Moosa in the room adjoining.
Stonor's first thought was for the effect on Clare's nerves. He jumped
up, savagely cursing the Indian woman. He ran to the communicating door.
Clare was close at his heels.
Mary was lying on the floor, covering her head with her arms, moaning
in an extremity of terror, and gibbering in her own tongue. For a while
she could not tell them what was the matter. Stonor thought she was
dreaming. Then she began to cry in English: "Door! Door!" and to point
to it. Stonor made for the door, but Clare with a cry clung to him, and
Mary herself, scrambling on all fours, clutched him around the knees.
Stonor felt exquisitely foolish.
"Well, let me secure it," he said gruffly.
This door was fitted with a bar, which he swung into place. At the
window across the room, he swung the shutter in, and fastened that also.
"You see," he said. "No one can get in here now."
They took the shaking Mary into the next room. To give them a better
sense of security, Stonor tore the cotton out of the window and fastened
this shutter also. There was no bar on this door. He preferred to leave
it open, and to mount guard in the doorway.
Gradually Mary calmed down sufficiently to tell them what had happened.
"Little noise wake me. I not know what it is. I listen. Hear it again.
Come from door. I watch. Bam-bye I see the door open so slow, so slow. I
so scare can't cry. My tongue is froze. I see a hand pushin' the door. I
see a head stick in and listen. Then I get my tongue again. I cry out.
Door close. I hear somebody runnin' outside."
Stonor and Clare looked at each other. "Not much doubt about the kind of
animal now," said the former deprecatingly.
Clare spread out her hands. "He must be mad," she whispered.
Mary and Clare clung to each other like sisters. Stonor remained at the
door watching the clear space between the shack and the river. Nothing
stirred there. Stonor heard no more untoward sounds.
Fortunately for the nerves of the women the nights were short. While
they watched and prayed for the dawn, and told themselves it would never
come, it was suddenly there. It came, and they could not see it come.
The light stole between the trees; the leaves dressed themselves with
colour. A little breeze came from the river, and seemed to blow the last
of the murk away. By half-past three it was full day.
"I must go out and look around," said Stonor.
Clare implored him not to leave them.
"It is necessary," he said firmly.
"Your red coat is so conspicuous," she faltered.
"It is my safeguard," he said; "that is, against humans. As for animals,
I can protect myself." He showed them his service revolver.
He left them weeping. He went first to the big spruce-tree behind the
house. He immediately saw, as he had expected, that a man had leaped out
of the lower branches. There were the two deep prints of moccasined
feet; two hand-prints also where he had fallen forward. He had no doubt
come down faster than he had intended. It was child's play after that to
follow his headlong course through the bush. Soon Stonor saw that he had
slackened his pace--no doubt at the moment when Stonor turned back to
the shack. Still the track was written clear. It made a wide detour
through the bush, and came back to the door of the room where Mary had
been sleeping. The man had taken a couple of hours to make perhaps three
hundred yards. He had evidently wormed himself along an inch at a time,
to avoid giving an alarm.
When Mary cried out he had taken back to the bush on the other side of
the shack. Stonor, following the tracks, circled through the bush on
this side, and was finally led to the edge of the river-bank. The
instant that he pushed through the bushes he saw that one of the
bark-canoes was missing. Running to the place where they lay, he saw
that it was the one with the willow-bushes that was gone. No need to
look any further. There was nothing in view for the short distance that
he could see up-river.
CHAPTER IX
THE FOOT
Stonor, returning to the shack, was hailed with joy as one who might
have come back from Hades unscathed. He told Clare just what he had
found.
"What do you think?" she asked anxiously.
"Isn't it clear? He saw us coming and took to the tree. There were so
many tracks around the base of the tree that I was put off. He must have
been hidden there all the time we were looking for him and shouting. As
soon as it got dark he tried to make his get-away, but his calculations
were somewhat upset by his falling. Even after we had taken warning, he
had to risk getting into his store-room, because all his food was there.
No doubt he thought we would all be in the other room, and he could
sneak in and take what he could carry. When he was scared off by Mary's
scream he started his journey without it, that's all."
"But why _should_ he run from us--from me?"
Stonor shrugged helplessly.
She produced the little red book again. "Read something here," she said,
turning the pages.
Under her directing finger, while she looked aside, he read: "The
hardest thing I have to contend against is my hunger for her. Discipline
is of little avail against that. I spend whole days wrestling with
myself, trying to get the better of it, and think I have conquered, only
to be awakened at night by wanting her worse than ever."
"Does that sound as if he wished to escape me?" she murmured.
In her distress of mind it did not occur to her, of course, that this
was rather a cruel situation for Stonor. He did not answer for a moment;
then said in a low tone: "I am afraid his mind is unhinged. You
suggested it."
"I know," she said quickly. "But I have been thinking it over. It can't
be. Listen to this." She hastily turned the pages of the little book.
"What day is this?"
"The third of July."
"This was written June 30th, only four days ago. It is the last entry in
the book. Listen!" She read, while the tears started to her eyes:
"I must try to get in some good books on natural history. If I could
make better friends with the little wild things around me I need never
be lonely. There is a young rabbit who seems disposed to hit it off with
me. I toss him a bit of biscuit after breakfast every morning. He comes
and waits for it now. He eats it daintily in my sight; then, with a
flirt of his absurd tail for 'thank you,' scampers down to the river to
wash it down."
"Those are not the thoughts of a man out of his mind."
"No," he admitted, "but everything you have read shows him to be of a
sensitive, high-strung nature. On such a man the sudden shock of our
coming----"
"Oh, then I have waited too long!" she cried despairingly. "And now I
can never repay!"
"Not necessarily," said Stonor with a dogged patience. "Such cases are
common in the North. But I never knew one to be incurable."
She took this in, and it comforted her partly; but her thoughts were
still busy with matters remote from Stonor. After a while she asked
abruptly: "What do you think we ought to do?"
"Start up the river at once," he said. "We'll hear news of him on the
way. We'll overtake him in the end."
She stared at him with troubled eyes, pondering this suggestion. At last
she slowly shook her head. "I don't think we ought to go," she murmured.
"What!" he cried, astonished. "You wish to stay here--after last night!
Why?"
"I don't know," she said helplessly.
"But if the man is really not right, he needs looking after. We ought to
hurry after him."
"It seems so," she said, still with the air of those who speak what is
strange to themselves; "but I have an intuition, a premonition--I don't
know what to call it! Something tells me that we do not yet know the
truth."
Stonor turned away helplessly. He could not argue against a woman's
reason like this.
"Ah, don't be impatient with me," she said appealingly. "Just wait
to-day. If nothing happens during the day to throw any light on what
puzzles us, I will make no more objections. I'll be willing to start
this afternoon, and camp up the river."
"It will give him twelve hours' start of us."
Her surprising answer was: "I don't think he's gone."
* * * * *
Stonor made his way over the old portage trail. He wished to have a look
at the Great Falls before returning up-river. Clare, waiting for what
she could not have told, had chosen to remain at the shack, and Mary
Moosa was not afraid to stay with her by daylight. Like Stonor, Mary
believed that the man had undoubtedly left the neighbourhood, and that
no further danger was to be apprehended from that quarter.
Stonor went along abstractedly, climbing over the obstructions or
cutting a way through, almost oblivious to his surroundings. His heart
was jealous and sore. His instinct told him that the man who had
prowled around the shack the night before was an evil-doer; yet Clare
persisted in exalting him to the skies. In his present temper it seemed
to Stonor as if Clare purposely made his task as hard as possible for
him. In fact, the trooper had a grievance against the whole world.
Suddenly he realized that his brain was simply chasing itself in
circles. Stopping short, he shook himself much like a dog on issuing
from the water. His will was to shake off the horrors of the past night
and his dread of the future. Better sense told him that only weakness
lay in dwelling on these things. Let things fall as they would, he would
meet them like a man, he hoped, and no more could be asked of him. In
the meantime he would not worry himself into a stew. He went on with a
lighter breast.
From the cutting in the trail Stonor saw that someone had travelled that
way a while before, probably during the previous season, for the cuts on
green wood were half-healed. It was clear, from the amount of cutting he
had been obliged to do, that this traveller was the first that way in
many years. Stonor further saw from the style of his axe-work that he
was a white man; a white man chops a sapling with one stroke clean
through: a red man makes two chops, half-way through on each side. This
was pretty conclusive evidence that Imbrie had first come from
down-river.
This trail had not been used since, and Stonor, remembering the
suggestion in Imbrie's diary that he frequently visited the falls,
supposed that he had some other way of reaching there. He determined to
see if it was practicable to make his way along the beach on the way
back.
The trail did not take him directly to the falls, but in a certain place
he saw signs of an old side-path striking off towards the river, and,
following this, he was brought out on a plateau of rock immediately
above the spot where the river stepped off into space. Here he stood for
a moment to prepare himself for the sight before looking over. His eye
was caught by some ends of string fluttering from the branches of a bush
beside him. He was at a loss to account for their presence until he
remembered Etzooah and his humble offerings to the Old Man. Here Etzooah
had tied his tobacco-bags.
Approaching the brink, the river smoothed itself a little as if
gathering its forces for the leap, and over the edge itself it slipped
smoothly. It was true to a certain extent that the cataract muffled its
own voice, but the earth trembled. The gorge below offered a superb
prospect. After the invariable flatness and tameness of the shores
above, the sudden cleft in the world impressed the beholder stunningly.
Then Stonor went to the extreme edge and looked over. A deep, dull roar
smote upon his ears; he was bewildered and satisfied. Knowing the Indian
propensity to exaggerate, he had half expected to find merely a cascade
wilder than anything above; or perhaps a wide straggling series of
falls. It was neither. The entire river gathered itself up, and plunged
sheer into deep water below. The river narrowed down at the brink, and
the volume of water was stupendous. The drop was over one hundred feet.
The water was of the colour of strong tea, and as it fell it drew over
its brown sheen a lovely, creamy fleece of foam. Tight little curls of
spray puffed out of the falling water like jets of smoke, and, spreading
and descending, merged into the white cloud that rolled about the foot
of the falls. This cloud itself billowed up in successive undulations
like full draperies, only to spread out and vanish in the sunshine.
Stonor had the solemn feeling that comes to the man who knows himself to
be among the first of his race to gaze on a great natural wonder. He
and Imbrie alone had seen this sight. What of the riddle of Imbrie?
Doctor, magician, skulker in the night, madman perhaps--and Clare's
husband! Must he be haunted by him all his life? But the noble spectacle
before Stonor's eyes calmed his nerves. All will be clear in the end, he
told himself. And nothing could destroy his thought of Clare.
* * * * *
He would liked to have remained for hours, but everything drew him back
to the shack. He started back along the beach. On the whole it was
easier going than by the encumbered trail. There were no obstacles
except the low precipice that has been mentioned, and that proved to be
no great matter to climb around. Meanwhile every foot of the rapid
offered a fascinating study to the river-man. This rapid seemed to go
against all the customary rules for rapids. Nowhere in all its torn
expanse could Stonor pick a channel; the rocks stuck up everywhere. He
noticed that one could have returned in a canoe in safety from the very
brink of the falls by means of the back-waters that crept up the shore.
His attention was caught by a log-jam out in the rapid. He had scarcely
noticed it the day before while searching for tracks. Two great rocks,
that stuck out of the water close together where the current ran
swiftest, had at some time caught an immense fallen tree squarely on
their shoulders, and the pressure of the current held it there. Another
tree had caught on the obstruction, and another, and now the fantastic
pile reared itself high out of the water.
At the moment Stonor had no weightier matter on his mind than to puzzle
how this had come about. Suddenly his blood ran cold to perceive what
looked like a human foot sticking out of the water at the bottom of the
pile. He violently rubbed his eyes, thinking that they deceived him.
But there was no mistake. It _was_ a foot, clad in a moccasin of the
ordinary style of the country. While Stonor looked it was agitated back
and forth as in a final struggle. With a sickened breast, he
instinctively looked around for some means of rescue. But he immediately
realized that the owner of the foot was long past aid. The movement was
due simply to the action of the current.
His brain whirled dizzily. A foot? Whose foot? Imbrie's? There was no
other man anywhere near. But Imbrie knew the place so well he could not
have been carried down, unless he had chosen to end his life that way.
And his anxiety to obtain food the night before did not suggest that he
had any intention of putting himself out of the way. Perhaps it was an
Indian drowned up-river and carried down. But they would surely have
heard of the accident on the way. More likely Imbrie. If his brain was
unhinged, who could say what wild impulse might seize him? Was this the
reason for Clare's premonition? If it was Imbrie, how could he tell her?
Stonor forced down the mounting horror that constricted his throat, and
soberly bethought himself of what he must do. Useless to speculate on
whose the body might be; he had to find out. He examined the place up
and down with fresh care. The log-jam was about half-a-mile above the
falls, and a slightly lesser distance below Imbrie's shack. It was
nearer his side of the river than the other; say, fifty yards of torn
white water lay between the drift-pile and the beach. To wade or swim
out was out of the question. On the other hand, the strongest flow of
water, the channel such as it was, set directly for the obstruction, and
it might be possible to drop down on it from above--if one provided some
means for getting back again. Stonor marked the position of every rock,
every reef above, and little by little made his plan.
He returned to the shack. In her present state of nerves he dared not
tell Clare of what he had found. In any case he might be mistaken in his
supposition as to the identity of the body. In that case she need never
be told. He was careful to present himself with a smooth face.
"Any news?" cried Clare eagerly. "You've been gone so long!"
He shook his head. "Anything here?"
"Nothing. I am ready to go now as soon as we have eaten."
Stonor, faced with the necessity of suddenly discovering some reason for
delaying their start, stroked his chin. "Have you slept?" he asked.
"How could I sleep?"
"I don't think you ought to start until you've had some sleep."
"I can sleep later."
"I need sleep too. And Mary."
"Of course! How selfish of me! We can start towards evening, then."
While Clare was setting the biscuits to the fire in the shack, and
Stonor was chopping wood outside, Mary came out for an armful of wood.
The opportunity of speaking to her privately was too good to be missed.
"Mary," said Stonor. "There's a dead body caught in the rapids below
here."
"Wah!" she cried, letting the wood fall. "You teenk it is _him_?"
"I don't know. I suppose so. I've got to find out."
"Find out? In the rapids? How you goin' find out? You get carry over the
falls!"
"Not so loud! I've got it all doped out. I'm taking no unnecessary
chances. But I'll need you to help me."
"I not help you," said Mary rebelliously. "I not help you drown
yourself--for a dead man. He's dead anyhow. If you go over the falls
what we do? What we do?"
"Easy! I told you I had a good plan. Wait and see what it is. Get her to
sleep this afternoon, and we'll try to pull it off before she wakes. Now
run on in, or she'll wonder what we're talking about. Don't show
anything in your face."
Mary's prime accomplishment lay in hiding her feelings. She picked up
her wood, and went stolidly into the shack.
Stonor, searching among Imbrie's things, was much reassured to find a
tracking-line. This, added to his own line, would give him six hundred
feet of rope, which he judged ample for his purpose. He spliced the two
while the meal was preparing.
"What's that for?" Clare asked.
"To help us up-stream."
As soon as he had eaten he went back to the beach. His movements here
were invisible to those in the shack. He carried the remaining
bark-canoe on his back down the beach to a point about a hundred and
fifty yards above the log-jam. This was to be his point of departure. He
took a fresh survey of the rapids, and went over and over in his mind
the course he meant to take.
After cutting off several short lengths that he required for various
purposes, Stonor fastened the end of the line to a tree on the edge of
the bank; the other end he made fast to the stern of the canoe--not to
the point of the stern, but to the stern-thwart where it joined the
gunwale. This was designed to hold the canoe at an angle against the
current that would keep her out in the stream. The slack of the line was
coiled neatly on the beach.
With one of the short lengths Stonor then made an offset from this line
near where it was fastened to the thwart, and passed it around his own
body under the arms. Thus, if the canoe smashed on the rocks or
swamped, by cutting the line at the thwart the strain would be
transferred to Stonor's body, and the canoe could be left to its fate.
Another short length with a loop at the end was made fast at the other
end of the thwart. This was for the purpose of making fast to the
log-jam while Stonor worked to free the body. A third piece of line he
carried around his neck. This was to secure the body.
During the course of these preparations Mary joined him. She reported
that Clare was fast asleep. Stonor made a little prayer that she might
not awaken till this business was over.
He explained to Mary what he was about, and showed her her part. She
listened sullenly, but, seeing that his mind was made up, shrugged at
the uselessness of opposing his will. Mary was to pay out the rope
according to certain instructions, and afterwards to haul him in.
Finally, after reassuring himself of the security of all his knots, he
divested himself of hat, tunic, and boots and stepped into the canoe. He
shook hands with Mary, took his knife between his teeth, and pushed off.
He made as much as he could out of the back-water alongshore, and then,
heading diagonally up-stream, shot out into the turmoil, paddling like a
man possessed in order to make sure of getting far enough out before the
current swept him abreast of his destination. Mary, according to
instructions, paid out the rope freely. Before starting he had marked
every rock in his course, and he avoided them now by instinct. His
thinking had been done beforehand. He worked like a machine.
He saw that he was going to make it, with something to spare. When he
had the log-jam safely under his quarter, he stopped paddling, and,
bringing the canoe around, drifted down on it. There was plenty of
water out here. He held up a hand to Mary, and according to
pre-arrangement she gradually took up the strain on the line. The canoe
slowed up, and the current began to race past.
So far so good. The line held the canoe slightly broached to the
current, thus the pressure of the current itself kept him from edging
ashore. The log-pile loomed up squarely ahead of him. Mary let him down
on it hand over hand. He manoeuvred himself abreast an immense log
pointing up and down river, alongside of which the current slipped
silkily. Casting his loop over the stump of a branch, he was held fast
and the strain was taken off Mary's arms.
The moccasined foot protruded from the water at the bow of his canoe. He
soon saw the impossibility of attempting to work from the frail canoe,
so he untied the rope which bound him to it, and pulled himself out on
the logs. The rope from the shore was still around his body in case of a
slip. He was taking no unnecessary chances.
The body was caught in some way under the same great log that his canoe
was fastened to. The current tore at the projecting foot with a snarl.
The foot oscillated continually under the pull, and sometimes
disappeared altogether, only to spring back into sight with a ghastly
life-like motion. Stonor cautiously straddled the log, and groped
beneath it. His principal anxiety was that log and all might come away
from the jam and be carried down, but there was little danger that his
insignificant weight would disturb so great a bulk.
The body was caught in the fork of a branch underneath. He succeeded in
freeing the other foot. He guessed that a smart pull up-stream would
liberate the whole, but in that case the current would almost surely
snatch it from his grasp. He saw that it would be an impossible task
from his insecure perch to drag the body out on the log, and in turn
load it into the fragile canoe. His only chance lay in towing it ashore.
So, with the piece of line he had brought for the purpose, he lashed the
feet together, and made the other end fast to the bow-thwart of the
canoe. Then he got in and adjusted his stern-line as before--it became
the bow-line for the return journey. In case it should become necessary
to cut adrift from the canoe, he took the precaution of passing a line
direct from his body to that which he meant to tow. When all was ready
he signalled to Mary to haul in.
Now began the most difficult half of his journey. On the strength of
Mary's arms depended the freeing of the body. It came away slowly.
Stonor had an instant's glimpse of the ghastly tow bobbing astern,
before settling down to the business in hand. For awhile all went well,
though the added pull of the submerged body put a terrific strain on
Mary. Fortunately she was as strong as a man. Stonor aided her all he
could with his paddle, but that was little. He was kept busy fending his
egg-shell craft off the rocks. He had instructed Mary, as the slack
accumulated, to walk gradually up the beach. This was to avoid the
danger of the canoe's broaching too far to the current. But Mary could
not do it under the increased load. The best she could manage was to
brace her body against the stones, and pull in hand over hand.
As the line shortened Stonor saw that he was going to have trouble.
Instead of working in-shore, the canoe was edging further into the
stream, and ever presenting a more dangerous angle to the tearing
current. Mary had pulled in about a third of the line, when suddenly the
canoe, getting the current under her dead rise, darted out into
mid-stream like a fish at the end of a line, and hung there canting
dangerously. The current snarled along the gunwale like an animal
preparing to crush its prey.
The strain on Mary was frightful. She was extended at full length with
her legs braced against an outcrop of rock. Stonor could see her
agonized expression. He shouted to her to slack off the line, but of
course the roar of the water drowned his puny voice. In dumb-play he
tried desperately to show her what to do, but Mary was possessed of but
one idea, to hang on until her arms were pulled out.
The canoe tipped inch by inch, and the boiling water crept up its
freeboard. Finally it swept in, and Stonor saw that all was over with
the canoe. With a single stroke of his knife he severed the rope at the
thwart behind him; with another stroke the rope in front. When the tug
came on his body he was jerked clean out of the canoe. It passed out of
his reckoning. By the drag behind him, he knew he still had the dead
body safe.
He instinctively struck out, but the tearing water, mocking his feeble
efforts, buffeted him this way and that as with the swing of giant arms.
Sometimes he was spun helplessly on the end of his line like a
trolling-spoon. He was flung sideways around a boulder and pressed there
by the hands of the current until it seemed the breath was slowly
leaving his body. Dazed, blinded, gasping, he somehow managed to
struggle over it, and was cast further in-shore. The tendency of the
current was to sweep him in now. If he could only keep alive! The stones
were thicker in-shore. He was beaten first on one side, then the other.
All his conscious efforts were reduced to protecting his head from the
rocks with his arms.
The water may have been but a foot or two deep, but of course he could
gain no footing. He still dragged his leaden burden. All the breath was
knocked out of him under the continual blows, but he was conscious of no
pain. The last few moments were a blank. He found himself in the
back-water, and expended his last ounce of strength in crawling out on
hands and knees on the beach. He cast himself flat, sobbing for breath.
Mary came running to his aid. He was able to nod to her reassuringly,
and in the ecstasy of her relief, she sat down suddenly, and wept like a
white woman. Stonor gathered himself together and sat up groaning. The
onset of pain was well-nigh unendurable. He felt literally as if his
flesh all over had been pounded to a jelly. But all his limbs,
fortunately, responded to their functions.
"Lie still," Mary begged of him.
He shook his head. "I must keep moving, or I'll become as helpless as a
log."
The nameless thing was floating in the back-water. Together they dragged
it out on the stones. It was Stonor's first sight of that which had cost
him such pains to secure. He nerved himself to bear it. Mary was no fine
lady, but she turned her head away. The man's face was totally
unrecognizable by reason of the battering it had received on the rocks;
his clothes were partly in ribbons; there was a gaping wound in the
breast.
For the rest, as far as Stonor could judge, it was the body of a young
man, and a comely one. His skin was dark like that of an Italian, or a
white man with a quarter or eighth strain of Indian blood in his veins.
Stonor was astonished by this fact; nothing that he had heard had
suggested that Imbrie was not as white as himself. This put a new look
on affairs. For an instant Stonor doubted. But the man's hand was
well-formed and well-kept; and in what remained of his clothes one could
still see the good materials and the neatness. In fact, it could be none
other than Imbrie.
He was roused from his contemplation of the gruesome object by a sharp
exclamation from Mary. Looking up, he saw Clare a quarter of a mile
away, hastening to them along the beach. His heart sank.
"Go to her," he said quickly. "Keep her from coming here."
Mary hastened away. Stonor followed more slowly, disguising his soreness
as best he could. For him it was cruel going over the stones--yet all
the way he was oddly conscious of the beauty of the wild cascade,
sweeping down between its green shores.
As he had feared, Clare refused to be halted by Mary. Thrusting the
Indian woman aside, she came on to Stonor.
"What's the matter?" she cried stormily. "Why did you both leave me? Why
does she try to stop me?--Why! you're all wet! Where's your tunic, your
boots? You're in pain!"
"Come to the house," he said. "I'll tell you."
She would not be put off. "What has happened? I insist on knowing now!
What is there down there I mustn't see?"
"Be guided by me," he pleaded. "Come away, and I'll tell you
everything."
"I _will_ see!" she cried. "Do you wish to put me out of my mind with
suspense?"
He saw that it was perhaps kinder not to oppose her. "I have found a
body in the river," he said. "Do not look at it. Let me tell you."
She broke away from him. "I must know the worst," she muttered.
He let her go. She ran on down the beach, and he hobbled after. She
stopped beside the body, and looked down with wide, wild eyes. One
dreadful low cry escaped her.
"Ernest!"
She collapsed. Stonor caught her sagging body. Her head fell limply back
over his arm.
CHAPTER X
THE START HOME
Stonor, refusing aid from Mary, painfully carried his burden all the way
back to the shack. He laid her on the bed. There was no sign of
returning animation. Mary loosened her clothing, chafed her hands, and
did what other offices her experience suggested. After what seemed like
an age to the watchers, she stirred and sighed. Stonor dreaded then what
recollection would bring to her awakening. But there was neither grief
nor terror in the quiet look she bent first on one then the other; only
a kind of annoyed perplexity. She closed her eyes again without
speaking, and presently her deepened breathing told them that she slept.
"Thank God!" whispered Stonor. "It's the best thing for her."
Mary followed him out of the shack. "Watch her close," he charged her.
"If you want me for anything come down to the beach and hail."
Stonor procured another knife and returned to the body. In the light of
Clare's identification he could have no further doubt that this was
indeed the remains of the unhappy Imbrie. She had her own means of
identification, he supposed. The man, undoubtedly deranged, must have
pushed off in his canoe and let the current carry him to his death.
Stonor, however, thinking of the report he must make to his commanding
officer, knew that his speculations were not sufficient. Much as he
disliked the necessity, it was incumbent on him to perform an autopsy.
This developed three surprising facts in this order: (a) there was no
water in the dead man's lungs, proving that he was already dead when his
body entered the water: (b) there was a bullet-hole through his heart:
(c) the bullet itself was lodged in his spine.
For a moment Stonor thought of murder--but only for a moment. A
glance showed him that the bullet was of thirty-eight calibre, a
revolver-bullet. Revolvers are unknown to the Indians. Stonor knew
that there were no revolvers in all the country round except his own,
Gaviller's forty-four, and one that the dead man himself might have
possessed. Consequently he saw no reason to change his original theory
of suicide. Imbrie, faced by that terrible drop, had merely hastened
the end by putting a bullet through his heart.
Stonor kept the bullet as possible evidence. He then looked about for a
suitable burial-place. His instinct was to provide the poor fellow with
a fair spot for his last long rest. Up on top of the low precipice of
rock that has been mentioned, there was a fine point of vantage visible
up-river beyond the head of the rapids. At no small pains Stonor dragged
the body up here, and with his knife dug him a shallow grave between the
roots of a conspicuous pine. It was a long, hard task. He covered him
with brush in lieu of a coffin, and, throwing the earth back, heaped a
cairn of stones on top. Placing a flat stone in the centre, he scratched
the man's name on it and the date. He spoke no articulate prayer, but
thought one perhaps.
"Sleep well, old fellow. It seems I was never to know you, though you
haunted me--and may perhaps haunt me still."
Dragging himself wearily back to the shack, Stonor found that Clare
still slept.
"Fine!" he said with clearing face. "There's no doctor like sleep!"
His secret dread was that she might become seriously ill. What would he
do in that case, so far away from help?
He sat himself down to watch beside Clare while Mary prepared the
evening meal. There were still some three hours more of daylight, and he
decided to be guided as to their start up-river by Clare's condition
when she awoke. If she had a horror of the place they could start at
once, provided she were able to travel, and sleep under canvas.
Otherwise it would be well to wait until morning, for he was pretty
nearly all in himself. Indeed, while he waited with the keenest anxiety
for Clare's eyes to open, his own closed. He slept with his head fallen
forward on his breast.
He awoke to find Clare's wide-open eyes wonderingly fixed on him.
"Who are you?" she asked.
It struck a chill to his breast. Was she mad? This was a more dreadful
horror than he had foreseen. Yet there was nothing distraught in her
gaze, merely that same look of perplexed annoyance. It was an
appreciable moment before he could collect his wits sufficiently to
answer.
"Your friend," he said, forcing himself to smile.
"Yes, I think you are," she said slowly. "But it's funny I don't quite
know you."
"You soon will."
"What is your name?"
"Martin Stonor."
"And that uniform you are wearing?"
"Mounted police."
She raised herself a little, and looked around. The puzzled expression
deepened. "What a strange-looking room! What am I doing in such a
place?"
To Stonor it was like a conversation in a dream. It struck awe to his
breast. Yet he forced himself to answer lightly and cheerfully. "This
is a shack in the woods where we are camping temporarily. We'll start
for home as soon as you are able."
"Home? Where is that?" she cried like a lost child.
A great hard lump rose in Stonor's throat. He could not speak.
After a while she said: "I feel all right. I could eat."
"That's fine!" he cried from the heart. "That's the main thing. Supper
will soon be ready."
The next question was asked with visible embarrassment. "You are not my
brother, are you, or any relation?"
"No, only your friend," he said, smiling.
She was troubled like a child, biting her lip, and turning her face from
him to hide the threatening tears. There was evidently some question she
could not bring herself to ask. He could not guess what it was.
Certainly not the one she did ask.
"What time is it?"
"Past seven o'clock."
"That means nothing to me," she burst out bitterly. "It's like the first
hour to me. It's so foolish to be asking such questions! I don't know
what's the matter with me! I don't even know my own name!"
That was it! "Your name is Clare Starling," he said steadily.
"What am I doing in a shack in the woods?"
He hesitated before answering this. His first fright had passed. He had
heard of people losing their memories, and knew that it was not
necessarily a dangerous state. Indeed, now, this wiping-out of
recollection seemed like a merciful dispensation, and he dreaded the
word that would bring the agony back.
"Don't ask any more questions now," he begged her. "Just rest up for the
moment, and take things as they come."
"Something terrible has happened!" she said agitatedly. "That is why I
am like this. You're afraid to tell me what it is. But I must know.
Nothing could be so bad as not knowing anything. It is unendurable not
to have any identity. Don't you understand? I am empty inside here. The
me is gone!"
He arose and stood beside her bed. "I ask you to trust me," he said
gravely. "I am the only doctor available. If you excite yourself like
this only harm can come of it. Everything is all right now. You have
nothing to fear. People who lose their memories always get them back
again. If you do not remember of yourself I promise to tell you
everything that has happened."
"I will try to be patient," she said dutifully.
Presently she asked: "Is there no one here but us? I thought I
remembered a woman--or did I dream it?"
Stonor called Mary in and introduced her. Clare's eyes widened. "An
Indian woman!" their expression said.
Stonor said, as if speaking of the most everyday matter: "Mary, Miss
Starling's memory is gone. It will soon return, of course, and in the
meantime plenty of food and sleep are the best things for her. She has
promised me not to ask any more questions for the present."
Mary paled slightly. To her, loss of memory smacked of insanity of which
she was terribly in awe--like all her race. However, under Stonor's
stern eye she kept her face pretty well.
Clare said: "I'd like to get up now," and Stonor left the shack.
Nothing further happened that night. Clare ate a good supper, and a bit
of colour returned to her cheeks. Stonor had no reason to be anxious
concerning her physical condition. She asked no more questions.
Immediately after eating he sent her and Mary to bed. Shortly
afterwards Mary reported that Clare had fallen asleep again.
Stonor slept in the store-room. He was up at dawn, and by sunrise he had
everything ready for the start up-river.
It was an entirely self-possessed Clare that issued from the shack after
breakfast, yet there was something inaccessible about her. Though she
was anxious to be friends with Stonor and Mary, she was cut off from
them. They had to begin all over again with her. There was something
piteous in the sight of the little figure so alone even among her
friends; but she was bearing it pluckily.
She looked around her eagerly. The river was very lovely, with the sun
drinking up the light mist from its surface.
"What river is this?" she asked.
Stonor told her.
"It is not altogether strange to me," she said. "I feel as if I might
have known it in a previous existence. There is a fall below, isn't
there?"
"Yes."
"How do you suppose I knew that?"
He shrugged, smiling.
"And the--the catastrophe happened down there," she said diffidently. He
nodded.
"I feel it like a numb place inside me. But I don't want to go down
there. I feel differently from yesterday. Some day soon, of course, I
must turn back the dreadful pages, but not quite yet. I want a little
sunshine and laziness and sleep first; a little vacation from trouble."
"That's just as it should be," said Stonor, much relieved.
"Isn't it funny, I can't remember anything that ever happened to me, yet
I haven't forgotten everything I knew. I know the meaning of things. I
still seem to talk like a grown-up person. Words come to me when I need
them. How do you explain that?"
"Well, I suppose it's because just one little department of your brain
has stopped working for a while."
"Well, I'm not going to worry. The world is beautiful."
* * * * *
The journey up-stream was a toilsome affair. Though the current between
the rapids was not especially swift, it made a great difference when
what had been added to their rate of paddling on the way down, was
deducted on the way back. Stonor foresaw that it would take them close
on ten days to make the Horse-Track. He and Mary took turns tracking the
canoe from the bank, while the other rested. Clare steered. Ascending
the rapids presented no new problems to a river-man, but it was
downright hard work. All hands joined in pulling and pushing, careless
of how they got wet.
The passing days brought no change in Clare's mental state, and in
Stonor the momentary dread of some thought or word that might bring
recollection crashing back, was gradually lulled. Physically she showed
an astonishing improvement, rejoicing in the hard work in the rapids,
eating and sleeping like a growing boy. To Stonor it was enchanting to
see the rosy blood mantle her pale cheeks and the sparkle of bodily
well-being enhance her eyes. With this new tide of health came a stouter
resistance to imaginative terrors. Away with doubts and questionings!
For the moment the physical side of her was uppermost. It was Nature's
own way of effecting a cure. Towards Stonor, in this new character of
hers, she displayed a hint of laughing boldness that enraptured him.
At first he would not let himself believe what he read in her new gaze;
that the natural woman who had sloughed off the burdens of an unhappy
past was disposed to love him. But of course he could not really resist
so sweet a suggestion. Let him tell himself all he liked that he was
living in a fool's paradise; that when recollection returned, as it must
in the end, she would think no more of him; nevertheless, when she
looked at him like that, he could not help being happy. The journey took
on a thousand new delights for him; such delights as his solitary youth
had never known. At least, he told himself, there was no sin in it, for
the only man who had a better claim on her was dead and buried.
One night they were camped beside some bare tepee poles on a point of
the bank. Mary had gone off to set a night-line in an eddy; Stonor lay
on his back in the grass smoking, and Clare sat near, nursing her knees.
"You've forbidden me to ask questions about myself," said she; "but how
about you?"
"Oh, there's nothing to tell about me."
She affected to study him with a disinterested air. "I don't believe you
have a wife," she said wickedly. "You haven't a married look."
"What kind of a look is that?"
"Oh, a sort of apologetic look."
"Well, as a matter of fact, I'm not married," he said, grinning.
"Have you a sweetheart?" she asked in her abrupt way, so like a boy's.
Stonor regarded his pipe-bowl attentively, but did not thereby succeed
in masking his blushes.
"Aha! You have!" she cried. "No need to answer."
"That depends on what you mean," he said, determined not to let her
outface him. "If you mean a regular cut and dried affair, no."
"But you're in love."
"Some might say so."
"Don't you say so?"
"I don't know. I've had no instruction on the subject."
"Pshaw! It's a poor kind of man that needs instruction!"
"I daresay."
"Tell me, and maybe I can instruct you."
"How can you tell the untellable?"
"Well, for instance, do you like to be with her?"
Stonor affected to study the matter. "No," he said.
She gave him so comical a look of rebuke that he laughed outright. "I
mean I'm uncomfortable whether I'm with her or away from her," he
explained.
"There may be something in that," she admitted. "Have you ever told
her?"
"No."
"Why don't you tell her like a man?"
"Things are not as simple as all that."
"Obstacles, eh?"
"Rather!"
A close observer might have perceived under Clare's scornful chaffing
the suggestion of a serious and anxious purpose. "Bless me! this is
getting exciting!" she said. "Maybe the lady has a husband?"
"No, not that."
A glint of relief showed under her lowered lids. "What's the trouble,
then?"
"Oh, just my general unworthiness, I guess."
"I don't think you can love her very much," she said, with pretended
scorn.
"Perhaps not," he said, refusing to be drawn.
She allowed the subject to drop. It was characteristic of Clare in her
lighter moments that her conversation skipped from subject to subject
like a chamois on the heights. Those who knew her well, though, began to
suspect in the end that there was often a method in her skipping. She
now talked of the day's journey, of the weather, of Mary's good
cooking, of a dozen minor matters. After a long time, when he might
naturally be supposed to have forgotten what they had started with, she
said offhand:
"Do you mind if I ask one question about myself?"
"Fire away."
"You told me my name was Miss Clare Starling."
"Do you suspect otherwise?"
"What am I doing with a wedding-ring?"
It took him unawares. He stared at her a little clownishly. "I--I never
noticed it," he stammered.
"It's hanging on a string around my neck."
"Your husband is dead," he said bluntly.
She cast down her eyes. "Was that--the catastrophe that happened up
here?"
While he wished to keep the information from her as long as possible, he
could not lie to her. "Yes," he said. "Don't ask any more."
She bowed as one who acknowledges the receipt of information not
personally important. "One more question; was he a good man, a man you
respected?"
"Oh, yes," he said quickly.
She looked puzzled. "Strange I should feel no sense of loss," she
murmured.
"You had been parted from him for a long time."
They fell silent. The charming spell that had bound them was effectually
broken. She shivered delicately, and announced her intention of going to
bed.
But in the morning she showed him a shining morning face. To arise
refreshed from sleep, hungry for one's breakfast, and eager for the
day's journey, was enough for her just now. She was living in her
instincts. Her instinct told her that Stonor loved her, and that
sufficed her. The dreadful things might wait.
Having ascended the last rapid, they found they could make better time
by paddling the dug-out, keeping close under the shore as the Kakisas
did, and cutting across from side to side on the inside of each bend to
keep out of the strongest of the current. The seating arrangement was
the same as at their start; Mary in the bow, Stonor in the stern, and
Clare facing Stonor. Thus all day long their eyes were free to dwell on
each other, nor did they tire. They had reached that perfect stage where
the eyes confess what the tongue dares not name; that charming stage of
folly when lovers tell themselves they
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