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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Northern Lights, by Gilbert Parker
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Northern Lights
+
+Author: Gilbert Parker
+
+Release Date: October 12, 2008 [EBook #26905]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NORTHERN LIGHTS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: BUT NOW HE HEARD A VOICE ABOVE HIM. IT WAS
+HER VOICE See page 353 ]
+
+
+
+
+NORTHERN LIGHTS
+
+BY
+GILBERT PARKER
+
+ILLUSTRATED
+
+HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
+NEW YORK AND LONDON
+MCMIX
+
+
+
+
+Books by
+GILBERT PARKER
+
+Northern Lights. Illustrated      Post 8vo $1.50
+The Weavers. Illustrated          Post 8vo 1.50
+The Right of Way. Illustrated     Post 8vo 1.50
+A Ladder of Swords. Illustrated   Post 8vo 1.50
+
+Pierre and His People.
+Mrs. Falchion.
+The Trespasser.
+The Translation of a Savage.
+The Trail of the Sword.
+When Valmond Came to Pontiac.
+An Adventurer of the North.
+The Seats of the Mighty.
+The Pomp of the Lavilettes.
+The Battle of the Strong.
+The Lane that Had No Turning.
+Donovan Pasha.
+Old Quebec (In collaboration with C. G. Bryan).
+Round the Compass in Australia.
+A Lover's Diary.
+Embers (Private Publication only).
+
+Copyright, 1909, by HARPER & BROTHERS.
+All rights reserved.
+Published September, 1909.
+
+
+
+
+TO
+ISHBEL, COUNTESS OF ABERDEEN
+A TRUE FRIEND
+OF THE GREAT DOMINION
+
+
+
+
+NOTE
+
+The tales in this book belong to two different epochs in the life of the
+Far West. The first five are reminiscent of "border days and deeds"--of
+days before the great railway was built which changed a waste into a
+fertile field of civilization. The remaining stories cover the period
+passed since the Royal Northwest Mounted Police and the Pullman Car first
+startled the early pioneer, and sent him into the land of the farther
+North or drew him into the quiet circle of civic routine and humdrum
+occupation.
+
+G. P.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+CHAPTER                               PAGE
+A Lodge in the Wilderness                1
+Once at Red Man's River                 21
+The Stroke of the Hour                  38
+Buckmaster's Boy                        57
+To-Morrow                               72
+Qu'appelle                              94
+The Stake and the Plumb-Line           118
+When the Swallows Homeward Fly         160
+George's Wife                          174
+Marcile                                196
+A Man, a Famine, and a Heathen Boy     216
+The Healing Springs and the Pioneers   234
+The Little Widow of Jansen             253
+Watching The Rise of Orion             272
+The Error of the Day                   295
+The Whisperer                          314
+As Deep as the Sea                     334
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+                                                    PAGE
+
+BUT NOW HE HEARD A VOICE ABOVE HIM. IT WAS
+HER VOICE                                   Frontispiece
+
+THE BIRD SHE HEARD IN THE NIGHT WAS
+CALLING IN HIS EARS NOW                               14
+
+THE START ON THE NORTH TRAIL                          36
+
+SHE SWAYED AND FELL FAINTING AT THE
+FEET OF BA'TISTE                                      56
+
+LITTLE BY LITTLE THEY DREW TO THE EDGE
+OF THE ROCK                                           70
+
+"THEY SHOT ME AN' HURT ME"                            74
+
+"PAULINE," HE SAID, FEEBLY, AND
+FAINTED IN HER ARMS                                  114
+
+THE OLD MAN SHOOK HIS HEAD. THOUGH
+NOT WITH UNDERSTANDING                               166
+
+GEORGE'S WIFE                                        184
+
+THEN HAD HAPPENED THE REAL EVENT OF
+HIS LIFE                                             198
+
+THE FAITH HEALER                                     236
+
+"AS PURTY A WOMAN, TOO--AS PURTY AND
+AS STRAIGHT BEWHILES"                                256
+
+"IF YOU KILL ME, YOU WILL NEVER GET
+AWAY FROM KOWATIN ALIVE"                             312
+
+FOR MINUTES THE STRUGGLE CONTINUED                   332
+
+"OH, ISN'T IT ALL WORTH LIVING?"
+SHE SAID                                             342
+
+
+
+
+NORTHERN LIGHTS
+
+
+
+
+A LODGE IN THE WILDERNESS
+
+
+"Hai-yai, so bright a day, so clear!" said Mitiahwe as she entered the big
+lodge and laid upon a wide, low couch, covered with soft skins, the fur of
+a grizzly which had fallen to her man's rifle. "_Hai-yai_, I wish it would
+last forever--so sweet!" she added, smoothing the fur lingeringly and
+showing her teeth in a smile.
+
+"There will come a great storm, Mitiahwe. See, the birds go south so
+soon," responded a deep voice from a corner by the doorway.
+
+The young Indian wife turned quickly, and, in a defiant, fantastic
+mood--or was it the inward cry against an impending fate, the tragic
+future of those who will not see, because to see is to suffer?--she made
+some quaint, odd motions of the body which belonged to a mysterious dance
+of her tribe, and, with flashing eyes, challenged the comely old woman
+seated on a pile of deer-skins.
+
+"It is morning, and the day will last forever," she said, nonchalantly,
+but her eyes suddenly took on a far-away look, half apprehensive, half
+wondering. The birds were indeed going south very soon, yet had there ever
+been so exquisite an autumn as this, had her man ever had so wonderful a
+trade, her man with the brown hair, blue eyes, and fair, strong face?
+
+"The birds go south, but the hunters and buffalo still go north," Mitiahwe
+urged, searchingly, looking hard at her mother--Oanita, the Swift Wing.
+
+"My dream said that the winter will be dark and lonely, that the ice will
+be thick, the snow deep, and that many hearts will be sick because of the
+black days and the hunger that sickens the heart," answered Swift Wing.
+
+Mitiahwe looked into Swift Wing's dark eyes, and an anger came upon her.
+"The hearts of cowards will freeze," she rejoined, "and to those that will
+not see the sun the world will be dark," she added. Then suddenly she
+remembered to whom she was speaking, and a flood of feeling ran through
+her; for Swift Wing had cherished her like a fledgling in the nest till
+her young white man came from "down East." Her heart had leaped up at
+sight of him, and she had turned to him from all the young men of her
+tribe, waiting in a kind of mist till he, at last, had spoken to her
+mother, and then one evening, her shawl over her head, she had come along
+to his lodge.
+
+A thousand times as the four years passed by she had thought how good it
+was that she had become his wife--the young white man's wife, rather than
+the wife of Breaking Rock, son of White Buffalo, the chief, who had four
+hundred horses and a face that would have made winter and sour days for
+her. Now and then Breaking Rock came and stood before the lodge, a
+distance off, and stayed there hour after hour, and once or twice he came
+when her man was with her; but nothing could be done, for earth and air
+and space were common to them all, and there was no offence in Breaking
+Rock gazing at the lodge where Mitiahwe lived. Yet it seemed as though
+Breaking Rock was waiting--waiting and hoping. That was the impression
+made upon all who saw him, and even old White Buffalo, the chief, shook
+his head gloomily when he saw Breaking Rock, his son, staring at the big
+lodge which was so full of happiness, and so full also of many luxuries
+never before seen at a trading-post on the Koonee River. The father of
+Mitiahwe had been chief, but because his three sons had been killed in
+battle the chieftainship had come to White Buffalo, who was of the same
+blood and family. There were those who said that Mitiahwe should have been
+chieftainess; but neither she nor her mother would ever listen to this,
+and so White Buffalo and the tribe loved Mitiahwe because of her modesty
+and goodness. She was even more to White Buffalo than Breaking Rock, and
+he had been glad that Dingan the white man--Long Hand he was called--had
+taken Mitiahwe for his woman. Yet behind this gladness of White Buffalo,
+and that of Swift Wing, and behind the silent watchfulness of Breaking
+Rock, there was a thought which must ever come when a white man mates with
+an Indian maid, without priest or preacher, or writing, or book, or bond.
+
+Yet four years had gone; and all the tribe, and all who came and went,
+half-breeds, traders, and other tribes, remarked how happy was the white
+man with his Indian wife. They never saw anything but light in the eyes of
+Mitiahwe, nor did the old women of the tribe who scanned her face as she
+came and went, and watched and waited too for what never came--not even
+after four years.
+
+Mitiahwe had been so happy that she had not really missed what never came;
+though the desire to have something in her arms which was part of them
+both had flushed up in her veins at times, and made her restless till her
+man had come home again. Then she had forgotten the unseen for the seen,
+and was happy that they two were alone together--that was the joy of it
+all, so much alone together; for Swift Wing did not live with them, and,
+like Breaking Rock, she watched her daughter's life, standing afar off,
+since it was the unwritten law of the tribe that the wife's mother must
+not cross the path or enter the home of her daughter's husband. But at
+last Dingan had broken through this custom, and insisted that Swift Wing
+should be with her daughter when he was away from home, as now on this
+wonderful autumn morning, when Mitiahwe had been singing to the Sun, to
+which she prayed for her man and for everlasting days with him.
+
+She had spoken angrily but now, because her soul sharply resented the
+challenge to her happiness which her mother had been making. It was her
+own eyes that refused to see the cloud which the sage and bereaved woman
+had seen and conveyed in images and figures of speech natural to the
+Indian mind.
+
+"_Hai-yai_," she said now, with a strange, touching sigh breathing in the
+words, "you are right, my mother, and a dream is a dream; also, if it be
+dreamed three times, then is it to be followed, and it is true. You have
+lived long, and your dreams are of the Sun and the Spirit." She shook a
+little as she laid her hand on a buckskin coat of her man hanging by the
+lodge door; then she steadied herself again, and gazed earnestly into her
+mother's eyes. "Have all your dreams come true, my mother?" she asked,
+with a hungering heart.
+
+"There was the dream that came out of the dark five times, when your
+father went against the Crees, and was wounded, and crawled away into the
+hills, and all our warriors fled--they were but a handful, and the Crees
+like a young forest in number! I went with my dream, and found him after
+many days, and it was after that you were born, my youngest and my last.
+There was also"--her eyes almost closed, and the needle and thread she
+held lay still in her lap--"when two of your brothers were killed in the
+drive of the buffalo. Did I not see it all in my dream, and follow after
+them to take them to my heart? And when your sister was carried off, was
+it not my dream which saw the trail, so that we brought her back again to
+die in peace, her eyes seeing the Lodge whither she was going, open to
+her, and the Sun, the Father, giving her light and promise--for she had
+wounded herself to die that the thief who stole her should leave her to
+herself! Behold, my daughter, these dreams have I had, and others; and I
+have lived long and have seen the bright day break into storm, and the
+herds flee into the far hills where none could follow, and hunger come,
+and--"
+
+"_Hai-yo_, see, the birds flying south," said the girl, with a gesture
+toward the cloudless sky. "Never since I lived have they gone south so
+soon." Again she shuddered slightly, then she spoke slowly: "I also have
+dreamed, and I will follow my dream. I dreamed"--she knelt down beside her
+mother and rested her hands in her mother's lap--"I dreamed that there was
+a wall of hills dark and heavy and far away, and that whenever my eyes
+looked at them they burned with tears; and yet I looked and looked, till
+my heart was like lead in my breast; and I turned from them to the rivers
+and the plains that I loved. But a voice kept calling to me, 'Come, come!
+Beyond the hills is a happy land. The trail is hard, and your feet will
+bleed, but beyond is the happy land.' And I would not go for the voice
+that spoke, and at last there came an old man in my dream and spoke to me
+kindly, and said, 'Come with me, and I will show thee the way over the
+hills to the Lodge where thou shalt find what thou hast lost!' And I said
+to him, 'I have lost nothing'; and I would not go. Twice I dreamed this
+dream, and twice the old man came, and three times I dreamed it; and then
+I spoke angrily to him, as but now I did to thee; and behold he changed
+before my eyes, and I saw that he was now become--" She stopped short, and
+buried her face in her hands for a moment, then recovered herself.
+"Breaking Rock it was I saw before me, and I cried out and fled. Then I
+waked with a cry, but my man was beside me, and his arm was round my neck;
+and this dream, is it not a foolish dream, my mother?"
+
+The old woman sat silent, clasping the hands of her daughter firmly, and
+looking out of the wide doorway toward the trees that fringed the river;
+and presently, as she looked, her face changed and grew pinched all at
+once, and Mitiahwe, looking at her, turned a startled face toward the
+river also.
+
+"Breaking Rock!" she said, in alarm, and got to her feet quickly.
+
+Breaking Rock stood for a moment looking toward the lodge, then came
+slowly forward to them. Never in all the four years had he approached this
+lodge of Mitiahwe, who, the daughter of a chief, should have married
+himself, the son of a chief! Slowly, but with long, slouching stride,
+Breaking Rock came nearer. The two women watched him without speaking.
+Instinctively they knew that he brought news, that something had happened;
+yet Mitiahwe felt at her belt for what no Indian girl would be without;
+and this one was a gift from her man on the anniversary of the day she
+first came to his lodge.
+
+Breaking Rock was at the door now, his beady eyes fixed on Mitiahwe's, his
+figure jerked to its full height, which made him, even then, two inches
+less than Long Hand. He spoke in a loud voice:
+
+"The last boat this year goes down the river to-morrow. Long Hand, your
+man, is going to his people. He will not come back. He has had enough of
+the Blackfoot woman. You will see him no more." He waved a hand to the
+sky. "The birds are going south. A hard winter is coming quick. You will
+be alone. Breaking Rock is rich. He has five hundred horses. Your man is
+going to his own people. Let him go. He is no man. It is four years, and
+still there are but two in your lodge. How!"
+
+He swung on his heel with a chuckle in his throat, for he thought he had
+said a good thing, and that in truth he was worth twenty white men. His
+quick ear caught a movement behind him, however, and he saw the girl
+spring from the lodge-door, something flashing from her belt. But now the
+mother's arms were round her, with cries of protest, and Breaking Rock,
+with another laugh, slipped away softly toward the river.
+
+"That is good," he muttered. "She will kill him, perhaps, when she goes to
+him. She will go, but he will not stay. I have heard."
+
+As he disappeared among the trees, Mitiahwe disengaged herself from her
+mother's arms, went slowly back into the lodge, and sat down on the great
+couch where for so many moons she had lain with her man beside her.
+
+Her mother watched her closely, though she moved about doing little
+things. She was trying to think what she would have done if such a thing
+had happened to her, if her man had been going to leave her. She assumed
+that Dingan would leave Mitiahwe, for he would hear the voices of his
+people calling far away, even as the red man who went East into the great
+cities heard the prairies and the mountains and the rivers and his own
+people calling, and came back, and put off the clothes of civilization,
+and donned his buckskins again, and sat in the Medicine Man's tent, and
+heard the spirits speak to him through the mist and smoke of the sacred
+fire. When Swift Wing first gave her daughter to the white man she foresaw
+the danger now at hand, but this was the tribute of the lower race to the
+higher, and--who could tell? White men had left their Indian wives, but
+had come back again, and forever renounced the life of their own nations,
+and become great chiefs, teaching useful things to their adopted people,
+bringing up their children as tribesmen--bringing up their children! There
+it was, the thing which called them back, the bright-eyed children, with
+the color of the brown prairie in their faces, and their brains so sharp
+and strong. But here was no child to call Dingan back, only the eloquent,
+brave, sweet face of Mitiahwe..... If he went! Would he go? Was he going?
+And now that Mitiahwe had been told that he would go, what would she do?
+In her belt was--but, no, that would be worse than all, and she would lose
+Mitiahwe, her last child, as she had lost so many others. What would she
+herself do if she were in Mitiahwe's place? Ah, she would make him stay
+somehow--by truth or by falsehood; by the whispered story in the long
+night; by her head upon his knee before the lodge-fire, and her eyes fixed
+on his, luring him, as the dream lures the dreamer into the far trail, to
+find the Sun's hunting-ground, where the plains are filled with the deer
+and the buffalo and the wild horse; by the smell of the cooking-pot and
+the favorite spiced drink in the morning; by the child that ran to him
+with his bow and arrows and the cry of the hunter--but there was no child;
+she had forgotten. She was always recalling her own happy early life with
+her man, and the clean-faced papooses that crowded round his knee--one
+wife and many children, and the old Harvester of the Years reaping them so
+fast, till the children stood up as tall as their father and chief. That
+was long ago, and she had had her share--twenty-five years of happiness;
+but Mitiahwe had had only four. She looked at Mitiahwe, standing still for
+a moment like one rapt, then suddenly she gave a little cry. Something had
+come into her mind, some solution of the problem, and she ran and stooped
+over the girl and put both hands on her head.
+
+"Mitiahwe, heart's blood of mine," she said, "the birds go south, but they
+return. What matter if they go so soon, if they return soon. If the Sun
+wills that the winter be dark, and he sends the Coldmaker to close the
+rivers and drive the wild ones far from the arrow and the gun, yet he may
+be sorry, and send a second summer--has it not been so, and the Coldmaker
+has hurried away--away! The birds go south, but they will return,
+Mitiahwe."
+
+"I heard a cry in the night while my man slept," Mitiahwe answered,
+looking straight before her, "and it was like the cry of a bird--calling,
+calling, calling."
+
+"But he did not hear--he was asleep beside Mitiahwe. If he did not wake,
+surely it was good-luck. Thy breath upon his face kept him sleeping.
+Surely it was good-luck to Mitiahwe that he did not hear."
+
+She was smiling a little now, for she had thought of a thing which would,
+perhaps, keep the man here in this lodge in the wilderness; but the time
+to speak of it was not yet. She must wait and see.
+
+Suddenly Mitiahwe got to her feet with a spring, and a light in her eyes.
+"_Hai-yai!_" she said with plaintive smiling, ran to a corner of the
+lodge, and from a leather bag drew forth a horseshoe and looked at it,
+murmuring to herself.
+
+The old woman gazed at her wonderingly. "What is it, Mitiahwe?" she
+asked.
+
+"It is good-luck. So my man has said. It is the way of his people. It is
+put over the door, and if a dream come it is a good dream; and if a bad
+thing come, it will not enter; and if the heart prays for a thing hid from
+all the world, then it brings good-luck. _Hai-yai!_ I will put it over the
+door, and then--" All at once her hand dropped to her side, as though some
+terrible thought had come to her, and, sinking to the floor, she rocked
+her body backward and forward for a time, sobbing. But presently she got
+to her feet again, and, going to the door of the lodge, fastened the
+horseshoe above it with a great needle and a string of buckskin.
+
+"O great Sun," she prayed, "have pity on me and save me. I cannot live
+alone. I am only a Blackfoot wife; I am not blood of his blood. Give, O
+great One, blood of his blood, bone of his bone, soul of his soul, that he
+will say, 'This is mine, body of my body,' and he will hear the cry and
+will stay. O great Sun, pity me!"
+
+The old woman's heart beat faster as she listened. The same thought was in
+the mind of both. If there were but a child, bone of his bone, then
+perhaps he would not go; or, if he went, then surely he would return when
+he heard his papoose calling in the lodge in the wilderness.
+
+As Mitiahwe turned to her, a strange burning light in her eyes, Swift Wing
+said: "It is good. The white man's Medicine for a white man's wife. But if
+there were the red man's Medicine too--"
+
+"What is the red man's Medicine?" asked the young wife, as she smoothed
+her hair, put a string of bright beads around her neck, and wound a red
+sash round her waist.
+
+The old woman shook her head, a curious, half-mystic light in her eyes,
+her body drawn up to its full height, as though waiting for something. "It
+is an old Medicine. It is of winters ago as many as the hairs of the head.
+I have forgotten almost, but it was a great Medicine when there were no
+white men in the land. And so it was that to every woman's breast there
+hung a papoose, and every woman had her man, and the red men were like
+leaves in the forest--but it was a winter of winters ago, and the Medicine
+Men have forgotten; and thou hast no child! When Long Hand comes, what
+will Mitiahwe say to him?"
+
+Mitiahwe's eyes were determined, her face was set, she flushed deeply,
+then the color fled. "What my mother would say, I will say. Shall the
+white man's Medicine fail? If I wish it, then it will be so; and I will
+say so."
+
+"But if the white man's Medicine fail?" Swift Wing made a gesture toward
+the door where the horseshoe hung. "It is Medicine for a white man, will
+it be Medicine for an Indian?"
+
+"Am I not a white man's wife?"
+
+"But if there were the Sun Medicine also, the Medicine of the days long
+ago?"
+
+"Tell me. If you remember--_Kai!_ but you do remember--I see it in your
+face. Tell me, and I will make that Medicine also, my mother."
+
+"To-morrow, if I remember it--I will think, and if I remember it,
+to-morrow I will tell you, my heart's blood. Maybe my dream will come to
+me and tell me. Then, even after all these years a papoose--"
+
+"But the boat will go at dawn to-morrow, and if he go also--"
+
+"Mitiahwe is young, her body is warm, her eyes are bright, the songs she
+sings, her tongue--if these keep him not, and the Voice calls him still to
+go, then still Mitiahwe shall whisper, and tell him--"
+
+"_Hai-yo_--hush," said the girl, and trembled a little, and put both hands
+on her mother's mouth.
+
+For a moment she stood so, then with an exclamation suddenly turned and
+ran through the doorway, and sped toward the river, and into the path
+which would take her to the post, where her man traded with the Indians
+and had made much money during the past six years, so that he could have
+had a thousand horses and ten lodges like that she had just left. The
+distance between the lodge and the post was no more than a mile, but
+Mitiahwe made a détour, and approached it from behind, where she could not
+be seen. Darkness was gathering now, and she could see the glimmer of the
+light of lamps through the windows, and as the doors opened and shut. No
+one had seen her approach, and she stole through a door which was open at
+the rear of the warehousing room, and went quickly to another door leading
+into the shop. There was a crack through which she could see, and she
+could hear all that was said. As she came she had seen Indians gliding
+through the woods with their purchases, and now the shop was clearing
+fast, in response to the urging of Dingan and his partner, a Scotch
+half-breed. It was evident that Dingan was at once abstracted and
+excited.
+
+Presently only two visitors were left--a French half-breed called
+Lablache, a swaggering, vicious fellow, and the captain of the steamer
+_Ste. Anne_, which was to make its last trip south in the morning--even
+now it would have to break its way through the young ice.
+
+Dingan's partner dropped a bar across the door of the shop, and the four
+men gathered about the fire. For a time no one spoke. At last the captain
+of the _Ste. Anne_ said: "It's a great chance, Dingan. You'll be in
+civilization again, and in a rising town of white people--Groise'll be a
+city in five years, and you can grow up and grow rich with the place. The
+Company asked me to lay it all before you, and Lablache here will buy out
+your share of the business, at whatever your partner and you prove it's
+worth. You're young; you've got everything before you. You've made a name
+out here for being the best trader west of the Great Lakes, and now's your
+time. It's none of my affair, of course, but I like to carry through what
+I'm set to do, and the Company said, 'You bring Dingan back with you. The
+place is waiting for him, and it can't wait longer than the last boat
+down.' You're ready to step in when he steps out, ain't you, Lablache?"
+
+Lablache shook back his long hair, and rolled about in his pride. "I give
+him cash for his share to-night--some one is behin' me, _sacré_, yes! It
+is worth so much, I pay and step in--I take the place over. I take half
+the business here, and I work with Dingan's partner. I take your horses,
+Dingan, I take your lodge, I take all in your lodge--_everyt'ing_."
+
+His eyes glistened, and a red spot came to each cheek as he leaned
+forward. At his last word Dingan, who had been standing abstractedly
+listening as it were, swung round on him with a muttered oath, and the
+skin of his face appeared to tighten. Watching through the crack of the
+door, Mitiahwe saw the look she knew well, though it had never been turned
+on her, and her heart beat faster. It was a look that came into Dingan's
+face whenever Breaking Rock crossed his path, or when one or two other
+names were mentioned in his presence, for they were names of men who had
+spoken of Mitiahwe lightly, and had attempted to be jocular about her.
+
+As Mitiahwe looked at him, now unknown to himself, she was conscious of
+what that last word of Lablache's meant. _Everyt'ing_ meant herself.
+Lablache--who had neither the good qualities of the white man nor the
+Indian, but who had the brains of the one and the subtlety of the other,
+and whose only virtue was that he was a successful trader, though he
+looked like a mere woodsman, with rings in his ears, gayly decorated
+buckskin coat and moccasins, and a furtive smile always on his lips!
+_Everyt'ing!_ Her blood ran cold at the thought of dropping the
+lodge-curtain upon this man and herself alone. For no other man than
+Dingan had her blood run faster, and he had made her life blossom. She had
+seen in many a half-breed's and in many an Indian's face the look which
+was now in that of Lablache, and her fingers gripped softly the thing in
+her belt that had flashed out on Breaking Rock such a short while ago. As
+she looked, it seemed for a moment as though Dingan would open the door
+and throw Lablache out, for in quick reflection his eyes ran from the man
+to the wooden bar across the door.
+
+"You'll talk of the shop, and the shop only, Lablache," he said, grimly.
+"I'm not huckstering my home, and I'd choose the buyer if I was selling.
+My lodge ain't to be bought, nor _anything_ in it--not even the broom to
+keep it clean of any half-breeds that'd enter it without leave."
+
+There was malice in the words, but there was greater malice in the tone,
+and Lablache, who was bent on getting the business, swallowed his ugly
+wrath, and determined that, if he got the business, he would get the lodge
+also in due time; for Dingan, if he went, would not take the lodge--or the
+woman--with him; and Dingan was not fool enough to stay when he could go
+to Groise to a sure fortune.
+
+The captain of the _Ste. Anne_ again spoke. "There's another thing the
+Company said, Dingan. You needn't go to Groise, not at once. You can take
+a month and visit your folks down East, and lay in a stock of
+home-feelings before you settle down at Groise for good. They was fair
+when I put it to them that you'd mebbe want to do that. 'You tell Dingan,'
+they said, 'that he can have the month glad and grateful, and a free
+ticket on the railway back and forth. He can have it at once,' they
+said."
+
+Watching, Mitiahwe could see her man's face brighten, and take on a look
+of longing at this suggestion; and it seemed to her that the bird she
+heard in the night was calling in his ears now. Her eyes went blind for a
+moment.
+
+"The game is with you, Dingan. All the cards are in your hands; you'll
+never get such another chance again; and you're only thirty," said the
+captain.
+
+[Illustration: THE BIRD SHE HEARD IN THE NIGHT WAS CALLING IN HIS
+EARS NOW]
+
+"I wish they'd ask me," said Dingan's partner, with a sigh, as he looked
+at Lablache. "I want my chance bad, though we've done well here--good
+gosh, yes, all through Dingan."
+
+"The winters, they go queeck in Groise," said Lablache. "It is life all
+the time, trade all the time, plenty to do and see--and a _bon fortune_ to
+make, bagosh!"
+
+"Your old home was in Nova Scotia, wasn't it, Dingan?" asked the captain,
+in a low voice. "I kem from Connecticut, and I was East to my village las'
+year. It was good, seein' all my old friends again; but I kem back
+content, I kem back full of home-feelin's and content. You'll like the
+trip, Dingan. It'll do you good."
+
+Dingan drew himself up with a start. "All right. I guess I'll do it. Let's
+figure up again," he said to his partner, with a reckless air.
+
+With a smothered cry Mitiahwe turned and fled into the darkness, and back
+to the lodge. The lodge was empty. She threw herself upon the great couch
+in an agony of despair.
+
+A half-hour went by. Then she rose, and began to prepare supper. Her face
+was aflame, her manner was determined, and once or twice her hand went to
+her belt, as though to assure herself of something.
+
+Never had the lodge looked so bright and cheerful; never had she prepared
+so appetizing a supper; never had the great couch seemed so soft and rich
+with furs, so homelike and so inviting after a long day's work. Never had
+Mitiahwe seemed so good to look at, so graceful and alert and
+refined--suffering does its work even in the wild woods, with "wild
+people." Never had the lodge such an air of welcome and peace and home as
+to-night; and so Dingan thought as he drew aside the wide curtains of
+deerskin and entered.
+
+Mitiahwe was bending over the fire, and appeared not to hear him.
+"Mitiahwe," he said, gently. She was singing to herself, to an Indian air,
+the words of a song Dingan had taught her:
+
+      "Open the door: cold is the night, and my feet are heavy,
+      Heap up the fire, scatter upon it the cones and the scented
+       leaves;
+      Spread the soft robe on the couch for the chief that
+       returns,
+      Bring forth the cup of remembrance--"
+
+It was like a low recitative, and it had a plaintive cadence, as of a dove
+that mourned.
+
+"Mitiahwe," he said, in a louder voice, but with a break in it, too; for
+it all rushed upon him, all that she had been to him--all that had made
+the great West glow with life, made the air sweeter, the grass greener,
+the trees more companionable and human: who it was that had given the
+waste places a voice. Yet--yet, there were his own people in the East,
+there was another life waiting for him, there was the life of ambition and
+wealth, and, and home--and children.
+
+His eyes were misty as she turned to him with a little cry of surprise,
+how much natural and how much assumed--for she had heard him enter--it
+would have been hard to say. She was a woman, and therefore the daughter
+of pretence even when most real. He caught her by both arms as she shyly
+but eagerly came to him. "Good girl, good little girl," he said. He looked
+round him. "Well, I've never seen our lodge look nicer than it does
+to-night; and the fire, and the pot on the fire, and the smell of the
+pine-cones, and the cedar-boughs, and the skins, and--"
+
+"And everything," she said, with a queer little laugh, as she moved away
+again to turn the steaks on the fire.
+
+Everything! He started at the word. It was so strange that she should use
+it by accident, when but a little while ago he had been ready to choke the
+wind out of a man's body for using it concerning herself.
+
+It stunned him for a moment, for the West, and the life apart from the
+world of cities, had given him superstition, like that of the Indians,
+whose life he had made his own.
+
+Herself!--to leave her here, who had been so much to him? As true as the
+sun she worshipped, her eyes had never lingered on another man since she
+came to his lodge; and, to her mind, she was as truly sacredly married to
+him as though a thousand priests had spoken, or a thousand Medicine Men
+had made their incantations. She was his woman and he was her man. As he
+chatted to her, telling her of much that he had done that day, and
+wondering how he could tell her of _all_ he had done, he kept looking
+round the lodge, his eye resting on this or that; and everything had its
+own personal history, had become part of their lodge-life, because it had
+a use as between him and her, and not a conventional domestic place. Every
+skin, every utensil, every pitcher and bowl and pot and curtain had been
+with them at one time or another when it became of importance and renowned
+in the story of their days and deeds.
+
+How could he break it to her--that he was going to visit his own people,
+and that she must be alone with her mother all winter, to await his return
+in the spring? His return? As he watched her sitting beside him, helping
+him to his favorite dish, the close, companionable trust and gentleness of
+her, her exquisite cleanness and grace in his eyes, he asked himself if,
+after all, it was not true that he would return in the spring. The years
+had passed without his seriously thinking of this inevitable day. He had
+put it off and off, content to live each hour as it came and take no real
+thought for the future; and yet, behind all was the warning fact that he
+must go one day, and that Mitiahwe could not go with him. Her mother must
+have known that when she let Mitiahwe come to him. Of course; and, after
+all, she would find another mate, a better mate, one of her own people.
+
+But her hand was in his now, and it was small and very warm, and suddenly
+he shook with anger at the thought of one like Breaking Rock taking her to
+his wigwam; or Lablache--this roused him to an inward fury; and Mitiahwe
+saw and guessed the struggle that was going on in him, and she leaned her
+head against his shoulder, and once she raised his hand to her lips, and
+said, "My chief!"
+
+Then his face cleared again, and she got him his pipe and filled it, and
+held a coal to light it; and, as the smoke curled up, and he leaned back
+contentedly for the moment, she went to the door, drew open the curtains,
+and, stepping outside, raised her eyes to the horseshoe. Then she said
+softly to the sky: "O Sun, great Father, have pity on me, for I love him,
+and would keep him. And give me bone of his bone, and one to nurse at my
+breast that is of him. O Sun, pity me this night, and be near me when I
+speak to him, and hear what I say."
+
+"What are you doing out there, Mitiahwe?" Dingan cried; and when she
+entered again he beckoned her to him. "What was it you were saying? Who
+were you speaking to?" he asked. "I heard your voice."
+
+"I was thanking the Sun for his goodness to me. I was speaking for the
+thing that is in my heart, that is life of my life," she added, vaguely.
+
+"Well, I have something to say to you, little girl," he said, with an
+effort.
+
+She remained erect before him waiting for the blow--outwardly calm,
+inwardly crying out in pain. "Do you think you could stand a little
+parting?" he asked, reaching out and touching her shoulder.
+
+"I have been alone before--for five days," she answered, quietly.
+
+"But it must be longer this time."
+
+"How long?" she asked, with eyes fixed on his. "If it is more than a week,
+I will go too."
+
+"It is longer than a month," he said.
+
+"Then I will go."
+
+"I am going to see my people," he faltered.
+
+"By the _Ste. Anne_?"
+
+He nodded. "It is the last chance this year; but I will come back--in the
+spring."
+
+As he said it he saw her shrink, and his heart smote him. Four years such
+as few men ever spent, and all the luck had been with him, and the West
+had got into his bones! The quiet, starry nights, the wonderful days, the
+hunt, the long journeys, the life free of care, and the warm lodge; and,
+here, the great couch--ah, the cheek pressed to his, the lips that
+whispered at his ear, the smooth arm round his neck. It all rushed upon
+him now. His people! His people in the East, who had thwarted his youth,
+vexed and cramped him, saw only evil in his widening desires, and threw
+him over when he came out West--the scallywag, they called him, who had
+never wronged a man--or a woman? Never--wronged--a--woman? The question
+sprang to his lips now. Suddenly he saw it all in a new light. White or
+brown or red, this heart and soul and body before him were all his, sacred
+to him; he was in very truth her "chief."
+
+Untutored as she was, she read him, felt what was going on in him. She saw
+the tears spring to his eyes. Then, coming close to him, she said, softly,
+slowly: "I must go with you if you go, because you must be with me
+when--Oh, _hai-yai_, my chief, shall we go from here? Here in this lodge
+wilt thou be with thine own people--thine own, thou and I--_and thine to
+come_." The great passion in her heart made the lie seem very truth.
+
+With a cry he got to his feet, and stood staring at her for a moment,
+scarcely comprehending; then suddenly he clasped her in his arms.
+
+"Mitiahwe--Mitiahwe, oh, my little girl!" he cried. "You and me--and our
+own--our own people!" Kissing her, he drew her down beside him on the
+couch. "Tell me again--is it so at last?" he said, and she whispered in
+his ear once more.
+
+In the middle of the night he said to her, "Some day, perhaps, we will go
+East--some day, perhaps."
+
+"But now?" she asked, softly.
+
+"Not now--not if I know it," he answered. "I've got my heart nailed to the
+door of this lodge."
+
+As he slept she got quietly out, and, going to the door of the lodge,
+reached up a hand and touched the horseshoe.
+
+"Be good Medicine to me," she said. Then she prayed. "O Sun, pity me, that
+it may be as I have said to him. Oh, pity me, great Father!"
+
+In the days to come Swift Wing said that it was her Medicine--when her
+hand was burned to the wrist in the dark ritual she had performed with the
+Medicine Man the night that Mitiahwe fought for her man; but Mitiahwe said
+it was her Medicine, the horseshoe, which brought one of Dingan's own
+people to the lodge--a little girl with Mitiahwe's eyes and form and her
+father's face. Truth has many mysteries, and the faith of the woman was
+great; and so it was that, to the long end, Mitiahwe kept her man. But
+truly she was altogether a woman, and had good-fortune.
+
+
+
+
+ONCE AT RED MAN'S RIVER
+
+
+"It's got to be settled to-night, Nance, This game is up here, up forever.
+The redcoat police from Ottawa are coming, and they'll soon be roostin' in
+this post, the Injuns are goin', the buffaloes are most gone, and the fur
+trade's dead in these parts. D'ye see?"
+
+The woman did not answer the big, broad-shouldered man bending over her,
+but remained looking into the fire with wide, abstracted eyes, and a face
+somewhat set.
+
+"You and your brother Bantry's got to go. This store ain't worth a cent
+now. The Hudson's Bay Company'll come along with the redcoats, and they'll
+set up a nice little Sunday-school business here for what they call
+'agricultural settlers.' There'll be a railway, and the Yankees'll send up
+their marshals to work with the redcoats on the border, and--"
+
+"And the days of smuggling will be over," put in the girl, in a low voice.
+"No more bull-whackers and mule-skinners 'whooping-it up'; no more
+Blackfeet and Piegans drinking alcohol and water, and cutting one
+anothers' throats. A nice, quiet time coming on the border Abe, eh?"
+
+The man looked at her queerly. She was not prone to sarcasm, she had not
+been given to sentimentalism in the past; she had taken the border-life as
+it was, had looked it straight between the eyes. She had lived up to it,
+or down to it, without any fuss, as good as any man in any phase of the
+life, and the only white woman in this whole West country. It was not in
+the words, but in the tone, that Abe Hawley found something unusual and
+defamatory.
+
+"Why, gol darn it, Nance, what's got into you? You bin a man out West, as
+good a pioneer as ever was on the border. But now you don't sound friendly
+to what's been the game out here, and to all of us that've been risking
+our lives to get a livin'."
+
+"What did I say?" asked the girl, unmoved.
+
+"It ain't what you said, it's the sound o' your voice."
+
+"You don't know my voice, Abe. It ain't always the same. You ain't always
+about; you don't always hear it."
+
+He caught her arm suddenly. "No, but I want to hear it always. I want to
+be always where you are, Nance. That's what's got to be settled
+to-day--to-night."
+
+"Oh, it's got to be settled to-night!" said the girl, meditatively,
+kicking nervously at a log on the fire. "It takes two to settle a thing
+like that, and there's only one says it's got to be settled. Maybe it
+takes more than two--or three--to settle a thing like that." Now she
+laughed mirthlessly.
+
+The man started, and his face flushed with anger; then he put a hand on
+himself, drew a step back, and watched her.
+
+"_One_ can settle a thing, if there's a dozen in it. You see, Nance, you
+and Bantry've got to close out. He's fixing it up to-night over at
+Dingan's Drive, and you can't go it alone when you quit this place. Now,
+it's this way: you can go West with Bantry, or you can go North with me.
+Away North there's buffalo and deer, and game a-plenty, up along the
+Saskatchewan, and farther up on the Peace River. It's going to be all
+right up there for half a lifetime, and we can have it in our own way yet.
+There'll be no smuggling, but there'll be trading, and land to get; and,
+mebbe, there'd be no need of smuggling, for we can make it, I know
+how--good white whiskey--and we'll still have this free life for our own.
+I can't make up my mind to settle down to a clean collar and going to
+church on Sundays, and all that. And the West's in your bones, too. You
+look like the West--"
+
+The girl's face brightened with pleasure, and she gazed at him steadily.
+
+"You got its beauty and its freshness, and you got its heat and cold--"
+
+She saw the tobacco-juice stain at the corners of his mouth, she became
+conscious of the slight odor of spirits in the air, and the light in her
+face lowered in intensity.
+
+"You got the ways of the deer in your walk, the song o' the birds in your
+voice; and you're going North with me, Nance, for I bin talkin' to you
+stiddy four years. It's a long time to wait on the chance, for there's
+always _women_ to be got, same as others have done--men like Dingan with
+Injun girls, and men like Tobey with half-breeds. But I ain't bin lookin'
+that way. I bin lookin' only toward you." He laughed eagerly, and lifted a
+tin cup of whiskey standing on a table near. "I'm lookin' toward you now,
+Nance. Your health and mine together. It's got to be settled now. You got
+to go to the 'Cific Coast with Bantry, or North with me."
+
+The girl jerked a shoulder and frowned a little. He seemed so sure of
+himself.
+
+"Or South with Nick Pringle, or East with someone else," she said,
+quizzically. "There's always four quarters to the compass, even when Abe
+Hawley thinks he owns the world and has a mortgage on eternity. I'm not
+going West with Bantry, but there's three other points that's open."
+
+With an oath the man caught her by the shoulders, and swung her round to
+face him. He was swelling with anger. "You--Nick Pringle, that trading
+cheat, that gambler! After four years, I--"
+
+"Let go my shoulders," she said, quietly. "I'm not your property. Go and
+get some Piegan girl to bully. Keep your hands off. I'm not a bronco for
+you to bit and bridle. You've got no rights. You--" Suddenly she relented,
+seeing the look in his face, and realizing that, after all, it was a
+tribute to herself that she could keep him for four years and rouse him to
+such fury. "But yes, Abe," she added, "you have some rights. We've been
+good friends all these years, and you've been all right out here. You said
+some nice things about me just now, and I liked it, even if it was as if
+you'd learned it out of a book. I've got no po'try in me; I'm plain
+homespun. I'm a sapling, I'm not any prairie-flower, but I like when I
+like, and I like a lot when I like. I'm a bit of hickory, I'm not a
+prairie-flower--"
+
+"Who said you was a prairie-flower? Did I? Who's talking about
+prairie-flowers--"
+
+He stopped suddenly, turned round at the sound of a footstep behind him,
+and saw, standing in a doorway leading to another room, a man who was
+digging his knuckles into his eyes and stifling a yawn. He was a
+refined-looking stripling of not more than twenty-four, not tall, but
+well-made, and with an air of breeding, intensified rather than hidden by
+his rough clothes.
+
+"Je-rick-ety! How long have I slept?" he said, blinking at the two beside
+the fire. "How long?" he added, with a flutter of anxiety in his tone.
+
+"I said I'd wake you," said the girl, coming forward. "You needn't have
+worried."
+
+"I don't worry," answered the young man. "I dreamed myself awake, I
+suppose. I got dreaming of redcoats and U. S. marshals, and an ambush in
+the Barfleur Coulée, and--" He saw a secret, warning gesture from the
+girl, and laughed, then turned to Abe and looked him in the face. "Oh, I
+know him! Abe Hawley's all O.K.--I've seen him over at Dingan's Drive.
+Honor among rogues. We're all in it. How goes it--all right?" he added,
+carelessly, to Hawley, and took a step forward, as though to shake hands.
+Seeing the forbidding look by which he was met, however, he turned to the
+girl again, as Hawley muttered something they could not hear.
+
+"What time is it?" he asked.
+
+"It's nine o'clock," answered the girl, her eyes watching his every
+movement, her face alive.
+
+"Then the moon's up almost?"
+
+"It'll be up in an hour."
+
+"Jerickety! Then I've got to get ready." He turned to the other room again
+and entered.
+
+"College pup!" said Hawley, under his breath, savagely. "Why didn't you
+tell me he was here?"
+
+"Was it any of your business, Abe?" she rejoined, quietly.
+
+"Hiding him away here--"
+
+"Hiding? Who's been hiding him? He's doing what you've done. He's
+smuggling--the last lot for the traders over by Dingan's Drive. He'll get
+it there by morning. He has as much right here as you. What's got into
+you, Abe?"
+
+"What does he know about the business? Why, he's a college man from the
+East. I've heard o' him. Ain't got no more sense for this life than a
+dicky-bird. White-faced college pup! What's he doing out here? If you're a
+friend o' his, you'd better look after him. He's green."
+
+"He's going East again," she said, "and if I don't go West with Bantry, or
+South over to Montana with Nick Pringle, _or North_--"
+
+"Nance!" His eyes burned, his lips quivered.
+
+She looked at him and wondered at the power she had over this bully of the
+border, who had his own way with most people, and was one of the most
+daring fighters, hunters, and smugglers in the country. He was cool, hard,
+and well in hand in his daily life, and yet, where she was concerned,
+"went all to pieces," as some one else had said about himself to her.
+
+She was not without the wiles and tact of her sex. "You go now, and come
+back, Abe," she said, in a soft voice. "Come back in an hour. Come back
+then, and I'll tell you which way I'm going from here."
+
+He was all right again. "It's with you, Nance," he said, eagerly. "I bin
+waiting four years."
+
+As he closed the door behind him the "college pup" entered the room again.
+"Oh, Abe's gone!" he said, excitedly. "I hoped you'd get rid of the old
+rip-roarer. I wanted to be alone with you for a while. I don't really need
+to start yet. With the full moon I can do it before daylight." Then, with
+quick warmth, "Ah, Nancy, Nancy, you're a flower--the flower of all the
+prairies," he added, catching her hand and laughing into her eyes.
+
+She flushed, and for a moment seemed almost bewildered. His boldness,
+joined to an air of insinuation and understanding, had influenced her
+greatly from the first moment they had met, two months ago, as he was
+going South on his smuggling enterprise. The easy way in which he had
+talked to her, the extraordinary sense he seemed to have of what was going
+on in her mind, the confidential meaning in voice and tone and words had,
+somehow, opened up a side of her nature hitherto unexplored. She had
+talked with him freely then, for it was only when he left her that he said
+what he instinctively knew she would remember till they met again. His
+quick comments, his indirect but acute questions, his exciting and
+alluring reminiscences of the East, his subtle yet seemingly frank
+compliments, had only stimulated a new capacity in her, evoked comparisons
+of this delicate-looking, fine-faced gentleman with the men of the West by
+whom she was surrounded. But later he appeared to stumble into expressions
+of admiration for her, as though he was carried off his feet and had been
+stunned by her charm. He had done it all like a master. He had not said
+that she was beautiful--she knew she was not--but that she was wonderful
+and fascinating, and with "something about her" he had never seen in all
+his life: like her own prairies, thrilling, inspiring, and adorable. His
+first look at her had seemed full of amazement. She had noticed that, and
+thought it meant only that he was surprised to find a white girl out here
+among smugglers, hunters, squaw-men, and Indians. But he said that the
+first look at her had made him feel things, feel life and women different
+from ever before; and he had never seen any one like her, nor a face with
+so much in it. It was all very brilliantly done.
+
+"You make me want to live," he had said, and she, with no knowledge of the
+nuances of language, had taken it literally, and had asked him if it had
+been his wish to die; and he had responded to her mistaken interpretation
+of his meaning, saying that he had had such sorrow he had not wanted to
+live. As he said it his face looked, in truth, overcome by some deep,
+inward care; so that there came a sort of feeling she had never had so far
+for any man--that he ought to have some one to look after him. This was
+the first real stirring of the maternal and protective spirit in her
+toward men, though it had shown itself amply enough regarding animals and
+birds. He had said he had not wanted to live, and yet he had come out West
+in order to try and live, to cure the trouble that had started in his
+lungs. The Eastern doctors had told him that the rough, out-door life
+would cure him, or nothing would, and he had vanished from the college
+walls and the pleasant purlieus of learning and fashion into the wilds. He
+had not lied directly to her when he said that he had had deep trouble;
+but he had given the impression that he was suffering from wrongs which
+had broken his spirit and ruined his health. Wrongs there certainly had
+been in his life, by whomever committed.
+
+Two months ago he had left this girl with her mind full of memories of
+what he had said to her, and there was something in the sound of the
+slight cough following his farewell words which had haunted her ever
+since. Her tremendous health and energy, the fire of life burning so
+brightly in her, reached out toward this man living on so narrow a margin
+of force, with no reserve for any extra strain, with just enough for each
+day's use and no more. Four hours before he had come again with his team
+of four mules and an Indian youth, having covered forty miles since his
+last stage. She was at the door, and saw him coming while he was yet a
+long distance off. Some instinct had told her to watch that afternoon, for
+she knew of his intended return and of his dangerous enterprise. The
+Indians had trailed south and east, the traders had disappeared with them,
+her brother Bantry had gone up and over to Dingan's Drive, and, save for a
+few loiterers and last hangers-on, she was alone with what must soon be a
+deserted post; its walls, its great enclosed yard, and its gun-platforms
+(for it had been fortified) left for law and order to enter upon, in the
+persons of the red-coated watchmen of the law.
+
+Out of the South, from over the border, bringing the last great smuggled
+load of whiskey which was to be handed over at Dingan's Drive, and then
+floated on Red Man's River to settlements up North, came the "college
+pup," Kelly Lambton, worn out, dazed with fatigue, but smiling too, for a
+woman's face was ever a tonic to his blood since he was big enough to move
+in life for himself. It needed courage--or recklessness--to run the border
+now; for, as Abe Hawley had said, the American marshals were on the
+pounce, the red-coated mounted police were coming west from Ottawa, and
+word had winged its way along the prairie that these redcoats were only a
+few score miles away, and might be at Fort Stay-Awhile at any moment. The
+trail to Dingan's Drive lay past it. Through Barfleur Coulée, athwart a
+great, open stretch of country, along a wooded belt, and then, suddenly,
+over a ridge, Dingan's Drive and Red Man's River would be reached.
+
+The Government had a mind to make an example, if necessary, by killing
+some smugglers in conflict, and the United States marshals had been goaded
+by vanity and anger at one or two escapes "to have something for their
+money," as they said. That, in their language, meant, "to let the red
+run," and Kelly Lambton had none too much blood to lose.
+
+He looked very pale and beaten as he held Nance Machell's hands now, and
+called her a prairie-flower, as he had done when he left her two months
+before. On his arrival, but now he had said little, for he saw that she
+was glad to see him, and he was dead for sleep, after thirty-six hours of
+ceaseless travel and watching and danger. Now, with the most perilous part
+of his journey still before him, and worn physically as he was, his blood
+was running faster as he looked into the girl's face, and something in her
+abundant force and bounding life drew him to her. Such vitality in a man
+like Abe Hawley would have angered him almost, as it did a little time
+ago, when Abe was there; but possessed by the girl, it roused in him a
+hunger to draw from the well of her perfect health, from the unused vigor
+of her being, something for himself. The touch of her hands warmed him. In
+the fulness of her life, in the strong eloquence of face and form, he
+forgot she was not beautiful. The lightness passed from his words, and his
+face became eager.
+
+"Flower, yes, the flower of the life of the West--that's what I mean," he
+said. "You are like an army marching. When I look at you, my blood runs
+faster. I want to march too. When I hold your hand I feel that life's
+worth living--I want to do things."
+
+She drew her hand away rather awkwardly. She had not now that command of
+herself which had ever been easy with the men of the West, except,
+perhaps, with Abe Hawley when--
+
+But with an attempt, only half-meant, to turn the topic, she said: "You
+must be starting if you want to get through to-night. If the redcoats
+catch you this side of Barfleur Coulée, or in the Coulée itself, you'll
+stand no chance. I heard they was only thirty miles north this afternoon.
+Maybe they'll come straight on here to-night, instead of camping. If they
+have news of your coming, they might. You can't tell."
+
+"You're right." He caught her hand again. "I've got to be going now. But
+Nance--Nance--Nancy, I want to stay here, here with you; or to take you
+with me."
+
+She drew back. "What do you mean?" she asked. "Take me with
+you--me--where?"
+
+"East--away down East."
+
+Her brain throbbed, her pulses beat so hard. She scarcely knew what to
+say, did not know what she said. "Why do you do this kind of thing? Why do
+you smuggle?" she asked. "You wasn't brought up to this."
+
+"To get this load of stuff through is life and death to me," he answered.
+"I've made six thousand dollars out here. That's enough to start me again
+in the East, where I lost everything. But I've got to have six hundred
+dollars clear for the travel--railways and things; and I'm having this
+last run to get it. Then I've finished with the West, I guess. My health's
+better; the lung is closed up, I've only got a little cough now and again,
+and I'm off East. I don't want to go alone." He suddenly caught her in his
+arms. "I want you--you, to go with me, Nancy--Nance!"
+
+Her brain swam. To leave the West behind, to go East to a new life full of
+pleasant things, as this man's wife! Her great heart rose, and suddenly
+the mother in her as well as the woman in her was captured by his wooing.
+She had never known what it was to be wooed like this.
+
+She was about to answer when there came a sharp knock at the door leading
+from the back yard, and Lambton's Indian lad entered. "The soldier--he
+come--many. I go over the ridge, I see. They come quick here," he said.
+
+Nance gave a startled cry, and Lambton turned to the other room for his
+pistols, overcoat, and cap, when there was the sound of horses' hoofs, the
+door suddenly opened, and an officer stepped inside.
+
+"You're wanted for smuggling, Lambton," he said, brusquely. "Don't stir!"
+In his hand was a revolver.
+
+"Oh, bosh! Prove it," answered the young man, pale and startled, but cool
+in speech and action.
+
+"We'll prove it all right. The stuff is hereabouts."
+
+The girl said something to the officer in the Chinook language. She saw he
+did not understand. Then she spoke quickly to Lambton in the same tongue.
+
+"Keep him here a bit," she said. "His men haven't come yet. Your outfit is
+well hid. I'll see if I can get away with it before they find it. They'll
+follow, and bring you with them, that's sure. So if I have luck and get
+through, we'll meet at Dingan's Drive."
+
+Lambton's face brightened. He quickly gave her a few directions in
+Chinook, and told her what to do at Dingan's if she got there first. Then
+she was gone.
+
+The officer did not understand what Nance had said, but he realized that,
+whatever she intended to do, she had an advantage over him. With an
+unnecessary courage he had ridden on alone to make his capture, and, as it
+proved, without prudence. He had got his man, but he had not got the
+smuggled whiskey and alcohol he had come to seize. There was no time to be
+lost. The girl had gone before he realized it. What had she said to the
+prisoner? He was foolish enough to ask Lambton, and Lambton replied
+coolly: "She said she'd get you some supper, but she guessed it would have
+to be cold--What's your name? Are you a colonel, or a captain, or only a
+principal private?"
+
+"I am Captain MacFee, Lambton. And you'll now bring me where your outfit
+is. March!"
+
+The pistol was still in his hand, and he had a determined look in his eye.
+Lambton saw it. He was aware of how much power lay in the threatening face
+before him, and how eager that power was to make itself felt, and provide
+"Examples"; but he took his chances.
+
+"I'll march all right," he answered; "but I'll march to where you tell me.
+You can't have it both ways. You can take me, because you've found me, and
+you can take my outfit, too, when you've found it; but I'm not doing your
+work, not if I know it."
+
+There was a blaze of anger in the eyes of the officer, and it looked for
+an instant as though something of the lawlessness of the border was going
+to mark the first step of the Law in the Wilderness, but he bethought
+himself in time, and said, quietly, yet in a voice which Lambton knew he
+must heed:
+
+"Put on your things--quick."
+
+When this was accomplished, and MacFee had secured the smuggler's pistols,
+he said again, "March, Lambton!"
+
+Lambton marched through the moonlit night toward the troop of men who had
+come to set up the flag of order in the plains and hills, and as he went
+his keen ear heard his own mules galloping away down toward the Barfleur
+Coulée. His heart thumped in his breast. This girl, this prairie-flower,
+was doing this for him, was risking her life, was breaking the law for
+him. If she got through, and handed over the whiskey to those who were
+waiting for it, and it got bundled into the boats going North before the
+redcoats reached Dingan's Drive, it would be as fine a performance as the
+West had ever seen; and he would be six hundred dollars to the good. He
+listened to the mules galloping, till the sounds had died into the
+distance, but he saw now that his captor had heard too, and that the
+pursuit would be desperate.
+
+A half-hour later it began, with MacFee at the head and a dozen troopers
+pounding behind, weary, hungry, bad-tempered, ready to exact payment for
+their hardships and discouragement.
+
+They had not gone a dozen miles when a shouting horseman rode furiously on
+them from behind. They turned with carbines cocked, but it was Abe Hawley
+who cursed them, flung his fingers in their faces, and rode on harder and
+harder. Abe had got the news from one of Nancy's half-breeds, and, with
+the devil raging in his heart, had entered on the chase. His spirit was up
+against them all: against the Law represented by the troopers camped at
+Fort Stay-Awhile, against the troopers and their captain speeding after
+Nancy Machell--his Nance, who was risking her life and freedom for the
+hated, pale-faced smuggler riding between the troopers; and his spirit was
+up against Nance herself.
+
+Nance had said to him, "Come back in an hour," and he had come back to
+find her gone. She had broken her word. She had deceived him. She had
+thrown the four years of his waiting to the winds, and a savage lust was
+in his heart, which would not be appeased till he had done some evil thing
+to some one.
+
+The girl and the Indian lad were pounding through the night with ears
+strained to listen for hoof-beats coming after, with eyes searching
+forward into the trail for swollen creeks and direful obstructions.
+Through Barfleur Coulée it was a terrible march, for there was no road,
+and again and again they were nearly overturned, while wolves hovered in
+their path, ready to reap a midnight harvest. But once in the open again,
+with the full moonlight on their trail, the girl's spirits rose. If she
+could do this thing for the man who had looked into her eyes as no one had
+ever done, what a finish to her days in the West! For they were finished,
+finished forever, and she was going--she was going East; not West with
+Bantry, nor South with Nick Pringle, nor North with Abe Hawley--ah, Abe
+Hawley! He had been a good friend, he had a great heart, he was the best
+man of all the Western men she had known; but another man had come from
+the East, a man who had roused something in her never felt before, a man
+who had said she was wonderful; and he needed some one to take good care
+of him, to make him love life again. Abe would have been all right if
+Lambton had never come, and she had meant to marry Abe in the end; but it
+was different now, and Abe must get over it. Yet she had told Abe to come
+back in an hour. He was sure to do it; and, when he had done it, and found
+her gone on this errand, what would he do? She knew what he would do. He
+would hurt someone. He would follow, too. But at Dingan's Drive, if she
+reached it before the troopers and before Abe, and did the thing she had
+set out to do; and because no whiskey could be found, Lambton must go
+free; and they all stood there together, what would be the end? Abe would
+be terrible; but she was going East, not North, and, when the time came
+she would face it and put things right somehow.
+
+The night seemed endless to her fixed and anxious eyes and mind, yet dawn
+came, and there had fallen no sound of hoof-beats on her ear. The ridge
+above Dingan's Drive was reached and covered, but yet there was no sign of
+her pursuers. At Red Man's River she delivered her load of contraband to
+the traders waiting for it, and saw it loaded into the boats and disappear
+beyond the wooded bend above Dingan's.
+
+Then she collapsed into the arms of her brother Bantry, and was carried,
+fainting, into Dingan's Lodge.
+
+A half-hour later MacFee and his troopers and Lambton came. MacFee grimly
+searched the post and the shore, but he saw by the looks of all that he
+had been foiled. He had no proof of anything, and Lambton must go free.
+
+"You've fooled us," he said to Nance, sourly, yet with a kind of
+admiration, too. "Through you, they got away with it. But I wouldn't try
+it again, if I were you."
+
+"Once is enough," answered the girl, laconically, as Lambton, set free,
+caught both her hands in his and whispered in her ear.
+
+MacFee turned to the others. "You'd better drop this kind of thing," he
+said. "I mean business." They saw the troopers by the horses, and nodded.
+
+"Well, we was about quit of it anyhow," said Bantry. "We've had all we
+want out here."
+
+A loud laugh went up, and it was still ringing when there burst into the
+group, out of the trail, Abe Hawley, on foot.
+
+He looked round the group savagely till his eyes rested on Nance and
+Lambton. "I'm last in," he said, in a hoarse voice. "My horse broke its
+leg cutting across to get here before her--" He waved a hand toward Nance.
+"It's best stickin' to old trails, not tryin' new ones." His eyes were
+full of hate as he looked at Lambton. "I'm keeping to old trails. I'm for
+goin' North, far up, where these two-dollar-a-day and hash-and-clothes
+people ain't come yet." He made a contemptuous gesture toward MacFee and
+his troopers. "I'm goin' North--" He took a step forward and fixed his
+bloodshot eyes on Nance. "I say I'm goin' North. You comin' with me,
+Nance?" He took off his cap to her.
+
+He was haggard, his buckskins were torn, his hair was dishevelled, and he
+limped a little; but he was a massive and striking figure, and MacFee
+watched him closely, for there was that in his eyes which meant trouble.
+"You said, 'Come back in an hour,' Nance, and I come back, as I said I
+would," he went on. "You didn't stand to your word. I've come to git it.
+I'm goin' North, Nance, and I bin waitin' for four years for you to go
+with me. Are you comin'?"
+
+His voice was quiet, but it had a choking kind of sound, and it struck
+strangely in the ears of all. MacFee came nearer.
+
+"Are you comin' with me, Nance, dear?"
+
+She reached a hand toward Lambton, and he took it, but she did not speak.
+Something in Abe's eyes overwhelmed her--something she had never seen
+before, and it seemed to stifle speech in her. Lambton spoke instead.
+
+"She's going East with me," he said. "That's settled."
+
+MacFee started. Then he caught Abe's arm. "Wait!" he said, peremptorily.
+"Wait one minute."
+
+There was something in his voice which held Abe back for the instant.
+
+[Illustration: THE START ON THE NORTH TRAIL]
+
+"You say she is going East with you," MacFee said sharply to Lambton.
+"What for?" He fastened Lambton with his eyes, and Lambton quailed. "Have
+you told her you've got a wife--down East? I've got your history, Lambton.
+Have you told her that you've got a wife you married when you were at
+college--and as good a girl as ever lived?"
+
+It had come with terrible suddenness even to Lambton, and he was too dazed
+to make any reply. With a cry of shame and anger, Nancy started back.
+Growling with rage and hate, Abe Hawley sprang toward Lambton, but the
+master of the troopers stepped between.
+
+No one could tell who moved first, or who first made the suggestion, for
+the minds of all were the same, and the general purpose was instantaneous;
+but in the fraction of a minute Lambton, under menace, was on his hands
+and knees crawling to the riverside. Watchful, but not interfering, the
+master of the troopers saw him set adrift in a canoe without a paddle,
+while he was pelted with mud from the shore.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next morning at sunrise Abe Hawley and the girl he had waited for so
+long started on the North trail together, MacFee, master of the troopers
+and justice of the peace, handing over the marriage lines.
+
+
+
+
+THE STROKE OF THE HOUR
+
+
+"They won't come to-night--sure."
+
+The girl looked again toward the west, where, here and there, bare poles,
+or branches of trees, or slips of underbrush, marked a road made across
+the plains through the snow. The sun was going down golden red, folding up
+the sky a wide, soft curtain of pink and mauve and deep purple merging
+into the fathomless blue, where already the stars were beginning to
+quiver. The house stood on the edge of a little forest, which had boldly
+asserted itself in the wide flatness. At this point in the west the
+prairie merged into an undulating territory, where hill and wood rolled
+away from the banks of the Saskatchewan, making another England in beauty.
+The forest was a sort of advance-post of that land of beauty.
+
+Yet there was beauty, too, on this prairie, though there was nothing to
+the east but snow and the forest so far as eye could see. Nobility and
+peace and power brooded over the white world.
+
+As the girl looked, it seemed as though the bosom of the land rose and
+fell. She had felt this vibrating life beat beneath the frozen surface.
+Now, as she gazed, she smiled sadly to herself, with drooping eyelids
+looking out from beneath strong brows.
+
+"I know you--I know you," she said, aloud. "You've got to take your toll.
+And when you're lying asleep like that, or pretending to, you reach
+up--and kill. And yet you can be kind--ah, but you can be kind and
+beautiful! But you must have your toll one way or t'other." She sighed and
+paused; then, after a moment, looking along the trail--"I don't expect
+they'll come to-night, and mebbe not to-morrow, if--if they stay for
+_that_."
+
+Her eyes closed, she shivered a little. Her lips drew tight, and her face
+seemed suddenly to get thinner. "But dad wouldn't--no, he couldn't, not
+considerin'--" Again she shut her eyes in pain.
+
+Her face was now turned from the western road by which she had expected
+her travellers, and toward the east, where already the snow was taking on
+a faint bluish tint, a reflection of the sky deepening toward night in
+that half-circle of the horizon. Distant and a little bleak and cheerless
+the half-circle was looking now.
+
+"No one--not for two weeks," she said, in comment on the eastern trail,
+which was so little frequented in winter, and this year had been less
+travelled than ever. "It would be nice to have a neighbor," she added, as
+she faced the west and the sinking sun again. "I get so lonely--just
+minutes I get lonely. But it's them minutes that seem to count more than
+all the rest when they come. I expect that's it--we don't live in months
+and years, but just in minutes. It doesn't take long for an earthquake to
+do its work--it's seconds then.... P'r'aps dad won't even come to-morrow,"
+she added, as she laid her hand on the latch. "It never seemed so long
+before, not even when he's been away a week." She laughed bitterly. "Even
+bad company's better than no company at all. Sure. And Mickey has been
+here always when dad's been away past times. Mickey was a fool, but he was
+company; and mebbe he'd have been better company if he'd been more of a
+scamp and less a fool. I dunno, but I really think he would. Bad company
+doesn't put you off so."
+
+There was a scratching at the inside of the door. "My, if I didn't forget
+Shako," she said, "and he dying for a run!"
+
+She opened the door quickly, and out jumped a Russian dog of almost full
+breed, with big, soft eyes like those of his mistress, and with the air of
+the north in every motion--like his mistress also.
+
+"Come, Shako, a run--a run!"
+
+An instant after she was flying off on a path toward the woods, her short
+skirts flying and showing limbs as graceful and shapely as those of any
+woman of that world of social grace which she had never seen; for she was
+a prairie girl through and through, born on the plains and fed on its
+scanty fare--scanty as to variety, at least. Backward and forward they
+ran, the girl shouting like a child of ten--she was twenty-three--her eyes
+flashing, her fine white teeth showing, her hands thrown up in sheer
+excess of animal life, her hair blowing about her face--brown, strong
+hair, wavy and plentiful.
+
+Fine creature as she was, her finest features were her eyes and her hands.
+The eyes might have been found in the most savage places; the hands,
+however, only could have come through breeding. She had got them honestly;
+for her mother was descended from an old family of the French province.
+That was why she had the name of Loisette--and had a touch of distinction.
+It was the strain of the patrician in the full blood of the peasant; but
+it gave her something which made her what she was--what she had been since
+a child, noticeable and besought, sometimes beloved. It was too strong a
+nature to compel love often, but it never failed to compel admiration. Not
+greatly a creature of words, she had become moody of late; and even now,
+alive with light and feeling and animal life, she suddenly stopped her
+romp and run, and called the dog to her.
+
+"Heel, Shako!" she said, and made for the door of the little house, which
+looked so snug and homelike. She paused before she came to the door, to
+watch the smoke curling up from the chimney straight as a column, for
+there was not a breath of air stirring. The sun was almost gone, and the
+strong bluish light was settling on everything, giving even the green
+spruce-trees a curious burnished tone.
+
+_Swish! Thud!_ She faced the woods quickly. It was only a sound that she
+had heard how many hundreds of times! It was the snow slipping from some
+broad branch of the fir-trees to the ground. Yet she started now.
+Something was on her mind, agitating her senses, affecting her
+self-control.
+
+"I'll be jumping out of my boots when the fire snaps, or the frost cracks
+the ice, next," she said, aloud, contemptuously. "I dunno what's the
+matter with me. I feel as if some one was hiding somewhere ready to pop
+out on me. I haven't never felt like that before."
+
+She had formed the habit of talking to herself, for it had seemed at
+first, as she was left alone when her father went trapping or upon
+journeys for the Government, that by-and-by she would start at the sound
+of her own voice if she didn't think aloud. So she was given to soliloquy,
+defying the old belief that people who talked to themselves were going
+mad. She laughed at that. She said that birds sang to themselves and
+didn't go mad, and crickets chirruped, and frogs croaked, and owls hooted,
+and she would talk and not go crazy either. So she talked to herself and
+to Shako when she was alone.
+
+How quiet it was inside when her light supper was eaten--bread and beans
+and pea-soup; she had got this from her French mother. Now she sat, her
+elbows on her knees, her chin on her hands, looking into the fire. Shako
+was at her feet upon the great musk-ox rug, which her father had got on
+one of his hunting trips in the Athabasca country years ago. It belonged
+as she belonged. It breathed of the life of the north-land, for the
+timbers of the hut were hewn cedar; the rough chimney, the seats, and the
+shelves on which a few books made a fair show beside the bright tins and
+the scanty crockery, were of pine; and the horned heads of deer and wapiti
+made pegs for coats and caps, and rests for guns and rifles. It was a
+place of comfort; it had an air of well-to-do thrift, even as the girl's
+dress, though plain, was made of good, sound stuff, gray, with a touch of
+dark red to match the auburn of her hair.
+
+A book lay open in her lap, but she had scarcely tried to read it. She had
+put it down after a few moments fixed upon it. It had sent her thoughts
+off into a world where her life had played a part too big for books, too
+deep for the plummet of any save those who had lived through the storm of
+life's trials; and life when it is bitter to the young is bitter with an
+agony the old never know. At last she spoke to herself.
+
+"She knows now! Now she knows what it is, how it feels--your heart like
+red-hot coals, and something in your head that's like a turnscrew, and you
+want to die and can't, for you've got to live and suffer!"
+
+Again she was quiet, and only the dog's heavy breathing, the snap of the
+fire, or the crack of a timber in the deadly frost broke the silence.
+Inside it was warm and bright and homelike; outside it was twenty degrees
+below zero, and like some vast tomb where life itself was congealed, and
+only the white stars, low, twinkling, and quizzical, lived--a life of
+sharp corrosion, not of fire.
+
+Suddenly she raised her head and listened. The dog did the same. None but
+those whose lives are lived in lonely places can be so acute, so sensitive
+to sound. It was a feeling delicate and intense, the whole nature getting
+the vibration. You could have heard nothing, had you been there; none but
+one who was of the wide spaces could have done so. But the dog and the
+woman felt, and both strained toward the window. Again they heard, and
+started to their feet. It was far, far away, and still you could not have
+heard; but now they heard clearly--a cry in the night, a cry of pain and
+despair. The girl ran to the window and pulled aside the bearskin curtain
+which had completely shut out the light. Then she stirred the fire, threw
+a log upon it, snuffed the candles, hastily put on her moccasins, fur
+coat, wool cap, and gloves, and went to the door quickly, the dog at her
+heels. Opening it, she stepped out into the night.
+
+"_Qui va là?_ Who is it? Where?" she called, and strained toward the west.
+She thought it might be her father or Mickey the hired man, or both.
+
+The answer came from the east, out of the homeless, neighborless, empty
+east--a cry, louder now. There were only stars, and the night was dark,
+though not deep dark. She sped along the prairie road as fast as she
+could, once or twice stopping to call aloud. In answer to her calls the
+voice sounded nearer and nearer. Now suddenly she left the trail and bore
+away northward. At last the voice was very near. Presently a figure
+appeared ahead, staggering toward her.
+
+"_Qui va là?_ Who is it?" she asked.
+
+"Ba'tiste Caron," was the reply in English, in a faint voice. She was
+beside him in an instant.
+
+"What has happened? Why are you off the trail?" she said, and supported
+him.
+
+"My Injun stoled my dogs and run off," he replied. "I run after. Then,
+when I am to come to the trail"--he paused to find the English word, and
+could not--"_encore_ to this trail I no can. So. Ah, _bon Dieu_, it has so
+awful!" He swayed and would have fallen, but she caught him, bore him up.
+She was so strong, and he was as slight as a girl, though tall.
+
+"When was that?" she asked.
+
+"Two nights ago," he answered, and swayed.
+
+"Wait," she said, and pulled a flask from her pocket. "Drink
+this--quick!"
+
+He raised it to his lips, but her hand was still on it, and she only let
+him take a little. Then she drew it away, though she had almost to use
+force, he was so eager for it. Now she took a biscuit from her pocket.
+
+"Eat; then some more brandy, after," she urged. "Come on; it's not far.
+See, there's the light," she added, cheerily, raising her head toward the
+hut.
+
+"I saw it just when I have fall down--it safe me. I sit down to die--like
+that! But it safe me, that light--so. Ah, _bon Dieu_, it was so far, and I
+want eat so!"
+
+Already he had swallowed the biscuit.
+
+"When did you eat last?" she asked, as she urged him on.
+
+"Two nights--except for one leetla piece of bread--I fin' it in my pocket.
+_Grâce!_ I have travel so far. _Jésu_, I think it ees ten thousan' miles,
+I go. But I mus' go on, I mus' go--_certainement_."
+
+The light came nearer and nearer. His footsteps quickened, though he
+staggered now and then, and went like a horse that has run its race, but
+is driven upon its course again, going heavily with mouth open and head
+thrown forward and down.
+
+"But I mus' to get there, an' you--you will to help me, eh?"
+
+Again he swayed, but her strong arm held him up. As they ran on, in a kind
+of dog-trot, her hand firm upon his arm--he seemed not to notice it--she
+became conscious, though it was half dark, of what sort of man she had
+saved. He was about her own age, perhaps a year or two older, with little,
+if any, hair upon his face, save a slight mustache. His eyes, deep sunken
+as they were, she made out were black, and the face, though drawn and
+famished, had a handsome look. Presently she gave him another sip of
+brandy, and he quickened his steps, speaking to himself the while.
+
+"I haf to do it--if I lif. It is to go, go, go, till I get."
+
+Now they came to the hut where the firelight flickered on the window-pane;
+the door was flung open, and, as he stumbled on the threshold, she helped
+him into the warm room. She almost pushed him over to the fire.
+
+Divested of his outer coat, muffler, cap, and leggings, he sat on a bench
+before the fire, his eyes wandering from the girl to the flames, and his
+hands clasping and unclasping between his knees. His eyes dilating with
+hunger, he watched her preparations for his supper; and when at last--and
+she had been but a moment--it was placed before him, his head swam, and he
+turned faint with the stress of his longing. He would have swallowed a
+basin of pea-soup at a draught, but she stopped him, holding the basin
+till she thought he might venture again. Then came cold beans, and some
+meat which she toasted at the fire and laid upon his plate. They had not
+spoken since first entering the house, when tears had shone in his eyes,
+and he had said:
+
+"You have safe--ah, you have safe me, and so I will do it yet by help _bon
+Dieu_--yes."
+
+The meal was done at last, and he sat with a great dish of tea beside him,
+and his pipe alight.
+
+"What time, if please?" he asked. "I t'ink nine hour, but no sure."
+
+"It is near nine," she said. She hastily tidied up the table after his
+meal, and then came and sat in her chair over against the wall of the rude
+fireplace.
+
+"Nine--dat is good. The moon rise at 'leven; den I go. I go on," he said,
+"if you show me de queeck way."
+
+"You go on--how can you go on?" she asked, almost sharply.
+
+"Will you not to show me?" he asked.
+
+"Show you what?" she asked, abruptly.
+
+"The queeck way to Askatoon," he said, as though surprised that she should
+ask. "They say me if I get here you will tell me queeck way to Askatoon.
+Time, he go so fas', an' I have loose a day an' a night, an' I mus' get
+Askatoon if I lif--I mus' get dere in time. It is all safe to de stroke of
+de hour, _mais_, after, it is--_bon Dieu_!--it is hell then. Who shall
+forgif me--no!"
+
+"The stroke of the hour--the stroke of the hour!" It beat into her brain.
+Were they both thinking of the same thing now?
+
+"You will show me queeck way. I mus' be Askatoon in two days, or it is all
+over," he almost moaned. "Is no man here--I forget dat name, my head go
+round like a wheel; but I know dis place, an' de good God, He help me fin'
+my way to where I call out, _bien sûr_. Dat man's name I have forget."
+
+"My father's name is John Alroyd," she answered, absently, for there were
+hammering at her brain the words, "_The stroke of the hour._"
+
+"Ah, now I get--yes. An' your name, it is Loisette Alroy--ah, I have it in
+my mind now--Loisette. I not forget dat name, I not forget you--no."
+
+"Why do you want to go the 'quick' way to Askatoon?" she asked.
+
+He puffed a moment at his pipe before he answered her. Presently he said,
+holding out his pipe, "You not like smoke, mebbe?"
+
+She shook her head in negation, making an impatient gesture.
+
+"I forget ask you," he said. "Dat journee make me forget. When Injun Jo,
+he leave me with the dogs, an' I wake up all alone, an' not know my
+way--not like Jo, I think I die, it is so bad, so _terrible_ in my head.
+Not'ing but snow, not'ing. But dere is de sun; it shine. It say to me,
+'Wake up, Ba'tiste; it will be all right bime-bye.' But all time I t'ink I
+go mad, for I mus' get Askatoon before--_dat_."
+
+She started. Had she not used the same word in thinking of Askatoon.
+"_That_," she had said.
+
+"Why do you want to go the 'quick' way to Askatoon?" she asked again, her
+face pale, her foot beating the floor impatiently.
+
+"To save him before _dat_!" he answered, as though she knew of what he was
+speaking and thinking.
+
+"What is _that_?" she asked. She knew now, surely, but she must ask it
+nevertheless.
+
+"Dat hanging--of Haman," he answered. He nodded to himself. Then he took
+to gazing into the fire. His lips moved as though talking to himself, and
+the hand that held the pipe lay forgotten on his knee.
+
+"What have you to do with Haman?" she asked, slowly, her eyes burning.
+
+"I want safe him--I mus' give him free." He tapped his breast. "It is here
+to mak' him free." He still tapped his breast.
+
+For a moment she stood frozen still, her face thin and drawn and white;
+then suddenly the blood rushed back into her face, and a red storm raged
+in her eyes.
+
+She thought of the sister, younger than herself, whom Rube Haman had
+married and driven to her grave within a year--the sweet Lucy, with the
+name of her father's mother. Lucy had been all English in face and tongue,
+a flower of the west, driven to darkness by this horse-dealing brute, who,
+before he was arrested and tried for murder, was about to marry Kate
+Wimper. Kate Wimper had stolen him from Lucy before Lucy's first and only
+child was born, the child that could not survive the warm mother-life
+withdrawn, and so had gone down the valley whither the broken-hearted
+mother had fled. It was Kate Wimper, who, before that, had waylaid the one
+man for whom she herself had ever cared, and drawn him from her side by
+such attractions as she herself would keep for an honest wife, if such she
+ever chanced to be. An honest wife she would have been had Kate Wimper not
+crossed the straight path of her life. The man she had loved was gone to
+his end also, reckless and hopeless, after he had thrown away his chance
+of a lifetime with Loisette Alroyd. There had been left behind this girl,
+to whom tragedy had come too young, who drank humiliation with a heart as
+proud as ever straightly set its course through crooked ways.
+
+It had hurt her, twisted her nature a little, given a fountain of
+bitterness to her soul, which welled up and flooded her life sometimes. It
+had given her face no sourness, but it put a shadow into her eyes.
+
+She had been glad when Haman was condemned for murder, for she believed he
+had committed it, and ten times hanging could not compensate for that dear
+life gone from their sight--Lucy, the pride of her father's heart. She was
+glad when Haman was condemned, because of the woman who had stolen him
+from Lucy, because of that other man, her lover, gone out of her own life.
+The new hardness in her rejoiced that now the woman, if she had any heart
+at all, must have it bowed down by this supreme humiliation and wrung by
+the ugly tragedy of the hempen rope.
+
+And now this man before her, this man with a boy's face, with the dark,
+luminous eyes, whom she had saved from the frozen plains, he had that in
+his breast which would free Haman, so he had said. A fury had its birth in
+her at that moment. Something seemed to seize her brain and master it,
+something so big that it held all her faculties in perfect control, and
+she felt herself in an atmosphere where all life moved round her
+mechanically, she herself the only sentient thing, so much greater than
+all she saw, or all that she realized by her subconscious self. Everything
+in the world seemed small. How calm it was even with the fury within!
+
+"Tell me," she said, quietly--"tell me how you are able to save Haman?"
+
+"He not kill Wakely. It is my brudder Fadette dat kill and get away. Haman
+he is drunk, and everyt'ing seem to say Haman he did it, an' every one
+know Haman is not friend to Wakely. So the juree say he must be hanging.
+But my brudder he go to die with hawful bad cold queeck, an' he send for
+the priest an' for me, an' tell all. I go to Governor with the priest, an'
+Governor gif me dat writing here." He tapped his breast, then took out a
+wallet and showed the paper to her. "It is life of dat Haman, _voici_! And
+so I safe him for my brudder. Dat was a bad boy, Fadette. He was bad all
+time since he was a baby, an' I t'ink him pretty lucky to die on his bed,
+an' get absolve, and go to purgatore. If he not have luck like dat he go
+to hell, an' stay there."
+
+He sighed, and put the wallet back in his breast carefully, his eyes half
+shut with weariness, his handsome face drawn and thin, his limbs lax with
+fatigue.
+
+"If I get Askatoon before de time for _dat_, I be happy in my heart, for
+dat brudder off mine he get out of purgatore bime-bye, I t'ink."
+
+His eyes were almost shut, but he drew himself together with a great
+effort, and added desperately: "No sleep. If I sleep it is all smash. Man
+say me I can get Askatoon by dat time from here, if I go queeck way across
+lak'--it is all froze now, dat lak'--an' down dat Foxtail Hills. Is it so,
+ma'm'selle?"
+
+"By the 'quick' way if you can make it in time," she said; "but it is no
+way for the stranger to go. There are always bad spots on the ice--it is
+not safe. You could not find your way."
+
+"I mus' get dere in time," he said, desperately.
+
+"You can't do it--alone," she said. "Do you want to risk all and lose?"
+
+He frowned in self-suppression. "Long way, I no can get dere in time?" he
+asked.
+
+She thought a moment. "No; it can't be done by the long way. But there is
+another way--a third trail, the trail the Gover'ment men made a year ago
+when they came to survey. It is a good trail. It is blazed in the woods
+and staked on the plains. You cannot miss. But--but there is so little
+time." She looked at the clock on the wall. "You cannot leave here much
+before sunrise, and--"
+
+"I will leef when de moon rise, at eleven," he interjected.
+
+"You have had no sleep for two nights, and no food. You can't last it
+out," she said, calmly.
+
+The deliberate look on his face deepened to stubbornness.
+
+"It is my vow to my brudder--he is in purgatore. An' I mus' do it," he
+rejoined, with an emphasis there was no mistaking. "You can show me dat
+way?"
+
+She went to a drawer and took out a piece of paper. Then, with a point of
+blackened stick, as he watched her and listened, she swiftly drew his
+route for him.
+
+"Yes, I get it in my head," he said. "I go dat way, but I wish--I wish it
+was dat queeck way. I have no fear, not'ing. I go w'en dat moon rise--I
+go, _bien sûr._"
+
+"You must sleep, then, while I get some food for you." She pointed to a
+couch in a corner. "I will wake you when the moon rises."
+
+For the first time he seemed to realize her, for a moment to leave the
+thing which consumed him, and put his mind upon her.
+
+"You not happy--you not like me here?" he asked, simply; then added,
+quickly, "I am not bad man like me brudder--no."
+
+Her eyes rested on him for a moment as though realizing him, while some
+thought was working in her mind behind.
+
+"No, you are not a bad man," she said. "Men and women are equal on the
+plains. You have no fear--I have no fear."
+
+He glanced at the rifles on the walls, then back at her. "My mudder, she
+was good woman. I am glad she did not lif to know what Fadette do." His
+eyes drank her in for a minute, then he said: "I go sleep now, t'ank
+you--till moontime."
+
+In a moment his deep breathing filled the room, the only sound save for
+the fire within and the frost outside.
+
+Time went on. The night deepened.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Loisette sat beside the fire, but her body was half-turned from it toward
+the man on the sofa. She was not agitated outwardly, but within there was
+that fire which burns up life and hope and all the things that come
+between us and great issues. It had burned up everything in her except one
+thought, one powerful motive. She had been deeply wronged, and justice had
+been about to give "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." But the
+man lying there had come to sweep away the scaffolding of justice--he had
+come for that.
+
+Perhaps he might arrive at Askatoon before the stroke of the hour, but
+still he would be too late, for in her pocket now was the Governor's
+reprieve. The man had slept soundly. His wallet was still in his breast;
+but the reprieve was with her.
+
+If he left without discovering his loss, and got well on his way, and
+discovered it then, it would be too late. If he returned--she only saw one
+step before her, she would wait for that, and deal with it when it came.
+She was thinking of Lucy, of her own lover ruined and gone. She was calm
+in her madness.
+
+At the first light of the moon she roused him. She had put food into his
+fur-coat pocket, and after he had drunk a bowl of hot pea-soup, while she
+told him his course again, she opened the door, and he passed out into the
+night. He started forward without a word, but came back again and caught
+her hand.
+
+"_Pardon_," he said; "I go forget everyt'ing except _dat_. But I t'ink
+what you do for me, it is better than all my life. _Bien sûr_, I will come
+again, when I get my mind to myself. Ah, but you are beautibul," he said,
+"an' you not happy. Well, I come again--yes, _à Dieu._"
+
+He was gone into the night, with the moon silvering the sky, and the
+steely frost eating into the sentient life of this northern world. Inside
+the house, with the bearskin blind dropped at the window again, and the
+fire blazing high, Loisette sat with the Governor's reprieve in her hand.
+Looking at it, she wondered why it had been given to Ba'tiste Caron and
+not to a police-officer. Ah yes, it was plain--Ba'tiste was a woodsman and
+plainsman, and could go far more safely than a constable, and faster.
+Ba'tiste had reason for going fast, and he would travel night and day--he
+was travelling night and day indeed. And now Ba'tiste might get there, but
+the reprieve would not. He would not be able to stop the hanging of
+Haman--the hanging of Rube Haman.
+
+A change came over her. Her eyes blazed, her breast heaved now. She had
+been so quiet, so cold and still. But life seemed moving in her once
+again. The woman, Kate Wimper, who had helped to send two people to their
+graves, would now drink the dregs of shame, if she was capable of
+shame--would be robbed of her happiness, if so be she loved Rube Haman.
+
+She stood up, as though to put the paper in the fire, but paused suddenly
+at one thought--_Rube Haman was innocent of murder._
+
+Even so, he was not innocent of Lucy's misery and death, or the death of
+the little one who only opened its eyes to the light for an instant, and
+then went into the dark again. But truly she was justified! When Haman was
+gone things would go on just the same--and she had been so bitter, her
+heart had been pierced as with a knife these past three years. Again she
+held out her hand to the fire, but suddenly she gave a little cry and put
+her hand to her head. There was Ba'tiste!
+
+What was Ba'tiste to her? Nothing--nothing at all. She had saved his
+life--even if she wronged Ba'tiste, her debt would be paid. No, she would
+not think of Ba'tiste. Yet she did not put the paper in the fire, but in
+the pocket of her dress. Then she went to her room, leaving the door open.
+The bed was opposite the fire, and, as she lay there--she did not take off
+her clothes, she knew not why--she could see the flames. She closed her
+eyes but could not sleep, and more than once when she opened them she
+thought she saw Ba'tiste sitting there as he had sat hours before. Why did
+Ba'tiste haunt her so? What was it he had said in his broken English as he
+went away?--that he would come back; that she was "beautibul."
+
+All at once as she lay still, her head throbbing, her feet and hands icy
+cold, she sat up listening.
+
+"Ah--again!" she cried. She sprang from her bed, rushed to the door, and
+strained her eyes into the silver night. She called into the icy void,
+"_Qui va là?_ Who goes?"
+
+She leaned forward, her hand at her ear, but no sound came in reply. Once
+more she called, but nothing answered. The night was all light and frost
+and silence.
+
+She had only heard, in her own brain, the iteration of Ba'tiste's calling.
+Would he reach Askatoon in time? she wondered, as she shut the door. Why
+had she not gone with him and attempted the shorter way--the quick way, he
+had called it? All at once the truth came back upon her, stirring her now.
+It would do no good for Ba'tiste to arrive in time. He might plead to them
+all and tell the truth about the reprieve, but it would not avail--Rube
+Haman would hang. That did not matter--even though he was innocent; but
+Ba'tiste's brother would be so long in purgatory. And even that would not
+matter; but she would hurt Ba'tiste--Ba'tiste--Ba'tiste! And Ba'tiste he
+would know that she--and he had called her "beautibul"--that she had--
+
+With a cry she suddenly clothed herself for travel. She put some food and
+drink in a leather bag and slung them over her shoulder. Then she dropped
+on a knee and wrote a note to her father, tears falling from her eyes. She
+heaped wood on the fire and moved toward the door. All at once she turned
+to the crucifix on the wall which had belonged to her mother, and, though
+she had followed her father's Protestant religion, she kissed the feet of
+the sacred figure.
+
+"Oh, Christ, have mercy on me, and bring me safe to my journey's end--in
+time," she said, breathlessly; then she went softly to the door, leaving
+the dog behind.
+
+It opened, closed, and the night swallowed her. Like a ghost she sped the
+quick way to Askatoon. She was six hours behind Ba'tiste, and, going hard
+all the time, it was doubtful if she could get there before the fatal
+hour.
+
+On the trail Ba'tiste had taken there were two huts where he could rest,
+and he had carried his blanket slung on his shoulder. The way she went
+gave no shelter save the trees and caves which had been used to _câche_
+buffalo meat and hides in old days. But beyond this there was danger in
+travelling by night, for the springs beneath the ice of the three lakes
+she must cross made it weak and rotten even in the fiercest weather, and
+what would no doubt have been death to Ba'tiste would be peril at least to
+her. Why had she not gone with him?
+
+"He had in his face what was in Lucy's," she said to herself, as she sped
+on. "She was fine like him, ready to break her heart for those she cared
+for. My, if she had seen him first instead of--"
+
+She stopped short, for the ice gave way to her foot, and she only sprang
+back in time to save herself. But she trotted on, mile after mile, the
+dog-trot of the Indian, head bent forward, toeing in, breathing steadily
+but sharply.
+
+The morning came, noon, then a fall of snow and a keen wind, and despair
+in her heart; but she had passed the danger-spots, and now, if the storm
+did not overwhelm her, she might get to Askatoon in time. In the midst of
+the storm she came to one of the caves of which she had known. Here was
+wood for a fire, and here she ate, and in weariness unspeakable fell
+asleep. When she waked it was near sundown, the storm had ceased, and, as
+on the night before, the sky was stained with color and drowned in
+splendor.
+
+"I will do it--I will do it, Ba'tiste!" she called, and laughed aloud into
+the sunset. She had battled with herself all the way, and she had
+conquered. Right was right, and Rube Haman must not be hung for what he
+did not do. Her heart hardened whenever she thought of the woman, but
+softened again when she thought of Ba'tiste, who had to suffer for the
+deed of a brother in "purgatore." Once again the night and its silence and
+loneliness followed her, the only living thing near the trail till long
+after midnight. After that, as she knew, there were houses here and there
+where she might have rested, but she pushed on unceasing.
+
+At daybreak she fell in with a settler going to Askatoon with his dogs.
+Seeing how exhausted she was, he made her ride a few miles upon his
+sledge; then she sped on ahead again till she came to the borders of
+Askatoon.
+
+People were already in the streets, and all were tending one way. She
+stopped and asked the time. It was within a quarter of an hour of the time
+when Haman was to pay another's penalty. She spurred herself on, and came
+to the jail blind with fatigue. As she neared the jail she saw her father
+and Mickey. In amazement her father hailed her, but she would not stop.
+She was admitted to the prison on explaining that she had a reprieve.
+Entering a room filled with excited people, she heard a cry.
+
+It came from Ba'tiste. He had arrived but ten minutes before, and, in the
+Sheriff's presence, had discovered his loss. He had appealed in vain.
+
+But now, as he saw the girl, he gave a shout of joy which pierced the
+hearts of all.
+
+"Ah, you haf it! Say you haf it, or it is no use--he mus' hang.
+Spik--spik! Ah, my brudder--it is to do him right! Ah, Loisette--_bon
+Dieu, merci!_"
+
+For answer she placed the reprieve in the hands of the Sheriff. Then she
+swayed and fell fainting at the feet of Ba'tiste.
+
+She had come at the stroke of the hour.
+
+When she left for her home again the Sheriff kissed her.
+
+And that was not the only time he kissed her. He did it again six months
+later, at the beginning of the harvest, when she and Ba'tiste Caron
+started off on the long trail of life together. None but Ba'tiste knew the
+truth about the loss of the reprieve, and to him she was "beautibul" just
+the same, and greatly to be desired.
+
+[Illustration: SHE SWAYED AND FELL FAINTING AT THE FEET OF BA'TISTE]
+
+
+
+
+BUCKMASTER'S BOY
+
+
+"I bin waitin' for him, an' I'll git him ef it takes all winter. I'll get
+him--plumb."
+
+The speaker smoothed the barrel of his rifle with mittened hand, which
+had, however, a trigger-finger free. With black eyebrows twitching over
+sunken gray eyes, he looked doggedly down the frosty valley from the ledge
+of high rock where he sat. The face was rough and weather-beaten, with the
+deep tan got in the open life of a land of much sun and little cloud, and
+he had a beard which, untrimmed and growing wild, made him look ten years
+older than he was.
+
+"I bin waitin' a durn while," the mountain-man added, and got to his feet
+slowly, drawing himself out to six and a half feet of burly manhood. The
+shoulders were, however, a little stooped, and the head was thrust forward
+with an eager, watchful look--a habit become a physical characteristic.
+
+Presently he caught sight of a hawk sailing southward along the peaks of
+the white icebound mountains above, on which the sun shone with such sharp
+insistence, making sky and mountain of a piece in deep purity and serene
+stillness.
+
+"That hawk's seen him, mebbe," he said, after a moment. "I bet it went up
+higher when it got him in its eye. Ef it'd only speak and tell me where he
+is--ef he's a day, or two days, or ten days north."
+
+Suddenly his eyes blazed and his mouth opened in superstitious amazement,
+for the hawk stopped almost directly overhead at a great height, and swept
+round in a circle many times, waveringly, uncertainly. At last it resumed
+its flight southward, sliding down the mountains like a winged star.
+
+The mountaineer watched it with a dazed expression for a moment longer,
+then both hands clutched the rifle and half swung it to position
+involuntarily.
+
+"It's seen him, and it stopped to say so. It's seen him, I tell you, an'
+I'll git him. Ef it's an hour, or a day, or a week, it's all the same. I'm
+here watchin', waitin' dead on to him, the poison skunk!"
+
+The person to whom he had been speaking now rose from the pile of cedar
+boughs where he had been sitting, stretched his arms up, then shook
+himself into place, as does a dog after sleep. He stood for a minute
+looking at the mountaineer with a reflective yet a furtively sardonic
+look. He was not above five feet nine inches in height, and he was slim
+and neat; and though his buckskin coat and breeches were worn and even
+frayed in spots, he had an air of some distinction and of concentrated
+force. It was a face that men turned to look at twice and shook their
+heads in doubt afterward--a handsome, worn, secretive face, in as perfect
+control as the strings of an instrument under the bow of a great artist.
+It was the face of a man without purpose in life beyond the
+moment--watchful, careful, remorselessly determined, an adventurer's
+asset, the dial-plate of a hidden machinery.
+
+Now he took the handsome meerschaum pipe from his mouth, from which he had
+been puffing smoke slowly, and said in a cold, yet quiet voice, "How long
+you been waitin', Buck?"
+
+"A month. He's overdue near that. He always comes down to winter at Fort
+o' Comfort, with his string of half-breeds, an' Injuns, an' the dogs."
+
+"No chance to get him at the Fort?"
+
+"It ain't so certain. They'd guess what I was doin' there. It's surer
+here. He's got to come down the trail, an' when I spot him by the Juniper
+clump"--he jerked an arm toward a spot almost a mile farther up the
+valley--"I kin scoot up the underbrush a bit and git him--plumb. I could
+do it from here, sure, but I don't want no mistake. Once only, jest one
+shot, that's all I want, Sinnet."
+
+He bit off a small piece of tobacco from a black plug Sinnet offered him,
+and chewed it with nervous fierceness, his eyebrows working, as he looked
+at the other eagerly. Deadly as his purpose was, and grim and unvarying as
+his vigil had been, the loneliness had told on him, and he had grown
+hungry for a human face and human companionship. Why Sinnet had come he
+had not thought to inquire. Why Sinnet should be going north instead of
+south had not occurred to him. He only realized that Sinnet was not the
+man he was waiting for with murder in his heart; and all that mattered to
+him in life was the coming of his victim down the trail. He had welcomed
+Sinnet with a sullen eagerness, and had told him in short, detached
+sentences the dark story of a wrong and a waiting revenge, which brought a
+slight flush to Sinnet's pale face and awakened a curious light in his
+eyes.
+
+"Is that your shack--that where you shake down?" Sinnet said, pointing
+toward a lean-to in the fir-trees to trees to the right.
+
+"That's it. I sleep there. It's straight on to the Juniper clump, the
+front door is." He laughed viciously, grimly. "Outside or inside, I'm on
+to the Juniper clump. Walk into the parlor?" he added, and drew open a
+rough-made door, so covered with green cedar boughs that it seemed of a
+piece with the surrounding underbrush and trees. Indeed, the little hut
+was so constructed that it could not be distinguished from the woods even
+a short distance away.
+
+"Can't have a fire, I suppose?" Sinnet asked.
+
+"Not daytimes. Smoke 'd give me away if he suspicioned me," answered the
+mountaineer. "I don't take no chances. Never can tell."
+
+"Water?" asked Sinnet, as though interested in the surroundings, while all
+the time he was eying the mountaineer furtively--as it were, prying to the
+inner man, or measuring the strength of the outer man. He lighted a fresh
+pipe and seated himself on a rough bench beside the table in the middle of
+the room, and leaned on his elbows, watching.
+
+The mountaineer laughed. It was not a pleasant laugh to hear. "Listen," he
+said. "You bin a long time out West. You bin in the mountains a good
+while. Listen."
+
+There was silence. Sinnet listened intently. He heard the faint drip,
+drip, drip of water, and looked steadily at the back wall of the room.
+
+"There--rock?" he said, and jerked his head toward the sound.
+
+"You got good ears," answered the other, and drew aside a blanket which
+hung on the back wall of the room. A wooden trough was disclosed hanging
+under a ledge of rock, and water dripped into it softly, slowly.
+
+"Almost providential, that rock," remarked Sinnet. "You've got your well
+at your back door. Food--but you can't go far, and keep your eye on the
+Bend too," he nodded toward the door, beyond which lay the frost-touched
+valley in the early morning light of autumn.
+
+"Plenty of black squirrels and pigeons come here on account of the springs
+like this one, and I get 'em with a bow and arrow. I didn't call myself
+Robin Hood and Daniel Boone not for nothin' when I was knee-high to a
+grasshopper." He drew from a rough cupboard some cold game, and put it on
+the table, with some scones and a pannikin of water. Then he brought out a
+small jug of whiskey and placed it beside his visitor. They began to eat.
+
+"How d'ye cook without fire?" asked Sinnet.
+
+"Fire's all right at nights. He'd never camp 'twixt here an' Juniper Bend
+at night. The next camp's six miles north from here. He'd only come down
+the valley daytimes. I studied it all out, and it's a dead sure thing.
+From daylight till dusk I'm on to him--I got the trail in my eye."
+
+He showed his teeth like a wild dog, as his look swept the valley. There
+was something almost revolting in his concentrated ferocity.
+
+Sinnet's eyes half closed as he watched the mountaineer, and the long,
+scraggy hands and whipcord neck seemed to interest him greatly. He looked
+at his own slim, brown hands with a half smile, and it was almost as cruel
+as the laugh of the other. Yet it had, too, a knowledge and an
+understanding which gave it humanity.
+
+"You're sure he did it?" Sinnet asked, presently, after drinking a very
+small portion of liquor, and tossing some water from the pannikin after
+it. "You're sure Greevy killed your boy, Buck?"
+
+"My name's Buckmaster, ain't it--Jim Buckmaster? Don't I know my own name?
+It's as sure as that. My boy said it was Greevy when he was dying. He told
+Bill Ricketts so, and Bill told me afore he went East. Bill didn't want to
+tell, but he said it was fair I should know, for my boy never did nobody
+any harm--an' Greevy's livin' on! But I'll git him. Right's right."
+
+"Wouldn't it be better for the law to hang him if you've got the proof,
+Buck? A year or so in jail, an' a long time to think over what's going
+round his neck on the scaffold--wouldn't that suit you, if you've got the
+proof?"
+
+A rigid, savage look came into Buckmaster's face.
+
+"I ain't lettin' no judge and jury do my business. I'm for certain sure,
+not for _p'r'aps_! An' I want to do it myself. Clint was only twenty. Like
+boys we was together. I was eighteen when I married, an' he come when
+_she_ went--jest a year--jest a year. An' ever since then we lived
+together, him an' me, an' shot together, an' trapped together, an' went
+gold-washin' together on the Cariboo, an' eat out of the same dish, an'
+slept under the same blanket, and jawed together nights--ever since he was
+five, when old Mother Lablache had got him into pants, an' he was fit to
+take the trail."
+
+The old man stopped a minute, his whipcord neck swelling, his lips
+twitching. He brought a fist down on the table with a bang. "The biggest
+little rip he was, as full of fun as a squirrel, an' never a smile--jest
+his eyes dancin', an' more sense than a judge. He laid hold o' me, that
+cub did--it was like his mother and himself together; an' the years
+flowin' in an' peterin' out, an' him gettin' older, an' always jest the
+same. Always on rock-bottom, always bright as a dollar, an' we livin' at
+Black Nose Lake, layin' up cash agin' the time we was to go South, an' set
+up a house along the railway, an' him to git married. I was for his
+gittin' married same as me, when we had enough cash. I use to think of
+that when he was ten, and when he was eighteen I spoke to him about it;
+but he wouldn't listen--jest laughed at me. You remember how Clint used to
+laugh, sort of low and teasin' like--you remember that laugh o' Clint's,
+don't you?"
+
+Sinnet's face was toward the valley and Juniper Bend, but he slowly turned
+his head and looked at Buckmaster strangely out of his half-shut eyes. He
+took the pipe from his mouth slowly.
+
+"I can hear it now," he answered, slowly. "I hear it often, Buck."
+
+The old man gripped his arm so suddenly that Sinnet was startled--in so
+far as anything could startle any one who had lived a life of chance and
+danger and accident--and his face grew a shade paler; but he did not move,
+and Buckmaster's hand tightened convulsively.
+
+"You liked him, an' he liked you; he first learnt poker off you, Sinnet.
+He thought you was a tough, but he didn't mind that no more than I did. It
+ain't for us to say what we're goin' to be, not always. Things in life git
+stronger than we are. You was a tough, but who's goin' to judge you? I
+ain't; for Clint took to you, Sinnet, an' he never went wrong in his
+thinkin'. God! he was wife an' child to me--an' he's dead--dead--dead!"
+
+The man's grief was a painful thing to see. His hands gripped the table,
+while his body shook with sobs, though his eyes gave forth no tears. It
+was an inward convulsion, which gave his face the look of unrelieved
+tragedy and suffering--Laocoon struggling with the serpents of sorrow and
+hatred which were strangling him.
+
+"Dead an' gone," he repeated, as he swayed to and fro, and the table
+quivered in his grasp. Presently, however, as though arrested by a
+thought, he peered out of the doorway toward Juniper Bend. "That hawk seen
+him--it seen him. He's comin', I know it, an' I'll git him--plumb." He had
+the mystery and imagination of the mountain-dweller.
+
+The rifle lay against the wall behind him, and he turned and touched it
+almost caressingly. "I ain't let go like this since he was killed, Sinnet.
+It don't do. I got to keep myself stiddy to do the trick when the minute
+comes. At first I usen't to sleep at nights, thinkin' of Clint, an'
+missin' him, an' I got shaky and no good. So I put a cinch on myself, an'
+got to sleepin' again--from the full dusk to dawn, for Greevy wouldn't
+take the trail at night. I've kept stiddy." He held out his hand as though
+to show that it was firm and steady, but it trembled with the emotion
+which had conquered him. He saw it, and shook his head angrily.
+
+"It was seein' you, Sinnet. It burst me. I ain't seen no one to speak to
+in a month, an' with you sittin' there, it was like Clint an' me cuttin'
+and comin' again off the loaf an' the knuckle-bone of ven'son."
+
+Sinnet ran a long finger slowly across his lips, and seemed meditating
+what he should say to the mountaineer. At length he spoke, looking into
+Buckmaster's face: "What was the story Ricketts told you? What did your
+boy tell Ricketts? I've heard, too, about it, and that's why I asked you
+if you had proofs that Greevy killed Clint. Of course, Clint should know,
+and if he told Ricketts, that's pretty straight; but I'd like to know if
+what I heard tallies with what Ricketts heard from Clint. P'r'aps it'd
+ease your mind a bit to tell it. I'll watch the Bend--don't you trouble
+about that. You can't do these two things at one time. I'll watch for
+Greevy; you give me Clint's story to Ricketts. I guess you know I'm
+feelin' for you, an' if I was in your place I'd shoot the man that killed
+Clint, if it took ten years. I'd have his heart's blood--all of it.
+Whether Greevy was in the right or in the wrong, I'd have him--_plumb_."
+
+Buckmaster was moved. He gave a fierce exclamation and made a gesture of
+cruelty. "Clint right or wrong? There ain't no question of that. My boy
+wasn't the kind to be in the wrong. What did he ever do but what was
+right? If Clint was in the wrong I'd kill Greevy jest the same, for Greevy
+robbed him of all the years that was before him--only a sapling he was,
+an' all his growin' to do, all his branches to widen an' his roots to
+spread. But that don't enter in it, his bein' in the wrong. It was a
+quarrel, and Clint never did Greevy any harm. It was a quarrel over cards,
+an' Greevy was drunk, an' followed Clint out into the prairie in the night
+and shot him like a coyote. Clint hadn't no chance, an' he jest lay there
+on the ground till morning, when Ricketts and Steve Joicey found him. An'
+Clint told Ricketts who it was."
+
+"Why didn't Ricketts tell it right out at once?" asked Sinnet.
+
+"Greevy was his own cousin--it was in the family, an' he kept thinkin' of
+Greevy's gal, Em'ly. Her--what'll it matter to her? She'll get married, an
+she'll forgit. I know her, a gal that's got no deep feelin' like Clint had
+for me. But because of her Ricketts didn't speak for a year. Then he
+couldn't stand it any longer, an' he told me--seein' how I suffered, an'
+everybody hidin' their suspicions from me, an' me up here out o' the way,
+an' no account. That was the feelin' among 'em: What was the good of
+making things worse? They wasn't thinkin' of the boy or of Jim Buckmaster,
+his father. They was thinkin' of Greevy's gal--to save her trouble."
+
+Sinnet's face was turned toward Juniper Bend, and the eyes were fixed, as
+it were, on a still more distant object--a dark, brooding, inscrutable
+look.
+
+"Was that all Ricketts told you, Buck?" The voice was very quiet, but it
+had a suggestive note.
+
+"That's all Clint told Bill before he died. That was enough."
+
+There was a moment's pause, and then, puffing out long clouds of smoke,
+and in a tone of curious detachment, as though he were telling something
+that he saw now in the far distance, or as a spectator of a battle from a
+far vantage-point might report to a blind man standing near, Sinnet said:
+
+"P'r'aps Ricketts didn't know the whole story; p'r'aps Clint didn't know
+it all to tell him; p'r'aps Clint didn't remember it all. P'r'aps he
+didn't remember anything except that he and Greevy quarrelled, and that
+Greevy and he shot at each other in the prairie. He'd only be thinking of
+the thing that mattered most to him--that his life was over, an' that a
+man had put a bullet in him, an'--"
+
+Buckmaster tried to interrupt him, but he waved a hand impatiently, and
+continued: "As I say, maybe he didn't remember everything; he had been
+drinkin' a bit himself, Clint had. He wasn't used to liquor, and couldn't
+stand much. Greevy was drunk, too, and gone off his head with rage. He
+always gets drunk when he first comes south to spend the winter with his
+girl Em'ly." He paused a moment, then went on a little more quickly.
+"Greevy was proud of her--couldn't even bear her being crossed in any way;
+and she has a quick temper, and if she quarrelled with anybody Greevy
+quarrelled too."
+
+"I don't want to know anything about her," broke in Buckmaster, roughly.
+"She isn't in this thing. I'm goin' to get Greevy. I bin waitin' for him,
+an' I'll git him."
+
+"You're going to kill the man that killed your boy, if you can, Buck; but
+I'm telling my story in my own way. You told Rickett's story; I'll tell
+what I've heard. And before you kill Greevy you ought to know all there is
+that anybody else knows--or suspicions about it."
+
+"I know enough. Greevy done it, an' I'm here."
+
+With no apparent coherence and relevancy Sinnet continued, but his voice
+was not so even as before. "Em'ly was a girl that wasn't twice alike. She
+was changeable. First it was one, then it was another, and she didn't seem
+to be able to fix her mind. But that didn't prevent her leadin' men on.
+She wasn't changeable, though, about her father. She was to him what your
+boy was to you. There she was like you, ready to give everything up for
+her father."
+
+"I tell y' I don't want to hear about her," said Buckmaster, getting to
+his feet and setting his jaws. "You needn't talk to me about her. She'll
+git over it. I'll never git over what Greevy done to me or to Clint--jest
+twenty, jest twenty! I got my work to do."
+
+He took his gun from the wall, slung it into the hollow of his arm, and
+turned to look up the valley through the open doorway.
+
+The morning was sparkling with life--the life and vigor which a touch of
+frost gives to the autumn world in a country where the blood tingles to
+the dry, sweet sting of the air. Beautiful, and spacious, and buoyant, and
+lonely, the valley and the mountains seemed waiting, like a new-born
+world, to be peopled by man. It was as though all had been made ready for
+him--the birds whistling and singing in the trees, the whisk of the
+squirrels leaping from bough to bough, the peremptory sound of the
+woodpecker's beak against the bole of a tree, the rustle of the leaves as
+a wood-hen ran past--a waiting, virgin world.
+
+Its beauty and its wonderful dignity had no appeal to Buckmaster. His eyes
+and mind were fixed on a deed which would stain the virgin wild with the
+ancient crime that sent the first marauder on human life into the
+wilderness.
+
+As Buckmaster's figure darkened the doorway Sinnet seemed to waken as from
+a dream, and he got swiftly to his feet. "Wait--you wait, Buck. You've got
+to hear all. You haven't heard my story yet. Wait, I tell you."
+
+His voice was so sharp and insistent, so changed, that Buckmaster turned
+from the doorway and came back into the room.
+
+"What's the use of my hearin'? You want me not to kill Greevy, because of
+that gal. What's she to me?"
+
+"Nothing to you, Buck, but Clint was everything to her."
+
+The mountaineer stood like one petrified.
+
+"What's that--what's that you say? It's a damn lie!"
+
+"It wasn't cards--the quarrel, not the real quarrel. Greevy found Clint
+kissing her. Greevy wanted her to marry Gatineau, the lumber-king. That
+was the quarrel."
+
+A snarl was on the face of Buckmaster. "Then she'll not be sorry when I
+git him. It took Clint from her as well as from me." He turned to the door
+again.
+
+"But, wait, Buck, wait one minute and hear--"
+
+He was interrupted by a low, exultant growl, and he saw Buckmaster's rifle
+clutched as a hunter, stooping, clutches his gun to fire on his prey.
+
+"Quick, the spy-glass!" he flung back at Sinnet. "It's him, but I'll make
+sure."
+
+Sinnet caught the telescope from the nails where it hung, and looked out
+toward Juniper Bend. "It's Greevy--and his girl, and the half-breeds," he
+said, with a note in his voice that almost seemed agitation, and yet few
+had ever seen Sinnet agitated. "Em'ly must have gone up the trail in the
+night."
+
+"It's my turn now," the mountaineer said, hoarsely, and, stooping, slid
+away quickly into the undergrowth.
+
+Sinnet followed, keeping near him, neither speaking. For a half mile they
+hastened on, and now and then Buckmaster drew aside the bushes, and looked
+up the valley, to keep Greevy and his _bois brûlées_ in his eye. Just so
+had he and his son and Sinnet stalked the wapiti and the red deer along
+these mountains; but this was a man that Buckmaster was stalking now, with
+none of the joy of the sport which had been his since a lad; only the
+malice of the avenger. The lust of a mountain feud was on him; he was
+pursuing the price of blood.
+
+At last Buckmaster stopped at a ledge of rock just above the trail. Greevy
+would pass below, within three hundred yards of his rifle. He turned to
+Sinnet with cold and savage eyes. "You go back," he said. "It's my
+business. I don't want you to see. You don't want to see, then you won't
+know, and you won't need to lie. You said that the man that killed Clint
+ought to die. He's going to die, but it's none o' your business. I want to
+be alone. In a minute he'll be where I kin git him--plumb. You go,
+Sinnet--right off. It's my business."
+
+There was a strange, desperate look in Sinnet's face; it was as hard as
+stone, but his eyes had a light of battle in them.
+
+"It's my business right enough, Buck," he said, "and you're not going to
+kill Greevy. That girl of his has lost her lover, your boy. It's broke her
+heart almost, and there's no use making her an orphan too. She can't stand
+it. She's had enough. You leave her father alone--you hear me, let up!" He
+stepped between Buckmaster and the ledge of rock from which the
+mountaineer was to take aim.
+
+There was a terrible look in Buckmaster's face. He raised his
+single-barrelled rifle, as though he would shoot Sinnet; but, at the
+moment, he remembered that a shot would warn Greevy, and that he might not
+have time to reload. He laid his rifle against a tree swiftly.
+
+"Git away from here," he said, with a strange rattle in his throat. "Git
+away quick; he'll be down past here in a minute."
+
+Sinnet pulled himself together as he saw Buckmaster snatch at a great
+clasp-knife in his belt. He jumped and caught Buckmaster's wrist in a grip
+like a vise.
+
+"Greevy didn't kill him, Buck," he said. But the mountaineer was gone mad,
+and did not grasp the meaning of the words. He twined his left arm round
+the neck of Sinnet, and the struggle began, he fighting to free Sinnet's
+hand from his wrist, to break Sinnet's neck. He did not realize what he
+was doing. He only knew that this man stood between him and the murderer
+of his boy, and all the ancient forces of barbarism were alive in him.
+Little by little they drew to the edge of the rock, from which there was a
+sheer drop of two hundred feet. Sinnet fought like a panther for safety,
+but no sane man's strength could withstand the demoniacal energy that bent
+and crushed him. Sinnet felt his strength giving. Then he said, in a
+hoarse whisper: "Greevy didn't kill him. I killed him, and--"
+
+At that moment he was borne to the ground with a hand on his throat, and
+an instant after the knife went home.
+
+Buckmaster got to his feet and looked at his victim for an instant, dazed
+and wild; then he sprang for his gun. As he did so the words that Sinnet
+had said as they struggled rang in his ears, "_Greevy didn't kill him; I
+killed him_!"
+
+He gave a low cry and turned back toward Sinnet, who lay in a pool of
+blood.
+
+Sinnet was speaking. He went and stooped over him.
+
+[Illustration: LITTLE BY LITTLE THEY DREW TO THE EDGE OF THE ROCK]
+
+"Em'ly threw me over for Clint," the voice said, huskily, "and I followed
+to have it out with Clint. So did Greevy, but Greevy was drunk. I saw them
+meet. I was hid. I saw that Clint would kill Greevy, and I fired. I was
+off my head--I'd never cared for any woman before, and Greevy was her
+father. Clint was off his head too. He had called me names that day--a
+cardsharp, and a liar, and a thief, and a skunk, he called me, and I hated
+him just then. Greevy fired twice--wide. He didn't know but what he killed
+Clint, but he didn't. I did. So I tried to stop you, Buck--"
+
+Life was going fast, and speech failed him; but he opened his eyes again
+and whispered: "I didn't want to die, Buck. I am only thirty-five, and
+it's too soon; but it had to be. Don't look that way, Buck. You got the
+man that killed him--plumb. But Em'ly didn't play fair with me--made a
+fool of me, the only time in my life I ever cared for a woman. You leave
+Greevy alone, Buck, and tell Em'ly for me I wouldn't let you kill her
+father."
+
+"You--Sinnet--you, you done it! Why, he'd have fought for you. You--done
+it--to him--to Clint!"
+
+Now that the blood-feud had been satisfied, a great change came over the
+mountaineer. He had done his work, and the thirst for vengeance was gone.
+Greevy he had hated, but this man had been with him in many a winter's
+hunt. His brain could hardly grasp the tragedy--it had all been too
+sudden.
+
+Suddenly he stooped down. "Sinnet," he said, "ef there was a woman in it,
+that makes all the difference. Sinnet, ef--"
+
+But Sinnet was gone upon a long trail that led into an illimitable
+wilderness. With a moan the old man ran to the ledge of rock. Greevy and
+his girl were below.
+
+"When there's a woman in it--!" he said, in a voice of helplessness and
+misery, and watched her till she disappeared from view. Then he turned,
+and, lifting up in his arms the man he had killed, carried him into the
+deeper woods.
+
+
+
+
+TO-MORROW
+
+
+I
+
+"My, nothing's the matter with the world to-day! It's so good it almost
+hurts."
+
+She raised her head from the white petticoat she was ironing, and gazed
+out of the doorway and down the valley with a warm light in her eyes and a
+glowing face. The snow-tipped mountains far above and away, the
+fir-covered, cedar-ranged foothills, and, lower down, the wonderful maple
+and ash woods, with their hundred autumn tints, all merging to one soft,
+red tone, the roar of the stream tumbling down the ravine from the
+heights, the air that braced the nerves like wine--it all seemed to be
+part of her, the passion of life corresponding to the passion of living in
+her.
+
+After watching the scene dreamily for a moment, she turned and laid the
+iron she had been using upon the hot stove near. Taking up another, she
+touched it with a moistened finger to test the heat, and, leaning above
+the table again, passed it over the linen for a few moments, smiling at
+something that was in her mind. Presently she held the petticoat up,
+turned it round, then hung it in front of her, eying it with critical
+pleasure.
+
+"_To-morrow!_" she said, nodding at it. "You won't be seen, I suppose, but
+_I'll_ know you're nice enough for a queen--and that's enough to know."
+She blushed a little, as though some one had heard her words and was
+looking at her, then she carefully laid the petticoat over the back of a
+chair. "No queen's got one whiter, if I do say it," she continued, tossing
+her head.
+
+In that, at any rate, she was right, for the water of the mountain springs
+was pure, the air was clear, and the sun was clarifying; and little
+ornamented or frilled as it was, the petticoat was exquisitely soft and
+delicate. It would have appealed to more eyes than a woman's.
+
+"To-morrow!" She nodded at it again and turned again to the bright world
+outside. With arms raised and hands resting against the timbers of the
+doorway, she stood dreaming. A flock of pigeons passed with a whir not far
+away, and skirted the woods making down the valley. She watched their
+flight abstractedly, yet with a subconscious sense of pleasure. Life--they
+were Life, eager, buoyant, belonging to this wild region, where still the
+heart could feel so much at home, where the great world was missed so
+little.
+
+Suddenly, as she gazed, a shot rang out down the valley, and two of the
+pigeons came tumbling to the ground, a stray feather floating after. With
+a startled exclamation she took a step forward. Her brain became confused
+and disturbed. She had looked out on Eden, and it had been ravaged before
+her eyes. She had been thinking of to-morrow, and this vast prospect of
+beauty and serenity had been part of the pageant in which it moved. Not
+the valley alone had been marauded, but that "To-morrow," and all it meant
+to her.
+
+Instantly the valley had become clouded over for her, its glory and its
+grace despoiled. She turned back to the room where the white petticoat lay
+upon the chair, but stopped with a little cry of alarm.
+
+A man was standing in the centre of the room. He had entered stealthily by
+the back door, and had waited for her to turn round. He was haggard and
+travel-stained, and there was a feverish light in his eyes. His fingers
+trembled as they adjusted his belt, which seemed too large for him.
+Mechanically he buckled it tighter.
+
+"You're Jenny Long, ain't you?" he asked. "I beg pardon for sneakin' in
+like this, but they're after me, some ranchers and a constable--one o' the
+Riders of the Plains. I've been tryin' to make this house all day. You're
+Jenny Long, ain't you?"
+
+She had plenty of courage, and, after the first instant of shock, she had
+herself in hand. She had quickly observed his condition, had marked the
+candor of the eye and the decision and character of the face, and doubt of
+him found no place in her mind. She had the keen observation of the
+dweller in lonely places, where every traveller has the potentialities of
+a foe, while the door of hospitality is opened to him after the custom of
+the wilds. Year in, year out, since she was a little girl and came to live
+here with her Uncle Sanger when her father died--her mother had gone
+before she could speak--travellers had halted at this door, going North or
+coming South, had had bite and sup, and bed, maybe, and had passed on,
+most of them never to be seen again. More than that, too, there had been
+moments of peril, such as when, alone, she had faced two wood-thieves with
+a revolver, as they were taking her mountain-pony with them, and herself
+had made them "hands-up," and had marched them into a prospector's camp
+five miles away.
+
+She had no doubt about the man before her. Whatever he had done, it was
+nothing dirty or mean--of that she was sure.
+
+"Yes, I'm Jenny Long," she answered. "What have you done? What are they
+after you for?"
+
+[Illustration: "THEY SHOT ME AN' HURT ME"]
+
+"Oh! to-morrow," he answered--"to-morrow I got to git to Bindon. It's life
+or death. I come from prospecting two hundred miles up North. I done it in
+two days and a half. My horse dropped dead--I'm near dead myself. I tried
+to borrow another horse up at Clancey's, and at Scotton's Drive, but they
+didn't know me, and they bounced me. So I borrowed a horse off Weigall's
+paddock, to make for here--to you. I didn't mean to keep that horse. Hell,
+I'm no horse-stealer! But I couldn't explain to them, except that I had to
+git to Bindon to save a man's life. If people laugh in your face, it's no
+use explainin'. I took a roan from Weigall's, and they got after me. 'Bout
+six miles up they shot at me an' hurt me."
+
+She saw that one arm hung limp at his side and that his wrist was wound
+with a red bandana.
+
+She started forward. "Are you hurt bad? Can I bind it up or wash it for
+you? I've got plenty of hot water here, and it's bad letting a wound get
+stale."
+
+He shook his head. "I washed the hole clean in the creek below. I doubled
+on them. I had to go down past your place here, and then work back to be
+rid of them. But there's no telling when they'll drop onto the game, and
+come back for me. My only chance was to git to you. Even if I had a horse,
+I couldn't make Bindon in time. It's two days round the gorge by trail. A
+horse is no use now--I lost too much time since last night. I can't git to
+Bindon to-morrow in time, if I ride the trail."
+
+"The river?" she asked, abruptly.
+
+"It's the only way. It cuts off fifty mile. That's why I come to you."
+
+She frowned a little, her face became troubled, and her glance fell on his
+arm nervously. "What've I got to do with it?" she asked, almost sharply.
+
+"Even if this was all right"--he touched the wounded arm--"I couldn't take
+the rapids in a canoe. I don't know them, an' it would be sure death.
+That's not the worst, for there's a man at Bindon would lose his
+life--p'r'aps twenty men--I dunno; but one man sure. To-morrow, it's go or
+stay with him. He was good--Lord, but he was good!--to my little gal years
+back. She'd only been married to me a year when he saved her, riskin' his
+own life. No one else had the pluck. My little gal, only twenty she was,
+an' pretty as a picture, an' me fifty miles away when the fire broke out
+in the hotel where she was. He'd have gone down to hell for a friend, an'
+he saved my little gal. I had her for five years after that. That's why I
+got to git to Bindon to-morrow. If I don't, I don't want to see to-morrow.
+I got to go down the river to-night."
+
+She knew what he was going to ask her. She knew he was thinking what all
+the North knew, that she was the first person to take the Dog Nose Rapids
+in a canoe, down the great river scarce a stone's-throw from her door; and
+that she had done it in safety many times. Not in all the West and North
+were there a half dozen people who could take a canoe to Bindon, and they
+were not here. She knew that he meant to ask her to paddle him down the
+swift stream, with its murderous rocks, to Bindon. She glanced at the
+white petticoat on the chair, and her lips tightened. To-morrow--to-morrow
+was as much to her here as it would be to this man before her, or the man
+he would save at Bindon.
+
+"What do you want?" she asked, hardening her heart.
+
+"Can't you see? I want you to hide me here till to-night. There's a full
+moon, an' it would be as plain goin' as by day. They told me about you up
+North, and I said to myself, 'If I git to Jenny Long, an' tell her about
+my friend at Bindon, an' my little gal, she'll take me down to Bindon in
+time.' My little gal would have paid her own debt if she'd ever had the
+chance. She didn't--she's lying up on Mazy Mountain. But one woman'll do a
+lot for the sake of another woman. Say, you'll do it, won't you? If I
+don't git there by to-morrow noon, it's no good."
+
+She would not answer. He was asking more than he knew. Why should she be
+sacrificed? Was it her duty to pay the "little gal's debt," to save the
+man at Bindon? To-morrow was to be the great day in her own life. The one
+man in all the world was coming to marry her to-morrow. After four years'
+waiting, after a bitter quarrel in which both had been to blame, he was
+coming from the mining town of Selby to marry her to-morrow.
+
+"What will happen? Why will your friend lose his life if you don't get to
+Bindon?"
+
+"By noon to-morrow, by twelve o'clock noon; that's the plot; that's what
+they've schemed. Three days ago, I heard. I got a man free from trouble
+North--he was no good, but I thought he ought to have another chance, and
+I got him free. He told me of what was to be done at Bindon. There'd been
+a strike in the mine, an' my friend had took it in hand with
+knuckle-dusters on. He isn't the kind to fell a tree with a jack-knife.
+Then three of the strikers that had been turned away--they was the
+ringleaders--they laid a plan that'd make the devil sick. They've put a
+machine in the mine, an' timed it, an' it'll go off when my friend comes
+out of the mine at noon to-morrow."
+
+Her face was pale now, and her eyes had a look of pain and horror. Her
+man--him that she was to marry--was the head of a mine also at Selby,
+forty miles beyond Bindon, and the horrible plot came home to her with
+piercing significance.
+
+"Without a second's warning," he urged, "to go like that, the man that was
+so good to my little gal, an' me with a chance to save him, an' others
+too, p'r'aps. You won't let it be. Say, I'm pinnin' my faith to you.
+I'm--"
+
+Suddenly he swayed. She caught him, held him, and lowered him gently in a
+chair. Presently he opened his eyes. "It's want o' food, I suppose," he
+said. "If you've got a bit of bread and meat--I must keep up."
+
+She went to a cupboard, but suddenly turned toward him again. Her ears had
+caught a sound outside in the underbrush. He had heard also, and he half
+staggered to his feet.
+
+"Quick--in here!" she said, and, opening a door, pushed him inside. "Lie
+down on my bed, and I'll bring you vittles as quick as I can," she added.
+Then she shut the door, turned to the ironing-board, and took up the iron,
+as the figure of a man darkened the doorway.
+
+"Hello, Jinny, fixin' up for to-morrow?" the man said, stepping inside,
+with a rifle under his arm and some pigeons in his hand.
+
+She nodded and gave him an impatient, scrutinizing glance. His face had a
+fatuous kind of smile.
+
+"Been celebrating the pigeons?" she asked, dryly, jerking her head toward
+the two birds, which she had seen drop from her Eden skies a short time
+before.
+
+"I only had one swig of whiskey, honest Injun!" he answered. "I s'pose I
+might have waited till to-morrow, but I was dead-beat. I got a bear over
+by the Ten-mile Reach, and I was tired. I ain't so young as I used to be,
+and, anyhow, what's the good? What's ahead of me? You're going to git
+married to-morrow after all these years we bin together, and you're going
+down to Selby from the mountains, where I won't see you, not once in a
+blue moon. Only that old trollop, Mother Massy, to look after me."
+
+"Come down to Selby and live there. You'll be welcome by Jake and me."
+
+He stood his gun in the corner and, swinging the pigeons in his hand,
+said: "Me live out of the mountains! Don't you know better than that? I
+couldn't breathe, and I wouldn't want to breathe. I've got my shack here,
+I got my fur business, and they're still fond of whiskey up North!" He
+chuckled to himself, as he thought of the illicit still farther up the
+mountain behind them. "I make enough to live on, and I've put a few
+dollars by, though I won't have so many after to-morrow, after I've given
+you a little pile, Jinny."
+
+"P'r'aps there won't be any _to-morrow_, as you expect," she said,
+slowly.
+
+The old man started. "What! you and Jake ain't quarrelled again? You ain't
+broke it off at the last moment, same as before? You ain't had a letter
+from Jake?" He looked at the white petticoat on the chair-back, and shook
+his head in bewilderment.
+
+"I've had no letter," she answered. "I've had no letter from Selby for a
+month. It was all settled then, and there was no good writing, when he was
+coming to-morrow with the minister and the license. Who do you think'd be
+postman from Selby here? It must have cost him ten dollars to send the
+last letter."
+
+"Then what's the matter? I don't understand," the old man urged,
+querulously. He did not want her to marry and leave him, but he wanted no
+more troubles; he did not relish being asked awkward questions by every
+mountaineer he met as to why Jenny Long didn't marry Jake Lawson.
+
+"There's only one way that I can be married to-morrow," she said, at last,
+"and that's by you taking a man down the Dog Nose Rapids to Bindon
+to-night."
+
+He dropped the pigeons on the floor, dumfounded. "What in--"
+
+He stopped short, in sheer incapacity to go further. Jenny had not always
+been easy to understand, but she was wholly incomprehensible now.
+
+She picked up the pigeons and was about to speak, but she glanced at the
+bedroom door, where her exhausted visitor had stretched himself on her
+bed, and beckoned her uncle to another room.
+
+"There's a plate of vittles ready for you in there," she said. "I'll tell
+you as you eat."
+
+He followed her into the little living-room adorned by the trophies of his
+earlier achievements with gun and rifle, and sat down at the table, where
+some food lay covered by a clean white cloth.
+
+"No one'll ever look after me as you've done, Jinny," he said, as he
+lifted the cloth and saw the palatable dish ready for him. Then he
+remembered again about to-morrow and the Dog Nose Rapids.
+
+"What's it all about, Jinny? What's that about my canoeing a man down to
+Bindon?"
+
+"Eat, uncle," she said, more softly than she had yet spoken, for his words
+about her care of him had brought a moisture to her eyes. "I'll be back in
+a minute and tell you all about it."
+
+"Well, it's about took away my appetite," he said. "I feel a kind of
+sinking." He took from his pocket a bottle, poured some of its contents
+into a tin cup, and drank it off.
+
+"No, I suppose you couldn't take a man down to Bindon," she said, as she
+saw his hand trembling on the cup. Then she turned and entered the other
+room again. Going to the cupboard, she hastily heaped a plate with food,
+and, taking a dipper of water from a pail near by, she entered her bedroom
+hastily and placed what she had brought on a small table, as her visitor
+rose slowly from the bed.
+
+He was about to speak, but she made a protesting gesture.
+
+"I can't tell you anything yet," she said.
+
+"Who was it come?" he asked.
+
+"My uncle--I'm going to tell him."
+
+"The men after me may git here any minute," he urged, anxiously.
+
+"They'd not be coming into my room," she answered, flushing slightly.
+
+"Can't you hide me down by the river till we start?" he asked, his eyes
+eagerly searching her face. He was assuming that she would take him down
+the river; but she gave no sign.
+
+"I've got to see if he'll take you first?" she answered.
+
+"He--your uncle, Tom Sanger? He drinks, I've heard. He'd never git to
+Bindon."
+
+She did not reply directly to his words. "I'll come back and tell you.
+There's a place you could hide by the river where no one could ever find
+you," she said, and left the room.
+
+As she stepped out, she saw the old man standing in the doorway of the
+other room. His face was petrified with amazement.
+
+"Who you got in that room, Jinny? What man you got in that room? I heard a
+man's voice. Is it because o' him that you bin talkin' about no weddin'
+to-morrow? Is it one o' the others come back, puttin' you off Jake
+again?"
+
+Her eyes flashed fire at his first words, and her breast heaved with
+anger, but suddenly she became composed again and motioned him to a
+chair.
+
+"You eat, and I'll tell you all about it, Uncle Tom," she said, and,
+seating herself at the table also, she told him the story of the man who
+must go to Bindon.
+
+When she had finished, the old man blinked at her for a minute without
+speaking, then he said, slowly: "I heard something 'bout trouble down at
+Bindon yisterday from a Hudson's Bay man goin' North, but I didn't take it
+in. You've got a lot o' sense, Jinny, an' if you think he's tellin' the
+truth, why, it goes; but it's as big a mixup as a lariat in a steer's
+horns. You've got to hide him sure, whoever he is, for I wouldn't hand an
+Eskimo over, if I'd taken him in my home once; we're mountain people. A
+man ought to be hung for horse-stealin', but this was different. He was
+doing it to save a man's life, an' that man at Bindon was good to his
+little gal, an' she's dead."
+
+He moved his head from side to side with the air of a sentimental
+philosopher. He had all the vanity of a man who had been a success in a
+small, shrewd, culpable way--had he not evaded the law for thirty years
+with his whiskey-still?
+
+"I know how he felt," he continued. "When Betsy died--we was only four
+years married--I could have crawled into a knot-hole an' died there. You
+got to save him, Jinny, but"--he came suddenly to his feet--"he ain't safe
+here. They might come any minute, if they've got back on his trail. I'll
+take him up the gorge. You know where."
+
+"You sit still, Uncle Tom," she rejoined. "Leave him where he is a minute.
+There's things must be settled first. They ain't going to look for him in
+my bedroom, be they?"
+
+The old man chuckled. "I'd like to see 'em at it. You got a temper, Jinny;
+and you got a pistol, too, eh?" He chuckled again. "As good a shot as any
+in the mountains. I can see you darin' 'em to come on. But what if Jake
+come, and he found a man in your bedroom"--he wiped the tears of laughter
+from his eyes--"why, Jinny--"
+
+He stopped short, for there was anger in her face. "I don't want to hear
+any more of that. I do what I want to do," she snapped out.
+
+"Well, well, you always done what you wanted; but we got to git him up the
+hills, till it's sure they're out o' the mountains and gone back. It'll be
+days, mebbe."
+
+"Uncle Tom, you've took too much to drink," she answered. "You don't
+remember he's got to be at Bindon by to-morrow noon. He's got to save his
+friend by then."
+
+"Pshaw! Who's going to take him down the river to-night? You're goin' to
+be married to-morrow. If you like, you can give him the canoe. It'll never
+come back, nor him neither!"
+
+"You've been down with me," she responded, suggestively. "And you went
+down once by yourself."
+
+He shook his head. "I ain't been so well this summer. My sight ain't what
+it was. I can't stand the racket as I once could. 'Pears to me I'm gettin'
+old. No, I couldn't take them rapids, Jinny, not for one frozen minute."
+
+She looked at him with trouble in her eyes, and her face lost some of its
+color. She was fighting back the inevitable, even as its shadow fell upon
+her. "You wouldn't want a man to die, if you could save him, Uncle
+Tom--blown up, sent to Kingdom Come without any warning at all; and
+perhaps he's got them that love him--and the world so beautiful."
+
+"Well, it ain't nice dyin' in the summer, when it's all sun, and there's
+plenty everywhere; but there's no one to go down the river with him.
+What's his name?"
+
+Her struggle was over. She had urged him, but in very truth she was urging
+herself all the time, bringing herself to the axe of sacrifice.
+
+"His name's Dingley. I'm going down the river with him--down to Bindon."
+
+The old man's mouth opened in blank amazement. His eyes blinked
+helplessly.
+
+"What you talkin' about, Jinny? Jake's comin' up with the minister, an'
+you're goin' to be married at noon to-morrow."
+
+"I'm takin' him"--she jerked her head toward the room where Dingley
+was--"down Dog Nose Rapids to-night. He's risked his life for his friend,
+thinkin' of her that's dead an' gone, and a man's life is a man's life. If
+it was Jake's life in danger, what 'd I think of a woman that could save
+him, and didn't?"
+
+"Onct you broke off with Jake Lawson--the day before you was to be
+married; an' it's took years to make up an' agree again to be spliced. If
+Jake comes here to-morrow, and you ain't here, what do you think he'll do?
+The neighbors are comin' for fifty miles round, two is comin' up a hundred
+miles, and you can't--Jinny, you can't do it. I bin sick of answerin'
+questions all these years 'bout you and Jake, an' I ain't goin' through it
+again. I've told more lies than there's straws in a tick."
+
+She flamed out. "Then take him down the river yourself--a man to do a
+man's work. Are you afeard to take the risk?"
+
+He held out his hands slowly and looked at them. They shook a little.
+"Yes, Jinny," he said, sadly, "I'm afeard. I ain't what I was. I made a
+mistake, Jinny. I've took too much whiskey. I'm older than I ought to be.
+I oughtn't never to have had a whiskey-still, an' I wouldn't have drunk so
+much. I got money--money for you, Jinny, for you an' Jake, but I've lost
+what I'll never git back. I'm afeard to go down the river with him. I'd go
+smash in the Dog Nose Rapids. I got no nerve. I can't hunt the grizzly any
+more, nor the puma, Jinny. I got to keep to common shootin', now and
+henceforth, amen! No, I'd go smash in Dog Nose Rapids."
+
+She caught his hands impulsively. "Don't you fret, Uncle Tom. You've bin a
+good uncle to me, and you've bin a good friend, and you ain't the first
+that's found whiskey too much for him. You ain't got an enemy in the
+mountains. Why, I've got two or three--"
+
+"Shucks! Women--only women whose beaux left 'em to follow after you.
+That's nothing, an' they'll be your friends fast enough after you're
+married to-morrow."
+
+"I ain't going to be married to-morrow. I'm going down to Bindon to-night.
+If Jake's mad, then it's all over, and there'll be more trouble among the
+women up here."
+
+By this time they had entered the other room. The old man saw the white
+petticoat on the chair. "No woman in the mountains ever had a petticoat
+like that, Jinny. It'd make a dress, it's that pretty an' neat. Golly! I'd
+like to see it on you, with the blue skirt over, and just hitched up a
+little."
+
+"Oh, shut up--shut up!" she said, in sudden anger, and caught up the
+petticoat as though she would put it away; but presently she laid it down
+again and smoothed it with quick, nervous fingers. "Can't you talk sense
+and leave my clothes alone? If Jake comes, and I'm not here, and he wants
+to make a fuss, and spoil everything, and won't wait, you give him this
+petticoat. You put it in his arms. I bet you'll have the laugh on him.
+He's got a temper."
+
+"So've you, Jinny, dear, so've you," said the old man, laughing. "You're
+goin' to have your own way, same as ever--same as ever."
+
+II
+
+A moon of exquisite whiteness silvering the world, making shadows on the
+water as though it were sunlight and the daytime, giving a spectral look
+to the endless array of poplar trees on the banks, glittering on the foam
+of the rapids. The spangling stars made the arch of the sky like some
+gorgeous chancel in a cathedral as vast as life and time. Like the day
+which was ended, in which the mountain-girl had found a taste of Eden, it
+seemed too sacred for mortal strife. Now and again there came the note of
+a night-bird, the croak of a frog from the shore; but the serene stillness
+and beauty of the primeval North was over all.
+
+For two hours after sunset it had all been silent and brooding, and then
+two figures appeared on the bank of the great river. A canoe was softly
+and hastily pushed out from its hidden shelter under the overhanging bank,
+and was noiselessly paddled out to mid-stream, dropping down the current
+meanwhile.
+
+It was Jenny Long and the man who must get to Bindon. They had waited till
+nine o'clock, when the moon was high and full, to venture forth. Then
+Dingley had dropped from her bedroom window, had joined her under the
+trees, and they had sped away, while the man's hunters, who had come
+suddenly, and before Jenny could get him away into the woods, were
+carousing inside. These had tracked their man back to Tom Sanger's house,
+and at first they were incredulous that Jenny and her uncle had not seen
+him. They had prepared to search the house, and one had laid his finger on
+the latch of her bedroom door; but she had flared out with such anger
+that, mindful of the supper she had already begun to prepare for them,
+they had desisted, and the whiskey-jug which the old man brought out
+distracted their attention.
+
+One of their number, known as the Man from Clancey's had, however, been
+outside when Dingley had dropped from the window, and had seen him from a
+distance. He had not given the alarm, but had followed, to make the
+capture by himself. But Jenny had heard the stir of life behind them, and
+had made a sharp détour, so that they had reached the shore and were out
+in mid-stream before their tracker got to the river. Then he called to
+them to return, but Jenny only bent a little lower and paddled on, guiding
+the canoe toward the safe-channel through the first small rapids leading
+to the great Dog Nose Rapids.
+
+A rifle-shot rang out, and a bullet "pinged" over the water and splintered
+the side of the canoe where Dingley sat. He looked calmly back, and saw
+the rifle raised again, but did not stir, in spite of Jenny's warning to
+lie down.
+
+"He'll not fire on you so long as he can draw a bead on me," he said,
+quietly.
+
+Again a shot rang out, and the bullet sang past his head.
+
+"If he hits me, you go straight on to Bindon," he continued. "Never mind
+about me. Go to the Snowdrop Mine. Get there by twelve o'clock, and warn
+them. Don't stop a second for me--"
+
+Suddenly three shots rang out in succession--Tom Sanger's house had
+emptied itself on the bank of the river--and Dingley gave a sharp
+exclamation.
+
+"They've hit me, but it's the same arm as before," he growled. "They got
+no right to fire at me. It's not the law. Don't stop," he added, quickly,
+as he saw her half turn round.
+
+Now there were loud voices on the shore. Old Tom Sanger was threatening to
+shoot the first man that fired again, and he would have kept his word.
+
+"Who you firin' at?" he shouted. "That's my niece, Jinny Long, an' you let
+that boat alone. This ain't the land o' lynch law. Dingley ain't escaped
+from gaol. You got no right to fire at him."
+
+"No one ever went down Dog Nose Rapids at night," said the Man from
+Clancey's, whose shot had got Dingley's arm. "There ain't a chance of them
+doing it. No one's ever done it."
+
+The two were in the roaring rapids now, and the canoe was jumping through
+the foam like a race-horse. The keen eyes on the bank watched the canoe
+till it was lost in the half-gloom below the first rapids, and then they
+went slowly back to Tom Sanger's house.
+
+"So there'll be no wedding to-morrow," said the Man from Clancey's.
+
+"Funerals, more likely," drawled another.
+
+"Jinny Long's in that canoe, an' she ginerally does what she wants to,"
+said Tom Sanger, sagely.
+
+"Well, we done our best, and now I hope they'll get to Bindon," said
+another.
+
+Sanger passed the jug to him freely. Then they sat down and talked of the
+people who had been drowned in Dog Nose Rapids, and of the last wedding in
+the mountains.
+
+III
+
+It was as the Man from Clancey's had said, no one had ever gone down Dog
+Nose Rapids in the night-time, and probably no one but Jenny Long would
+have ventured it. Dingley had had no idea what a perilous task had been
+set his rescuer. It was only when the angry roar of the great rapids
+floated up-stream to them, increasing in volume till they could see the
+terror of tumbling waters just below, and the canoe shot forward like a
+snake through the swift, smooth current which would sweep them into the
+vast caldron, that he realized the terrible hazard of the enterprise.
+
+The moon was directly overhead when they drew upon the race of rocks and
+fighting water and foam. On either side only the shadowed shore, forsaken
+by the races which had hunted and roamed and ravaged here--not a light,
+nor any sign of life, or the friendliness of human presence to make their
+isolation less complete, their danger, as it were, shared by
+fellow-mortals. Bright as the moon was, it was not bright enough for
+perfect pilotage. Never in the history of white men had these rapids been
+ridden at night-time. As they sped down the flume of the deep,
+irresistible current, and were launched into the trouble of rocks and
+water, Jenny realized how great their peril was, and how different the
+track of the waters looked at night-time from daytime. Outlines seemed
+merged, rocks did not look the same, whirlpools had a different vortex,
+islands of stone had a new configuration. As they sped on, lurching,
+jumping, piercing a broken wall of wave and spray like a torpedo, shooting
+an almost sheer fall, she came to rely on a sense of intuition rather than
+memory, for night had transformed the waters.
+
+Not a sound escaped either. The man kept his eyes fixed on the woman; the
+woman scanned the dreadful pathway with eyes deep-set and burning,
+resolute, vigilant, and yet defiant, too, as though she had been trapped
+into this track of danger, and was fighting without great hope, but with
+the temerity and nonchalance of despair. Her arms were bare to the
+shoulder almost, and her face was again and again drenched, but second
+succeeded second, minute followed minute in a struggle which might well
+turn a man's hair gray, and now, at last--how many hours was it since they
+had been cast into this den of roaring waters?--at last, suddenly, over a
+large fall, and here smooth waters again, smooth and untroubled, and
+strong and deep. Then, and only then, did a word escape either; but the
+man had passed through torture and unavailing regret, for he realized that
+he had had no right to bring this girl into such a fight. It was not _her_
+friend who was in danger at Bindon. Her life had been risked without due
+warrant. "I didn't know, or I wouldn't have asked it," he said, in a low
+voice. "Lord, but you are a wonder--to take that hurdle for no one that
+belonged to you, and to do it as you've done it. This country will rise to
+you." He looked back on the raging rapids far behind, and he shuddered.
+"It was a close call, and no mistake. We must have been within a foot of
+down-you-go fifty times. But it's all right now, if we can last it out and
+git there." Again he glanced back, then turned to the girl. "It makes me
+pretty sick to look at it," he continued. "I bin through a lot, but that's
+as sharp practice as I want."
+
+"Come here and let me bind up your arm," she answered. "They hit you--the
+sneaks! Are you bleeding much?"
+
+He came near her carefully, as she got the big canoe out of the current
+into quieter water. She whipped the scarf from about her neck, and with
+his knife ripped up the seam of his sleeve. Her face was alive with the
+joy of conflict and elated with triumph. Her eyes were shining. She bathed
+the wound--the bullet had passed clean through the fleshy part of the
+arm--and then carefully tied the scarf round it over her handkerchief.
+
+"I guess it's as good as a man could do it," she said, at last.
+
+"As good as any doctor," he rejoined.
+
+"I wasn't talking of your arm," she said.
+
+"Course not. Excuse me. You was talkin' of them rapids, and I've got to
+say there ain't a man that could have done it and come through like you. I
+guess the man that marries you'll get more than his share of luck."
+
+"I want none of that," she said, sharply, and picked up her paddle again,
+her eyes flashing anger.
+
+He took a pistol from his pocket and offered it to her. "I didn't mean any
+harm by what I said. Take this if you think I won't know how to behave
+myself," he urged.
+
+She flung up her head a little. "I knew what I was doing before I
+started," she said. "Put it away. How far is it, and can we do it in
+time?"
+
+"If you can hold out, we can do it; but it means going all night and all
+morning; and it ain't dawn yet, by a long shot."
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Dawn came at last, and the mist of early morning, and the imperious and
+dispelling sun; and with mouthfuls of food as they drifted on, the two
+fixed their eyes on the horizon beyond which lay Bindon. And now it seemed
+to the girl as though this race to save a life, or many lives, was the one
+thing in existence. _To-morrow_ was to-day, and the white petticoat was
+lying in the little house in the mountains, and her wedding was an
+interminable distance off, so had this adventure drawn her into its risks
+and toils and haggard exhaustion.
+
+Eight, nine, ten, eleven o'clock came, and then they saw signs of
+settlement. Houses appeared here and there upon the banks, and now and
+then a horseman watched them from the shore, but they could not pause.
+Bindon--Bindon--Bindon--the Snowdrop Mine at Bindon, and a death-dealing
+machine timed to do its deadly work, were before the eyes of the two
+_voyageurs_.
+
+Half-past eleven, and the town of Bindon was just beyond them. A quarter
+to twelve, and they had run their canoe into the bank beyond which were
+the smokestacks and chimneys of the mine. Bindon was peacefully pursuing
+its way, though here and there were little groups of strikers who had not
+resumed work.
+
+Dingley and the girl scrambled up the bank. Trembling with fatigue, they
+hastened on. The man drew ahead of her, for she had paddled for fifteen
+hours, practically without ceasing, and the ground seemed to rise up at
+her. But she would not let him stop.
+
+He hurried on, reached the mine, and entered, shouting the name of his
+friend. It was seven minutes to twelve.
+
+A moment later, a half-dozen men came rushing from that portion of the
+mine where Dingley had been told the machine was placed, and at their head
+was Lawson, the man he had come to save.
+
+The girl hastened on to meet them, but she grew faint and leaned against a
+tree, scarce conscious. She was roused by voices.
+
+"No, it wasn't me, it wasn't me that done it; it was a girl. Here she
+is--Jenny Long! You got to thank her, Jake."
+
+Jake! Jake! The girl awakened to full understanding now. Jake--what Jake?
+She looked, then stumbled forward with a cry.
+
+"Jake--it was my Jake!" she faltered.
+
+The mine-boss caught her in his arms.
+
+"You, Jenny! It's you that's saved me!"
+
+Suddenly there was a rumble as of thunder, and a cloud of dust and stone
+rose from the Snowdrop Mine.
+
+The mine-boss tightened his arm round the girl's waist. "That's what I
+missed, through him and you, Jenny," he said.
+
+"What was you doing here, and not at Selby, Jake?" she asked.
+
+"They sent for me--to stop the trouble here."
+
+"But what about our wedding to-day?" she asked, with a frown.
+
+"A man went from here with a letter to you three days ago," he said,
+"asking you to come down here and be married. I suppose he got drunk, or
+had an accident, and didn't reach you. It had to be. I was needed
+here--couldn't tell what would happen."
+
+"It has happened out all right," said Dingley, "and this'll be the end of
+it. You got them miners solid now. The strikers'll eat humble pie after
+to-day."
+
+"We'll be married to-day, just the same," the mine-boss said, as he gave
+some brandy to the girl.
+
+But the girl shook her head. She was thinking of a white petticoat in a
+little house in the mountains.
+
+"I'm not going to be married to-day," she said, decisively.
+
+"Well, to-morrow," said the mine-boss.
+
+But the girl shook her head again. "To-day is to-morrow," she answered.
+"You can wait, Jake. I'm going back home to be married."
+
+
+
+
+QU'APPELLE
+
+
+(_Who calls?_)
+
+"But I'm white; I'm not an Indian. My father was a white man. I've been
+brought up as a white girl. I've had a white girl's schooling."
+
+Her eyes flashed as she sprang to her feet and walked up and down the room
+for a moment, then stood still, facing her mother--a dark-faced,
+pock-marked woman, with heavy, somnolent eyes--and waited for her to
+speak. The reply came slowly and sullenly:
+
+"I am a Blackfoot woman. I lived on the Muskwat River among the braves for
+thirty years. I have killed buffalo. I have seen battles. Men, too, I have
+killed when they came to steal our horses and crept in on our lodges in
+the night--the Crees! I am a Blackfoot. You are the daughter of a
+Blackfoot woman. No medicine can cure that. Sit down. You have no sense.
+You are not white. They will not have you. Sit down."
+
+The girl's handsome face flushed; she threw up her hands in an agony of
+protest. A dreadful anger was in her panting breast, but she could not
+speak. She seemed to choke with excess of feeling. For an instant she
+stood still, trembling with agitation, then she sat down suddenly on a
+great couch covered with soft deer-skins and buffalo robes. There was deep
+in her the habit of obedience to this sombre but striking woman. She had
+been ruled firmly, almost oppressively, and she had not yet revolted.
+Seated on the couch, she gazed out of the window at the flying snow, her
+brain too much on fire for thought, passion beating like a pulse in all
+her lithe and graceful young body, which had known the storms of life and
+time for only twenty years.
+
+The wind shrieked and the snow swept past in clouds of blinding drift,
+completely hiding from sight the town below them, whose civilization had
+built itself many habitations and was making roads and streets on the
+green-brown plain, where herds of buffalo had stamped and streamed and
+thundered not long ago. The town was a mile and a half away, and these two
+were alone in a great circle of storm, one of them battling against a
+tempest which might yet overtake her, against which she had set her face
+ever since she could remember; though it had only come to violence since
+her father died two years before--a careless, strong, wilful white man,
+who had lived the Indian life for many years, but had been swallowed at
+last by the great wave of civilization streaming westward and northward,
+wiping out the game and the Indian, and overwhelming the rough, fighting,
+hunting, pioneer life. Joel Renton had made money, by good luck chiefly,
+having held land here and there which he had got for nothing, and had then
+almost forgotten about it, and, when reminded of it, still held on to it
+with that defiant stubbornness which often possesses improvident and
+careless natures. He had never had any real business instinct, and to
+swagger a little over the land he held and to treat offers of purchase
+with contempt was the loud assertion of a capacity he did not possess. So
+it was that stubborn vanity, beneath which was his angry protest against
+the prejudice felt by the new people of the West for the white pioneer who
+married an Indian and lived the Indian life--so it was that this gave him
+competence and a comfortable home after the old trader had been driven out
+by the railway and the shopkeeper. With the first land he sold he sent his
+daughter away to school in a town farther east and south, where she had
+been brought in touch with a life that at once cramped and attracted her;
+where, too, she had felt the first chill of racial ostracism, and had
+proudly fought it to the end, her weapons being talent, industry, and a
+hot, defiant ambition.
+
+There had been three years of bitter, almost half-sullen, struggle,
+lightened by one sweet friendship with a girl whose face she had since
+drawn in a hundred different poses on stray pieces of paper, on the walls
+of the big, well-lighted attic to which she retreated for hours every day,
+when she was not abroad on the prairies, riding the Indian pony that her
+uncle the Piegan Chief, Ice Breaker, had given her years before. Three
+years of struggle, and then her father had died, and the refuge for her
+vexed, defiant heart was gone. While he lived she could affirm the rights
+of a white man's daughter, the rights of the daughter of a pioneer who had
+helped to make the West; and her pride in him had given a glow to her
+cheek and a spring to her step which drew every eye. In the chief street
+of Portage la Drôme men would stop their trafficking and women nudge one
+another when she passed, and wherever she went she stirred interest,
+excited admiration, or aroused prejudice--but the prejudice did not matter
+so long as her father, Joel Renton, lived. Whatever his faults, and they
+were many--sometimes he drank too much, and swore a great deal, and
+bullied and stormed--she blinked at them all, for he was of the conquering
+race, a white man who had slept in white sheets and eaten off white
+tablecloths, and used a knife and fork, since he was born; and the women
+of his people had had soft petticoats and fine stockings, and silk gowns
+for festal days, and feathered hats of velvet, and shoes of polished
+leather, always and always, back through many generations. She had held
+her head high, for she was of his women, of the women of his people, with
+all their rights and all their claims. She had held it high till that
+stormy day--just such a day as this, with the surf of snow breaking
+against the house--when they carried him in out of the wild turmoil and
+snow, laying him on the couch where she now sat, and her head fell on his
+lifeless breast, and she cried out to him in vain to come back to her.
+
+Before the world her head was still held high, but in the attic-room, and
+out on the prairies far away, where only the coyote or the prairie hen
+saw, her head drooped, and her eyes grew heavy with pain and sombre
+protest. Once in an agony of loneliness, and cruelly hurt by a conspicuous
+slight put upon her at the Portage by the wife of the Reeve of the town,
+who had daughters twain of pure white blood got from behind the bar of a
+saloon in Winnipeg, she had thrown open her window at night, with the
+frost below zero, and stood in her thin nightdress, craving the death
+which she hoped the cold would give her soon. It had not availed, however,
+and once again she had ridden out in a blizzard to die, but had come upon
+a man lost in the snow, and her own misery had passed from her, and her
+heart, full of the blood of plainsmen, had done for another what it would
+not do for itself. The Indian in her had, with strange, sure instinct,
+found its way to Portage la Drôme, the man, with both hands and one foot
+frozen, on her pony, she walking at his side, only conscious that she had
+saved one, not two lives that day.
+
+Here was another such day, here again was the storm in her heart which had
+driven her into the plains that other time, and here again was that
+tempest of white death outside.
+
+_"You have no sense. You are not white. They will not have you. Sit
+down_--" The words had fallen on her ears with a cold, deadly smother.
+There came a chill upon her which stilled the wild pulses in her, which
+suddenly robbed the eyes of their brightness and gave a drawn look to the
+face.
+
+"You are not white. They will not have you, Pauline." The Indian mother
+repeated the words after a moment, her eyes grown still more gloomy; for
+in her, too, there was a dark tide of passion moving. In all the outlived
+years this girl had ever turned to the white father rather than to her,
+and she had been left more and more alone. Her man had been kind to her,
+and she had been a faithful wife, but she had resented the natural
+instinct of her half-breed child, almost white herself and with the
+feelings and ways of the whites, to turn always to her father, as though
+to a superior guide, to a higher influence and authority. Was not she
+herself the descendant of Blackfoot and Piegan chiefs through generations
+of rulers and warriors? Was there not Piegan and Blackfoot blood in the
+girl's veins? Must only the white man's blood be reckoned when they made
+up their daily account and balanced the books of their lives, credit and
+debtor--misunderstanding and kind act, neglect and tenderness, reproof and
+praise, gentleness and impulse, anger and caress--to be set down in the
+everlasting record? Why must the Indian always give way--Indian habits,
+Indian desires, the Indian way of doing things, the Indian point of view,
+Indian food, Indian medicine? Was it all bad, and only that which belonged
+to white life good?
+
+"Look at your face in the glass, Pauline," she added, at last. "You are
+good-looking, but it isn't the good looks of the whites. The lodge of a
+chieftainess is the place for you. There you would have praise and honor;
+among the whites you are only a half-breed. What is the good? Let us go
+back to the life out there beyond the Muskwat River--up beyond. There is
+hunting still, a little, and the world is quiet, and nothing troubles.
+Only the wild dog barks at night, or the wolf sniffs at the door, and all
+day there is singing. Somewhere out beyond the Muskwat the feasts go on,
+and the old men build the great fires, and tell tales, and call the wind
+out of the north, and make the thunder speak; and the young men ride to
+the hunt or go out to battle, and build lodges for the daughters of the
+tribe; and each man has his woman, and each woman has in her breast the
+honor of the tribe, and the little ones fill the lodge with laughter. Like
+a pocket of deerskin is every house, warm and small and full of good
+things. _Hai-yai_, what is this life to that! There you will be head and
+chief of all, for there is money enough for a thousand horses; and your
+father was a white man, and these are the days when the white man rules.
+Like clouds before the sun are the races of men, and one race rises and
+another falls. Here you are not first, but last; and the child of the
+white father and mother, though they be as the dirt that flies from a
+horse's heels, it is before you. Your mother is a Blackfoot."
+
+As the woman spoke slowly and with many pauses, the girl's mood changed,
+and there came into her eyes a strange, dark look deeper than anger. She
+listened with a sudden patience which stilled the agitation in her breast
+and gave a little touch of rigidity to her figure. Her eyes withdrew from
+the wild storm without and gravely settled on her mother's face, and with
+the Indian woman's last words understanding pierced, but did not dispel,
+the sombre and ominous look in her eyes.
+
+There was silence for a moment, and then she spoke almost as evenly as her
+mother had done.
+
+"I will tell you everything. You are my mother, and I love you; but you
+will not see the truth. When my father took you from the lodges and
+brought you here, it was the end of the Indian life. It was for you to go
+on with him, but you would not go. I was young, but I saw, and I said that
+in all things I would go with him. I did not know that it would be hard,
+but at school, at the very first, I began to understand. There was only
+one, a French girl--I loved her--a girl who said to me, 'You are as white
+as I am, as any one, and your heart is the same, and you are beautiful.'
+Yes, Manette said I was beautiful."
+
+She paused a moment, a misty, far-away look came into her eyes, her
+fingers clasped and unclasped, and she added:
+
+"And her brother, Julien--he was older--when he came to visit Manette he
+spoke to me as though I was all white, and was good to me. I have never
+forgotten, never. It was five years ago, but I remember him. He was tall
+and strong, and as good as Manette--as good as Manette. I loved Manette,
+but she suffered for me, for I was not like the others, and my ways were
+different--then. I had lived up there on the Warais among the lodges, and
+I had not seen things--only from my father, and he did so much in an
+Indian way. So I was sick at heart, and sometimes I wanted to die; and
+once--But there was Manette, and she would laugh and sing, and we would
+play together, and I would speak French and she would speak English, and I
+learned from her to forget the Indian ways. What were they to me? I had
+loved them when I was of them, but I came on to a better life. The Indian
+life is to the white life as the parfleche pouch to--to this." She laid
+her hand upon a purse of delicate silver mesh hanging at her waist. "When
+your eyes are opened you must go on, you cannot stop. There is no going
+back. When you have read of all there is in the white man's world, when
+you have seen, then there is no returning. You may end it all, if you
+wish, in the snow, in the river, but there is no returning. The lodge of a
+chief--ah, if my father had heard you say that--!"
+
+The Indian woman shifted heavily in her chair, then shrank away from the
+look fixed on her. Once or twice she made as if she would speak, but sank
+down in the great chair, helpless and dismayed.
+
+"The lodge of a chief!" the girl continued, in a low, bitter voice. "What
+is the lodge of a chief? A smoky fire, a pot, a bed of skins--_aih-yi_! If
+the lodges of the Indians were millions, and I could be head of all, and
+rule the land, yet would I rather be a white girl in the hut of her white
+man, struggling for daily bread among the people who sweep the buffalo
+out, but open up the land with the plough, and make a thousand live where
+one lived before. It is peace you want, my mother, peace and solitude, in
+which the soul goes to sleep. Your days of hope are over, and you want to
+drowse by the fire. I want to see the white man's cities grow, and the
+armies coming over the hill with the ploughs and the reapers and the
+mowers, and the wheels and the belts and engines of the great factories,
+and the white woman's life spreading everywhere; for I am a white man's
+daughter. I can't be both Indian and white. I will not be like the sun
+when the shadow cuts across it and the land grows dark. I will not be
+half-breed. I will be white or I will be Indian; and I will be white,
+white only. My heart is white, my tongue is white, I think, I feel, as
+white people think and feel. What they wish, I wish; as they live, I live;
+as white women dress, I dress."
+
+She involuntarily drew up the dark-red skirt she wore, showing a white
+petticoat and a pair of fine stockings on an ankle as shapely as she had
+ever seen among all the white women she knew. She drew herself up with
+pride, and her body had a grace and ease which the white woman's
+convention had not cramped.
+
+Yet, with all her protests, no one would have thought her English. She
+might have been Spanish, or Italian, or Roumanian, or Slav, though nothing
+of her Indian blood showed in purely Indian characteristics, and something
+sparkled in her, gave a radiance to her face and figure which the storm
+and struggle in her did not smother. The white women of Portage la Drôme
+were too blind, too prejudiced, to see all that she really was, and
+admiring white men could do little, for Pauline would have nothing to do
+with them till the women met her absolutely as an equal; and from the
+other half-breeds, who intermarried with one another and were content to
+take a lower place than the pure whites, she held aloof, save when any of
+them was ill or in trouble. Then she recognized the claim of race, and
+came to their doors with pity and soft impulses to help them. French and
+Scotch and English half-breeds, as they were, they understood how she was
+making a fight for all who were half-Indian, half-white, and watched her
+with a furtive devotion, acknowledging her superior place, and proud of
+it.
+
+"I will not stay here," said the Indian mother, with sullen stubbornness.
+"I will go back beyond the Warais. My life is my own life, and I will do
+what I like with it."
+
+The girl started, but became composed again on the instant. "Is your life
+all your own, mother?" she asked. "I did not come into the world of my own
+will. If I had I would have come all white or all Indian. I am your
+daughter, and I am here, good or bad--is your life all your own?"
+
+"You can marry and stay here, when I go. You are twenty. I had my man,
+your father, when I was seventeen. You can marry. There are men. You have
+money. They will marry you--and forget the rest."
+
+With a cry of rage and misery the girl sprang to her feet and started
+forward, but stopped suddenly at sound of a hasty knocking and a voice
+asking admittance. An instant later, a huge, bearded, broad-shouldered man
+stepped inside, shaking himself free of the snow, laughing half-sheepishly
+as he did so, and laying his fur cap and gloves with exaggerated care on
+the wide window-sill.
+
+"John Alloway," said the Indian woman, in a voice of welcome and with a
+brightening eye, for it would seem as though he came in answer to her
+words of a few moments before. With a mother's instinct she had divined at
+once the reason for the visit, though no warning thought crossed the mind
+of the girl, who placed a chair for their visitor with a heartiness which
+was real--was not this the white man she had saved from death in the snow
+a year ago? Her heart was soft toward the life she had kept in the world.
+She smiled at him, all the anger gone from her eyes, and there was almost
+a touch of tender anxiety in her voice as she said:
+
+"What brought you out in this blizzard? It wasn't safe. It doesn't seem
+possible you got here from the Portage."
+
+The huge ranchman and auctioneer laughed cheerily. "Once lost, twice get
+there," he exclaimed, with a quizzical toss of the head, thinking he had
+said a good thing. "It's a year ago to the very day that I was lost out
+back"--he jerked a thumb over his shoulder--"and you picked me up and
+brought me in; and what was I to do but come out on the anniversary and
+say thank you? I'd fixed up all year to come to you, and I wasn't to be
+stopped, 'cause it was like the day we first met, old Coldmaker hitting
+the world with his whips of frost, and shaking his ragged blankets of snow
+over the wild West."
+
+"Just such a day," said the Indian woman, after a pause. Pauline remained
+silent, placing a little bottle of cordial before their visitor, with
+which he presently regaled himself, raising his glass with an air.
+
+"Many happy returns to us both!" he said, and threw the liqueur down his
+throat, smacked his lips, and drew his hand down his great mustache and
+beard, like some vast animal washing its face with its paw. Smiling, and
+yet not at ease, he looked at the two women and nodded his head
+encouragingly, but whether the encouragement was for himself or for them
+he could not have told.
+
+His last words, however, had altered the situation. The girl had caught at
+a suggestion in them which startled her. This rough, white plainsman was
+come to make love to her, and to say--what? He was at once awkward and
+confident, afraid of her, of her refinement, grace, beauty, and education,
+and yet confident in the advantage of his position, a white man bending to
+a half-breed girl. He was not conscious of the condescension and majesty
+of his demeanor, but it was there, and his untutored words and ways must
+make it all too apparent to the girl. The revelation of the moment made
+her at once triumphant and humiliated. This white man had come to make
+love to her, that was apparent; but that he, ungrammatical, crude, and
+rough, should think he had but to put out his hand, and she in whom every
+subtle emotion and influence had delicate response, whose words and ways
+were as far removed from his as day from night, would fly to him, brought
+the flush of indignation to her cheek. She responded to his toast with a
+pleasant nod, however, and said:
+
+"But if you will keep coming in such wild storms, there will not be many
+anniversaries." Laughing, she poured out another glass of liqueur for
+him.
+
+"Well, now, p'r'aps you're right, and so the only thing to do is not to
+keep coming, but to stay--stay right where _you_ are."
+
+The Indian woman could not see her daughter's face, which was turned to
+the fire, but she herself smiled at John Alloway, and nodded her head
+approvingly. Here was the cure for her own trouble and loneliness. Pauline
+and she, who lived in different worlds, and yet were tied to each other by
+circumstances they could not control, would each work out her own destiny
+after her own nature, since John Alloway had come a-wooing. She would go
+back on the Warais, and Pauline would remain at the Portage, a white woman
+with her white man. She would go back to the smoky fires in the huddled
+lodges; to the venison stew and the snake dance; to the feasts of the
+medicine-men, and the long sleeps in the summer days, and the winter's
+tales, and be at rest among her own people; and Pauline would have revenge
+of the wife of the prancing Reeve, and perhaps the people would forget who
+her mother was.
+
+With these thoughts flying through her sluggish mind, she rose and moved
+heavily from the room, with a parting look of encouragement at Alloway, as
+though to say, a man that is bold is surest.
+
+With her back to the man, Pauline watched her mother leave the room, saw
+the look she gave Alloway. When the door was closed she turned and looked
+Alloway in the eyes.
+
+"How old are you?" she asked, suddenly.
+
+He stirred in his seat nervously. "Why, fifty, about," he answered, with
+confusion.
+
+"Then you'll be wise not to go looking for anniversaries in blizzards,
+when they're few at the best," she said, with a gentle and dangerous
+smile.
+
+"Fifty--why, I'm as young as most men of thirty," he responded, with an
+uncertain laugh. "I'd have come here to-day if it had been snowing
+pitchforks and chain-lightning. I made up my mind I would. You saved my
+life, that's dead sure; and I'd be down among the moles if it wasn't for
+you and that Piegan pony of yours. Piegan ponies are wonders in a
+storm--seem to know their way by instinct. You, too--why, I bin on the
+plains all my life, and was no better than a baby that day; but you--why,
+you had Piegan in you--why, yes--"
+
+He stopped short for a moment, checked by the look in her face, then went
+blindly on: "And you've got Blackfoot in you, too; and you just felt your
+way through the tornado and over the blind prairie like a bird reaching
+for the hills. It was as easy to you as picking out a maverick in a bunch
+of steers to me. But I never could make out what you was doing on the
+prairie that terrible day. I've thought of it a hundred times. What was
+you doing, if it ain't cheek to ask?"
+
+"I was trying to lose a life," she answered, quietly, her eyes dwelling on
+his face, yet not seeing him; for it all came back on her, the agony which
+had driven her out into the tempest to be lost evermore.
+
+He laughed. "Well now, that's good," he said; "that's what they call
+speaking sarcastic. You was out to save, and not to lose, a life; that was
+proved to the satisfaction of the court." He paused and chuckled to
+himself, thinking he had been witty, and continued: "And I was that court,
+and my judgment was that the debt of that life you saved had to be paid to
+you within one calendar year, with interest at the usual per cent. for
+mortgages on good security. That was my judgment, and there's no appeal
+from it. I am the great Justinian in this case!"
+
+"Did you ever save anybody's life?" she asked, putting the bottle of
+cordial away, as he filled his glass for the third time.
+
+"Twice certain, and once divided the honors," he answered, pleased at the
+question.
+
+"And did you expect to get any pay, with or without interest?" she added.
+
+"Me! I never thought of it again. But yes--by gol, I did! One case was
+funny, as funny can be. It was Ricky Wharton over on the Muskwat River. I
+saved his life right enough, and he came to me a year after and said, 'You
+saved my life, now what are you going to do with it? I'm stony broke. I
+owe a hundred dollars, and I wouldn't be owing it if you hadn't saved my
+life. When you saved it I was five hundred to the good, and I'd have left
+that much behind me. Now I'm on the rocks, because you insisted on saving
+my life; and you just got to take care of me.' I 'insisted'! Well, that
+knocked me silly, and I took him on--blame me, if I didn't keep Ricky a
+whole year, till he went north looking for gold. Get pay?--why, I _paid_!
+Saving life has its responsibilities, little gal."
+
+"You can't save life without running some risk yourself, not as a rule,
+can you?" she said, shrinking from his familiarity.
+
+"Not as a rule," he replied. "You took on a bit of risk with me, you and
+your Piegan pony."
+
+"Oh, I was young," she responded, leaning over the table and drawing faces
+on a piece of paper before her. "I could take more risks, I was only
+nineteen!"
+
+"I don't catch on," he rejoined. "If it's sixteen or--"
+
+"Or fifty," she interposed.
+
+"What difference does it make? If you're done for, it's the same at
+nineteen as fifty, and _vicey-versey_."
+
+"No, it's not the same," she answered. "You leave so much more that you
+want to keep, when you go at fifty."
+
+"Well, I dunno. I never thought of that."
+
+"There's all that has belonged to you. You've been married, and have
+children, haven't you?"
+
+He started, frowned, then straightened himself. "I got one girl--she's
+East with her grandmother," he said, jerkily.
+
+"That's what I said; there's more to leave behind at fifty," she replied,
+a red spot on each cheek. She was not looking at him, but at the face of a
+man on the paper before her--a young man with abundant hair, a strong
+chin, and big, eloquent eyes; and all around his face she had drawn the
+face of a girl many times, and beneath the faces of both she was writing
+_Manette and Julien_.
+
+The water was getting too deep for John Alloway. He floundered toward the
+shore. "I'm no good at words," he said--"no good at argyment; but I've got
+a gift for stories--round the fire of a night, with a pipe and tin basin
+of tea; so I'm not going to try and match you. You've had a good education
+down at Winnipeg. Took every prize, they say, and led the school, though
+there was plenty of fuss because they let you do it, and let you stay
+there, being half-Indian. You never heard what was going on outside, I
+s'pose. It didn't matter, for you won out. Blamed foolishness, trying to
+draw the line between red and white that way. Of course, it's the women
+always, always the women, striking out for all-white or nothing. Down
+there at Portage they've treated you mean, mean as dirt. The Reeve's
+wife--well, we'll fix that up all right. I guess John Alloway ain't to be
+bluffed. He knows too much, and they all know he knows enough. When John
+Alloway, 32 Main Street, with a ranch on the Katanay, says, 'We're coming,
+Mr. and Mrs. John Alloway is coming,' they'll get out their cards
+_visite_, I guess."
+
+Pauline's head bent lower, and she seemed laboriously etching lines into
+the faces before her--Manette and Julien, Julien and Manette; and there
+came into her eyes the youth and light and gayety of the days when Julien
+came of an afternoon and the riverside rang with laughter--the dearest,
+lightest days she had ever spent.
+
+The man of fifty went on, seeing nothing but a girl over whom he was
+presently going to throw the lasso of his affection and take her home with
+him, yielding and glad, a white man and his half-breed girl--but such a
+half-breed!
+
+"I seen enough of the way some of them women treated you," he continued,
+"and I sez to myself, Her turn next. There's a way out, I sez, and John
+Alloway pays his debts. When the anniversary comes round I'll put things
+right, I sez to myself. She saved my life, and she shall have the rest of
+it, if she'll take it, and will give a receipt in full, and open a new
+account in the name of John and Pauline Alloway. Catch it? See--Pauline?"
+
+Slowly she got to her feet. There was a look in her eyes such as had been
+in her mother's a little while before, but a hundred times intensified, a
+look that belonged to the flood and flow of generations of Indian life,
+yet controlled in her by the order and understanding of centuries of white
+men's lives, the pervasive, dominating power of race.
+
+For an instant she kept her eyes toward the window. The storm had suddenly
+ceased, and a glimmer of sunset light was breaking over the distant wastes
+of snow.
+
+"You want to pay a debt you think you owe," she said, in a strange,
+lustreless voice, turning to him at last. "Well, you have paid it. You
+have given me a book to read which I will keep always. And I give you a
+receipt in full for your debt."
+
+"I don't know about any book," he answered, dazedly. "I want to marry you
+right away."
+
+"I am sorry, but it is not necessary," she replied, suggestively. Her face
+was very pale now.
+
+"But I want to. It ain't a debt. That was only a way of putting it. I want
+to make you my wife. I got some position, and I can make the West sit up
+and look at you and be glad."
+
+Suddenly her anger flared out, low and vivid and fierce, but her words
+were slow and measured. "There is no reason why I should marry you--not
+one. You offer me marriage as a prince might give a penny to a beggar. If
+my mother were not an Indian woman, you would not have taken it all as a
+matter of course. But my father was a white man, and I am a white man's
+daughter, and I would rather marry an Indian, who would think me the best
+thing there was in the light of the sun, than marry you. Had I been pure
+white you would not have been so sure; you would have asked, not offered.
+I am not obliged to you. You ought to go to no woman as you came to me.
+See, the storm has stopped. You will be quite safe going back now. The
+snow will be deep, perhaps, but it is not far."
+
+She went to the window, got his cap and gloves, and handed them to him. He
+took them, dumbfounded and overcome.
+
+"Say, I ain't done it right, mebbe, but I meant well, and I'd be good to
+you and proud of you, and I'd love you better than anything I ever saw,"
+he said, shamefacedly, but eagerly and honestly, too.
+
+"Ah, you should have said those last words first," she answered.
+
+"I say them now."
+
+"They come too late; but they would have been too late in any case," she
+added. "Still, I am glad you said them."
+
+She opened the door for him.
+
+"I made a mistake," he urged, humbly. "I understand better now. I never
+had any schoolin'."
+
+"Oh, it isn't that," she answered, gently. "Good-bye."
+
+Suddenly he turned. "You're right--it couldn't ever be," he said.
+"You're--you're great. And I owe you my life still!"
+
+He stepped out into the biting air.
+
+For a moment Pauline stood motionless in the middle of the room, her gaze
+fixed upon the door which had just closed; then, with a wild gesture of
+misery and despair, she threw herself upon the couch in a passionate
+outburst of weeping. Sobs shook her from head to foot, and her hands,
+clenched above her head, twitched convulsively.
+
+Presently the door opened and her mother looked in eagerly. At what she
+saw her face darkened and hardened for an instant, but then the girl's
+utter abandonment of grief and agony convinced and conquered her. Some
+glimmer of the true understanding of the problem which Pauline represented
+got into her heart and drove the sullen selfishness from her face and eyes
+and mind. She came over heavily and, sinking upon her knees, swept an arm
+around the girl's shoulder. She realized what had happened, and probably
+this was the first time in her life that she had ever come by instinct to
+a revelation of her daughter's mind or of the faithful meaning of
+incidents of their lives.
+
+"You said no to John Alloway," she murmured.
+
+Defiance and protest spoke in the swift gesture of the girl's hands. "You
+think because he was white that I'd drop into his arms! No--no--no!"
+
+"You did right, little one."
+
+The sobs suddenly stopped, and the girl seemed to listen with all her
+body. There was something in her Indian mother's voice she had never heard
+before--at least, not since she was a little child and swung in a deerskin
+hammock in a tamarac-tree by Renton's Lodge, where the chiefs met and the
+West paused to rest on its onward march. Something of the accents of the
+voice that crooned to her then was in the woman's tones now.
+
+"He offered it like a lump of sugar to a bird--I know. He didn't know that
+you have great blood--yes, but it is true. My man's grandfather, he was of
+the blood of the kings of England. My man had the proof. And for a
+thousand years my people have been chiefs. There is no blood in all the
+West like yours. My heart was heavy, and dark thoughts came to me, because
+my man is gone, and the life is not my life, and I am only an Indian woman
+from the Warais, and my heart goes out there always now. But some great
+Medicine has been poured into my heart. As I stood at the door and saw you
+lying there, I called to the Sun. 'O great Spirit,' I said, 'help me to
+understand, for this girl is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh, and
+Evil has come between us!' And the Sun Spirit poured the Medicine into my
+spirit, and there is no cloud between us now. It has passed away, and I
+see. Little white one, the white life is the only life, and I will live it
+with you till a white man comes and gives you a white man's home. But not
+John Alloway. Shall the crow nest with the oriole?"
+
+As the woman spoke with slow, measured voice full of the cadences of a
+heart revealing itself, the girl's breath at first seemed to stop, so
+still she lay; then, as the true understanding of the words came to her,
+she panted with excitement, her breast heaved, and the blood flushed her
+face. When the slow voice ceased, and the room became still, she lay quiet
+for a moment, letting the new thing find secure lodgment in her thought;
+then, suddenly, she raised herself and threw her arms round her mother in
+a passion of affection.
+
+"Lalika! O mother Lalika!" she said, tenderly, and kissed her again and
+again. Not since she was a little girl, long before they left the Warais,
+had she called her mother by her Indian name, which her father had
+humorously taught her to do in those far-off happy days by the beautiful,
+singing river and the exquisite woods, when, with a bow and arrow, she had
+ranged, a young Diana who slew only with love.
+
+"Lalika, mother Lalika, it is like the old, old times," she added, softly.
+"Ah, it does not matter now, for you understand!"
+
+"I do not understand altogether," murmured the Indian woman, gently. "I am
+not white, and there is a different way of thinking; but I will hold your
+hand, and we will live the white life together."
+
+Cheek to cheek they saw the darkness come, and afterwards the silver moon
+steal up over a frozen world, in which the air bit like steel and braced
+the heart like wine. Then, at last, before it was nine o'clock, after her
+custom, the Indian woman went to bed, leaving her daughter brooding
+peacefully by the fire.
+
+For a long time Pauline sat with hands clasped in her lap, her gaze on the
+tossing flames, in her heart and mind a new feeling of strength and
+purpose. The way before her was not clear, she saw no further than this
+day, and all that it had brought; yet she was as one that has crossed a
+direful flood and finds herself on a strange shore in an unknown country,
+with the twilight about her, yet with so much of danger passed that there
+was only the thought of the moment's safety round her, the camp-fire to be
+lit, and the bed to be made under the friendly trees and stars.
+
+For a half-hour she sat so, and then, suddenly, she raised her head
+listening, leaning toward the window, through which the moonlight
+streamed. She heard her name called without, distinct and
+strange--"_Pauline! Pauline!_"
+
+Starting up, she ran to the door and opened it. All was silent and cruelly
+cold. Nothing but the wide plain of snow and the steely air. But as she
+stood intently listening, the red glow from the fire behind her, again
+came the cry--"Pauline!"--not far away. Her heart beat hard, and she
+raised her head and called--why was it she should call out in a language
+not her own?--"_Qu'appelle? Qu'appelle?_"
+
+And once again on the still night air came the trembling appeal,
+"Pauline!"
+
+"_Qu'appelle? Qu'appelle_?" she cried; then, with a gasping murmur of
+understanding and recognition she ran forward in the frozen night toward
+the sound of the voice. The same intuitive sense which had made her call
+out in French, without thought or reason, had revealed to her who it was
+that called; or was it that even in the one word uttered there was the
+note of a voice always remembered since those days with Manette at
+Winnipeg?
+
+Not far away from the house, on the way to Portage la Drôme, but a little
+distance from the road, was a crevasse, and toward this she sped, for once
+before an accident had happened there. Again the voice called as she
+sped--"Pauline!"--and she cried out that she was coming. Presently she
+stood above the declivity, and peered over. Almost immediately below her,
+a few feet down, was a man lying in the snow. He had strayed from the
+obliterated road, and had fallen down the crevasse, twisting his foot
+cruelly. Unable to walk, he had crawled several hundred yards in the snow,
+but his strength had given out, and then he had called to the house, on
+whose dark windows flickered the flames of the fire, the name of the girl
+he had come so far to see.
+
+[Illustration: "PAULINE," HE SAID, FEEBLY, AND FAINTED IN HER ARMS]
+
+With a cry of joy and pain at once she recognized him now. It was as her
+heart had said--it was Julien, Manette's brother. In a moment she was
+beside him, her arm around his shoulder.
+
+"Pauline!" he said, feebly, and fainted in her arms. An instant later she
+was speeding to the house, and, rousing her mother and two of the
+stablemen, she snatched a flask of brandy from a cupboard and hastened
+back.
+
+An hour later Julien Labrosse lay in the great sitting-room beside the
+fire, his foot and ankle bandaged, and at ease, his face alight with all
+that had brought him there. And once again the Indian mother with a sure
+instinct knew why he had come, and saw that now her girl would have a
+white man's home, and, for her man, one of the race like her father's
+race, white and conquering.
+
+"I'm sorry to give trouble," Julien said, laughing--he had a trick of
+laughing lightly; "but I'll be able to get back to the Portage
+to-morrow."
+
+To this the Indian mother said, however: "To please yourself is a great
+thing, but to please others is better; and so you will stay here till you
+can walk back to the Portage, M'sieu' Julien."
+
+"Well, I've never been so comfortable," he said--"never so happy. If you
+don't mind the trouble!"
+
+The Indian woman nodded pleasantly, and found an excuse to leave the room.
+But before she went she contrived to place near his elbow one of the
+scraps of paper on which Pauline had drawn his face, with that of Manette.
+It brought a light of hope and happiness into his eyes, and he thrust the
+paper under the fur robes of the couch.
+
+"What are you doing with your life?" Pauline asked him, as his eyes sought
+hers a few moments later.
+
+"Oh, I have a big piece of work before me," he answered eagerly, "a great
+chance--to build a bridge over the St. Lawrence, and I'm only thirty! I've
+got my start. Then, I've made over the old Seigneury my father left me,
+and I'm going to live in it. It will be a fine place, when I've done with
+it, comfortable and big, with old oak timbers and walls, and deep
+fireplaces, and carvings done in the time of Louis Quinze, and dark-red
+velvet curtains for the drawing-room, and skins and furs. Yes, I must have
+skins and furs like these here." He smoothed the skins with his hand.
+
+"Manette, she will live with you?" Pauline asked.
+
+"Oh no, her husband wouldn't like that. You see, Manette is to be married.
+She told me to tell you all about it."
+
+He told her all that was to tell of Manette's courtship, and added that
+the wedding would take place in the spring.
+
+"Manette wanted it when the leaves first flourish and the birds come
+back," he said, gayly; "and so she's not going to live with me at the
+Seigneury, you see. No, there it is, as fine a house, good enough for a
+prince, and I shall be there alone, unless--"
+
+His eyes met hers, and he caught the light that was in them before the
+eyelids drooped over them and she turned her head to the fire. "But the
+spring is two months off yet," he added.
+
+"The spring?" she asked, puzzled, yet half afraid to speak.
+
+"Yes, I'm going into my new house when Manette goes into her new house--in
+the spring. And I won't go alone if--"
+
+He caught her eyes again, but she rose hurriedly and said: "You must sleep
+now. Good-night." She held out her hand.
+
+"Well, I'll tell you the rest to-morrow--to-morrow night, when it's quiet
+like this, and the stars shine," he answered. "I'm going to have a home of
+my own like this--ah, _bien sûr_, Pauline."
+
+That night the old Indian mother prayed to the Sun. "O great Spirit," she
+said, "I give thanks for the Medicine poured into my heart. Be good to my
+white child when she goes with her man to the white man's home far away. O
+great Spirit, when I return to the lodges of my people, be kind to me, for
+I shall be lonely; I shall not have my child; I shall not hear my white
+man's voice. Give me good Medicine, O Sun and great Father, till my dream
+tells me that my man comes from over the hills for me once more."
+
+
+
+
+THE STAKE AND THE PLUMB-LINE
+
+
+She went against all good judgment in marrying him; she cut herself off
+from her own people, from the life in which she had been an alluring and
+beautiful figure. Washington had never had two such seasons as those in
+which she moved; for the diplomatic circle who had had "the run of the
+world" knew her value, and were not content without her. She might have
+made a brilliant match with one ambassador thirty years older than
+herself--she was but twenty-two; and there were at least six attachés and
+secretaries of legation who entered upon a tournament for her heart and
+hand; but she was not for them. All her fine faculties of tact and
+fairness, of harmless strategy, and her gifts of wit and unexpected humor
+were needed to keep her cavaliers constant and hopeful to the last; but
+she never faltered, and she did not fail. The faces of old men brightened
+when they saw her, and one or two ancient figures who, for years, had been
+seldom seen at social functions now came when they knew she was to be
+present. There were, of course, a few women who said she would coquette
+with any male from nine to ninety; but no man ever said so; and there was
+none, from first to last, but smiled with pleasure at even the mention of
+her name, so had her vivacity, intelligence, and fine sympathy conquered
+them. She was a social artist by instinct. In their hearts they all
+recognized how fair and impartial she was; and she drew out of every man
+the best that was in him. The few women who did not like her said that she
+chattered; but the truth was she made other people talk by swift
+suggestion or delicate interrogation.
+
+After the blow fell, Freddy Hartzman put the matter succinctly, and told
+the truth faithfully, when he said: "The first time I met her, I told her
+all I'd ever done that could be told, and all I wanted to do; including a
+resolve to carry her off to some desert place and set up a Kingdom of Two.
+I don't know how she did it. I was like a tap, and poured myself out; and
+when it was all over I thought she was the best talker I'd ever heard. But
+yet she'd done nothing except look at me and listen, and put in a question
+here and there, that was like a baby asking to see your watch. Oh, she was
+a lily-flower, was Sally Seabrook, and I've never been sorry I told her
+all my little story! It did me good. Poor darling--it makes me sick
+sometimes when I think of it. Yet she'll win out all right--a hundred to
+one she'll win out. She was a star."
+
+Freddy Hartzman was in an embassy of repute; he knew the chancelleries and
+salons of many nations, and was looked upon as one of the ablest and
+shrewdest men in the diplomatic service. He had written one of the best
+books on international law in existence, he talked English like a native,
+he had published a volume of delightful verse, and had omitted to publish
+several others, including a tiny volume which Sally Seabrook's charms had
+inspired him to write. His view of her was shared by most men who knew the
+world, and especially by the elderly men who had a real knowledge of human
+nature, among whom was a certain important member of the United States
+executive called John Appleton. When the end of all things at Washington
+came for Sally, these two men united to bear her up, that her feet should
+not stumble upon the stony path of the hard journey she had undertaken.
+Appleton was not a man of much speech; but his words had weight; for he
+was not only a minister; he came of an old family which had ruled the
+social destinies of a state, and had alternately controlled and disturbed
+its politics. On the day of the sensation, in the fiery cloud of which
+Sally disappeared, Appleton delivered himself of his mind in the matter at
+a reception given by the President.
+
+"She will come back--and we will all take her back, be glad to have her
+back," he said. "She has the grip of a lever which can lift the eternal
+hills with the right pressure. Leave her alone--leave her alone. This is a
+democratic country, and she'll prove democracy a success before she's
+done."
+
+The world knew that John Appleton had offered her marriage, and he had
+never hidden the fact. What they did not know was that she had told him
+what she meant to do before she did it. He had spoken to her plainly,
+bluntly, then with a voice that was blurred and a little broken, urging
+her against the course toward which she was set; but it had not availed;
+and, realizing that he had come upon a powerful will underneath the sunny
+and so human surface, he had ceased to protest, to bear down upon her mind
+with his own iron force. When he realized that all his reasoning was
+wasted, that all worldly argument was vain, he made one last attempt, a
+forlorn hope, as though to put upon record what he believed to be the
+truth.
+
+"There is no position you cannot occupy," he said. "You have the perfect
+gift in private life, and you have a public gift. You have a genius for
+ruling. Say, my dear, don't wreck it all. I know you are not for me, but
+there are better men in the country than I am. Hartzman will be a great
+man one day--he wants you. Young Tilden wants you; he has millions, and he
+will never disgrace them or you, the power which they can command, and the
+power which you have. And there are others. Your people have told you they
+will turn you off; the world will say things--will rend you. There is
+nothing so popular for the moment as the fall of a favorite. But that's
+nothing--it's nothing at all compared with the danger to yourself. I
+didn't sleep last night thinking of it. Yet I'm glad you wrote me; it gave
+me time to think, and I can tell you the truth as I see it. Haven't you
+thought that he will drag you down, down, down, wear out your soul, break
+and sicken your life, destroy your beauty--you are beautiful, my dear,
+beyond what the world sees, even. Give it up--ah, give it up, and don't
+break our hearts! There are too many people loving you for you to
+sacrifice them--and yourself, too.... You've had such a good time!"
+
+"It's been like a dream," she interrupted, in a far-away voice--"like a
+dream, these two years."
+
+"And it's been such a good dream," he urged; "and you will only go to a
+bad one, from which you will never wake. The thing has fastened on him; he
+will never give it up. And penniless, too--his father has cast him off. My
+girl, it's impossible. Listen to me. There's no one on earth that would do
+more for you than I would--no one."
+
+"Dear, dear friend!" she cried, with a sudden impulse, and caught his hand
+in hers and kissed it before he could draw it back. "You are so true, and
+you think you are right. But, but"--her eyes took on a deep, steady,
+far-away look--"but I will save him; and we shall not be penniless in the
+end. Meanwhile I have seven hundred dollars a year of my own. No one can
+touch that. Nothing can change me now--and I have promised."
+
+When he saw her fixed determination, he made no further protest, but asked
+that he might help her, be with her the next day, when she was to take a
+step which the wise world would say must lead to sorrow and a miserable
+end.
+
+The step she took was to marry Jim Templeton, the drunken, cast-off son of
+a millionaire senator from Kentucky, who controlled railways and owned a
+bank, and had so resented his son's inebriate habits that for five years
+he had never permitted Jim's name to be mentioned in his presence. Jim had
+had twenty thousand dollars left him by his mother, and a small income of
+three hundred dollars from an investment which had been made for him when
+a little boy. And this had carried him on; for, drunken as he was, he had
+sense enough to eke out the money, limiting himself to three thousand
+dollars a year. He had four thousand dollars left, and his tiny income of
+three hundred, when he went to Sally Seabrook, after having been sober for
+a month, and begged her to marry him.
+
+Before dissipation had made him look ten years older than he was, there
+had been no handsomer man in all America. Even yet he had a remarkable
+face: long, delicate, with dark-brown eyes, as fair a forehead as man
+could wish, and black, waving hair, streaked with gray--gray, though he
+was but twenty-nine years of age.
+
+When Sally was fifteen and he twenty-two, he had fallen in love with her
+and she with him; and nothing had broken the early romance. He had
+captured her young imagination, and had fastened his image on her heart.
+Her people, seeing the drift of things, had sent her to a school on the
+Hudson, and the two did not meet for some time. Then came a stolen
+interview, and a fastening of the rivets of attraction--for Jim had gifts
+of a wonderful kind. He knew his Horace and Anacreon and Heine and
+Lamartine and Dante in the originals, and a hundred others; he was a
+speaker of power and grace; and he had a clear, strong head for business.
+He was also a lawyer, and was junior attorney to his father's great
+business. It was because he had the real business gift, not because he had
+a brilliant and scholarly mind, that his father had taken him into his
+concerns, and was the more unforgiving when he gave way to temptation.
+Otherwise, he would have pensioned Jim off, and dismissed him from his
+mind as a useless, insignificant person; for Horace, Anacreon, and
+philosophy and history were to him the recreations of the feeble-minded.
+He had set his heart on Jim, and what Jim could do and would do by-and-by
+in the vast financial concerns he controlled, when he was ready to slip
+out and down; but Jim had disappointed him beyond calculation.
+
+In the early days of their association Jim had left his post and taken to
+drink at critical moments in their operations. At first, high words had
+been spoken, then there came the strife of two dissimilar natures, and
+both were headstrong, and each proud and unrelenting in his own way. Then,
+at last, had come the separation, irrevocable and painful; and Jim had
+flung out into the world, a drunkard, who, sober for a fortnight, or a
+month, or three months, would afterward go off on a spree, in which he
+quoted Sappho and Horace in taverns, and sang bacchanalian songs with a
+voice meant for the stage--a heritage from an ancestor who had sung upon
+the English stage a hundred years before. Even in his cups, even after his
+darling vice had submerged him, Jim Templeton was a man marked out from
+his fellows, distinguished and very handsome. Society, however, had ceased
+to recognize him for a long time, and he did not seek it. For two or three
+years he practised law now and then. He took cases, preferably criminal
+cases, for which very often he got no pay; but that, too, ceased at last.
+Now, in his quiet, sober intervals he read omnivorously, and worked out
+problems in physics for which he had a taste, until the old appetite
+surged over him again. Then his spirits rose, and he was the old brilliant
+talker, the joyous galliard until, in due time, he became silently and
+lethargically drunk.
+
+In one of his sober intervals he had met Sally Seabrook in the street. It
+was the first time in four years, for he had avoided her, and though she
+had written to him once or twice, he had never answered her--shame was in
+his heart. Yet all the time the old song was in Sally's ears. Jim
+Templeton had touched her in some distant and intimate corner of her
+nature where none other had reached; and in all her gay life, when men had
+told their tale of admiration in their own way, her mind had gone back to
+Jim, and what he had said under the magnolia-trees; and his voice had
+drowned all others. She was not blind to what he had become, but a deep
+belief possessed her that she, of all the world, could save him. She knew
+how futile it would look to the world, how wild a dream it looked even to
+her own heart, how perilous it was; but, play upon the surface of things
+as she had done so much and so often in her brief career, she was seized
+of convictions having origin, as it might seem, in something beyond
+herself.
+
+So when she and Jim met in the street, the old, true thing rushed upon
+them both, and for a moment they stood still and looked at each other. As
+they might look who say farewell forever, so did each dwell upon the
+other's face. That was the beginning of the new epoch. A few days more,
+and Jim came to her and said that she alone could save him; and she meant
+him to say it, had led him to the saying, for the same conviction was
+burned deep in her own soul. She knew the awful risk she was taking, that
+the step must mean social ostracism, and that her own people would be no
+kinder to her than society; but she gasped a prayer, smiled at Jim as
+though all were well, laid her plans, made him promise her one thing on
+his knees, and took the plunge.
+
+Her people did as she expected. She was threatened with banishment from
+heart and home--with disinheritance; but she pursued her course; and the
+only person who stood with her and Jim at the altar was John Appleton, who
+would not be denied, and who had such a half-hour with Jim before the
+ceremony as neither of them forgot in the years that the locust ate
+thereafter. And, standing at the altar, Jim's eyes were still wet, with
+new resolves in his heart and a being at his side meant for the best man
+in the world. As he knelt beside her, awaiting the benediction, a sudden
+sense of the enormity of this act came upon him, and for her sake he would
+have drawn back then, had it not been too late. He realized that it was a
+crime to put this young, beautiful life in peril; that his own life was a
+poor, contemptible thing, and that he had been possessed of the egotism of
+the selfish and the young.
+
+But the thing was done, and a new life was begun. Before they were
+launched upon it, however, before society had fully grasped the sensation,
+or they had left upon their journey to northern Canada, where Sally
+intended they should work out their problem and make their home, far and
+free from all old associations, a curious thing happened. Jim's father
+sent an urgent message to Sally to come to him. When she came, he told her
+she was mad, and asked her why she had thrown her life away.
+
+"Why have you done it?" he said. "You--you knew all about him; you might
+have married the best man in the country. You could rule a kingdom; you
+have beauty and power, and make people do what you want; and you've got a
+sot."
+
+"He is your son," she answered, quietly.
+
+She looked so beautiful and so fine as she stood there, fearless and
+challenging before him, that he was moved. But he would not show it.
+
+"He was my son--when he was a man," he retorted grimly.
+
+"He is the son of the woman you once loved," she answered.
+
+The old man turned his head away.
+
+"What would she have said to what you did to Jim?"
+
+He drew himself around sharply. Her dagger had gone home, but he would not
+let her know it.
+
+"Leave her out of the question--she was a saint," he said, roughly.
+
+"She cannot be left out; nor can you. He got his temperament naturally; he
+inherited his weakness. From your grandfather, from her father. Do you
+think you are in no way responsible?"
+
+He was silent for a moment, but then said, stubbornly: "Why--why have you
+done it? What's between him and me can't be helped; we are father and son;
+but you--you had no call, no responsibility."
+
+"I love Jim. I always loved him, ever since I can remember, as you did. I
+see my way ahead. I will not desert him. No one cares what happens to him,
+no one but me. Your love wouldn't stand the test; mine will."
+
+"Your folks have disinherited you--you have almost nothing, and I will not
+change my mind. What do you see ahead of you?"
+
+"Jim--only Jim--and God."
+
+Her eyes were shining, her hands were clasped together at her side in the
+tenseness of her feeling, her indomitable spirit spoke in her face.
+
+Suddenly the old man brought his fist down on the table with a bang. "It's
+a crime--oh, it's a crime, to risk your life so! You ought to have been
+locked up. I'd have done it."
+
+"Listen to me," she rejoined, quietly. "I know the risk. But do you think
+that I could have lived my life out, feeling that I might have saved Jim
+and didn't try? You talk of beauty and power and ruling--you say what
+others have said to me. Which is the greater thing, to get what pleases
+one, or to work for something which is more to one than all else in the
+world? To save one life, one intellect, one great man--oh, he has the
+making of a great man in him!--to save a soul, would not life be well
+lost, would not love be well spent, in doing it?"
+
+"Love's labor lost," said the old man, slowly, cynically, but not without
+emotion.
+
+"I have ambition," she continued. "No girl was ever more ambitious, but my
+ambition is to make the most and best of myself. Place?--Jim and I will
+hold it yet. Power?--it shall be as it must be; but Jim and I will work
+for it to fulfil ourselves. For me--ah, if I can save him--and I mean to
+do so!--do you think that I would not then have my heaven on earth? You
+want money--money--money, power, and to rule; and these are to you the
+best things in the world. I make my choice differently, though I would
+have these other things if I could; and I hope I shall. But Jim first--Jim
+first, your son, Jim--my husband, Jim!"
+
+The old man got to his feet slowly. She had him at bay. "But you are
+great," he said, "great! It is an awful stake--awful! Yet, if you win,
+you'll have what money can't buy. And listen to me. We'll make the stake
+bigger. It will give it point, too, in another way. If you keep Jim sober
+for four years from the day of your marriage, on the last day of that four
+years I'll put in your hands for you and him, or for your child--if you
+have one--five millions of dollars. I am a man of my word. While Jim
+drinks I won't take him back; he's disinherited. I'll give him nothing now
+or hereafter. Save him for four years--if he can do that he will do
+all--and there's five millions as sure as the sun's in heaven. Amen and
+amen."
+
+He opened the door. There was a strange, soft light in her eyes as she
+came to go.
+
+"Aren't you going to kiss me?" she said, looking at him whimsically.
+
+He was disconcerted. She did not wait, but reached up and kissed him on
+the cheek. "Good-bye," she said, with a smile. "We'll win the stake.
+Good-bye."
+
+An instant and she was gone. He shut the door, then turned and looked in a
+mirror on the wall. Abstractedly he touched the cheek she had kissed.
+Suddenly a change passed over his face. He dropped in a chair, and his
+fist struck the table as he said: "By God, she may do it, she may do it!
+But it's life and death--it's life and death."
+
+Society had its sensation, and then the veil dropped. For a long time none
+looked behind it except Jim's father. He had too much at stake not to have
+his telescope upon them. A detective followed them to keep Jim's record.
+But this they did not know.
+
+II
+
+From the day they left Washington Jim put his life and his fate in his
+wife's hands. He meant to follow her judgment, and, self-willed and strong
+in intellect as he was, he said that she should have a fair chance of
+fulfilling her purpose. There had been many _pour parlers_ as to what Jim
+should do. There was farming. She set that aside, because it meant
+capital, and it also meant monotony and loneliness; and capital was
+limited, and monotony and loneliness were bad for Jim, deadening an active
+brain which must not be deprived of stimulants--stimulants of a different
+sort, however, from those which had heretofore mastered it. There was the
+law. But Jim would have to become a citizen of Canada, change his flag,
+and where they meant to go--to the outskirts--there would be few
+opportunities for the law; and with not enough to _do_ there would be
+danger. Railway construction? That seemed good in many ways, but Jim had
+not the professional knowledge necessary; his railway experience with his
+father had only been financial. Above all else he must have
+responsibility, discipline, and strict order in his life.
+
+"Something that will be good for my natural vanity, and knock the nonsense
+out of me," Jim agreed, as they drew farther and farther away from
+Washington and the past, and nearer and nearer to the Far North and their
+future. Never did two more honest souls put their hands in each other's,
+and set forth upon the thorniest path to a goal which was their heart's
+desire. Since they had become one, there had come into Sally's face that
+illumination which belongs only to souls possessed of an idea greater than
+themselves, outside themselves--saints, patriots; faces which have been
+washed in the salt tears dropped for others' sorrows and lighted by the
+fire of self-sacrifice. Sally Seabrook, the high-spirited, the radiant,
+the sweetly wilful, the provoking, to concentrate herself upon this narrow
+theme--to reconquer the lost paradise of one vexed mortal soul!
+
+What did Jim's life mean? It was only one in the millions coming and
+going, and every man must work out his own salvation. Why should she cramp
+her soul to this one issue, when the same soul could spend itself upon the
+greater motives and in the larger circle? A wide world of influence had
+opened up before her; position, power, adulation, could all have been
+hers, as John Appleton and Jim's father had said. She might have moved in
+well-trodden ways, through gardens of pleasure, lived a life where all
+would be made easy, where she would be shielded at every turn, and her
+beauty would be flattered by luxury into a constant glow. She was not so
+primitive, so unintellectual, as not to have thought of this, else her
+decision would have had less importance; she would have been no more than
+an infatuated, emotional woman with a touch of second-class drama in her
+nature. She had thought of it all, and she had made her choice. The easier
+course was the course for meaner souls, and she had not one vein of thin
+blood nor a small idea in her whole nature. She had a heart and mind for
+great issues. She believed that Jim had a great brain, and would and could
+accomplish great things. She knew that he had in him the strain of
+hereditary instinct--his mother's father had ended a brief life in a
+drunken duel on the Mississippi, and Jim's boyhood had never had
+discipline or direction, or any strenuous order. He might never acquire
+order, and the power that order and habit and the daily iteration of
+necessary thoughts and acts bring; but the prospect did not appal her. She
+had taken the risk with her eyes wide open; had set her own life and
+happiness in the hazard. But Jim must be saved, must be what his talents,
+his genius, entitled him to be. And the long game must have the long
+thought.
+
+So, as they drew into the great Saskatchewan Valley, her hand in his, and
+hope in his eyes, and such a look of confidence and pride in her as
+brought back his old, strong beauty of face and smoothed the careworn
+lines of self-indulgence, she gave him his course: as a private he must
+join the North-West Mounted Police, the red-coated riders of the plains,
+and work his way up through every stage of responsibility, beginning at
+the foot of the ladder of humbleness and self-control. She believed that
+he would agree with her proposal; but her hands clasped his a little more
+firmly and solicitously--there was a faint, womanly fear at her heart--as
+she asked him if he would do it. The life meant more than occasional
+separation; it meant that there would be periods when she would not be
+with him; and there was great danger in that; but she knew that the risks
+must be taken, and he must not be wholly reliant on her presence for his
+moral strength.
+
+His face fell for a moment when she made the suggestion, but it cleared
+presently, and he said, with a dry laugh: "Well, I guess they must make me
+a sergeant pretty quick. I'm a colonel in the Kentucky Carbineers!"
+
+She laughed, too; then a moment afterward, womanlike, wondered if she was
+right, and was a little frightened. But that was only because she was not
+self-opinionated, and was anxious, more anxious than any woman in all the
+North.
+
+It happened as Jim said; he was made a sergeant at once--Sally managed
+that; for, when it came to the point, she saw the conditions in which the
+privates lived, and realized that Jim must be one of them, and clean out
+the stables, and groom his horse and the officers' horses, and fetch and
+carry, her heart failed her, and she thought that she was making her
+remedy needlessly heroical. So, she went to see the commissioner, who was
+on a tour of scrutiny on their arrival at the post, and, as better men
+than he had done in more knowing circles, he fell under her spell. If she
+had asked for a lieutenancy, he would probably have corrupted some member
+of Parliament into securing it for Jim.
+
+But Jim was made a sergeant, and the commissioner and the captain of the
+troop kept their eyes on him. So did other members of the troop who did
+not quite know their man, and attempted, figuratively, to pinch him here
+and there. They found that his actions were greater than his words, and
+both were in perfect harmony in the end, though his words often seemed
+pointless to their minds, until they understood that they had conveyed
+truths through a medium more like a heliograph than a telephone. By-and-by
+they began to understand his heliographing, and, when they did that, they
+began to swear by him, not at him.
+
+In time it was found that the troop never had a better disciplinarian than
+Jim. He knew when to shut his eyes, and when to keep them open. To
+non-essentials he kept his eyes shut; to essentials he kept them very wide
+open. There were some men of good birth from England and elsewhere among
+them, and these mostly understood him first. But they all understood Sally
+from the beginning, and after a little they were glad enough to be
+permitted to come, on occasion, to the five-roomed little house near the
+barracks, and hear her talk, then answer her questions, and, as men had
+done at Washington, open out their hearts to her. They noticed, however,
+that while she made them barley-water, and all kinds of soft drinks from
+citric acid, sarsaparilla, and the like, and had one special drink of her
+own invention, which she called cream-nectar, no spirits were to be had.
+They also noticed that Jim never drank a drop of liquor, and by-and-by,
+one way or another, they got a glimmer of the real truth, before it became
+known who he really was or anything of his story. And the interest in the
+two, and in Jim's reformation, spread through the country, while Jim
+gained reputation as the smartest man in the force.
+
+They were on the outskirts of civilization--as Jim used to say, "One step
+ahead of the procession." Jim's duty was to guard the columns of
+settlement and progress, and to see that every man got his own rights and
+not more than his rights; that justice should be the plumb-line of march
+and settlement. His principle was embodied in certain words which he
+quoted once to Sally from the prophet Amos--"_And the Lord said unto me,
+Amos, what seest thou? And I said, A plumb-line_."
+
+On the day that Jim became a lieutenant his family increased by one. It
+was a girl, and they called her Nancy, after Jim's mother. It was the
+anniversary of their marriage, and, so far, Jim had won, with what
+fightings and strugglings and wrestlings of the spirit only Sally and
+himself knew. And she knew as well as he, and always saw the storm coming
+before it broke--a restlessness, then a moodiness, then a hungry, eager,
+helpless look, and afterward an agony of longing, a feverish desire to
+break away and get the thrilling thing which would still the demon within
+him.
+
+There had been moments when his doom seemed certain--he knew and she knew
+that if he once got drunk again he would fall never to rise. On one
+occasion, after a hard, long, hungry ride, he was half-mad with desire,
+but even as he seized the flask that was offered to him by his only enemy,
+the captain of B Troop, at the next station eastward, there came a sudden
+call to duty, two hundred Indians having gone upon the war-path. It saved
+him, it broke the spell. He had to mount and away, with the antidote and
+stimulant of responsibility driving him on.
+
+Another occasion was equally perilous to his safety. They had been idle
+for days in a hot week in summer, waiting for orders to return from the
+rail-head where they had gone to quell a riot, and where drink and
+hilarity were common. Suddenly--more suddenly than it had ever come, the
+demon of his thirst had Jim by the throat. Sergeant Sewell, of the
+gray-stubble head, who loved him more than his sour heart had loved
+anybody in all his life, was holding himself ready for the physical
+assault he must make upon his superior officer if he raised a glass to his
+lips, when salvation came once again. An accident had occurred far down on
+the railway line, and the operator of the telegraph-office had that very
+day been stricken down with pleurisy and pneumonia. In despair the manager
+had sent to Jim, eagerly hoping that he might help them, for the Riders of
+the Plains were a sort of court of appeal for every trouble in the Far
+North.
+
+Instantly Jim was in the saddle with his troop. Out of curiosity he had
+learned telegraphy when a boy, as he had learned many things, and, arrived
+at the scene of the accident, he sent messages and received them--by
+sound, not on paper as did the official operator, to the amazement and
+pride of the troop. Then, between caring for the injured in the accident,
+against the coming of the relief train, and nursing the sick operator
+through the dark moments of his dangerous illness, he passed a crisis of
+his own disease triumphantly; but not the last crisis.
+
+So the first and so the second and third years passed in safety.
+
+III
+
+"Please, I want to go, too, Jim."
+
+Jim swung round and caught the child up in his arms.
+
+"Say, how dare you call your father _Jim_--eh, tell me that?"
+
+"It's what mummy calls you--it's pretty."
+
+"I don't call her 'mummy' because you do, and you mustn't call me _Jim_
+because she does--do you hear?"
+
+The whimsical face lowered a little, then the rare and beautiful dark blue
+eyes raised slowly, shaded by the long lashes, and the voice said,
+demurely, "Yes--Jim."
+
+"Nancy--Nancy," said a voice from the corner in reproof, mingled with
+suppressed laughter. "Nancy, you mustn't be saucy. You must say 'father'
+to--"
+
+"Yes, mummy. I'll say father to--Jim."
+
+"You imp--you imp of delight," said Jim, as he strained the dainty little
+lass to his breast, while she appeared interested in a wave of his black
+hair, which she curled around her finger.
+
+Sally came forward with the little parcel of sandwiches she had been
+preparing, and put them in the saddlebags lying on a chair at the door, in
+readiness for the journey Jim was about to make. Her eyes were glistening,
+and her face had a heightened color. The three years which had passed
+since she married had touched her not at all to her disadvantage, rather
+to her profit. She looked not an hour older; motherhood had only added to
+her charm, lending it a delightful gravity. The prairie life had given a
+shining quality to her handsomeness, an air of depth and firmness, an
+exquisite health and clearness to the color in her cheeks. Her step was as
+light as Nancy's, elastic and buoyant--a gliding motion which gave a
+sinuous grace to the movements of her body. There had also come into her
+eyes a vigilance such as deaf people possess, a sensitive observation
+imparting a deeper intelligence to the face.
+
+Here was the only chance by which you could guess the story of her life.
+Her eyes were like the ears of an anxious mother who can never sleep till
+every child is abed; whose sense is quick to hear the faintest footstep
+without or within; and who, as years go on, and her children grow older
+and older, must still lie awake hearkening for the late footstep on the
+stair. In Sally's eyes was the story of the past three years: of love and
+temptation and struggle, of watchfulness and yearning and anxiety, of
+determination and an inviolable hope. Her eyes had a deeper look than that
+in Jim's. Now, as she gazed at him, the maternal spirit rose up from the
+great well of protectiveness in her and engulfed both husband and child.
+There was always something of the maternal in her eyes when she looked at
+Jim. He did not see it--he saw only the wonderful blue, and the humor
+which had helped him over such difficult places these past three years. In
+steadying and strengthening Jim's will, in developing him from his
+Southern indolence into Northern industry and sense of responsibility,
+John Appleton's warnings had rung in Sally's ears, and Freddy Hartzman's
+forceful and high-minded personality had passed before her eyes with an
+appeal powerful and stimulating; but always she came to the same upland of
+serene faith and white-hearted resolve; and Jim became dearer and dearer.
+
+The baby had done much to brace her faith in the future and comfort her
+anxious present. The child had intelligence of a rare order. She would lie
+by the half-hour on the floor, turning over the leaves of a book without
+pictures, and, before she could speak, would read from the pages in a
+language all her own. She made a fairy world for herself, peopled by
+characters to whom she gave names, to whom she assigned curious attributes
+and qualities. They were as real to her as though flesh and blood, and she
+was never lonely, and never cried; and she had buried herself in her
+father's heart. She had drawn to her the roughest men in the troop, and
+for old Sewell, the grim sergeant, she had a specially warm place.
+
+"You can love me if you like," she had said to him at the very start, with
+the egotism of childhood; but made haste to add, "because I love you,
+Gri-Gri." She called him Gri-Gri from the first, but they knew only long
+afterward that "gri-gri" meant "gray-gray," to signify that she called him
+after his grizzled hairs.
+
+What she had been in the life-history of Sally and Jim they both knew. Jim
+regarded her with an almost superstitious feeling. Sally was his strength,
+his support, his inspiration, his bulwark of defence; Nancy was the charm
+he wore about his neck--his mascot, he called her. Once, when she was ill,
+he had suffered as he had never done before in his life. He could not
+sleep nor eat, and went about his duties like one in a dream. When his
+struggles against his enemy were fiercest, he kept saying over her name to
+himself, as though she could help him. Yet always it was Sally's hand he
+held in the darkest hours, in his brutal moments; for in this fight
+between appetite and will there are moments when only the animal seems to
+exist, and the soul disappears in the glare and gloom of the primal
+emotions. Nancy he called his "lucky sixpence," but he called Sally his
+"guinea-girl."
+
+From first to last his whimsicality never deserted him. In his worst
+hours, some innate optimism and humor held him steady in his fight. It was
+not depression that possessed him at the worst, but the violence of an
+appetite most like a raging pain which men may endure with a smile upon
+their lips. He carried in his face the story of a conflict, the aftermath
+of bitter experience; and through all there pulsed the glow of experience.
+He had grown handsomer, and the graceful decision of his figure, the
+deliberate certainty of every action, heightened the force of a singular
+personality. As in the eyes of Sally, in his eyes was a long, reflective
+look which told of things overcome, and yet of dangers present. His lips
+smiled often, but the eyes said: "I have lived, I have seen, I have
+suffered, and I must suffer more. I have loved, I have been loved under
+the shadow of the sword. Happiness I have had, and golden hours, but not
+peace--never peace. My soul has need of peace."
+
+In the greater, deeper experience of their lives, the more material side
+of existence had grown less and less to them. Their home was a model of
+simple comfort and some luxury, though Jim had insisted that Sally's
+income should not be spent, except upon the child, and should be saved for
+the child, their home being kept on his pay and on the tiny income left by
+his mother. With the help of an Indian girl, and a half-breed for out-door
+work and fires and gardening, Sally had cared for the house herself.
+Ingenious and tasteful, with a gift for cooking and an educated hand, she
+had made her little home as pretty as their few possessions would permit.
+Refinement covered all, and three or four score books were like so many
+friends to comfort her when Jim was away; like kind and genial neighbors
+when he was at home. From Browning she had written down in her long,
+sliding handwriting, and hung up beneath Jim's looking-glass, the
+heartening and inspiring words:
+
+         "One who never turned his back, but marched breast
+           forward,
+             Never doubted clouds would break,
+         Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would
+           triumph,
+         Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,
+           Sleep to wake."
+
+They had lived above the sordid, and there was something in the nature of
+Jim's life to help them to it. He belonged to a small handful of men who
+had control over an empire, with an individual responsibility and
+influence not contained in the scope of their commissions. It was a matter
+of moral force and character, and of uniform, symbolical only of the great
+power behind; of the long arm of the State; of the insistence of the law,
+which did not rely upon force alone, but on the certainty of its
+administration. In such conditions the smallest brain was bound to expand,
+to take on qualities of judgment and temperateness which would never be
+developed in ordinary circumstances. In the case of Jim Templeton, who
+needed no stimulant to his intellect, but rather a steadying quality, a
+sense of proportion, the daily routine, the command of men, the diverse
+nature of his duties, half civil, half military, the personal appeals made
+on all sides by the people of the country for advice, for help, for
+settlement of disputes, for information which his well-instructed mind
+could give--all these modified the romantic brilliance of his intellect,
+made it and himself more human.
+
+It had not come to him all at once. His intellect at first stood in his
+way. His love of paradox, his deep observation, his insight--all made him
+inherently satirical, though not cruelly so; but satire had become pure
+whimsicality at last; and he came to see that, on the whole, the world was
+imperfect, but also, on the whole, was moving toward perfection rather
+than imperfection. He grew to realize that what seemed so often weakness
+in men was tendency and idiosyncrasy rather than evil. And in the end he
+thought better of himself as he came to think better of all others. For he
+had thought less of all the world because he had thought so little of
+himself. He had overestimated his own faults, had made them into crimes in
+his own eyes, and, observing things in others of similar import, had
+become almost a cynic in intellect, while in heart he had remained a boy.
+
+In all that he had changed a great deal. His heart was still the heart of
+a boy, but his intellect had sobered, softened, ripened--even in this
+secluded and seemingly unimportant life; as Sally had said and hoped it
+would. Sally's conviction had been right. But the triumph was not yet
+achieved. She knew it. On occasion the tones of his voice told her, the
+look that came into his eyes proclaimed it to her, his feverishness and
+restlessness made it certain. How many a night had she thrown her arm over
+his shoulder, and sought his hand and held it while in the dark silence,
+wide-eyed, dry-lipped, and with a throat like fire he had held himself
+back from falling. There was liquor in the house--the fight would not have
+been a fight without it. She had determined that he should see his enemy
+and meet him in the plains and face him down; and he was never many feet
+away from his possible disaster. Yet for long over three years all had
+gone well. There was another year. Would he last out the course?
+
+At first the thought of the great stake for which she was playing in terms
+of currency, with the head of Jim's father on every note, was much with
+her. The amazing nature of the offer of five millions of dollars
+stimulated her imagination, roused her; gold coins are counters in the
+game of success, signs and tokens. Money alone could not have lured her;
+but rather what it represented--power, width of action, freedom to help
+when the heart prompted, machinery for carrying out large plans, ability
+to surround with advantage those whom we love. So, at first, while yet the
+memories of Washington were much with her, the appeal of the millions was
+strong. The gallant nature of the contest and the great stake braced her;
+she felt the blood quicken in her pulse.
+
+But, all through, the other thing really mastered her: the fixed idea that
+Jim must be saved. As it deepened, the other life that she had lived
+became like the sports in which we shared when children, full of vivacious
+memory, shining with impulse and the stir of life, but not to be
+repeated--days and deeds outgrown. So the light of one idea shone in her
+face. Yet she was intensely human too; and if her eyes had not been set on
+the greater glory, the other thought might have vulgarized her mind, made
+her end and goal sordid--the descent of a nature rather than its
+ascension.
+
+When Nancy came, the lesser idea, the stake, took on a new importance, for
+now it seemed to her that it was her duty to secure for the child its
+rightful heritage. Then Jim, too, appeared in a new light, as one who
+could never fulfil himself unless working through the natural channels of
+his birth, inheritance, and upbringing. Jim, drunken and unreliable, with
+broken will and fighting to find himself--the waste places were for him,
+until he was the master of his will and emotions. Once, however, secure in
+ability to control himself, with cleansed brain and purpose defined, the
+widest field would be still be too narrow for his talents--and the five,
+yes, the fifty millions of his father must be his.
+
+She had never repented having married Jim; but twice in those three years
+she had broken down and wept as though her heart would break. There were
+times when Jim's nerves were shaken in his struggle against the unseen
+foe, and he had spoken to her querulously, almost sharply. Yet in her
+tears there was no reproach for him, rather for herself--the fear that she
+might lose her influence over him, that she could not keep him close to
+her heart, that he might drift away from her in the commonplaces and
+monotony of work and domestic life. Everything so depended on her being to
+him not only the one woman for whom he cared, but the woman without whom
+he could care for nothing else.
+
+"O, my God, give me his love," she had prayed. "Let me keep it yet a
+little while. For his sake, not for my own, let me have the power to hold
+his love. Make my mind always quiet, and let me blow neither hot nor cold.
+Help me to keep my temper sweet and cheerful, so that he will find the
+room empty where I am not, and his footsteps will quicken when he comes to
+the door. Not for my sake, dear God, but for his, or my heart will
+break--it will break unless Thou dost help me to hold him. O Lord, keep me
+from tears; make my face happy that I may be goodly to his eyes, and
+forgive the selfishness of a poor woman who has little, and would keep her
+little and cherish it, for Christ's sake."
+
+Twice had she poured out her heart so, in the agony of her fear that she
+should lose favor in Jim's sight--she did not know how alluring she was,
+in spite of the constant proofs offered her. She had had her will with all
+who came her way, from Governor to Indian brave. Once, in a journey they
+had made far north, soon after they came, she had stayed at a Hudson Bay
+Company's post for some days, while there came news of restlessness among
+the Indians, because of lack of food, and Jim had gone farther north to
+steady the tribes, leaving her with the factor and his wife and a
+half-breed servant.
+
+While she and the factor's wife were alone in the yard of the post one
+day, an Indian chief, Arrowhead, in war-paint and feathers, entered
+suddenly, brandishing a long knife. He had been drinking, and there was
+danger in his black eyes. With a sudden inspiration she came forward
+quickly, nodded and smiled to him, and then pointed to a grindstone
+standing in the corner of the yard. As she did so, she saw Indians
+crowding into the gate armed with knives, guns, bows, and arrows. She
+beckoned to Arrowhead, and he followed her to the grindstone. She poured
+some water on the wheel and began to turn it, nodding at the now impassive
+Indian to begin. Presently he nodded also, and put his knife on the stone.
+She kept turning steadily, singing to herself the while, as with anxiety
+she saw the Indians drawing closer and closer in from the gate. Faster and
+faster she turned, and at last the Indian lifted his knife from the stone.
+She reached out her hand with simulated interest, felt the edge with her
+thumb, the Indian looking darkly at her the while. Presently, after
+feeling the edge himself, he bent over the stone again, and she went on
+turning the wheel, still singing softly. At last he stopped again and felt
+the edge. With a smile which showed her fine, white teeth, she said, "Is
+that for me?" making a significant sign across her throat at the same
+time.
+
+The old Indian looked at her grimly, then slowly shook his head in
+negation.
+
+"I go hunt Yellow Hawk to-night," he said. "I go fight; I like marry you
+when I come back. _How_!" he said, and turned away toward the gate.
+
+Some of his braves held back, the blackness of death in their looks. He
+saw. "My knife is sharp," he said. "The woman is brave. She shall live--go
+and fight Yellow Hawk, or starve and die."
+
+Divining their misery, their hunger, and the savage thought that had come
+to them, Sally had whispered to the factor's wife to bring food, and the
+woman now came running out with two baskets full, and returned for more.
+Sally ran forward among the Indians and put the food into their hands.
+With grunts of satisfaction they seized what she gave, and thrust it into
+their mouths, squatting on the ground. Arrowhead looked on stern and
+immobile, but when at last she and the factor's wife sat down before the
+braves with confidence and an air of friendliness, he sat down also; yet,
+famished as he was, he would not touch the food. At last Sally, realizing
+his proud defiance of hunger, offered him a little lump of pemmican and a
+biscuit, and with a grunt he took it from her hands and ate it. Then, at
+his command, a fire was lit, the pipe of peace was brought out, and Sally
+and the factor's wife touched their lips to it, and passed it on.
+
+So was a new treaty of peace and loyalty made with Arrowhead and his tribe
+by a woman without fear, whose life had seemed not worth a minute's
+purchase; and, as the sun went down, Arrowhead and his men went forth to
+make war upon Yellow Hawk beside the Nettigon River. In this wise had her
+influence spread in the land.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Standing now with the child in his arms and his wife looking at him with a
+shining moisture of the eyes, Jim laughed outright. There came upon him a
+sudden sense of power, of aggressive force--the will to do. Sally
+understood, and came and laughingly grasped his arm.
+
+"Oh, Jim," she said, playfully, "you are getting muscles like steel. You
+hadn't these when you were colonel of the Kentucky Carbineers!"
+
+"I guess I need them now," he said, smiling, and with the child still in
+his arms drew her to a window looking northward. As far as the eye could
+see, nothing but snow, like a blanket spread over the land. Here and there
+in the wide expanse a tree silhouetted against the sky, a tracery of
+eccentric beauty, and off in the far distance a solitary horseman riding
+toward the post--riding hard.
+
+"It was root, hog, or die with me, Sally," he continued, "and I rooted....
+I wonder--that fellow on the horse--I have a feeling about him. See, he's
+been riding hard and long--you can tell by the way the horse drops his
+legs. He sags a bit himself.... But isn't it beautiful, all that out
+there--the real quintessence of life."
+
+The air was full of delicate particles of frost on which the sun sparkled,
+and though there was neither bird nor insect, nor animal, nor stir of
+leaf, nor swaying branch or waving grass, life palpitated in the air,
+energy sang its song in the footstep that crunched the frosty ground, that
+broke the crusted snow; it was in the delicate wind that stirred the flag
+by the barracks away to the left; hope smiled in the wide prospect over
+which the thrilling, bracing air trembled. Sally had chosen right.
+
+"You had a big thought when you brought me here, guinea-girl," he added,
+presently. "We are going to win out here"--he set the child down--"you and
+I and this lucky sixpence." He took up his short fur coat. "Yes, we'll
+win, honey." Then, with a brooding look in his face, he added:
+
+               "'The end comes as came the beginning,
+                 And shadows fail into the past;
+               And the goal, is it not worth the winning,
+                 If it brings us but home at the last?
+               While far through the pain of waste places
+                 We tread, 'tis a blossoming rod
+               That drives us to grace from disgraces,
+                 From the fens to the gardens of God!'"
+
+He paused reflectively. "It's strange that this life up here makes you
+feel that you must live a bigger life still, that this is only the wide
+porch to the great labor-house--it makes you want to do things. Well,
+we've got to win the stake first," he added, with a laugh.
+
+"The stake is a big one, Jim--bigger than you think."
+
+"You and her and me--me that was in the gutter."
+
+"What is the gutter, dadsie?" asked Nancy.
+
+"The gutter--the gutter is where the dish-water goes, midget," he
+answered, with a dry laugh.
+
+"Oh, I don't think you'd like to be in the gutter," Nancy said, solemnly.
+
+"You have to get used to it first, miss," answered Jim. Suddenly Sally
+laid both hands on Jim's shoulders and looked him in the eyes. "You must
+win the stake, Jim. Think--now!"
+
+She laid a hand on the head of the child. He did not know that he was
+playing for a certain five millions, perhaps fifty millions, of dollars.
+She had never told him of his father's offer. He was fighting only for
+salvation, for those he loved, for freedom. As they stood there, the
+conviction had come upon her that they had come to the last battle-field,
+that this journey which Jim now must take would decide all, would give
+them perfect peace or lifelong pain. The shadow of battle was over them,
+but he had no foreboding, no premonition; he had never been so full of
+spirits and life.
+
+To her adjuration Jim replied by burying his face in her golden hair, and
+he whispered: "Say, I've done near four years, my girl. I think I'm all
+right now--I think. This last six months, it's been easy--pretty fairly
+easy."
+
+"Four months more, only four months more--God be good to us!" she said,
+with a little gasp.
+
+If he held out for four months more, the first great stage in their
+life-journey would be passed, the stake won.
+
+"I saw a woman get an awful fall once," Jim said, suddenly. "Her bones
+were broken in twelve places, and there wasn't a spot on her body without
+injury. They set and fixed up every broken bone except one. It was split
+down. They didn't dare perform the operation; she couldn't stand it. There
+was a limit to pain, and she had reached the boundary. Two years went by,
+and she got better every way, but inside her leg those broken pieces of
+bone were rubbing against each other. She tried to avoid the inevitable
+operation, but Nature said, 'You must do it, or die in the end.' She
+yielded. Then came the long preparations for the operation. Her heart
+shrank, her mind got tortured. She'd suffered too much. She pulled herself
+together, and said, 'I must conquer this shrinking body of mine by my
+will. How shall I do it?' Something within her said, 'Think and do for
+others. Forget yourself.' And so, as they got her ready for her torture,
+she visited hospitals, agonized cripple as she was, and smiled and talked
+to the sick and broken, telling them of her own miseries endured and
+dangers faced, of the boundary of human suffering almost passed; and so
+she got her courage for her own trial. And she came out all right in the
+end. Well, that's the way I've felt sometimes. But I'm ready for my
+operation now whenever it comes, and it's coming, I know. Let it come when
+it must." He smiled.
+
+There came a knock at the door, and presently Sewell entered. "The
+Commissioner wishes you to come over, sir," he said.
+
+"I was just coming, Sewell. Is all ready for the start?"
+
+"Everything's ready, sir, but there's to be a change of orders.
+Something's happened--a bad job up in the Cree country, I think."
+
+A few minutes later Jim was in the Commissioner's office. The murder of a
+Hudson's Bay Company's man had been committed in the Cree country. The
+stranger whom Jim and Sally had seen riding across the plains had brought
+the news for thirty miles, word of the murder having been carried from
+point to point. The Commissioner was uncertain what to do, as the Crees
+were restless through want of food and the absence of game, and a force
+sent to capture Arrowhead, the chief who had committed the murder, might
+precipitate trouble. Jim solved the problem by offering to go alone and
+bring the chief into the post. It was two hundred miles to the Cree
+encampment, and the journey had its double dangers.
+
+Another officer was sent on the expedition for which Jim had been
+preparing, and he made ready to go upon his lonely duty. His wife did not
+know till three days after he had gone what the nature of his mission
+was.
+
+IV
+
+Jim made his journey in good weather with his faithful dogs alone, and
+came into the camp of the Crees armed with only a revolver. If he had gone
+with ten men, there would have been an instant mêlée, in which he would
+have lost his life. This is what the chief had expected, had prepared for;
+but Jim was more formidable alone, with power far behind him which could
+come with force and destroy the tribe, if resistance was offered, than
+with fifty men. His tongue had a gift of terse and picturesque speech,
+powerful with a people who had the gift of imagination. With five hundred
+men ready to turn him loose in the plains without dogs or food, he carried
+himself with a watchful coolness and complacent determination which got
+home to their minds with great force.
+
+For hours the struggle for the murderer went on, a struggle of mind over
+inferior mind and matter.
+
+Arrowhead was a chief whose will had never been crossed by his own people,
+and to master that will by a superior will, to hold back the destructive
+force which, to the ignorant minds of the braves, was only a natural force
+of defence, meant a task needing more than authority behind it. For the
+very fear of that authority put in motion was an incentive to present
+resistance--to stave off the day of trouble. The faces that surrounded Jim
+were thin with hunger, and the murder that had been committed by the chief
+had, as its origin, the foolish replies of the Hudson's Bay Company's man
+to their demand for supplies. Arrowhead had killed him with his own hand.
+
+But Jim Templeton was of a different calibre. Although he had not been
+told it, he realized that, indirectly, hunger was the cause of the crime
+and might easily become the cause of another; for their tempers were
+sharper even than their appetites. Upon this he played; upon this he made
+an exhortation to the chief. He assumed that Arrowhead had become violent
+because of his people's straits, that Arrowhead's heart yearned for his
+people and would make sacrifice for them. Now, if Arrowhead came quietly,
+he would see that supplies of food were sent at once, and that
+arrangements were made to meet the misery of their situation. Therefore,
+if Arrowhead came freely, he would have so much in his favor before his
+judges; if he would not come quietly, then he must be brought by force;
+and if they raised a hand to prevent it, then destruction would fall upon
+all--all save the women and children. The law must be obeyed. They might
+try to resist the law through him, but, if violence was shown, he would
+first kill Arrowhead, and then destruction would descend like a wind out
+of the north, darkness would swallow them, and their bones would cover the
+plains.
+
+As he ended his words a young brave sprang forward with hatchet raised.
+Jim's revolver slipped down into his palm from his sleeve, and a bullet
+caught the brave in the lifted arm. The hatchet dropped to the ground.
+
+Then Jim's eyes blazed, and he turned a look of anger on the chief, his
+face pale and hard, as he said: "The stream rises above the banks; come
+with me, chief, or all will drown. I am master, and I speak. Ye are hungry
+because ye are idle. Ye call the world yours, yet ye will not stoop to
+gather from the earth the fruits of the earth. Ye sit idle in the summer,
+and women and children die round you when winter comes. Because the game
+is gone, ye say. Must the world stand still because a handful of Crees
+need a hunting-ground? Must the makers of cities and the wonders of the
+earth, who fill the land with plenty--must they stand far off, because the
+Crees and their chief would wander over a million acres, for each man a
+million, when by a hundred--ay, by ten--each white man would live in
+plenty and make the land rejoice? See! Here is the truth. When the Great
+Spirit draws the game away so that the hunting is poor, ye sit down and
+fill your hearts with murder, and in the blackness of your thoughts kill
+my brother. Idle and shiftless and evil ye are, while the earth cries out
+to give you of its plenty, a great harvest from a little seed, if ye will
+but dig and plant, and plough and sow and reap, and lend your backs to
+toil. Now hear and heed. The end is come. For this once ye shall be
+fed--by the blood of my heart, ye shall be fed! And another year ye shall
+labor, and get the fruits of your labor, and not stand waiting, as it
+were, till a fish shall pass the spear or a stag water at your door, that
+ye may slay and eat. The end is come, ye idle men. O chief, hearken! One
+of your braves would have slain me, even as you slew my brother--he one,
+and you a thousand. Speak to your people as I have spoken, and then come
+and answer for the deed done by your hand. And this I say that right shall
+be done between men and men. Speak."
+
+Jim had made his great effort, and not without avail. Arrowhead rose
+slowly, the cloud gone out of his face, and spoke to his people, bidding
+them wait in peace until food came, and appointing his son chief in his
+stead until his return.
+
+"The white man speaks truth, and I will go," he said. "I shall return," he
+continued, "if it be written so upon the leaves of the Tree of Life; and
+if it be not so written, I shall fade like a mist, and the tepees will
+know me not again. The days of my youth are spent, and my step no longer
+springs from the ground. I shuffle among the grass and the fallen leaves,
+and my eyes scarce know the stag from the doe. The white man is master--if
+he wills it we shall die; if he wills it we shall live. And this was ever
+so. It is in the tale of our people. One tribe ruled, and the others were
+their slaves. If it is written on the leaves of the Tree of Life that the
+white man rule us forever, then it shall be so, I have spoken. Now,
+behold, I go."
+
+Jim had conquered, and together they sped away with the dogs through the
+sweet-smelling spruce woods where every branch carried a cloth of white,
+and the only sound heard was the swish of a blanket of snow as it fell to
+the ground from the wide webs of green, or a twig snapped under the load
+it bore. Peace brooded in the silent and comforting forest, and Jim and
+Arrowhead, the Indian ever ahead, swung along, mile after mile, on their
+snow-shoes, emerging at last upon the wide, white prairie.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+A hundred miles of sun and fair weather, sleeping at night in the open in
+a trench dug in the snow, no fear in the thoughts of Jim, nor evil in the
+heart of the heathen man. There had been moments of watchfulness, of
+uncertainty, on Jim's part, the first few hours of the first night after
+they left the Cree reservation; but the conviction speedily came to Jim
+that all was well; for the chief slept soundly from the moment he lay down
+in his blankets between the dogs. Then Jim went to sleep as in his own
+bed, and, waking, found Arrowhead lighting a fire from a little load of
+sticks from the sledges. And between murderer and captor there sprang up
+the companionship of the open road which brings all men to a certain land
+of faith and understanding, unless they are perverted and vile. There was
+no vileness in Arrowhead. There were no handcuffs on his hands, no sign of
+captivity; they two ate out of the same dish, drank from the same basin,
+broke from the same bread. The crime of Arrowhead, the gallows waiting for
+him, seemed very far away. They were only two silent travellers, sharing
+the same hardship, helping to give material comfort to each other--in the
+inevitable democracy of those far places, where small things are not great
+nor great things small; where into men's hearts comes the knowledge of the
+things that matter; where, from the wide, starry sky, from the august
+loneliness, and the soul of the life which has brooded there for untold
+generations, God teaches the values of this world and the next.
+
+One hundred miles of sun and fair weather, and then fifty miles of bitter,
+aching cold, with nights of peril from the increasing chill, so that Jim
+dared not sleep lest he should never wake again, but die benumbed and
+exhausted! Yet Arrowhead slept through all. Day after day so, and then ten
+miles of storm such as come only to the vast barrens of the northlands;
+and woe to the traveller upon whom the icy wind and the blinding snow
+descended! Woe came upon Jim Templeton and Arrowhead, the heathen.
+
+In the awful struggle between man and nature that followed, the captive
+became the leader. The craft of the plains, the inherent instinct, the
+feeling which was more than eyesight became the only hope. One whole day
+to cover ten miles--an endless path of agony, in which Jim went down again
+and again, but came up blinded by snow and drift, and cut as with lashes
+by the angry wind. At the end of the ten miles was a Hudson Bay Company's
+post and safety; and through ten hours had the two struggled toward it,
+going off at tangents, circling on their own tracks; but the Indian, by an
+instinct as sure as the needle to the pole, getting the direction to the
+post again, in the moments of direst peril and uncertainty. To Jim the
+world became a sea of maddening forces which buffeted him; a whirlpool of
+fire in which his brain was tortured, his mind was shrivelled up; a vast
+army rending itself, each man against the other. It was a purgatory of
+music, broken by discords; and then at last--how sweet it all was, after
+the eternity of misery!--"Church bells and voices low," and Sally singing
+to him, Nancy's voice calling! Then, nothing but sleep--sleep, a sinking
+down millions of miles in an ether of drowsiness which thrilled him; and
+after--no more.
+
+None who has suffered up to the limit of what the human body and soul may
+bear can remember the history of those distracted moments when the
+struggle became one between the forces in nature and the forces in man,
+between agonized body and smothered mind, yet with the divine intelligence
+of the created being directing, even though subconsciously, the fight.
+
+How Arrowhead found the post in the mad storm he could never have told.
+Yet he found it, with Jim unconscious on the sledge and with limbs frozen,
+all the dogs gone but two, the leathers over the Indian's shoulders as he
+fell against the gate of the post with a shrill cry that roused the factor
+and his people within, together with Sergeant Sewell, who had been sent
+out from headquarters to await Jim's arrival there. It was Sewell's hand
+which first felt Jim's heart and pulse, and found that there was still
+life left, even before it could be done by the doctor from headquarters,
+who had come to visit a sick man at the post.
+
+For hours they worked with snow upon the frozen limbs to bring back life
+and consciousness. Consciousness came at last with half delirium, half
+understanding; as, emerging from the passing sleep of anæsthetics, the eye
+sees things and dimly registers them before the brain has set them in any
+relation to life or comprehension.
+
+But Jim was roused at last, and the doctor presently held to his lips a
+glass of brandy. Then from infinite distance Jim's understanding returned;
+the mind emerged, but not wholly, from the chaos in which it was
+travelling. His eyes stood out in eagerness.
+
+"Brandy! brandy!" he said, hungrily.
+
+With an oath Sewell snatched the glass from the doctor's hand, put it on
+the table, then stooped to Jim's ear and said, hoarsely: "Remember--Nancy.
+For God's sake, sir, don't drink!"
+
+Jim's head fell back, the fierce light went out of his eyes, the face
+became grayer and sharper. "Sally--Nancy--Nancy," he whispered, and his
+fingers clutched vaguely at the quilt.
+
+"He must have brandy or he will die. The system is pumped out. He must be
+revived," said the doctor. He reached again for the glass of spirits.
+
+Jim understood now. He was on the borderland between life and death, his
+feet were at the brink. "No--not--brandy, no!" he moaned. "Sally--Sally,
+kiss me," he said, faintly, from the middle world in which he was.
+
+"Quick, the broth!" said Sewell to the factor, who had been preparing it.
+"Quick, while there's a chance." He stooped and called into Jim's ear:
+"For the love of God, wake up, sir. They're coming--they're both
+coming--Nancy's coming. They'll soon be here." What matter that he
+lied?--a life was at stake.
+
+Jim's eyes opened again. The doctor was standing with the brandy in his
+hand. Half madly Jim reached out. "I must live until they come," he cried;
+"the brandy--ah, give it! Give it--ah, no, no, I must not," he added,
+gasping, his lips trembling, his hands shaking.
+
+Sewell held the broth to his lips. He drank a little, yet his face became
+grayer and grayer; a bluish tinge spread about his mouth.
+
+"Have you nothing else, sir?" asked Sewell, in despair.
+
+The doctor put down the brandy, went quickly to his medicine-case, dropped
+into a glass some liquid from a phial, came over again, and poured a
+little between the lips; then a little more, as Jim's eyes opened again;
+and at last every drop in the glass trickled down the sinewy throat.
+
+Presently as they watched him the doctor said: "It will not do. He must
+have brandy. It has life--food--in it."
+
+Jim understood the words. He knew that if he drank the brandy the chances
+against his future were terrible. He had made his vow, and he must keep
+it. Yet the thirst was on him; his enemy had him by the throat again, was
+dragging him down. Though his body was so cold, his throat was on fire.
+But in the extremity of his strength his mind fought on--fought on,
+growing weaker every moment. He was having his last fight. They watched
+him with an aching anxiety, and there was anger in the doctor's face. He
+had no patience with these forces arrayed against him.
+
+At last the doctor whispered to Sewell, "It's no use; he must have the
+brandy, or he can't live an hour."
+
+Sewell weakened; the tears fell down his rough, hard cheeks. "It'll ruin
+him--it's ruin or death."
+
+"Trust a little more in God and in the man's strength. Let us give him the
+chance. Force it down his throat--he's not responsible," said the
+physician, to whom saving life was more than all else.
+
+Suddenly there appeared at the bedside Arrowhead, gaunt and weak, his face
+swollen, the skin of it broken by the whips of storm.
+
+"He is my brother," he said, and, stooping, laid both hands, which he had
+held before the fire for a long time, on Jim's heart. "Take his feet, his
+hands, his legs, and his head in your hands," he said to them all. "Life
+is in us; we will give him life."
+
+He knelt down and kept both hands on Jim's heart, while the others, even
+the doctor, awed by his act, did as they were bidden. "Shut your eyes. Let
+your life go into him. Think of him, and him alone. Now!" said Arrowhead,
+in a strange voice.
+
+He murmured, and continued murmuring, his body drawing closer and closer
+to Jim's body, while in the deep silence, broken only by the chanting of
+his low, monotonous voice, the others pressed Jim's hands and head and
+feet and legs--six men under the command of a heathen murderer.
+
+The minutes passed. The color came back to Jim's face, the skin of his
+hands filled up, they ceased twitching, his pulse got stronger, his eyes
+opened with a new light in them.
+
+"I'm living, anyhow," he said, at last, with a faint smile. "I'm
+hungry--broth, please."
+
+The fight was won, and Arrowhead, the pagan murderer, drew over to the
+fire and crouched down beside it, his back to the bed, impassive and
+still. They brought him a bowl of broth and bread, which he drank slowly,
+and placed the empty bowl between his knees. He sat there through the
+night, though they tried to make him lie down.
+
+As the light came in at the windows, Sewell touched him on the shoulder
+and said, "He is sleeping now."
+
+"I hear my brother breathe," answered Arrowhead. "He will live."
+
+All night he had listened, and had heard Jim's breath as only a man who
+has lived in waste places can hear. "He will live. What I take with one
+hand I give with the other."
+
+He had taken the life of the factor; he had given Jim his life. And when
+he was tried three months later for murder, some one else said this for
+him, and the hearts of all, judge and jury, were so moved they knew not
+what to do.
+
+But Arrowhead was never sentenced, for, at the end of the first day's
+trial, he lay down to sleep and never waked again. He was found the next
+morning still and cold, and there was clasped in his hands a little doll
+which Nancy had given him on one of her many visits to the prison during
+her father's long illness. They found a piece of paper in his belt with
+these words in the Cree language: "With my hands on his heart at the post
+I gave him the life that was in me, saving but a little until now.
+Arrowhead, the chief, goes to find life again by the well at the root of
+the tree. _How!_"
+
+V
+
+On the evening of the day that Arrowhead made his journey to "the well at
+the root of the tree" a stranger knocked at the door of Captain
+Templeton's cottage; then, without awaiting admittance, entered.
+
+Jim was sitting with Nancy on his knee, her head against his shoulder,
+Sally at his side, her face alight with some inner joy. Before the knock
+came to the door Jim had just said, "Why do your eyes shine so, Sally?
+What's in your mind?" She had been about to answer, to say to him what had
+been swelling her heart with pride, though she had not meant to tell him
+what he had forgotten--not till midnight. But the figure that entered the
+room, a big man with deep-set eyes, a man of power who had carried
+everything before him in the battle of life, answered for her.
+
+"You have won the stake, Jim," he said, in a hoarse voice. "You and she
+have won the stake, and I've brought it--brought it."
+
+Before they could speak he placed in Sally's hands bonds for five million
+dollars.
+
+"Jim--Jim, my son!" he burst out. Then, suddenly, he sank into a chair
+and, putting his head in his hands, sobbed aloud.
+
+"My God, but I'm proud of you--speak to me, Jim. You've broken me up." He
+was ashamed of his tears, but he could not wipe them away.
+
+"Father, dear old man!" said Jim, and put his hands on the broad
+shoulders.
+
+Sally knelt down beside him, took both the great hands from the
+tear-stained face, and laid them against her cheek. But presently she put
+Nancy on his knees.
+
+"I don't like you to cry," the child said, softly; "but to-day I cried
+too, 'cause my Indian man is dead."
+
+The old man could not speak, but he put his cheek down to hers. After a
+minute, "Oh, but she's worth ten times that!" he said, as Sally came close
+to him with the bundle he had thrust into her hands.
+
+"What is it?" said Jim.
+
+"It's five million dollars--for Nancy," she said.
+
+"Five--million--what--?"
+
+"The stake, Jim," said Sally. "If you did not drink for four years--never
+touched a drop--we were to have five million dollars."
+
+"You never told him, then--you never told him that?" asked the old man.
+
+"I wanted him to win without it," she said. "If he won, he would be the
+stronger; if he lost, it would not be so hard for him to bear."
+
+The old man drew her down and kissed her cheek. He chuckled, though the
+tears were still in his eyes.
+
+"You are a wonder--the tenth wonder of the world!" he blurted.
+
+Jim stood staring at the bundle in Nancy's hands. "Five millions--five
+million dollars!" he kept saying to himself.
+
+"I said Nancy's worth ten times that, Jim." The old man caught his hand
+and pressed it. "But it was a damned near thing, I tell you," he added.
+"They tried to break me and my railways and my bank. I had to fight the
+combination, and there was one day when I hadn't that five million dollars
+there, nor five. Jim, they tried to break the old man! And if they'd
+broken me, they'd have made me out a scoundrel to her--to this wife of
+yours who risked everything for both of us--for both of us, Jim; for she'd
+given up the world to save you, and she was playing like a soul in hell
+for heaven. If they'd broken me, I'd never have lifted my head again. When
+things were at their worst I played to save that five millions--her stake
+and mine; I played for that. I fought for it as a man fights his way out
+of a burning house. And I won--I won. And it was by fighting for that five
+millions I saved fifty--fifty millions, son. They didn't break the old
+man, Jim. They didn't break him--not much."
+
+"There are giants in the world still," said Jim, his own eyes full. He
+knew now his father and himself, and he knew the meaning of all the bitter
+and misspent life of the old days. He and his father were on a level of
+understanding at last.
+
+"Are you a giant?" asked Nancy, peering up into her grandfather's eyes.
+
+The old man laughed, then sighed. "Perhaps I was once, more or less, my
+dear," saying to her what he meant for the other two--"perhaps I was; but
+I've finished. I'm through. I've had my last fight."
+
+He looked at his son. "I pass the game on to you, Jim. You can do it. I
+knew you could do it as the reports came in this year. I've had a
+detective up here for four years. I had to do it. It was the devil in me.
+You've got to carry on the game, Jim; I'm done. I'll stay home and potter
+about. I want to go back to Kentucky, and build up the old place, and take
+care of it a bit--your mother always loved it. I'd like to have it as it
+was when she was there long ago. But I'll be ready to help you when I'm
+wanted, understand."
+
+"You want me to run things--your colossal schemes? You think--?"
+
+"I don't think. I'm old enough to know,"
+
+
+
+
+WHEN THE SWALLOWS HOMEWARD FLY
+
+
+The arrogant Sun had stalked away into the evening, trailing behind him
+banners of gold and crimson, and a swift twilight was streaming over the
+land. As the sun passed, the eyes of two men on a high hill followed it,
+and the look of one was like a light in a window to a lost traveller. It
+had in it the sense of home and the tale of a journey done. Such a journey
+this man had made as few have ever attempted and fewer accomplished. To
+the farthermost regions of snow and ice, where the shoulder of a continent
+juts out into the northwestern arctic seas, he had travelled on foot and
+alone, save for his dogs, and for Indian guides who now and then
+shepherded him from point to point. The vast ice-hummocks had been his
+housing; pemmican, the raw flesh of fish, and even the fat and oil of
+seals had been his food. Ever and ever through long months the everlasting
+white glitter of the snow and ice, ever and ever the cold stars, the
+cloudless sky, the moon at full, or swung like a white sickle in the sky
+to warn him that his life must be mown like grass. At night to sleep in a
+bag of fur and wool, by day the steely wind, or the air shaking with a
+filmy powder of frost; while the illimitably distant sun made the tiny
+flakes sparkle like silver--a _poudre_ day, when the face and hands are
+most like to be frozen, and all so still and white and passionless, yet
+aching with energy. Hundreds upon hundreds of miles that endless trail
+went winding to the farthest Northwest. No human being had ever trod its
+lengths before, though Indians or a stray Hudson's Bay Company man had
+made journeys over part of it during the years that have passed since
+Prince Rupert sent his adventurers to dot that northern land with posts
+and forts and trace fine arteries of civilization through the wastes.
+
+Where this man had gone none other had been of white men from the western
+lands, though from across the wide Pacific, from the Eastern world,
+adventurers and exiles had once visited what is now known as the Yukon
+Valley. So this man, browsing in the library of his grandfather, an
+Eastern scholar, had come to know; and for love of adventure, and because
+of the tale of a valley of gold and treasure to be had, and because he had
+been ruined by bad investments, he had made a journey like none ever
+essayed before. And on his way up to those regions, where the veil before
+the face of God is very thin and fine, and men's hearts glow within them,
+where there was no oasis save the unguessed deposit of a great human dream
+that his soul could feel, the face of a girl had haunted him. Her
+voice--so sweet a voice that it rang like muffled silver in his ears,
+till, in the everlasting theatre of the pole, the stars seemed to repeat
+it through millions of echoing hills, growing softer and softer as the
+frost hushed it to his ears--had said to him late and early, "You must
+come back with the swallows." Then she had sung a song which had been like
+a fire in his heart, not alone because of the words of it, but because of
+the soul in her voice, and it had lain like a coverlet on his heart to
+keep it warm:
+
+           "Adieu! The sun goes awearily down,
+           The mist creeps up o'er the sleepy town,
+           The white sail bends to the shuddering mere,
+           And the reapers have reaped and the night is here.
+
+           "Adieu! And the years are a broken song,
+           The right grows weak in the strife with wrong,
+           The lilies of love have a crimson stain,
+           And the old days never will come again.
+
+           "Adieu! Where the mountains afar are dim
+           'Neath the tremulous tread of the seraphim,
+           Shall not our querulous hearts prevail,
+           That have prayed for the peace of the Holy Grail?
+
+           "Adieu! Sometime shall the veil between
+           The things that are and that might have been
+           Be folded back for our eyes to see,
+           And the meaning of all shall be clear to me."
+
+It had been but an acquaintance of five days while he fitted out for his
+expedition, but in this brief time it had sunk deep into his mind that
+life was now a thing to cherish, and that he must indeed come back; though
+he had left England caring little if, in the peril and danger of his
+quest, he ever returned. He had been indifferent to his fate till he came
+to the Valley of the Saskatchewan, to the town lying at the foot of the
+maple hill beside the great northern stream, and saw the girl whose life
+was knit with the far North, whose mother's heart was buried in the great
+wastes where Sir John Franklin's expedition was lost; for her husband had
+been one of the ill-fated if not unhappy band of lovers of that
+civilization for which they had risked all and lost all save immortality.
+Hither the two had come after he had been cast away on the icy plains,
+and, as the settlement had crept north, had gone north with it, always on
+the outer edge of house and field, ever stepping northward. Here, with
+small income but high hearts and quiet souls, they had lived and labored.
+
+And when this newcomer from the old land set his face northward to an
+unknown destination, the two women had prayed as the mother did in the old
+days when the daughter was but a babe at her knee, and it was not yet
+certain that Franklin and his men had been cast away forever. Something in
+him--his great height, his strength of body, his clear, meditative eyes,
+his brave laugh--reminded her of him, her husband, who, like Sir Humphrey
+Gilbert, had said that it mattered little where men did their duty, since
+God was always near to take or leave as it was His will. When Bickersteth
+went, it was as though one they had known all their lives had passed; and
+the woman knew also that a new thought had been sown in her daughter's
+mind, a new door opened in her heart.
+
+And he had returned. He was now looking down into the valley where the
+village lay. Far, far over, two days' march away, he could see the cluster
+of houses, and the glow of the sun on the tin spire of the little mission
+church where he had heard the girl and her mother sing, till the hearts of
+all were swept by feeling and ravished by the desire for "the peace of the
+Holy Grail." The village was, in truth, but a day's march away from him,
+but he was not alone, and the journey could not be hastened. Beside him,
+his eyes also upon the sunset and the village, was a man in a costume
+half-trapper, half-Indian, with bushy gray beard and massive frame, and a
+distant, sorrowful look, like that of one whose soul was tuned to past
+suffering. As he sat, his head sunk on his breast, his elbow resting on a
+stump of pine--the token of a progressive civilization--his chin upon his
+hand, he looked like the figure of Moses made immortal by Michael Angelo.
+But his strength was not like that of the man beside him, who was thirty
+years younger. When he walked, it was as one who had no destination, who
+had no haven toward which to travel, who journeyed as one to whom the
+world is a wilderness, and one tent or one hut is the same as another, and
+none is home.
+
+Like two ships meeting hull to hull on the wide seas, where a few miles of
+water will hide them from each other, whose ports are thousands of miles
+apart, whose courses are not the same, they two had met, the elder man,
+sick and worn and near to death, in the poor hospitality of an Indian's
+tepee. John Bickersteth had nursed the old man back to strength, and had
+brought him southward with him--a silent companion, who spoke in
+monosyllables, who had no conversation at all of the past and little of
+the present, but who was a woodsman and an arctic traveller of the most
+expert kind, who knew by instinct where the best places for shelter and
+for sleeping might be found, who never complained, and was wonderful with
+the dogs. Close as their association was, Bickersteth had felt concerning
+the other that his real self was in some other sphere or place toward
+which his mind was always turning, as though to bring it back.
+
+Again and again had Bickersteth tried to get the old man to speak about
+the past, but he had been met by a dumb sort of look, a straining to
+understand. Once or twice the old man had taken his hands in both of his
+own and gazed with painful eagerness into his face, as though trying to
+remember or to comprehend something that eluded him. Upon these occasions
+the old man's eyes dropped tears in an apathetic quiet, which tortured
+Bickersteth beyond bearing. Just such a look he had seen in the eyes of a
+favorite dog when he had performed an operation on it to save its life--a
+reproachful, non-comprehending, loving gaze.
+
+Bickersteth understood a little of the Chinook language, which is familiar
+to most Indian tribes, and he had learned that the Indians knew nothing
+exact concerning the old man; but rumors had passed from tribe to tribe
+that this white man had lived forever in the farthest North among the
+arctic tribes, and that he passed from people to people, disappearing into
+the untenanted wilderness, but reappearing again among stranger tribes,
+never resting, and as one always seeking what he could not find.
+
+One thing had helped this old man in all his travels and sojourning. He
+had, as it seemed to the native people, a gift of the hands; for when they
+were sick a few moments' manipulation of his huge, quiet fingers
+vanquished pain. A few herbs he gave in tincture, and these also were
+praised; but it was a legend that when he was persuaded to lay on his
+hands and close his eyes, and with his fingers to "search for the pain and
+find it, and kill it," he always prevailed. They believed that, though his
+body was on earth, his soul was with Manitou, and that it was his soul
+which came into him again, and gave the Great Spirit's healing to the
+fingers. This had been the man's safety through how many years--or how
+many generations--they did not know; for legends regarding the pilgrim had
+grown and were fostered by the medicine-men, who, by giving him great age
+and supernatural power, could, with more self-respect, apologize for their
+own incapacity.
+
+So the years--how many it was impossible to tell, since he did not know or
+would not say--had gone on; and now, after ceaseless wandering, his face
+was turned toward that civilization out of which he had come so long
+ago--or was it so long ago?--one generation, or two, or ten? It seemed to
+Bickersteth at times as though it were ten, so strange, so unworldly was
+his companion. At first he thought that the man remembered more than he
+would appear to acknowledge, but he found that after a day or two
+everything that happened as they journeyed was also forgotten.
+
+It was only visible things, or sounds, that appeared to open the doors of
+memory of the most recent happenings. These happenings, if not varied,
+were of critical moment, since, passing down from the land of unchanging
+ice and snow, they had come into March and April storms and the perils of
+the rapids and the swollen floods of May. Now, in June, two years and a
+month since Bickersteth had gone into the wilds, they looked down upon the
+goal of one at least--of the younger man who had triumphed in his quest up
+in these wilds abandoned centuries ago.
+
+With the joyous thought in his heart that he had discovered anew one of
+the greatest gold-fields of the world, that a journey unparalleled had
+been accomplished, he turned toward his ancient companion, and a feeling
+of pity and human love enlarged within him. He, John Bickersteth, was
+going into a world again where--as he believed--a happy fate awaited him;
+but what of this old man? He had brought him out of the wilds, out of the
+unknown--was he only taking him into the unknown again? Were there
+friends, any friends anywhere in the world, waiting for him? He called
+himself by no name, he said he had no name. Whence came he? Of whom?
+Whither was he wending now? Bickersteth had thought of the problem often,
+and he had no answer for it save that he must be taken care of, if not by
+others, then by himself; for the old man had saved him from drowning; had
+also saved him from an awful death on a March day when he fell into a
+great hole and was knocked insensible in the drifting snow; had saved him
+from brooding on himself--the beginning of madness--by compelling him to
+think for another. And sometimes, as he looked at the old man, his
+imagination had caught the spirit of the legend of the Indians, and he had
+cried out, "O soul, come back and give him memory--give him back his
+memory, Manitou the mighty!"
+
+[Illustration: THE OLD MAN SHOOK HIS HEAD. THOUGH NOT WITH UNDERSTANDING]
+
+Looking on the old man now, an impulse seized him. "Dear old man," he
+said, speaking as one speaks to a child that cannot understand, "you shall
+never want while I have a penny, or have head or hands to work. But is
+there no one that you care for or that cares for you, that you remember,
+or that remembers you?"
+
+The old man shook his head, though not with understanding, and he laid a
+hand on the young man's shoulder, and whispered:
+
+"Once it was always snow, but now it is green, the land. I have seen it--I
+have seen it once." His shaggy eyebrows gathered over, his eyes searched,
+searched the face of John Bickersteth. "Once, so long ago--I cannot
+think," he added, helplessly.
+
+"Dear old man," Bickersteth said, gently, knowing he would not wholly
+comprehend, "I am going to ask her--Alice--to marry me, and if she does,
+she will help look after you, too. Neither of us would have been here
+without the other, dear old man, and we shall not be separated. Whoever
+you are, you are a gentleman, and you might have been my father or
+hers--or hers."
+
+He stopped suddenly. A thought had flashed through his mind, a thought
+which stunned him, which passed like some powerful current through his
+veins, shocked him, then gave him a palpitating life. It was a wild
+thought, but yet why not?--why not? There was the chance, the faint,
+far-off chance. He caught the old man by the shoulders and looked him in
+the eyes, scanned his features, pushed back the hair from the rugged
+forehead.
+
+"Dear old man," he said, his voice shaking, "do you know what I'm
+thinking? I'm thinking that you may be of those who went out to the Arctic
+Sea with Sir John Franklin--with Sir John Franklin, you understand. Did
+you know Sir John Franklin?--is it true, dear old boy?--is it true? Are
+you one that has lived to tell the tale? Did you know Sir John
+Franklin?--is it--tell me, is it true?"
+
+He let go the old man's shoulders, for over the face of the other there
+had passed a change. It was strained and tense. The hands were
+outstretched, the eyes were staring straight into the west and the coming
+night.
+
+"It is--it is--that's it!" cried Bickersteth. "That's it--oh, love o' God,
+that's it! Sir John Franklin--Sir John Franklin, and all the brave lads
+that died up there! You remember the ship--the Arctic Sea--the ice-fields,
+and Franklin--you remember him? Dear old man, say you remember Franklin?"
+
+The thing had seized him. Conviction was upon him, and he watched the
+other's anguished face with anguish and excitement in his own. But--but it
+might be, it might be her father--the eyes, the forehead are like hers;
+the hands, the long hands, the pointed fingers. "Dear old man, did you
+have a wife and child, and were they both called Alice--do you remember?
+Franklin!--Alice! Do you remember?"
+
+The old man got slowly to his feet, his arms outstretched, the look in his
+face changing, understanding, struggling for its place, memory fighting
+for its own, the soul contending for its mastery.
+
+"Franklin--Alice--the snow," he said, confusedly, and sank down.
+
+"God have mercy!" cried Bickersteth, as he caught the swaying body and
+laid it upon the ground. "He was there--almost."
+
+He settled the old man against the great pine stump and chafed his hands.
+"Man, dear man, if you belong to her--if you do, can't you see what it
+will mean to me? She can't say no to me then. But if it's true, you'll
+belong to England and to all the world, too, and you'll have fame
+everlasting. I'll have gold for her and for you, and for your Alice, too,
+dear old man. Wake up now and remember if you are Dyke Allingham, who went
+with Franklin to the silent seas of the Pole. If it's you, really you,
+what wonder you lost your memory! You saw them all die, Franklin and all,
+die there in the snow, with all the white world round them. If you were
+there, what a travel you have had, what strange things you have seen!
+Where the world is loneliest, God lives most. If you get close to the
+heart of things, it's no marvel you forgot what you were, or where you
+came from; because it didn't matter; you knew that you were only one of
+thousands of millions who have come and gone, that make up the soul of
+things, that make the pulses of the universe beat. That's it, dear old
+man. The universe would die, if it weren't for the souls that leave this
+world and fill it with life. Wake up! Wake up, Allingham, and tell us
+where you've been, and what you've seen."
+
+He did not labor in vain. Slowly consciousness came back, and the gray
+eyes opened wide, the lips smiled faintly under the bushy beard; but
+Bickersteth saw that the look in the face was much the same as it had been
+before. The struggle had been too great, the fight for the other lost self
+had exhausted him, mind and body, and only a deep obliquity and a great
+weariness filled the countenance. He had come back to the verge, he had
+almost again discovered himself; but the opening door had shut fast
+suddenly, and he was back again in the night, the incompanionable night of
+forgetfulness.
+
+Bickersteth saw that the travail and strife had drained life and energy,
+and that he must not press the mind and vitality of this exile of time and
+the unknown too far. He felt that when the next test came the old man
+would either break completely, and sink down into another and everlasting
+forgetfulness, or tear away forever the veil between himself and his past,
+and emerge into a long-lost life. His strength must be shepherded, and he
+must be kept quiet and undisturbed until they came to the town yonder in
+the valley, over which the night was slowly settling down. There two women
+waited, the two Alices, from both of whom had gone lovers into the North.
+The daughter was living over again in her young love the pangs of suspense
+through which her mother had passed. Two years since Bickersteth had gone,
+and not a sign!
+
+Yet, if the girl had looked from her bedroom window, this Friday night,
+she would have seen on the far hill a sign; for there burned a fire beside
+which sat two travellers who had come from the uttermost limits of snow.
+But as the fire burned--a beacon to her heart if she had but known it--she
+went to her bed, the words of a song she had sung at choir-practice with
+tears in her voice and in her heart ringing in her ears. A concert was to
+be held after the service on the coming Sunday night, at which there was
+to be a collection for funds to build another mission-house a hundred
+miles farther north, and she had been practising music she was to sing.
+Her mother had been an amateur singer of great power, and she was renewing
+her mother's gift in a voice behind which lay a hidden sorrow. As she
+cried herself to sleep the words of the song which had moved her kept
+ringing in her ears and echoing in her heart:
+
+                    "When the swallows homeward fly,
+                    And the roses' bloom is o'er--"
+
+But her mother, looking out into the night, saw on the far hill the fire,
+burning like a star, where she had never seen a fire set before, and a
+hope shot into her heart for her daughter--a hope that had flamed up and
+died down so often during the past year. Yet she had fanned with
+heartening words every such glimmer of hope when it came, and now she went
+to bed saying, "Perhaps he will come to-morrow." In her mind, too, rang
+the words of the song which had ravished her ears that night, the song she
+had sung the night before her own husband, Dyke Allingham, had gone with
+Franklin to the Polar seas:
+
+                   "When the swallows homeward fly--"
+
+As she and her daughter entered the little church on the Sunday evening,
+two men came over the prairie slowly toward the town, and both raised
+their heads to the sound of the church-bell calling to prayer. In the eyes
+of the younger man there was a look which has come to many in this world
+returning from hard enterprise and great dangers, to the familiar streets,
+the friendly faces of men of their kin and clan--to the lights of home.
+
+The face of the older man, however, had another look. It was such a
+look as is seldom seen in the faces of men, for it showed the struggle
+of a soul to regain its identity. The words which the old man had
+uttered in response to Bickersteth's appeal before he fainted
+away--"Franklin--Alice--the snow"--had showed that he was on the verge;
+the bells of the church pealing in the summer air brought him near it once
+again. How many years had gone since he had heard church-bells?
+Bickersteth, gazing at him in eager scrutiny, wondered if, after all, he
+might be mistaken about him. But no, this man had never been born and
+bred in the Far North. His was a type which belonged to the civilization
+from which he himself had come. There would soon be the test of it all.
+Yet he shuddered, too, to think what might happen if it was all true,
+and discovery or reunion should shake to the centre the very life of
+the two long-parted ones.
+
+He saw the look of perplexed pain and joy at once in the face of the old
+man, but he said nothing, and he was almost glad when the bell stopped.
+The old man turned to him.
+
+"What is it?" he said. "I remember--" but he stopped suddenly, shaking his
+head.
+
+An hour later, cleared of the dust of travel, the two walked slowly toward
+the church from the little tavern where they were lodged. The service was
+now over, but the concert had begun. The church was full, and there were
+people in the porch; but these made way for the two strangers; and, as
+Bickersteth was recognized by two or three present, place was found for
+them. Inside, the old man stared round him in a confused and troubled way,
+but his motions were quiet and abstracted, and he looked like some old
+viking, his workaday life done, come to pray ere he went hence forever.
+They had entered in a pause in the concert, but now two ladies came
+forward to the chancel steps, and one with her hands clasped before her,
+began to sing:
+
+                   "When the swallows homeward fly,
+                     And the roses' bloom is o'er,
+                   And the nightingale's sweet song
+                     In the woods is heard no more--"
+
+It was Alice--Alice the daughter--and presently the mother, the other
+Alice, joined in the refrain. At sight of them Bickersteth's eyes had
+filled, not with tears, but with a cloud of feeling, so that he went
+blind. There she was, the girl he loved. Her voice was ringing in his
+ears. In his own joy for one instant he had forgotten the old man beside
+him and the great test that was now upon him. He turned quickly, however,
+as the old man got to his feet. For an instant the lost exile of the North
+stood as though transfixed. The blood slowly drained from his face, and in
+his eyes was an agony of struggle and desire. For a moment an awful
+confusion had the mastery, and then suddenly a clear light broke into his
+eyes, his face flushed healthily and shone, his arms went up, and there
+rang in his ears the words:
+
+                    "Then I think, with bitter pain,
+                    Shall we ever meet again
+                    When the swallows homeward fly?"
+
+"Alice!--Alice!" he called, and tottered forward up the aisle, followed by
+John Bickersteth.
+
+"Alice, I have come back!" he cried again.
+
+
+
+
+GEORGE'S WIFE
+
+
+"She's come, and she can go back. No one asked her, no one wants her, and
+she's got no rights here. She thinks she'll come it over me, but she'll
+get nothing, and there's no place for her here."
+
+The old, gray-bearded man, gnarled and angular, with overhanging brows and
+a harsh face, made this little speech of malice and unfriendliness,
+looking out on the snow-covered prairie through the window. Far in the
+distance were a sleigh and horses like a spot in the snow, growing larger
+from minute to minute.
+
+It was a day of days. Overhead the sun was pouring out a flood of light
+and warmth, and, though it was bitterly cold, life was beating hard in the
+bosom of the West. Men walked lightly, breathed quickly, and their eyes
+were bright with the brightness of vitality and content. Even the old man
+at the window of this lonely house, in a great, lonely stretch of country,
+with the cedar hills behind it, had a living force which defied his
+seventy-odd years, though the light in his face was hard and his voice was
+harder still. Under the shelter of the foothills, cold as the day was, his
+cattle were feeding in the open, scratching away the thin layer of snow
+and browsing on the tender grass underneath. An arctic world in
+appearance, it had an abounding life which made it friendly and
+generous--the harshness belonged to the surface. So, perhaps, it was with
+the old man who watched the sleigh in the distance coming nearer, but that
+in his nature on which any one could feed was not so easily reached as the
+fresh young grass under the protecting snow.
+
+"She'll get nothing out of me," he repeated, as the others in the room
+behind him made no remark, and his eyes ranged gloatingly over the cattle
+under the foothills and the buildings which he had gathered together to
+proclaim his substantial greatness in the West. "Not a _sou markee_!" he
+added, clinking some coins in his pocket. "She's got no rights."
+
+"Cassy's got as much right here as any of us, Abel, and she's coming to
+say it, I guess."
+
+The voice which spoke was unlike a Western voice. It was deep and full and
+slow, with an organ-like quality. It was in good-keeping with the tall,
+spare body and large, fine, rugged face of the woman to whom it belonged.
+She sat in a rocking-chair, but did not rock, her fingers busy with the
+knitting-needles, her feet planted squarely on the home-made hassock at
+her feet.
+
+The old man waited for a minute in a painful silence, then he turned
+slowly round, and, with tight-pressed lips, looked at the woman in the
+rocking-chair. If it had been any one else who had "talked back" at him,
+he would have made quick work of them, for he was of that class of tyrant
+who pride themselves on being self-made, and have an undue respect for
+their own judgment and importance. But the woman who had ventured to
+challenge his cold-blooded remarks about his dead son's wife, now
+hastening over the snow to the house her husband had left under a cloud
+eight years before, had no fear of him, and, maybe, no deep regard for
+him. He respected her, as did all who knew her--a very reticent,
+thoughtful, busy being, who had been like a well of comfort to so many
+that had drunk and passed on out of her life, out of time and time's
+experiences. Seventy-nine years saw her still upstanding, strong, full of
+work, and fuller of life's knowledge. It was she who had sent the horses
+and sleigh for Cassy when the old man, having read the letter that Cassy
+had written him, said that she could "freeze at the station" for all of
+him. Aunt Kate had said nothing then, but, when the time came, by her
+orders the sleigh and horses were at the station; and the old man had made
+no direct protest, for she was the one person he had never dominated nor
+bullied. If she had only talked, he would have worn her down, for he was
+fond of talking, and it was said by those who were cynical and incredulous
+about him that he had gone to prayer-meetings, had been a local preacher,
+only to hear his own voice. Probably, if there had been any politics in
+the West in his day, he would have been a politician, though it would have
+been too costly for his taste, and religion was very cheap; it enabled him
+to refuse to join in many forms of expenditure, on the ground that he "did
+not hold by such things."
+
+In Aunt Kate, the sister of his wife, dead so many years ago, he had found
+a spirit stronger than his own. He valued her; he had said more than once,
+to those who he thought would never repeat it to her, that she was a
+"great woman"; but self-interest was the mainspring of his appreciation.
+Since she had come again to his house--she had lived with him once before
+for two years when his wife was slowly dying--it had been a different
+place. Housekeeping had cost less than before, yet the cooking was better,
+the place was beautifully clean, and discipline without rigidity reigned
+everywhere. One by one the old woman's boys and girls had died--four of
+them--and she was now alone, with not a single grandchild left to cheer
+her; and the life out here with Abel Baragar had been unrelieved by much
+that was heartening to a woman; for Black Andy, Abel's son, was not an
+inspiring figure, though even his moroseness gave way under her influence.
+So it was that when Cassy's letter came her breast seemed to grow warmer
+and swell with longing to see the wife of her nephew, who had such a bad
+reputation in Abel's eyes, and to see George's little boy, who was coming,
+too. After all, whatever Cassy was, she was the mother of Abel's son's
+son; and Aunt Kate was too old and wise to be frightened by tales told of
+Cassy or any one else. So, having had her own way so far regarding Cassy's
+coming, she looked Abel calmly in the eyes, over the gold-rimmed
+spectacles which were her dearest possession--almost the only thing of
+value she had. She was not afraid of Abel's anger, and he knew it; but his
+eldest son, Black Andy, was present, and he must make a show of being
+master of the situation.
+
+"Aunt Kate," he said, "I didn't make a fuss about you sending the horses
+and sleigh for her, because women do fool things sometimes. I suppose
+curiosity got the best of you. Anyhow, mebbe it's right Cassy should find
+out, once for all, how things stand, and that they haven't altered since
+she took George away, and ruined his life, and sent him to his grave.
+That's why I didn't order Mick back when I saw him going out with the
+team."
+
+"Cassy Mavor," interjected a third voice from a corner behind the great
+stove--"Cassy Mavor, of the variety-dance-and-song, and a talk with the
+gallery between!"
+
+Aunt Kate looked over at Black Andy, and stopped knitting, for there was
+that in the tone of the sullen ranchman which stirred in her a sudden
+anger, and anger was a rare and uncomfortable sensation to her. A flush
+crept slowly over her face, then it died away, and she said quietly to
+Black Andy--for she had ever prayed to be master of the demon of temper
+down deep in her, and she was praying now--
+
+"She earnt her living by singing and dancing, and she's brought up
+George's boy by it, and singing and dancing isn't a crime. David danced
+before the Lord. I danced myself when I was a young girl, and before I
+joined the church. 'Twas about the only pleasure I ever had; 'bout the
+only one I like to remember. There's no difference to me 'twixt making
+your feet handy and clever and full of music, and playing with your
+fingers on the piano or on a melodeon at a meeting. As for singing, it's
+God's gift; and many a time I wisht I had it. I'd have sung the blackness
+out of your face and heart, Andy." She leaned back again and began to knit
+very fast. "I'd like to hear Cassy sing, and see her dance, too."
+
+Black Andy chuckled coarsely. "I often heard her sing and saw her dance
+down at Lumley's before she took George away East. You wouldn't have
+guessed she had consumption. She knocked the boys over down to Lumley's.
+The first night at Lumley's done for George."
+
+Black Andy's face showed no lightening of its gloom as he spoke, but there
+was a firing-up of the black eyes, and the woman with the knitting felt
+that--for whatever reason--he was purposely irritating his father.
+
+"The devil was in her heels and in her tongue," Andy continued. "With her
+big mouth, red hair, and little eyes she'd have made anybody laugh. I
+laughed."
+
+"You laughed!" snapped out his father, with a sneer.
+
+Black Andy's eyes half closed with a morose look, then he went on: "Yes, I
+laughed at Cassy. While she was out here at Lumley's getting cured,
+accordin' to the doctor's orders, things seemed to get a move on in the
+West. But it didn't suit professing Christians like you, dad." He jerked
+his head toward the old man and drew the spittoon near with his feet.
+
+"The West hasn't been any worse off since she left," snarled the old man.
+
+"Well, she took George with her," grimly retorted Black Andy.
+
+Abel Baragar's heart had been warmer toward his dead son George than to
+any one else in the world. George had been as fair of face and hair as
+Andrew was dark, as cheerful and amusing as Andrew was gloomy and
+dispiriting, as agile and dexterous of mind and body as his brother was
+slow and angular, as emotional and warm-hearted as the other was
+phlegmatic and sour--or so it seemed to the father and to nearly all
+others.
+
+In those old days they had not been very well off. The railway was not
+completed, and the West had not begun "to move." The old man had bought
+and sold land and cattle and horses, always living on a narrow margin of
+safety, but in the hope that one day the choice bits of land he was
+shepherding here and there would take a leap up in value; and his judgment
+had been right. His prosperity had all come since George went away with
+Cassy Mavor. His anger at George had been the more acute, because the
+thing happened at a time when his affairs were on the edge of a precipice.
+He had won through it, but only by the merest shave, and it had all left
+him with a bad spot in his heart, in spite of his "having religion."
+Whenever he remembered George he instinctively thought of those black days
+when a Land and Cattle Syndicate was crowding him over the edge into the
+chasm of failure, and came so near doing it. A few thousand dollars less
+to put up here and there, and he would have been ruined; his blood became
+hotter whenever he thought of it. He had had to fight the worst of it
+through alone, for George, who had been useful as a kind of buyer and
+seller, who was ever all things to all men, and ready with quip and jest,
+and not a little uncertain as to truth--to which the old man shut his eyes
+when there was a "deal" on--had, in the end, been of no use at all, and
+had seemed to go to pieces just when he was most needed. His father had
+put it all down to Cassy Mavor, who had unsettled things since she had
+come to Lumley's, and, being a man of very few ideas, he cherished those
+he had with an exaggerated care. Prosperity had not softened him; it had
+given him an arrogance unduly emphasized by a reputation for rigid virtue
+and honesty. The indirect attack which Andrew now made on George's memory
+roused him to anger, as much because it seemed to challenge his own
+judgment as cast a slight on the name of the boy whom he had cast off, yet
+who had a firmer hold on his heart than any human being ever had. It had
+only been pride which had prevented him from making it up with George
+before it was too late; but, all the more, he was set against the woman
+who "kicked up her heels for a living"; and, all the more, he resented
+Black Andy, who, in his own grim way, had managed to remain a partner with
+him in their present prosperity, and had done so little for it.
+
+"George helped to make what you've got," he said, darkly, now. "The West
+missed George. The West said, 'There was a good man ruined by a woman.'
+The West'd never think anything or anybody missed you, 'cept yourself.
+When you went North, it never missed you; when you come back, its jaw
+fell. You wasn't fit to black George's boots."
+
+Black Andy's mouth took on a bitter sort of smile, and his eyes drooped
+furtively as he struck the damper of the stove heavily with his foot; then
+he replied, slowly:
+
+"Well, that's all right; but if I wasn't fit to black his boots, it ain't
+my fault. I git my nature honest, as he did. We wasn't any cross-breeds, I
+s'pose. We got the strain direct, and we was all right on her side."
+
+He jerked his head toward Aunt Kate, whose face was growing pale. She
+interposed now.
+
+"Can't you leave the dead alone?" she asked, in a voice ringing a little.
+"Can't you let them rest? Ain't it enough to quarrel about the living?
+Cassy'll be here soon," she added, peering out of the window, "and if I
+was you I'd try and not make her sorry she ever married a Baragar. It
+ain't a feeling that'd make a sick woman live long."
+
+Aunt Kate did not strike often, but when she did she struck hard. Abel
+Baragar staggered a little under this blow, for, at the moment, it seemed
+to him that he saw his dead wife's face looking at him from the chair
+where her sister now sat. Down in his ill-furnished heart, where there had
+been little which was companionable, there was a shadowed corner. Sophy
+Baragar had been such a true-hearted, brave-souled woman, and he had been
+so impatient and exacting with her, till the beautiful face, which had
+been reproduced in George, had lost its color and its fire, had become
+careworn and sweet with that sweetness which goes early out of the world.
+In all her days the vanished wife had never hinted at as much as Aunt Kate
+suggested now, and Abel Baragar shut his eyes against the thing which he
+was seeing. He was not all hard, after all.
+
+Aunt Kate turned to Black Andy now.
+
+"Mebbe Cassy ain't for long," she said. "Mebbe she's come out for what she
+came out for before. It seems to me it's that, or she wouldn't have come;
+because she's young yet, and she's fond of her boy, and she'd not want to
+bury herself alive out here with us. Mebbe her lungs is bad again."
+
+"Then she's sure to get another husband out here," said the old man,
+recovering himself. "She got one before easy, on the same ticket." With
+something of malice he looked over at Black Andy.
+
+"If she can sing and dance as she done nine years ago, I shouldn't
+wonder," answered Black Andy, smoothly. These two men knew each other;
+they had said hard things to each other for many a year, yet they lived on
+together unshaken by each other's moods and bitternesses.
+
+"I'm getting old--I'm seventy-nine--and I ain't for long," urged Aunt
+Kate, looking Abel in the eyes. "Some day soon I'll be stepping out and
+away. Then things'll go to sixes and sevens, as they did after Sophy died.
+Some one ought to be here that's got a right to be here, not a hired
+woman."
+
+Suddenly the old man raged out:
+
+"Her--off the stage to look after this! Her, that's kicked up her heels
+for a living! It's--no, she's no good. She's common. She's come, and she
+can go. I ain't having sweepings from the streets living here as if they
+had rights."
+
+Aunt Kate set her lips.
+
+"Sweepings! You've got to take that back, Abel. It's not Christian. You've
+got to take that back."
+
+"He'll take it back all right before we've done, I guess," remarked Black
+Andy. "He'll take a lot back."
+
+"Truth's truth, and I'll stand by it, and--"
+
+The old man stopped, for there came to them now, clearly, the sound of
+sleigh-bells. They all stood still for an instant, silent and attentive,
+then Aunt Kate moved toward the door.
+
+"Cassy's come," she said. "Cassy and George's boy've come."
+
+Another instant and the door was opened on the beautiful, white, sparkling
+world, and the low sleigh, with its great, warm, buffalo robes, in which
+the small figures of a woman and a child were almost lost, stopped at the
+door. Two whimsical but tired eyes looked over a rim of fur at the old
+woman in the doorway, then Cassy's voice rang out:
+
+"Hello! that's Aunt Kate, I know! Well, here we are, and here's my boy.
+Jump, George!"
+
+A moment later and the gaunt old woman folded both mother and son in her
+arms and drew them into the room. The door was shut, and they all faced
+one another.
+
+The old man and Black Andy did not move, but stood staring at the trim
+figure in black, with the plain face, large mouth, and tousled red hair,
+and the dreamy-eyed, handsome little boy beside her.
+
+Black Andy stood behind the stove, looking over at the new-comers with
+quizzical, almost furtive eyes, and his father remained for a moment with
+mouth open, gazing at his dead son's wife and child, as though not quite
+comprehending the scene. The sight of the boy had brought back, in some
+strange, embarrassing way, a vision of thirty years before, when George
+was a little boy in buckskin pants and jacket, and was beginning to ride
+the prairie with him. This boy was like George, yet not like him. The face
+was George's, the sensuous, luxurious mouth; but the eyes were not those
+of a Baragar, nor yet those of Aunt Kate's family; and they were not
+wholly like the mother's. They were full and brimming, while hers were
+small and whimsical; yet they had her quick, humorous flashes and her
+quaintness.
+
+"Have I changed so much? Have you forgotten me?" Cassy asked, looking the
+old man in the eyes. "You look as strong as a bull." She held out her hand
+to him and laughed.
+
+"Hope I see you well," said Abel Baragar, mechanically, as he took the
+hand and shook it awkwardly.
+
+"Oh, I'm all right," answered the nonchalant little woman, undoing her
+jacket. "Shake hands with your grandfather, George. That's right--don't
+talk too much," she added, with a half-nervous little laugh, as the old
+man, with a kind of fixed smile, and the child shook hands in silence.
+
+Presently she saw Black Andy behind the stove. "Well, Andy, have you been
+here ever since?" she asked, and, as he came forward, she suddenly caught
+him by both arms, stood on tiptoe, and kissed him. "Last time I saw you,
+you were behind the stove at Lumley's. Nothing's ever too warm for you,"
+she added. "You'd be shivering on the equator. You were always hugging the
+stove at Lumley's."
+
+"Things were pretty warm there, too, Cassy," he said, with a sidelong look
+at his father.
+
+She saw the look, her face flushed with sudden temper, then her eyes fell
+on her boy, now lost in the arms of Aunt Kate, and she curbed herself.
+
+"There were plenty of things doing at Lumley's in those days," she said,
+brusquely. "We were all young and fresh then," she added, and then
+something seemed to catch her voice, and she coughed a little--a hard,
+dry, feverish cough. "Are the Lumleys all right? Are they still there, at
+the Forks?" she asked, after the little paroxysm of coughing.
+
+"Cleaned out--all scattered. We own the Lumleys' place now," replied Black
+Andy, with another sidelong glance at his father, who, as he put some more
+wood on the fire and opened the damper of the stove wider, grimly watched
+and listened.
+
+"Jim, and Lance, and Jerry, and Abner?" she asked, almost abstractedly.
+
+"Jim's dead--shot by a U. S. marshal by mistake for a smuggler," answered
+Black Andy, suggestively. "Lance is up on the Yukon, busted; Jerry is one
+of our hands on the place; and Abner is in jail."
+
+"Abner--in jail!" she exclaimed, in a dazed way. "What did he do? Abner
+always seemed so straight."
+
+[Illustration: GEORGE'S WIFE]
+
+"Oh, he sloped with a thousand dollars of the railway people's money. They
+caught him, and he got seven years."
+
+"He was married, wasn't he?" she asked, in a low voice.
+
+"Yes, to Phenie Tyson. There's no children, so she's all right, and
+divorce is cheap over in the States, where she is now."
+
+"Phenie Tyson didn't marry Abner because he was a saint, but because he
+was a man, I suppose," she replied, gravely. "And the old folks?"
+
+"Both dead. What Abner done sent the old man to his grave. But Abner's
+mother died a year before."
+
+"What Abner done killed his father," said Abel Baragar, with dry emphasis.
+"Phenie Tyson was extravagant--wanted this and that, and nothin' was too
+good for her. Abner spoilt his life gettin' her what she wanted; and it
+broke old Ezra Lumley's heart."
+
+George's wife looked at him for a moment with her eyes screwed up, and
+then she laughed softly. "My, it's curious how some folks go up and some
+go down! It must be lonely for Phenie waiting all these years for Abner to
+get free.... I had the happiest time in my life at Lumley's. I was getting
+better of my--cold. While I was there I got lots of strength stored up, to
+last me many a year when I needed it; and, then, George and I were married
+at Lumley's!"
+
+Aunt Kate came slowly over with the boy and laid a hand on Cassy's
+shoulder, for there was an undercurrent to the conversation which boded no
+good. The very first words uttered had plunged Abel Baragar and his son's
+wife into the midst of the difficulty which she had hoped might, after
+all, be avoided.
+
+"Come, and I'll show you your room, Cassy," she said. "It faces south, and
+you'll get the sun all day. It's like a sun-parlor. We're going to have
+supper in a couple of hours, and you must rest some first. Is the house
+warm enough for you?"
+
+The little, garish woman did not reply directly, but shook back her red
+hair and caught her boy to her breast and kissed him; then she said, in
+that staccato manner which had given her words on the stage such point and
+emphasis: "Oh, this house is a'most too warm for me, Aunt Kate!"
+
+Then she moved toward the door with the grave, kindly old woman, her son's
+hand in her own.
+
+"You can see the Lumleys' place from your window, Cassy," said Black Andy,
+grimly. "We got a mortgage on it, and foreclosed it, and it's ours now;
+and Jerry Lumley's stock-riding for us. Anyhow, he's better off than
+Abner, or Abner's wife."
+
+Cassy turned at the door and faced him. Instinctively she caught at some
+latent conflict with old Abel Baragar in what Black Andy had said, and her
+face softened, for it suddenly flashed into her mind that he was not
+against her.
+
+"I'm glad to be back West," she said. "It meant a lot to me when I was at
+Lumley's." She coughed a little again, but turned to the door with a
+laugh.
+
+"How long have you come to stay here--out West?" asked the old man,
+furtively.
+
+"Oh, there's plenty of time to think of that!" she answered, brusquely,
+and she heard Black Andy laugh derisively as the door closed behind her.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+In a blaze of joy the sun swept down behind the southern hills, and the
+windows of Lumley's house at the Forks, catching the oblique rays,
+glittered and shone like flaming silver. Nothing of life showed, save the
+cattle here and there, creeping away to the shelter of the foothills for
+the night. The white, placid snow made a coverlet as wide as the vision of
+the eye, save where spruce and cedar trees gave a touch of warmth and
+refuge here and there. A wonderful, buoyant peace seemed to rest upon the
+wide, silent expanse. The birds of song were gone South over the hills,
+and the living wild things of the prairies had stolen into
+winter-quarters. Yet, as Cassy Mavor looked out upon the exquisite beauty
+of the scene, upon the splendid outspanning of the sun along the hills,
+the deep plangent blue of the sky and the thrilling light, she saw a world
+in agony and she heard the moans of the afflicted. The sun shone bright on
+the windows of Lumley's house, but she could hear the crying of Abner's
+wife, and of old Ezra and Eliza Lumley, when their children were stricken
+or shamed; when Abel Baragar drew tighter and tighter the chains of the
+mortgage, which at last made them tenants in the house once their own.
+Only eight years ago, and all this had happened. And what had not happened
+to her, too, in those eight years!
+
+With George--reckless, useless, loving, lying George--she had left
+Lumley's with her sickness cured, as it seemed, after a long year in the
+West, and had begun life again. What sort of life had it been? "Kicking up
+her heels on the stage," as Abel Baragar had said; but, somehow, not as it
+was before she went West to give her perforated lung to the healing air of
+the plains, and to live out-doors with the men--a man's life. Then she had
+never put a curb on her tongue, or greatly on her actions, except that,
+though a hundred men quarrelled openly, or in their own minds, about her,
+no one had ever had any _right_ to quarrel about her. With a tongue which
+made men gasp with laughter, with as comic a gift as ever woman had, and
+as equally comic a face, she had been a good-natured little tyrant in her
+way. She had given a kiss here and there, and had taken one, but always
+there had been before her mind the picture of a careworn woman who
+struggled to bring up her three children honestly, and without the help of
+charity, and, with a sigh of content and weariness, had died as Cassy made
+her first hit on the stage and her name became a household word. And
+Cassy, garish, gay, freckled, witty, and whimsical, had never forgotten
+those days when her mother prayed and worked her heart out to do her duty
+by her children. Cassy Mavor had made her following, had won her place,
+was the idol of "the gallery"; and yet she was "of the people," as she had
+always been, until her first sickness came, and she had gone out to
+Lumley's, out along the foothills of the Rockies.
+
+What had made her fall in love with George Baragar? She could not have
+told, if she had been asked. He was wayward, given to drink at times,
+given also to card-playing and racing; but he had a way with him which few
+women could resist and that made men his friends; and he had a sense of
+humor akin to her own. In any case, one day she let him catch her up in
+his arms, and there was the end of it. But no, not the end, after all. It
+was only the beginning of real life for her. All that had gone before
+seemed but playing on the threshold, though it had meant hard, bitter
+hard, work, and temptation, and patience, and endurance of many kinds. And
+now George was gone forever. But George's little boy lay there on the bed
+in a soft sleep, with all his life before him.
+
+She turned from the warm window and the buoyant, inspiring scene to the
+bed. Stooping over, she kissed the sleeping boy with an abrupt eagerness,
+and made a little awkward, hungry gesture of love over him, and her face
+flushed hot with the passion of motherhood in her.
+
+"All I've got now," she murmured. "Nothing else left--nothing else at
+all."
+
+She heard the door open behind her, and she turned round. Aunt Kate was
+entering with a bowl in her hands.
+
+"I heard you moving about, and I've brought you something hot to drink,"
+she said.
+
+"That's real good of you, Aunt Kate," was the cheerful reply. "But it's
+near supper-time, and I don't need it."
+
+"It's boneset tea--for your cold," answered Aunt Kate, gently, and put it
+on the high dressing-table made of a wooden box and covered with muslin.
+"For your cold, Cassy," she repeated.
+
+The little woman stood still a moment gazing at the steaming bowl, lines
+growing suddenly around her mouth, then she looked at Aunt Kate
+quizzically. "Is my cold bad--so bad that I need boneset?" she asked, in a
+queer, constrained voice.
+
+"It's comforting, is boneset tea, even when there's no cold, 'specially
+when the whiskey's good, and the boneset and camomile has steeped some
+days."
+
+"Have you been steeping them some days?" Cassy asked, softly, eagerly.
+
+Aunt Kate nodded, then tried to explain.
+
+"It's always good to be prepared, and I didn't know but what the cold you
+used to have might be come back," she said. "But I'm glad if it ain't--if
+that cough of yours is only one of the measly little hacks people get in
+the East, where it's so damp."
+
+Cassy was at the window again, looking out at the dying radiance of the
+sun. Her voice seemed hollow and strange and rather rough, as she said, in
+reply:
+
+"It's a real cold, deep down, the same as I had nine years ago, Aunt Kate;
+and it's come to stay, I guess. That's why I came back West. But I
+couldn't have gone to Lumley's again, even if they were at the Forks now,
+for I'm too poor. I'm a back-number now. I had to give up singing and
+dancing a year ago, after George died. So I don't earn my living any more,
+and I had to come to George's father, with George's boy."
+
+Aunt Kate had a shrewd mind, and was tactful, too. She did not understand
+why Cassy, who had earned so much money all these years, should be so poor
+now, unless it was that she hadn't saved--that she and George hadn't
+saved. But, looking at the face before her, and the child on the bed, she
+was convinced that the woman was a good woman; that, singer and dancer as
+she was, there was no reason why any home should be closed to her, or any
+heart should shut its doors before her. She guessed a reason for this
+poverty of Cassy Mavor, but it only made her lay a hand on the little
+woman's shoulders and look into her eyes.
+
+"Cassy," she said, gently, "you was right to come here. There's trials
+before you, but for the boy's sake you must bear them. Sophy, George's
+mother, had to bear them, and Abel was fond of her, too, in his way. He's
+stored up a lot of things to say, and he'll say them; but you'll keep the
+boy in your mind, and be patient, won't you, Cassy? You got rights here,
+and it's comfortable, and there's plenty, and the air will cure your lung
+as it did before. It did all right before, didn't it?" She handed the bowl
+of boneset tea. "Take it; it'll do you good, Cassy," she added.
+
+Cassy said nothing in reply. She looked at the bed where her boy lay, she
+looked at the angular face of the woman, with its brooding motherliness,
+at the soft, gray hair, and, with a little gasp of feeling, she raised the
+bowl to her lips and drank freely. Then, putting it down, she said:
+
+"He doesn't mean to have us, Aunt Kate, but I'll try and keep my temper
+down. Did he ever laugh in his life?"
+
+"He laughs sometimes--kind o' laughs."
+
+"I'll make him laugh real, if I can," Cassy rejoined. "I've made a lot of
+people laugh in my time."
+
+The old woman leaned suddenly over, and drew the red, ridiculous head to
+her shoulder with a gasp of affection, and her eyes were full of tears.
+
+"Cassy," she exclaimed, "Cassy, you make me cry!" and then she turned and
+hurried from the room.
+
+Three hours later the problem was solved in the big sitting-room where
+Cassy had first been received with her boy. Aunt Kate sat with her feet on
+a hassock, rocking gently and watching and listening. Black Andy was
+behind the great stove with his chair tilted back, carving the bowl of a
+pipe; the old man sat rigid by the table, looking straight before him and
+smacking his lips now and then as he was wont to do at meeting; while
+Cassy, with her chin in her hands and elbows on her knees, gazed into the
+fire and waited for the storm to break.
+
+Her little flashes of humor at dinner had not brightened things, and she
+had had an insane desire to turn cartwheels round the room, so implacable
+and highly strained was the attitude of the master of the house, so
+unctuous was the grace and the thanksgiving before and after the meal.
+Abel Baragar had stored up his anger and his righteous antipathy for
+years, and this was the first chance he had had of visiting his
+displeasure on the woman who had "ruined" George, and who had now come to
+get "rights," which he was determined she should not have. He had steeled
+himself against seeing any good in her whatever. Self-will, self-pride,
+and self-righteousness were big in him, and so the supper had ended in
+silence, and with a little attack of coughing on the part of Cassy, which
+made her angry at herself. Then the boy had been put to bed, and she had
+come back to await the expected outburst. She could feel it in the air,
+and while her blood tingled in a desire to fight this tyrant to the bitter
+end, she thought of her boy and his future, and she calmed the tumult in
+her veins.
+
+She did not have to wait very long. The querulous voice of the old man
+broke the silence.
+
+"When be you goin' back East? What time did you fix for goin'?" he asked.
+
+She raised her head and looked at him squarely. "I didn't fix any time for
+going East again," she replied. "I came out West this time to stay."
+
+"I thought you was on the stage," was the rejoinder.
+
+"I've left the stage. My voice went when I got a bad cold again, and I
+couldn't stand the draughts of the theatre, and so I couldn't dance,
+either. I'm finished with the stage. I've come out here for good and
+all."
+
+"Where did you think of livin' out here?"
+
+"I'd like to have gone to Lumley's, but that's not possible, is it?
+Anyway, I couldn't afford it now. So I thought I'd stay here, if there was
+room for me."
+
+"You want to board here?"
+
+"I didn't put it to myself that way. I thought perhaps you'd be glad to
+have me. I'm handy. I can cook, I can sew, and I'm quite cheerful and
+kind. Then there's George--little George. I thought you'd like to have
+your grandson here with you."
+
+"I've lived without him--or his father--for eight years, an' I could bear
+it awhile yet, mebbe."
+
+There was a half-choking sound from the old woman in the rocking-chair,
+but she did not speak, though her knitting dropped into her lap.
+
+"But if you knew us better, perhaps you'd like us better," rejoined Cassy,
+gently. "We're both pretty easy to get on with, and we see the bright side
+of things. He has a wonderful disposition, has George."
+
+"I ain't goin' to like you any better," said the old man, getting to his
+feet. "I ain't goin' to give you any rights here. I've thought it out, and
+my mind's made up. You can't come it over me. You ruined my boy's life and
+sent him to his grave. He'd have lived to be an old man out here; but you
+spoiled him. You trapped him into marrying you, with your kicking and your
+comic songs, and your tricks of the stage, and you parted us--parted him
+and me forever."
+
+"That was your fault. George wanted to make it up."
+
+"With you!" The old man's voice rose shrilly, the bitterness and passion
+of years was shooting high in the narrow confines of his mind. The geyser
+of his prejudice and antipathy was furiously alive. "To come back with you
+that ruined him and broke up my family, and made my life like bitter
+aloes! No! And if I wouldn't have him with you, do you think I'll have you
+without him? By the God of Israel, no!"
+
+Black Andy was now standing up behind the stove intently watching, his
+face grim and sombre; Aunt Kate sat with both hands gripping the arms of
+the rocker.
+
+Cassy got slowly to her feet. "I've been as straight a woman as your
+mother or your wife ever was," she said, "and all the world knows it. I'm
+poor--and I might have been rich. I was true to myself before I married
+George, and I was true to George after, and all I earned he shared; and
+I've got little left. The mining stock I bought with what I saved went
+smash, and I'm poor as I was when I started to work for myself. I can work
+awhile yet; but I wanted to see if I could fit in out here and get well
+again, and have my boy fixed in the house of his grandfather. That's the
+way I'm placed, and that's how I came. But give a dog a bad name--ah, you
+shame your dead boy in thinking bad of me! I didn't ruin him. I didn't
+kill him. He never came to any bad through me. I helped him; he was happy.
+Why, I--" She stopped suddenly, putting a hand to her mouth. "Go on, say
+what you want to say, and let's understand once for all," she added, with
+a sudden sharpness.
+
+Abel Baragar drew himself up. "Well, I say this. I'll give you three
+thousand dollars, and you can go somewhere else to live. I'll keep the boy
+here. That's what I've fixed in my mind to do. You can go, and the boy
+stays. I ain't goin' to live with you that spoiled George's life."
+
+The eyes of the woman dilated, she trembled with a sudden rush of anger,
+then stood still, staring in front of her without a word. Black Andy
+stepped from behind the stove.
+
+"You are going to stay here, Cassy," he said, "here where you have rights
+as good as any, and better than any, if it comes to that." He turned to
+his father. "You thought a lot of George," he added. "He was the apple of
+your eye. He had a soft tongue, and most people liked him; but George was
+foolish--I've known it all these years. George was pretty foolish. He
+gambled, he bet at races, he speculated--wild. You didn't know it. He took
+ten thousand dollars of your money, got from the Wonegosh farm he sold for
+you. He--"
+
+Cassy Mavor started forward with a cry, but Black Andy waved her down.
+
+"No, I'm going to tell it. George lost your ten thousand dollars, dad,
+gambling, racing, speculating. He told her--Cassy--two days after they was
+married, and she took the money she earned on the stage and give it to him
+to pay you back on the quiet through the bank. You never knew, but that's
+the kind of boy your son George was, and that's the kind of wife he had.
+George told me all about it when I went East six years ago."
+
+He came over to Cassy and stood beside her. "I'm standing by George's
+wife," he said, taking her hand, while she shut her eyes in her
+misery--had she not hid her husband's wrong-doing all these years?--"I'm
+standing by her. If it hadn't been for that ten thousand dollars she paid
+back for George, you'd have been swamped, when the Syndicate got after
+you, and we wouldn't have had Lumley's place, nor this, nor anything. I
+guess she's got rights here, dad, as good as any."
+
+The old man sank slowly into a chair. "George--George stole from me--stole
+money from me!" he whispered. His face was white. His pride and vainglory
+were broken. He was a haggard, shaken figure. His self-righteousness was
+levelled in the dust.
+
+With sudden impulse Cassy stole over to him and took his hand and held it
+tight.
+
+"Don't! Don't feel so bad!" she said. "He was weak and wild then. But he
+was all right afterward. He was happy with me."
+
+"I've owed Cassy this for a good many years, dad," said Black Andy, "and
+it had to be paid. She's got better stuff in her than any Baragar."
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+An hour later the old man said to Cassy at the door of her room: "You got
+to stay here and git well. It's yours, the same as the rest of us--what's
+here."
+
+Then he went down-stairs and sat with Aunt Kate by the fire.
+
+"I guess she's a good woman," he said, at last. "I didn't use her right."
+
+"You've been lucky with your women-folk," Aunt Kate answered, quietly.
+
+"Yes, I've been lucky," he answered. "I dunno if I deserve it. Mebbe not.
+Do you think she'll git well?"
+
+"It's a healing air out here," Aunt Kate answered, and listened to the
+wood of the house snapping in the sharp frost.
+
+
+
+
+MARCILE
+
+
+That the day was beautiful, that the harvest of the West had been a great
+one, that the salmon-fishing had been larger than ever before, that gold
+had been found in the Yukon, made no difference to Jacques Grassette, for
+he was in the condemned cell of Bindon Jail, living out those days which
+pass so swiftly between the verdict of the jury and the last slow walk
+with the Sheriff.
+
+He sat with his back to the stone wall, his hands on his knees, looking
+straight before him. All that met his physical gaze was another stone
+wall, but with his mind's eye he was looking beyond it into spaces far
+away. His mind was seeing a little house with dormer-windows, and a steep
+roof on which the snow could not lodge in winter-time; with a narrow stoop
+in front where one could rest of an evening, the day's work done; the
+stone-and-earth oven near by in the open, where the bread for a family of
+twenty was baked; the wooden plough tipped against the fence, to wait the
+"fall" cultivation; the big iron cooler in which the sap from the
+maple-trees was boiled, in the days when the snow thawed and spring opened
+the heart of the wood; the flash of the sickle and the scythe hard by; the
+fields of the little, narrow farm running back from the St. Lawrence like
+a riband; and, out on the wide stream, the great rafts with their riverine
+population floating down to Michelin's mill-yards.
+
+For hours he had sat like this, unmoving, his gnarled red hands clamping
+each leg as though to hold him steady while he gazed; and he saw himself
+as a little lad, barefooted, doing chores, running after the shaggy,
+troublesome pony which would let him catch it when no one else could, and,
+with only a halter on, galloping wildly back to the farm-yard, to be
+hitched up in the cariole which had once belonged to the old Seigneur. He
+saw himself as a young man back from "the States," where he had been
+working in the mills, regarded austerely by little Father Roche, who had
+given him his first Communion--for, down in Massachusetts he had learned
+to wear his curly hair plastered down on his forehead, smoke bad cigars,
+and drink "old Bourbon," to bet and to gamble, and be a figure at
+horse-races.
+
+Then he saw himself, his money all gone, but the luck still with him, at
+Mass on the Sunday before going to the backwoods lumber-camp for the
+winter, as boss of a hundred men. He had a way with him, and he had
+brains, had Jacques Grassette, and he could manage men, as Michelin the
+lumber-king himself had found in a great river-row and strike, when
+bloodshed seemed certain. Even now the ghost of a smile played at his lips
+as he recalled the surprise of the old _habitants_ and of Father Roche
+when he was chosen for this responsible post; for to run a great
+lumber-camp well, hundreds of miles from civilisation, where there is no
+visible law, no restraints of ordinary organized life, and where men, for
+seven months together, never saw a woman or a child, and ate pork and
+beans, and drank white whiskey, was a task of administration as difficult
+as managing a small republic new-created out of violent elements of
+society. But Michelin was right, and the old Seigneur, Sir Henri
+Robitaille, who was a judge of men, knew he was right, as did also
+Hennepin the school-master, whose despair Jacques had been, for he never
+worked at his lessons as a boy, and yet he absorbed Latin and mathematics
+by some sure but unexplainable process. "Ah, if you would but work,
+Jacques, you _vaurien_, I would make a great man of you," Hennepin had
+said to him more than once; but this had made no impression on Jacques. It
+was more to the point that the ground-hogs and black squirrels and pigeons
+were plentiful in Casanac Woods.
+
+And so he thought as he stood at the door of the Church of St. Francis on
+that day before going "out back" to the lumber-camp. He had reached the
+summit of greatness--to command men. That was more than wealth or
+learning, and as he spoke to the old Seigneur going in to Mass, he still
+thought so, for the Seigneur's big house and the servants and the great
+gardens had no charm for him. The horses--that was another thing; but
+there would be plenty of horses in the lumber-camp; and, on the whole, he
+felt himself rather superior to the old Seigneur, who now was
+Lieutenant-Governor of the province in which lay Bindon Jail.
+
+At the door of the Church of St. Francis he had stretched himself up with
+good-natured pride, for he was by nature gregarious and friendly, but with
+a temper quick and strong, and even savage when roused; though Michelin
+the lumber-king did not know that when he engaged him as boss, having seen
+him only at the one critical time when his superior brain and will saw its
+chance to command and had no personal interest in the strife. He had been
+a miracle of coolness then, and his six-foot-two of pride and muscle was
+taking natural tribute at the door of the Church of St. Francis, where he
+waited till nearly every one had entered, and Father Roche's voice could
+be heard in the Mass.
+
+[Illustration: THEN HAD HAPPENED THE REAL EVENT OF HIS LIFE]
+
+Then had happened the real event of his life: a black-eyed, rose-cheeked
+girl went by with her mother, hurrying in to Mass. As she passed him their
+eyes met, and his blood leaped in his veins. He had never seen her before,
+and, in a sense, he had never seen any woman before. He had danced with
+many a one, and kissed a few in the old days among the flax-beaters, at
+the harvesting, in the gayeties of a wedding, and also down in
+Massachusetts. That, however, was a different thing, which he forgot an
+hour after; but this was the beginning of the world for him; for he knew
+now, of a sudden, what life was, what home meant, why "old folks" slaved
+for their children, and mothers wept when girls married or sons went away
+from home to bigger things; why in there, in at Mass, so many were praying
+for all the people and thinking only of one. All in a moment it came--and
+stayed; and he spoke to her, to Marcile, that very night, and he spoke
+also to her father, Valloir the farrier, the next morning by lamplight,
+before he started for the woods. He would not be gainsaid, nor take no for
+an answer, nor accept, as a reason for refusal, that she was only sixteen,
+and that he did not know her, for she had been away with a childless aunt
+since she was three. That she had fourteen brothers and sisters who had to
+be fed and cared for did not seem to weigh with the farrier. That was an
+affair of _le bon Dieu_, and enough would be provided for them all as
+heretofore--one could make little difference; and though Jacques was a
+very good match, considering his prospects and his favor with the
+lumber-king, Valloir had a kind of fear of him, and could not easily
+promise his beloved Marcile, the flower of his flock, to a man of whom the
+priest so strongly disapproved. But it was a new sort of Jacques Grassette
+who, that morning, spoke to him with the simplicity and eagerness of a
+child; and the suddenly conceived gift of a pony stallion, which every man
+in the parish envied Jacques, won Valloir over; and Jacques went "away
+back" with the first timid kiss of Marcile Valloir burning on his cheek.
+"Well, bagosh, you are a wonder!" said Jacques' father, when he told him
+the news, and saw Jacques jump into the cariole and drive away.
+
+Here in prison, this, too, Jacques saw--this scene; and then the wedding
+in the spring, and the tour through the parishes for days together, lads
+and lasses journeying with them; and afterward the new home with a bigger
+stoop than any other in the village, with some old, gnarled
+crab-apple-trees and lilac bushes, and four years of happiness, and a
+little child that died; and all the time Jacques rising in the esteem of
+Michelin the lumber-king, and sent on inspections, and to organize camps;
+for weeks, sometimes for months, away from the house behind the lilac
+bushes--and then the end of it all, sudden and crushing and unredeemable.
+
+Jacques came back one night and found the house empty. Marcile had gone to
+try her luck with another man.
+
+That was the end of the upward career of Jacques Grassette. He went out
+upon a savage hunt which brought him no quarry, for the man and the woman
+had disappeared as completely as though they had been swallowed by the
+sea. And here, at last, he was waiting for the day when he must settle a
+bill for a human life taken in passion and rage.
+
+His big frame seemed out of place in the small cell, and the watcher
+sitting near him, to whom he had not addressed a word nor replied to a
+question since the watching began, seemed an insignificant factor in the
+scene. Never had a prisoner been more self-contained, or rejected more
+completely all those ministrations of humanity which relieve the horrible
+isolation of the condemned cell. Grassette's isolation was complete. He
+lived in a dream, did what little there was to do in a dark abstraction,
+and sat hour after hour, as he was sitting now, piercing, with a brain at
+once benumbed to all outer things and afire with inward things, those
+realms of memory which are infinite in a life of forty years.
+
+"_Sacré!_" he muttered at last, and a shiver seemed to pass through him
+from head to foot; then an ugly and evil oath fell from his lips, which
+made his watcher shrink back appalled, for he also was a Catholic, and had
+been chosen of purpose, in the hope that he might have an influence on
+this revolted soul. It had, however, been of no use, and Grassette had
+refused the advances and ministrations of the little good priest, Father
+Laflamme, who had come from the coast of purpose to give him the offices
+of the Church. Silent, obdurate, sullen, he had looked the priest straight
+in the face, and had said, in broken English, "_Non_, I pay my bill. _Nom
+de diable!_ I will say my own Mass, light my own candle, go my own way. I
+have too much."
+
+Now, as he sat glooming, after his outbreak of oaths, there came a
+rattling noise at the door, the grinding of a key in the lock, the
+shooting of bolts, and a face appeared at the little wicket in the door.
+Then the door opened, and the Sheriff stepped inside, accompanied by a
+white-haired, stately old man. At sight of this second figure--the Sheriff
+had come often before, and would come for one more doleful walk with
+him--Grassette started. His face, which had never whitened in all the
+dismal and terrorizing doings of the capture and the trial and sentence,
+though it had flushed with rage more than once, now turned a little pale,
+for it seemed as if this old man had stepped out of the visions which had
+just passed before his eyes.
+
+"His Honor, the Lieutenant-Governor, Sir Henri Robitaille, has come to
+speak with you.... Stand up!" the Sheriff added, sharply, as Grassette
+kept his seat.
+
+Grassette's face flushed with anger, for the prison had not broken his
+spirit; then he got up slowly. "I not stand up for you," he growled at the
+Sheriff; "I stand up for him." He jerked his head toward Sir Henri
+Robitaille. This grand Seigneur, with Michelin had believed in him in
+those far-off days which he had just been seeing over again, and all his
+boyhood and young manhood was rushing back on him. But now it was the
+Governor who turned pale, seeing who the criminal was.
+
+"Jacques Grassette!" he cried, in consternation and emotion, for under
+another name the murderer had been tried and sentenced, nor had his
+identity been established--the case was so clear, the defence had been
+perfunctory, and Quebec was very far away!
+
+"M'sieu'!" was the respectful response, and Grassette's fingers twitched.
+
+"It was my sister's son you killed, Grassette," said the Governor, in a
+low, strained voice.
+
+"_Nom de Dieu_!" said Grassette, hoarsely.
+
+"I did not know, Grassette," the Governor went on--"I did not know it was
+you."
+
+"Why did you come, m'sieu'?"
+
+"Call him 'your Honor,'" said the Sheriff, sharply.
+
+Grassette's face hardened, and his look, turned upon the Sheriff, was
+savage and forbidding. "I will speak as it please me. Who are you? What do
+I care? To hang me--that is your business; but, for the rest, you spik to
+me differen'! Who are you? Your father kep' a tavern for thieves, _vous
+savez bien_!" It was true that the Sheriff's father had had no savory
+reputation in the West.
+
+The Governor turned his head away in pain and trouble, for the man's rage
+was not a thing to see--and they both came from the little parish of St.
+Francis, and had passed many an hour together.
+
+"Never mind, Grassette," he said, gently. "Call me what you will. You've
+got no feeling against me; and I can say with truth that I don't want your
+life for the life you took."
+
+Grassette's breast heaved. "He put me out of my work, the man I kill. He
+pass the word against me, he hunt me out of the mountains, he call--_tête
+de diable_! he call me a name so bad. Everything swim in my head, and I
+kill him."
+
+The Governor made a protesting gesture. "I understand. I am glad his
+mother was dead. But do you not think how sudden it was? Now here, in the
+thick of life, then, out there, beyond this world in the dark--in
+purgatory."
+
+The brave old man had accomplished what every one else, priest, lawyer,
+Sheriff, and watcher, had failed to do: he had shaken Grassette out of his
+blank isolation and obdurate unrepentance, had touched some chord of
+recognizable humanity.
+
+"It is done--_bien_, I pay for it," responded Grassette, setting his jaw.
+"It is two deaths for me. Waiting and remembering, and then with the
+Sheriff there the other--so quick, and all."
+
+The Governor looked at him for some moments without speaking. The Sheriff
+intervened again officiously.
+
+"His Honor has come to say something important to you," he remarked,
+oracularly.
+
+"Hold you--does he need a Sheriff to tell him when to spik?" was
+Grassette's surly comment. Then he turned to the Governor. "Let us speak
+in French," he said, in _patois_. "This rope-twister will not understan'.
+He is no good--I spit at him!"
+
+The Governor nodded, and, despite the Sheriff's protest, they spoke in
+French, Grassette with his eyes intently fixed on the other, eagerly
+listening.
+
+"I have come," said the Governor, "to say to you, Grassette, that you
+still have a chance of life."
+
+He paused, and Grassette's face took on a look of bewilderment and vague
+anxiety. A chance of life--what did it mean?
+
+"Reprieve?" he asked, in a hoarse voice.
+
+The Governor shook his head. "Not yet; but there is a chance. Something
+has happened. A man's life is in danger, or it may be he is dead; but more
+likely he is alive. You took a life; perhaps you can save one now.
+Keeley's Gulch, the mine there!"
+
+"They have found it--gold?" asked Grassette, his eyes staring. He was
+forgetting for a moment where and what he was.
+
+"He went to find it, the man whose life is in danger. He had heard from a
+trapper who had been a miner once. While he was there a landslip came, and
+the opening to the mine was closed up."
+
+"There were two ways in. Which one did he take?" cried Grassette.
+
+"The only one he could take, the only one he or any one else knew. You
+know the other way in--you only, they say."
+
+"I found it--the easier, quick way in; a year ago I found it."
+
+"Was it near the other entrance?"
+
+Grassette shook his head. "A mile away."
+
+"If the man is alive--and we think he is--you are the only person that can
+save him. I have telegraphed the Government. They do not promise, but they
+will reprieve, and save your life if you find the man."
+
+"Alive or dead?"
+
+"Alive or dead, for the act would be the same. I have an order to take you
+to the Gulch, if you will go; and I am sure that you will have your life
+if you do it. I will promise--ah, yes, Grassette, but it shall be so!
+Public opinion will demand it. You will do it?"
+
+"To go free--_altogether_?"
+
+"Well, but if your life is saved, Grassette?"
+
+The dark face flushed, then grew almost repulsive again in its
+sullenness.
+
+"Life--and this, in prison, shut in year after year! To do always what
+some one else wills, to be a slave to a warder! To have men like that over
+me that have been a boss of men--wasn't it that drove me to kill?--to be
+treated like dirt! And to go on with this, while outside there is free
+life, and to go where you will at your own price--no! What do I care for
+life? What is it to me! To live like this--ah, I would break my head
+against these stone walls, I would choke myself with my own hands! If I
+stayed here, I would kill again--I would kill--kill!"
+
+"Then to go free altogether--that would be the wish of all the world, if
+you save this man's life, if it can be saved. Will you not take the
+chance? We all have to die some time or other, Grassette, some sooner,
+some later; and when you go, will you not want to take to God in your
+hands a life saved for a life taken? Have you forgotten God, Grassette? We
+used to remember Him in the Church of St. Francis down there at home."
+
+There was a moment's silence, in which Grassette's head was thrust
+forward, his eyes staring into space. The old Seigneur had touched a
+vulnerable corner in his nature.
+
+Presently he said in a low voice: "To be free altogether!... What is his
+name? Who is he?"
+
+"His name is Bignold," the Governor answered. He turned to the Sheriff
+inquiringly. "That is it, is it not?" he asked, in English, again.
+
+"James Tarran Bignold," answered the Sheriff.
+
+The effect of these words upon Grassette was remarkable. His body appeared
+to stiffen, his face became rigid, he stared at the Governor blankly,
+appalled; the color left his face, and his mouth opened with a curious and
+revolting grimace. The others drew back, startled, and watched him.
+
+"_Sang de Dieu_!" he murmured at last, with a sudden gesture of misery and
+rage.
+
+Then the Governor understood: he remembered that the name just given by
+the Sheriff and himself was the name of the Englishman who had carried off
+Grassette's wife years ago. He stepped forward and was about to speak, but
+changed his mind. He would leave it all to Grassette; he would not let the
+Sheriff know the truth, unless Grassette himself disclosed the situation.
+He looked at Grassette with a look of poignant pity and interest combined.
+In his own placid life he had never had any tragic happening, his blood
+had run coolly, his days had been blessed by an urbane fate; such scenes
+as this were but a spectacle to him; there was no answering chord of human
+suffering in his own breast to make him realize what Grassette was
+undergoing now; but he had read widely, he had been an acute observer of
+the world and its happenings, and he had a natural human sympathy which
+had made many a man and woman eternally grateful to him.
+
+What would Grassette do? It was a problem which had no precedent, and the
+solution would be a revelation of the human mind and heart. What would the
+man do?
+
+"Well, what is all this, Grassette?" asked the Sheriff, brusquely. His
+official and officious intervention, behind which was the tyranny of the
+little man, given a power which he was incapable of wielding wisely, would
+have roused Grassette to a savage reply a half-hour before, but now it was
+met by a contemptuous wave of the hand, and Grassette kept his eyes fixed
+on the Governor.
+
+"James Tarran Bignold!" Grassette said, harshly, with eyes that searched
+the Governor's face; but they found no answering look there. The Governor,
+then, did not remember that tragedy of his home and hearth, and the man
+who had made of him an Ishmael. Still, Bignold had been almost a stranger
+in the parish, and it was not curious if the Governor had forgotten.
+
+"Bignold!" he repeated, but the Governor gave no response.
+
+"Yes, Bignold is his name, Grassette," said the Sheriff. "You took a life,
+and now, if you save one, that'll balance things. As the Governor says,
+there'll be a reprieve anyhow. It's pretty near _the day_, and this isn't
+a bad world to kick in, so long as you kick with one leg on the ground,
+and--"
+
+The Governor hastily intervened upon the Sheriff's brutal remarks. "There
+is no time to be lost, Grassette. He has been ten days in the mine."
+
+Grassette's was not a slow brain. For a man of such physical and bodily
+bulk, he had more talents than are generally given. If his brain had been
+slower, his hand also would have been slower to strike. But his
+intelligence had been surcharged with hate these many years, and since the
+day he had been deserted it had ceased to control his actions--a
+passionate and reckless wilfulness had governed it. But now, after the
+first shock and stupefaction, it seemed to go back to where it was before
+Marcile went from him, gather up the force and intelligence it had then,
+and come forward again to this supreme moment, with all that life's harsh
+experiences had done for it, with the education that misery and misdoing
+give. Revolutions are often the work of instants, not years, and the
+crucial test and problem by which Grassette was now faced had lifted him
+into a new atmosphere, with a new capacity alive in him. A moment ago his
+eyes had been bloodshot and swimming with hatred and passion; now they
+grew, almost suddenly, hard and lurking and quiet, with a strange,
+penetrating force and inquiry in them.
+
+"Bignold--where does he come from?--What is he?" he asked the Sheriff.
+
+"He is an Englishman; he's only been out here a few months. He's been
+shooting and prospecting; but he's a better shooter than a prospector.
+He's a stranger; that's why all the folks out here want to save him if
+it's possible. It's pretty hard dying in a strange land far away from all
+that's yours. Maybe he's got a wife waiting for him over there."
+
+"_Nom de Dieu_!" said Grassette, with suppressed malice, under his
+breath.
+
+"Maybe there's a wife waiting for him, and there's her to think of. The
+West's hospitable, and this thing has taken hold of it; the West wants to
+save this stranger, and it's waiting for you, Grassette, to do its work
+for it, you being the only man that can do it, the only one that knows the
+other secret way into Keeley's Gulch. Speak right out, Grassette. It's
+your chance for life. Speak out quick."
+
+The last three words were uttered in the old slave-driving tone, though
+the earlier part of the speech had been delivered oracularly, and had
+brought again to Grassette's eyes the reddish, sullen look which had made
+them, a little while before, like those of some wounded, angered animal at
+bay; but it vanished slowly, and there was silence for a moment. The
+Sheriff's words had left no vestige of doubt in Grassette's mind. This
+Bignold was the man who had taken Marcile away, first to the English
+province, then into the States, where he had lost track of them, then over
+to England. Marcile--where was Marcile now?
+
+In Keeley's Gulch was the man who could tell him, the man who had ruined
+his home and his life. Dead or alive, he was in Keeley's Gulch, the man
+who knew where Marcile was; and if he knew where Marcile was, and if she
+was alive, and he was outside these prison walls, what would he do to her?
+And if he was outside these prison walls, and in the Gulch, and the man
+was there alive before him, what would he do?
+
+Outside these prison walls--to be out there in the sun, where life would
+be easier to give up, if it had to be given up! An hour ago he had been
+drifting on a sea of apathy, and had had his fill of life. An hour ago he
+had had but one desire, and that was to die fighting, and he had even
+pictured to himself a struggle in this narrow cell where he would compel
+them to kill him, and so in any case let him escape the rope. Now he was
+suddenly brought face to face with the great central issue of his life,
+and the end, whatever that end might be, could not be the same in meaning,
+though it might be the same concretely. If he elected to let things be,
+then Bignold would die out there in the Gulch, starved, anguished, and
+alone. If he went, he could save his own life by saving Bignold, if
+Bignold was alive; or he could go--and not save Bignold's life or his own!
+What would he do?
+
+The Governor watched him with a face controlled to quietness, but with an
+anxiety which made him pale in spite of himself.
+
+"What will you do, Grassette?" he said, at last, in a low voice and with a
+step forward to him. "Will you not help to clear your conscience by doing
+this thing? You don't want to try and spite the world by not doing it. You
+can make a lot of your life yet, if you are set free. Give yourself and
+give the world a chance. You haven't used it right. Try again."
+
+Grassette imagined that the Governor did not remember who Bignold was, and
+that this was an appeal against his despair, and against revenging himself
+on the community which had applauded his sentence. If he went to the
+Gulch, no one would know or could suspect the true situation, every one
+would be unprepared for that moment when Bignold and he would face each
+other--and all that would happen then.
+
+Where was Marcile? Only Bignold knew. Alive or dead? Only Bignold knew.
+
+"_Bien_, I will do it, m'sieu'," he said to the Governor. "I am to go
+alone--eh?"
+
+The Sheriff shook his head. "No; two warders will go with you--and
+myself."
+
+A strange look passed over Grassette's face. He seemed to hesitate for a
+moment, then he said again: "_Bon_, I will go."
+
+"Then there is, of course, the doctor," said the Sheriff.
+
+"_Bon_!" said Grassette. "What time is it?"
+
+"Twelve o'clock," answered the Sheriff, and made a motion to the warder to
+open the door of the cell.
+
+"By sundown!" Grassette said, and he turned with a determined gesture to
+leave the cell.
+
+At the gate of the prison a fresh, sweet air caught his face.
+Involuntarily he drew in a great draught of it, and his eyes seemed to
+gaze out, almost wonderingly, over the grass and the trees to the
+boundless horizon. Then he became aware of the shouts of the crowd--shouts
+of welcome. This same crowd had greeted him with shouts of execration when
+he had left the court-house after his sentence. He stood still for a
+moment and looked at them, as it were only half comprehending that they
+were cheering him now, and that voices were saying, "Bravo, Grassette!
+Save him, and we'll save you."
+
+Cheer upon cheer, but he took no notice. He walked like one in a dream--a
+long, strong step. He turned neither to left nor right, not even when the
+friendly voice of one who had worked with him bade him "Cheer up and do
+the trick." He was busy working out a problem which no one but himself
+could solve. He was only half conscious of his surroundings; he was moving
+in a kind of detached world of his own, where the warders and the Sheriff
+and those who followed were almost abstract and unreal figures. He was
+living with a past which had been everlastingly distant, and had now
+become a vivid and buffeting present. He returned no answers to the
+questions addressed to him, and would not talk, save when for a little
+while they dismounted from their horses and sat under the shade of a great
+ash-tree for a few moments and snatched a mouthful of luncheon. Then he
+spoke a little and asked some questions, but lapsed into a moody silence
+afterward. His life and nature were being passed through a fiery crucible.
+In all the years that had gone he had had an ungovernable desire to kill
+both Bignold and Marcile if he ever met them--a primitive, savage desire
+to blot them out of life and being. His fingers had ached for Marcile's
+neck, that neck in which he had lain his face so often in the transient,
+unforgettable days of their happiness. If she was alive now!--if she was
+still alive!
+
+Her story was hidden there in Keeley's Gulch with Bignold, and he was
+galloping hard to reach his foe. As he went, by some strange alchemy of
+human experience, by that new birth of his brain, the world seemed
+different from what it had ever been before, at least since the day when
+he had found an empty home and a shamed hearthstone. He got a new feeling
+toward it, and life appealed to him as a thing that might have been so
+well worth living! But since that was not to be, then he would see what he
+could do to get compensation for all that he had lost, to take toll for
+the thing that had spoiled him, and given him a savage nature and a raging
+temper, which had driven him at last to kill a man who, in no real sense,
+had injured him.
+
+Mile after mile they journeyed, a troop of interested people coming after;
+the sun and the clear, sweet air, the waving grass, the occasional
+clearings where settlers had driven in the tent-pegs of home; the forest
+now and then swallowing them, the mountains rising above them like a blank
+wall, and then suddenly opening out before them; and the rustle and
+scamper of squirrels and coyotes; and over their heads the whistle of
+birds, the slow beat of wings of great wild-fowl. The tender sap of youth
+was in this glowing and alert new world, and, by sudden contrast with the
+prison walls which he had just left behind, the earth seemed recreated,
+unfamiliar, compelling, and companionable. Strange that in all the years
+that had been since he had gone back to his abandoned home to find Marcile
+gone, the world had had no beauty, no lure for him. In the splendor of it
+all he had only raged and stormed, hating his fellow-man, waiting, however
+hopelessly, for the day when he should see Marcile and the man who had
+taken her from him. And yet now, under the degradation of his crime and
+its penalty, and the unmanning influence of being the helpless victim of
+the iron power of the law, rigid, ugly, and demoralizing--now with the
+solution of his life's great problem here before him in the hills, with
+the man for whom he had waited so long caverned in the earth but a
+hand-reach away, as it were, his wrongs had taken a new manifestation in
+him, and the thing that kept crying out in him every moment was, Where is
+Marcile?
+
+It was four o'clock when they reached the pass which only Grassette knew,
+the secret way into the Gulch. There was two hours' walking through the
+thick, primeval woods, where few had ever been, except the ancient tribes
+which had once lorded it here; then came a sudden drop into the earth, a
+short travel through a dim cave, and afterward a sheer wall of stone
+enclosing a ravine where the rocks on either side nearly met overhead.
+
+Here Grassette gave the signal to shout aloud, and the voice of the
+Sheriff called out: "Hello, Bignold! Hello! Hello, Bignold! Are you
+there?--Hello!" His voice rang out clear and piercing, and then came a
+silence--a long, anxious silence. Again the voice rang out: "Hello!
+Hello-o-o! Bignold! Bigno-o-ld!"
+
+They strained their ears. Grassette was flat on the ground, his ear to the
+earth. Suddenly he got to his feet, his face set, his eyes glittering.
+
+"He is there beyon'--I hear him," he said, pointing farther down the
+Gulch. "Water--he is near it."
+
+"We heard nothing," said the Sheriff--"not a sound."
+
+"I hear ver' good. He is alive. I hear him--so," responded Grassette; and
+his face had a strange, fixed look which the others interpreted to be
+agitation at the thought that he had saved his own life by finding
+Bignold--and alive; which would put his own salvation beyond doubt.
+
+He broke away from them and hurried down the Gulch. The others followed
+hard after, the Sheriff and the warders close behind; but he outstripped
+them.
+
+Suddenly he stopped and stood still, looking at something on the ground.
+They saw him lean forward and his hands stretched out with a fierce
+gesture. It was the attitude of a wild animal ready to spring.
+
+They were beside him in an instant, and saw at his feet Bignold worn to a
+skeleton, with eyes starting from his head and fixed on Grassette in agony
+and stark fear.
+
+The Sheriff stooped to lift Bignold up, but Grassette waved them back with
+a fierce gesture, standing over the dying man.
+
+"He spoil my home. He break me--I have my bill to settle here," he said,
+in a voice hoarse and harsh. "It is so? It is so--eh? Spik!" he said to
+Bignold.
+
+"Yes," came feebly from the shrivelled lips. "Water! Water!" the wretched
+man gasped. "I'm dying!"
+
+A sudden change came over Grassette. "Water--queeck!" he said.
+
+The Sheriff stooped and held a hatful of water to Bignold's lips, while
+another poured brandy from a flask into the water.
+
+Grassette watched them eagerly. When the dying man had swallowed a little
+of the spirit and water, Grassette leaned over him again, and the others
+drew away. They realized that these two men had an account to settle, and
+there was no need for Grassette to take revenge, for Bignold was going
+fast.
+
+"You stan' far back," said Grassette, and they fell away.
+
+Then he stooped down to the sunken, ashen face, over which death was fast
+drawing its veil.
+
+"Marcile--where is Marcile?" he asked.
+
+The dying man's lips opened. "God forgive me--God save my soul!" he
+whispered. He was not concerned for Grassette now.
+
+"Queeck--queeck, where is Marcile?" Grassette said, sharply. "Come back,
+Bignold. Listen--where is Marcile?"
+
+He strained to hear the answer. Bignold was going, but his eyes opened
+again, however, for this call seemed to pierce to his soul as it struggled
+to be free.
+
+"Ten years--since--I saw her," he whispered. "Good girl--Marcile. She
+loves you, but she--is afraid." He tried to say something more, but his
+tongue refused its office.
+
+"Where is she?--spik!" commanded Grassette, in a tone of pleading and
+agony now.
+
+Once more the flying spirit came back. A hand made a motion toward his
+pocket, then lay still.
+
+Grassette felt hastily in the dead man's pocket, drew forth a letter, and
+with half-blinded eyes read the few lines it contained. It was dated from
+a hospital in New York, and was signed, "Nurse Marcile."
+
+With a groan of relief Grassette stood staring at the dead man. When the
+others came to him again, his lips were moving, but they did not hear what
+he was saying. They took up the body and moved away with it up the
+ravine.
+
+"It's all right, Grassette. You'll be a free man," said the Sheriff.
+
+Grassette did not answer. He was thinking how long it would take him to
+get to Marcile, when he was free.
+
+He had a true vision of beginning life again with Marcile.
+
+
+
+
+A MAN, A FAMINE, AND A HEATHEN BOY
+
+
+I
+
+Athabasca in the Far North is the scene of this story--Athabasca, one of
+the most beautiful countries in the world in summer, but a cold, bare land
+in winter. Yet even in winter it is not so bleak and bitter as the
+districts southwest of it, for the Chinook winds steal through from the
+Pacific and temper the fierceness of the frozen Rockies. Yet forty and
+fifty degrees below zero is cold, after all, and July strawberries in this
+wild Northland are hardly compensation for seven months of ice and snow,
+no matter how clear and blue the sky, how sweet the sun during its short
+journey in the day. Some days, too, the sun may not be seen even when
+there is no storm, because of the fine, white, powdered frost in the air.
+
+A day like this is called a _poudre_ day; and woe to the man who tempts it
+unthinkingly, because the light makes the delicate mist of frost shine
+like silver. For that powder bites the skin white in short order, and
+sometimes reckless men lose ears or noses or hands under its sharp caress.
+But when it really storms in that Far North, then neither man nor beast
+should be abroad--not even the Eskimo dogs; though times and seasons can
+scarcely be chosen when travelling in Athabasca, for a storm comes
+unawares. Upon the plains you will see a cloud arising, not in the sky,
+but from the ground--a billowy surf of drifting snow; then another white
+billow from the sky will sweep down and meet it, and you are caught
+between.
+
+He who went to Athabasca to live a generation ago had to ask himself if
+the long winter, spent chiefly indoors, with, maybe, a little trading with
+the Indians, meagre sport, and scant sun, savages and half-breeds the only
+companions, and out of all touch with the outside world, letters coming
+but once a year; with frozen fish and meat, always the same, as the staple
+items in a primitive fare; with danger from starvation and marauding
+tribes; with endless monotony, in which men sometimes go mad--he had to
+ask himself if these were to be cheerfully endured because, in the short
+summer, the air is heavenly, the rivers and lakes are full of fish, the
+flotilla of canoes of the fur-hunters is pouring down, and all is gayety
+and pleasant turmoil; because there is good shooting in the autumn, and
+the smell of the land is like a garden, and hardy fruits and flowers are
+at hand.
+
+That is a question which was asked William Rufus Holly once upon a time.
+
+William Rufus Holly, often called "Averdoopoy," sometimes "Sleeping
+Beauty," always Billy Rufus, had had a good education. He had been to
+high-school and to college, and he had taken one or two prizes _en route_
+to graduation; but no fame travelled with him, save that he was the
+laziest man of any college year for a decade. He loved his little
+porringer, which is to say that he ate a good deal; and he loved to read
+books, which is not to say that he loved study; he hated getting out of
+bed, and he was constantly gated for morning chapel. More than once he had
+sweetly gone to sleep over his examination papers. This is not to say that
+he failed at his examinations--on the contrary, he always succeeded; but
+he only did enough to pass and no more; and he did not wish to do more
+than pass. His going to sleep at examinations was evidence that he was
+either indifferent or self-indulgent, and it certainly showed that he was
+without nervousness. He invariably roused himself, or his professor roused
+him, a half-hour before the papers should be handed in, and, as it were,
+by a mathematical calculation he had always done just enough to prevent
+him being plucked.
+
+He slept at lectures, he slept in hall, he slept as he waited his turn to
+go to the wicket in a cricket match, and he invariably went to sleep
+afterward. He even did so on the day he had made the biggest score in the
+biggest game ever played between his college and the pick of the country;
+but he first gorged himself with cake and tea. The day he took his degree
+he had to be dragged from a huge grandfather's chair and forced along in
+his ragged gown--"ten holes and twelve tatters"--to the function in the
+convocation-hall. He looked so fat and shiny, so balmy and sleepy, when he
+took his degree and was handed his prize for a poem on Sir John Franklin,
+that the public laughed, and the college men in the gallery began
+singing--
+
+                   "Bye O, my baby,
+                   Father will come to you soo-oon!"
+
+He seemed not to care, but yawned in his hand as he put his prize book
+under his arm through one of the holes in his gown, and in two minutes was
+back in his room, and in another five was fast asleep.
+
+It was the general opinion that William Rufus Holly, fat, yellow-haired,
+and twenty-four years old, was doomed to failure in life, in spite of the
+fact that he had a little income of a thousand dollars a year and had made
+a century in an important game of cricket. Great, therefore, was the
+surprise of the college, and afterward of the Province, when, at the
+farewell dinner of the graduates, Sleeping Beauty announced, between his
+little open-eyed naps, that he was going Far North as a missionary.
+
+At first it was thought he was joking, but when at last, in his calm and
+dreamy look, they saw he meant what he said, they arose and carried him
+round the room on a chair, making impromptu songs as they travelled. They
+toasted Billy Rufus again and again, some of them laughing till they cried
+at the thought of Averdoopoy going to the Arctic regions. But an uneasy
+seriousness fell upon these "beautiful, bountiful, brilliant boys," as
+Holly called them later, when in a simple, honest, but indolent speech he
+said he had applied for ordination.
+
+Six months later William Rufus Holly, a deacon in holy orders, journeyed
+to Athabasca in the Far North.
+
+On his long journey there was plenty of time to think. He was embarked on
+a career which must forever keep him in the wilds; for very seldom indeed
+does a missionary of the North ever return to the crowded cities or take a
+permanent part in civilized life.
+
+What the loneliness of it would be he began to feel, as for hours and
+hours he saw no human being on the plains; in the thrilling stillness of
+the night; in fierce storms in the woods, when his half-breed guides bent
+their heads to meet the wind and rain, and did not speak for hours; in the
+long, adventurous journey on the river by the day, in the cry of the
+plaintive loon at night; in the scant food for every meal. Yet what the
+pleasure would be he felt in the joyous air, the exquisite sunshine, the
+flocks of wild-fowl flying north, _honking_ on their course; in the song
+of the half-breeds as they ran the rapids. Of course, he did not think
+these things quite as they are written here--all at once and all together;
+but in little pieces from time to time, feeling them rather than saying
+them to himself.
+
+At least he did understand how serious a thing it was, his going as a
+missionary into the Far North. Why did he do it? Was it a whim, or the
+excited imagination of youth, or that prompting which the young often have
+to make the world better? Or was it a fine spirit of adventure with a good
+heart behind it? Perhaps it was a little of all these; but there was also
+something more, and it was to his credit.
+
+Lazy as William Rufus Holly had been at school and college, he had still
+thought a good deal, even when he seemed only sleeping; perhaps he thought
+more because he slept so much, because he studied little and read a great
+deal. He always knew what everybody thought--that he would never do
+anything but play cricket till he got too heavy to run, and then would
+sink into a slothful, fat, and useless middle and old age; that his life
+would be a failure. And he knew that they were right; that if he stayed
+where he could live an easy life, a fat and easy life he would lead; that
+in a few years he would be good for nothing except to eat and sleep--no
+more. One day, waking suddenly from a bad dream of himself so fat as to be
+drawn about on a dray by monstrous fat oxen with rings through their
+noses, led by monkeys, he began to wonder what he should do--the hardest
+thing to do; for only the hardest life could possibly save him from
+failure, and, in spite of all, he really did want to make something of his
+life. He had been reading the story of Sir John Franklin's Arctic
+expedition, and all at once it came home to him that the only thing for
+him to do was to go to the Far North and stay there, coming back about
+once every ten years to tell the people in the cities what was being done
+in the wilds. Then there came the inspiration to write his poem on Sir
+John Franklin, and he had done so, winning the college prize for poetry.
+But no one had seen any change in him in those months; and, indeed, there
+had been little or no change, for he had an equable and practical, though
+imaginative, disposition, despite his avoirdupois, and his new purpose did
+not stir him yet from his comfortable sloth.
+
+And in all the journey west and north he had not been stirred greatly from
+his ease of body, for the journey was not much harder than playing cricket
+every day, and there were only the thrill of the beautiful air, the new
+people, and the new scenes to rouse him. As yet there was no great
+responsibility. He scarcely realized what his life must be until one
+particular day.
+
+Then Sleeping Beauty waked wide up, and from that day lost the name. Till
+then he had looked and borne himself like any other traveller,
+unrecognized as a parson or "mikonaree." He had not had prayers in camp
+_en route_, he had not preached, he had held no meetings. He was as yet
+William Rufus Holly, the cricketer, the laziest dreamer of a college
+decade. His religion was simple and practical; he had never had any morbid
+ideas; he had lived a healthy, natural, and honorable life, until he went
+for a mikonaree, and, if he had no cant, he had not a clear idea of how
+many-sided, how responsible, his life must be--until that one particular
+day.
+
+This is what happened then.
+
+From Fort O'Call, an abandoned post of the Hudson's Bay Company on the
+Peace River, nearly the whole tribe of the Athabasca Indians in
+possession of the post now had come up the river, with their chief,
+Knife-in-the-Wind, to meet the mikonaree. Factors of the Hudson's Bay
+Company, _coureurs de bois_, and _voyageurs_ had come among them at
+times, and once the renowned Father Lacombe, the Jesuit priest, had
+stayed with them three months; but never to this day had they seen a
+Protestant mikonaree, though once a factor, noted for his furious temper,
+his powers of running, and his generosity, had preached to them. These
+men, however, were both over fifty years old. The Athabascas did not
+hunger for the Christian religion, but a courier from Edmonton had
+brought them word that a mikonaree was coming to their country to stay,
+and they put off their stoical manner and allowed themselves the luxury of
+curiosity. That was why even the squaws and papooses came up the river
+with the braves, all wondering if the stranger had brought gifts with
+him, all eager for their shares; for it had been said by the courier of
+the tribe that "Oshondonto," their name for the newcomer, was bringing
+mysterious loads of well-wrapped bales and skins. Upon a point below the
+first rapids of the Little Manitou they waited with their camp-fires
+burning and their pipe of peace.
+
+When the canoes bearing Oshondonto and his _voyageurs_ shot the rapids to
+the song of the river,
+
+              "En roulant, ma boule roulant,[[y:italic]]
+              En roulant, ma boule!"[[y:italic]]
+
+with the shrill voices of the boatmen rising to meet the cry of the
+startled water-fowl, the Athabascas crowded to the high banks. They
+grunted "How!" in greeting, as the foremost canoe made for the shore.
+
+But if surprise could have changed the countenances of Indians, these
+Athabascas would not have known one another when the missionary stepped
+out upon the shore. They had looked to see a gray-bearded man like the
+chief factor who quarrelled and prayed; but they found instead a
+round-faced, clean-shaven youth, with big, good-natured eyes, yellow hair,
+and a roundness of body like that of a month-old bear's cub. They expected
+to find a man who, like the factor, could speak their language, and they
+found a cherub sort of youth who talked only English, French, and
+Chinook--that common language of the North--and a few words of their own
+language which he had learned on the way.
+
+Besides, Oshondonto was so absent-minded at the moment, so absorbed in
+admiration of the garish scene before him, that he addressed the chief in
+French, of which Knife-in-the-Wind knew but one word, _câche_, which all
+the North knows.
+
+But presently William Rufus Holly recovered himself, and in stumbling
+Chinook made himself understood. Opening a bale, he brought out beads and
+tobacco and some bright red flannel, and two hundred Indians sat round him
+and grunted "How!" and received his gifts with little comment. Then the
+pipe of peace went round, and Oshondonto smoked it becomingly.
+
+But he saw that the Indians despised him for his youth, his fatness, his
+yellow hair as soft as a girl's, his cherub face, browned though it was by
+the sun and weather.
+
+As he handed the pipe to Knife-in-the-Wind, an Indian called Silver
+Tassel, with a cruel face, said, grimly:
+
+"Why does Oshondonto travel to us?"
+
+William Rufus Holly's eyes steadied on those of the Indian as he replied
+in Chinook: "To teach the way to Manitou the Mighty, to tell the
+Athabascas of the Great Chief who died to save the world."
+
+"The story is told in many ways; which is right? There was the factor,
+Word of Thunder. There is the song they sing at Edmonton--I have heard."
+
+"The Great Chief is the same Chief," answered the missionary. "If you tell
+of Fort O'Call, and Knife-in-the-Wind tells of Fort O'Call, he and you
+will speak different words, and one will put in one thing and one will
+leave out another; men's tongues are different. But Fort O'Call is the
+same, and the Great Chief is the same."
+
+"It was a long time ago," said Knife-in-the-Wind, sourly, "many thousand
+moon, as the pebbles in the river, the years."
+
+"It is the same world, and it is the same Chief, and it was to save us,"
+answered William Rufus Holly, smiling, yet with a fluttering heart, for
+the first test of his life had come.
+
+In anger Knife-in-the-Wind thrust an arrow into the ground and said:
+
+"How can the white man who died thousands of moons ago in a far country
+save the red man of to-day?"
+
+"A strong man should bear so weak a tale," broke in Silver Tassel,
+ruthlessly. "Are we children, that the Great Chief sends a child as
+messenger?"
+
+For a moment Billy Rufus did not know how to reply, and in the pause
+Knife-in-the-Wind broke in two pieces the arrow he had thrust in the
+ground in token of displeasure.
+
+Suddenly, as Oshondonto was about to speak, Silver Tassel sprang to his
+feet, seized in his arms a lad of twelve who was standing near, and,
+running to the bank, dropped him into the swift current.
+
+"If Oshondonto be not a child, let him save the lad," said Silver Tassel,
+standing on the brink.
+
+Instantly William Rufus Holly was on his feet. His coat was off before
+Silver Tassel's words were out of his mouth, and, crying, "In the name of
+the Great White Chief!" he jumped into the rushing current. "In the name
+of your Manitou, come on, Silver Tassel!" he called up from the water, and
+struck out for the lad.
+
+Not pausing an instant, Silver Tassel sprang into the flood, into the
+whirling eddies and dangerous current below the first rapids and above the
+second.
+
+II
+
+Then came the struggle for Wingo of the Cree tribe, a waif among the
+Athabascas, whose father had been slain as they travelled, by a wandering
+tribe of Blackfeet. Never was there a braver rivalry, although the odds
+were with the Indian--in lightness, in brutal strength. With the
+mikonaree, however, were skill, and that sort of strength which the world
+calls "moral," the strength of a good and desperate purpose. Oshondonto
+knew that on the issue of this shameless business--this cruel sport of
+Silver Tassel--would depend his future on the Peace River. As he shot
+forward with strong strokes in the whirling torrent after the helpless
+lad, who, only able to keep himself afloat, was being swept down toward
+the rapids below, he glanced up to the bank along which the Athabascas
+were running. He saw the garish colors of their dresses; he saw the
+ignorant medicine-man, with his mysterious bag, making incantations, he
+saw the _tepee_ of the chief, with its barbarous pennant above; he saw the
+idle, naked children tearing at the entrails of a calf; and he realized
+that this was a deadly tournament between civilization and barbarism.
+
+Silver Tassel was gaining on him; they were both overhauling the boy; it
+was now to see which should reach Wingo first, which should take him to
+shore. That is, if both were not carried under before they reached him;
+that is, if, having reached him, they and he would ever get to shore; for,
+lower down, before it reached the rapids, the current ran horribly smooth
+and strong, and here and there were jagged rocks just beneath the
+surface.
+
+Still Silver Tassel gained on him, as they both gained on the boy.
+Oshondonto swam strong and hard, but he swam with his eyes on the struggle
+for the shore also; he was not putting forth his utmost strength, for he
+knew it would be bitterly needed, perhaps to save his own life by a last
+effort.
+
+Silver Tassel passed him when they were about fifty feet from the boy.
+Shooting by on his side, with a long stroke and a plunge of his body like
+a projectile, the dark face with the long, black hair plastering it turned
+toward his own, in fierce triumph Silver Tassel cried "How!" in derision.
+
+Billy Rufus set his teeth and lay down to his work like a sportsman. His
+face had lost its roses, and it was set and determined, but there was no
+look of fear upon it, nor did his heart sink when a cry of triumph went up
+from the crowd on the banks. The white man knew by old experience in the
+cricket-field and in many a boat-race that it is well not to halloo till
+you are out of the woods. His mettle was up, he was not the Reverend
+William Rufus Holly, missionary, but Billy Rufus, the champion cricketer,
+the sportsman playing a long game.
+
+Silver Tassel reached the boy, who was bruised and bleeding and at his
+last gasp, and, throwing an arm round him, struck out for the shore. The
+current was very strong, and he battled fiercely as Billy Rufus, not far
+above, moved down toward them at an angle. For a few yards Silver Tassel
+was going strong, then his pace slackened, he seemed to sink lower in the
+water, and his stroke became splashing and irregular. Suddenly he struck a
+rock, which bruised him badly, and, swerving from his course, he lost his
+stroke and let go the boy.
+
+By this time the mikonaree had swept beyond them, and he caught the boy by
+his long hair as he was being swept below. Striking out for the shore, he
+swam with bold, strong strokes, his judgment guiding him well past rocks
+beneath the surface. Ten feet from shore he heard a cry of alarm from
+above. It concerned Silver Tassel, he knew, but he could not look round
+yet.
+
+In another moment the boy was dragged up the bank by strong hands, and
+Billy Rufus swung round in the water toward Silver Tassel, who, in his
+confused energy, had struck another rock, and, exhausted now, was being
+swept toward the rapids. Silver Tassel's shoulder scarcely showed--his
+strength was gone. In a flash Billy Rufus saw there was but one thing to
+do. He must run the rapids with Silver Tassel--there was no other way. It
+would be a fight through the jaws of death; but no Indian's eyes had a
+better sense for river-life than William Rufus Holly's.
+
+How he reached Silver Tassel, and drew the Indian's arm over his own
+shoulder; how they drove down into the boiling flood; how Billy Rufus' fat
+body was battered and torn and ran red with blood from twenty flesh
+wounds; but how by luck beyond the telling he brought Silver Tassel
+through safely into the quiet water a quarter of a mile below the rapids,
+and was hauled out, both more dead than alive, is a tale still told by the
+Athabascas around their camp-fire. The rapids are known to-day as the
+Mikonaree Rapids.
+
+The end of this beginning of the young man's career was that Silver Tassel
+gave him the word of eternal friendship, Knife-in-the-Wind took him into
+the tribe, and the boy Wingo became his very own, to share his home and
+his travels, no longer a waif among the Athabascas.
+
+After three days' feasting, at the end of which the missionary held his
+first service and preached his first sermon, to the accompaniment of
+grunts of satisfaction from the whole tribe of Athabascas, William Rufus
+Holly began his work in the Far North.
+
+The journey to Fort O'Call was a procession of triumph, for, as it was
+summer, there was plenty of food, the missionary had been a success, and
+he had distributed many gifts of beads and flannel.
+
+All went well for many moons, although converts were uncertain and
+baptisms few, and the work was hard and the loneliness at times terrible.
+But at last came dark days.
+
+One summer and autumn there had been poor fishing and shooting, the
+_câches_ of meat were fewer on the plains, and almost nothing had come up
+to Fort O'Call from Edmonton, far below. The yearly supplies for the
+missionary, paid for out of his private income--the bacon, beans, tea,
+coffee, and flour--had been raided by a band of hostile Indians, and he
+viewed with deep concern the progress of the severe winter. Although three
+years of hard, frugal life had made his muscles like iron, they had only
+mellowed his temper, increased his flesh, and rounded his face; nor did he
+look an hour older than on the day when he had won Wingo for his willing
+slave and devoted friend.
+
+He never resented the frequent ingratitude of the Indians; he said little
+when they quarrelled over the small comforts his little income brought
+them yearly from the South. He had been doctor, lawyer, judge among them,
+although he interfered little in the larger disputes, and was forced to
+shut his eyes to intertribal enmities. He had no deep faith that he could
+quite civilize them; he knew that their conversion was only on the
+surface, and he fell back on his personal influence with them. By this he
+could check even the excesses of the worst man in the tribe, his old
+enemy, Silver Tassel of the bad heart, who yet was ready always to give a
+tooth for a tooth, and accepted the fact that he owed Oshondonto his
+life.
+
+When famine crawled across the plains to the doors of the settlement and
+housed itself at Fort O'Call, Silver Tassel acted badly, however, and
+sowed fault-finding among the thoughtless of the tribe.
+
+"What manner of Great Spirit is it who lets the food of his chief
+Oshondonto fall into the hands of the Blackfeet?" he said. "Oshondonto
+says the Great Spirit hears. What has the Great Spirit to say? Let
+Oshondonto ask."
+
+Again, when they were all hungrier, he went among them with complaining
+words. "If the white man's Great Spirit can do all things, let him give
+Oshondonto and the Athabascas food."
+
+The missionary did not know of Silver Tassel's foolish words, but he saw
+the downcast face of Knife-in-the-Wind, the sullen looks of the people;
+and he unpacked the box he had reserved jealously for the darkest days
+that might come. For meal after meal he divided these delicacies among
+them--morsels of biscuit, and tinned meats, and dried fruits. But his eyes
+meanwhile were turned again and again to the storm raging without, as it
+had raged for this the longest week he had ever spent. If it would but
+slacken, a boat could go out to the nets set in the lake near by some days
+before, when the sun of spring had melted the ice. From the hour the nets
+had been set the storm had raged. On the day when the last morsel of meat
+and biscuit had been given away the storm had not abated, and he saw with
+misgiving the gloomy, stolid faces of the Indians round him. One man, two
+children, and three women had died in a fortnight. He dreaded to think
+what might happen, his heart ached at the looks of gaunt suffering in the
+faces of all; he saw, for the first time, how black and bitter
+Knife-in-the-Wind looked as Silver Tassel whispered to him.
+
+With the color all gone from his cheeks, he left the post and made his way
+to the edge of the lake where his canoe was kept. Making it ready for the
+launch, he came back to the fort. Assembling the Indians, who had watched
+his movements closely, he told them that he was going through the storm to
+the nets on the lake, and asked for a volunteer to go with him.
+
+No one replied. He pleaded--for the sake of the women and children.
+
+Then Knife-in-the-Wind spoke. "Oshondonto will die if he goes. It is a
+fool's journey--does the wolverine walk into an empty trap?"
+
+Billy Rufus spoke passionately now. His genial spirit fled; he reproached
+them.
+
+Silver Tassel spoke up loudly: "Let Oshondonto's Great Spirit carry him to
+the nets alone, and back again with fish for the heathen the Great Chief
+died to save."
+
+"You have a wicked heart, Silver Tassel. You know well that one man can't
+handle the boat and the nets also. Is there no one of you--?"
+
+A figure shot forward from a corner. "I will go with Oshondonto," came the
+voice of Wingo, the waif of the Crees.
+
+The eye of the mikonaree flashed round in contempt on the tribe. Then
+suddenly it softened, and he said to the lad, "We will go together,
+Wingo."
+
+Taking the boy by the hand, he ran with him through the rough wind to the
+shore, launched the canoe on the tossing lake, and paddled away through
+the tempest.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+The bitter winds of an angry spring, the sleet and wet snow of a belated
+winter, the floating blocks of ice crushing against the side of the boat,
+the black water swishing over man and boy, the harsh, inclement world near
+and far.... The passage made at last to the nets; the brave Wingo
+steadying the canoe--a skilful hand sufficing where the strength of a
+Samson would not have availed; the nets half full, and the breaking cry of
+joy from the lips of the waif--a cry that pierced the storm and brought
+back an answering cry from the crowd of Indians on the far shore.... The
+quarter-hour of danger in the tossing canoe; the nets too heavy to be
+dragged, and fastened to the thwarts instead; the canoe going shoreward
+jerkily, a cork on the waves with an anchor behind; heavier seas and winds
+roaring down on them as they slowly near the shore; and at last, in one
+awful moment, the canoe upset, and the man and the boy in the water....
+Then both clinging to the upturned canoe as it is driven near and nearer
+shore.... The boy washed off once, twice, and the man with his arm round
+clinging--clinging, as the shrieking storm answers to the calling of the
+Athabascas on the shore, and drives craft and fish and man and boy down
+upon the banks; no savage bold enough to plunge in to their rescue.... At
+last a rope thrown, a drowning man's wrists wound round it, his teeth set
+in it--and now, at last, a man and a heathen boy, both insensible, being
+carried to the mikonaree's hut and laid upon two beds, one on either side
+of the small room, as the red sun goes slowly down.... The two still
+bodies on bearskins in the hut, and a hundred superstitious Indians flying
+from the face of death.... The two alone in the light of the flickering
+fire; the many gone to feast on fish, the price of lives.
+
+But the price was not yet paid, for the man waked from
+insensibility--waked to see himself with the body of the boy beside him
+in the red light of the fires.
+
+For a moment his heart stopped beating, he turned sick and faint. Deserted
+by those for whom he risked his life!... How long had he lain there? What
+time was it? When was it that he had fought his way to the nets and back
+again--hours, maybe? And the dead boy there, Wingo, who had risked his
+life, also dead--how long? His heart leaped--ah, not hours, only minutes,
+maybe. It was sundown as unconsciousness came on him--Indians would not
+stay with the dead after sundown. Maybe it was only ten minutes--five
+minutes--one minute ago since they left him!...
+
+His watch! Shaking fingers drew it out, wild eyes scanned it. It was not
+stopped. Then it could have only been minutes ago. Trembling to his feet,
+he staggered over to Wingo, he felt the body, he held a mirror to the
+lips. Yes, surely there was light moisture on the glass.
+
+Then began another fight with death--William Rufus Holly struggling to
+bring to life again Wingo, the waif of of the Crees.
+
+The blood came back to his own heart with a rush as the mad desire to save
+this life came on him. He talked to the dumb face, he prayed in a kind of
+delirium, as he moved the arms up and down, as he tilted the body, as he
+rubbed, chafed, and strove. He forgot he was a missionary, he almost
+cursed himself. "For them--for cowards, I risked his life, the brave lad
+with no home! Oh, God! give him back to me!" he sobbed. "What right had I
+to risk his life for theirs? I should have shot the first man that refused
+to go.... Wingo, speak! Wake up! Come back!"
+
+The sweat poured from him in his desperation and weakness. He said to
+himself that he had put this young life into the hazard without cause. Had
+he, then, saved the lad from the rapids and Silver Tassel's brutality only
+to have him drag fish out of the jaws of death for Silver Tassel's meal?
+
+It seemed to him that he had been working for hours, though it was in fact
+only a short time, when the eyes of the lad slowly opened and closed
+again, and he began to breathe spasmodically. A cry of joy came from the
+lips of the missionary, and he worked harder still. At last the eyes
+opened wide, stayed open, saw the figure bent over him, and the lips
+whispered, "Oshondonto--my master!" as a cup of brandy was held to his
+lips.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Billy Rufus the cricketer had won the game, and somehow the Reverend
+William Rufus Holly the missionary never repented the strong language he
+used against the Athabascas as he was bringing Wingo back to life, though
+it was not what is called "strictly canonical."
+
+He had conquered the Athabascas forever. Even Silver Tassel acknowledged
+his power, and he as industriously spread abroad the report that the
+mikonaree had raised Wingo from the dead, as he had sown dissension during
+the famine. But the result was that the missionary had power in the land,
+and the belief in him was so great that, when Knife-in-the-Wind died, the
+tribe came to him to raise their chief from the dead. They never quite
+believed that he could not--not even Silver Tassel, who now rules the
+Athabascas and is ruled in turn by William Rufus Holly: which is a very
+good thing for the Athabascas.
+
+
+
+
+THE HEALING SPRINGS AND THE PIONEERS
+
+
+He came out of the mysterious South one summer day, driving before him a
+few sheep, a cow, and a long-eared mule which carried his tent and other
+necessaries, and camped outside the town on a knoll, at the base of which
+was a thicket of close shrub. During the first day no one in Jansen
+thought anything of it, for it was a land of pilgrimage, and hundreds came
+and went on their journeys in search of free homesteads and good water and
+pasturage. But when, after three days, he was still there, Nicolle
+Terasse, who had little to do and an insatiable curiosity, went out to see
+him. He found a new sensation for Jansen. This is what he said when he
+came back:
+
+"You want know 'bout him, _bagosh_! Dat is somet'ing to see, dat
+man--Ingles is his name. Sooch hair--mooch long an' brown, and a leetla
+beard not so brown, an' a leather sole onto his feet, and a gray coat to
+his ankles--_oui_, so like dat. An' his voice--_voilà_, it is like water
+in a cave. He is a great man--I dunno not; but he spik at me like dis, 'Is
+dere sick, and cripple, and stay-in-bed people here dat can't get up?' he
+say. An' I say, 'Not plenty, but some--_bagosh_! Dere is dat Miss Greet,
+an' ole Ma'am Drouchy, an' dat young Pete Hayes--an' so on.' 'Well, if
+they have faith I will heal them,' he spik at me. 'From de Healing Springs
+dey shall rise to walk,' he say. _Bagosh_, you not t'ink dat true? Den you
+go see."
+
+So Jansen turned out to see, and besides the man they found a curious
+thing. At the foot of the knoll, in a space which he had cleared, was a
+hot spring that bubbled and rose and sank, and drained away into the
+thirsty ground. Luck had been with Ingles the Faith Healer. Whether he
+knew of the existence of this spring, or whether he chanced upon it, he
+did not say; but while he held Jansen in the palm of his hand, in the
+feverish days that followed, there were many who attached mysterious
+significance to it, who claimed for it supernatural origin. In any case,
+the one man who had known of the existence of this spring was far away
+from Jansen, and he did not return till a day of reckoning came for the
+Faith Healer.
+
+Meanwhile, Jansen made pilgrimage to the Springs of Healing, and at
+unexpected times Ingles suddenly appeared in the town, and stood at street
+corners; and in his "Patmian voice," as Flood Rawley the lawyer called it,
+warned the people to flee their sins, and, purifying their hearts, learn
+to cure all ills of mind and body, the weaknesses of the sinful flesh and
+the "ancient evil" in their souls, by faith that saves.
+
+"'_Is not the life more than meat?_'" he asked them. "And if,
+peradventure, there be those among you who have true belief in hearts all
+purged of evil, and yet are maimed, or sick of body, come to me, and I
+will lay my hands upon you, and I will heal you." Thus he cried.
+
+There were those so wrought upon by his strange eloquence and spiritual
+passion, so hypnotized by his physical and mental exaltation, that they
+rose up from the hand-laying and the prayer eased of their ailments.
+Others he called upon to lie in the hot spring at the foot of the hill for
+varying periods, before the laying-on of hands, and these also, crippled
+or rigid with troubles of the bone, announced that they were healed.
+
+People flocked from other towns, and though, to some who had been cured,
+their pains and sickness returned, there were a few who bore perfect
+evidence to his teaching and healing, and followed him, "converted and
+consecrated," as though he were a new Messiah. In this corner of the West
+was such a revival as none could remember--not even those who had been to
+camp-meetings in the East in their youth, and had seen the Spirit descend
+upon hundreds and draw them to the anxious seat.
+
+Then came the great sensation--the Faith Healer converted Laura Sloly.
+Upon which Jansen drew its breath painfully; for, while it was willing to
+bend to the inspiration of the moment, and to be swept on a tide of
+excitement into that enchanted field called Imagination, it wanted to
+preserve its institutions--and Laura Sloly had come to be an institution.
+Jansen had always plumed itself, and smiled, when she passed; and even now
+the most sentimentally religious of them inwardly anticipated the time
+when the town would return to its normal condition; and that condition
+would not be normal if there were any change in Laura Sloly. It mattered
+little whether most people were changed or not, because one state of their
+minds could not be less or more interesting than another; but a change in
+Laura Sloly could not be for the better.
+
+Her father had come to the West in the early days, and had prospered by
+degrees until a town grew up beside his ranch; and though he did not
+acquire as much permanent wealth from this golden chance as might have
+been expected, and lost much he did make by speculation, still he had his
+rich ranch left, and it and he and Laura were part of the history of
+Jansen. Laura had been born at Jansen before even it had a name. Next to
+her father she was the oldest inhabitant, and she had a prestige which was
+given to no one else.
+
+[Illustration: THE FAITH HEALER]
+
+Everything had conspired to make her a figure of moment and interest. She
+was handsome in almost a mannish sort of way, being of such height and
+straightness, and her brown eyes had a depth and fire in which more than a
+few men had drowned themselves. Also, once she had saved a settlement by
+riding ahead of a marauding Indian band to warn their intended victims,
+and had averted another tragedy of pioneer life. Pioneers proudly told
+strangers to Jansen of the girl of thirteen who rode a hundred and twenty
+miles without food, and sank inside the palisade of the Hudson Bay
+Company's fort, as the gates closed upon the settlers taking refuge, the
+victim of brain fever at last. _Cerebro-spinal meningitis_, the doctor
+from Winnipeg called it, and the memory of that time when men and women
+would not sleep till her crisis was past was still fresh on the tongues of
+all.
+
+Then she had married at seventeen, and, within a year, had lost both her
+husband and her baby, a child bereaved of her Playmates--for her husband
+had been but twenty years old and was younger far than she in everything.
+And since then, twelve years before, she had seen generations of lovers
+pass into the land they thought delectable; and their children flocked to
+her, hung about her, were carried off by her to the ranch, and kept for
+days, against the laughing protests of their parents. Flood Rawley called
+her the Pied Piper of Jansen, and, indeed, she had a voice that fluted and
+piped, and yet had so whimsical a note that the hardest faces softened at
+the sound of it; and she did not keep its best notes for the few. She was
+impartial, almost impersonal; no woman was her enemy, and every man was
+her friend--and nothing more. She had never had an accepted lover since
+the day her Playmates left her. Every man except one had given up hope
+that he might win her; and though he had been gone from Jansen for two
+years, and had loved her since the days before the Playmates came and
+went, he never gave up hope, and was now to return and say again what he
+had mutely said for years--what she understood, and he knew she
+understood.
+
+Tim Denton had been a wild sort in his brief day. He was a rough diamond,
+but he was a diamond, and was typical of the West--its heart, its courage,
+its freedom, and its force; capable of exquisite gentleness strenuous to
+exaggeration, with a very primitive religion, and the only religion Tim
+knew was that of human nature. Jansen did not think Tim good enough--not
+within a comet shot--for Laura Sloly; but they thought him better than any
+one else.
+
+But now Laura was a convert to the prophet of the Healing Springs, and
+those people who still retained their heads in the eddy of religious
+emotion were in despair. They dreaded to meet Laura; they kept away from
+the "protracted meetings," but were eager to hear about her and what she
+said and did. What they heard allayed their worst fears. She still smiled,
+and seemed as cheerful as before, they heard, and she neither spoke nor
+prayed in public, but she led the singing always. Now the anxious and the
+sceptical and the reactionary ventured out to see and hear; and seeing and
+hearing gave them a satisfaction they hardly dared express. She was more
+handsome than ever, and if her eyes glistened with a light they had never
+seen before, and awed them, her lips still smiled, and the old laugh came
+when she spoke to them. Their awe increased. This was "getting religion"
+with a difference.
+
+But presently they received a shock. A whisper grew that Laura was in love
+with the Faith Healer. Some woman's instinct drove straight to the centre
+of a disconcerting possibility, and in consternation she told her husband;
+and Jansen husbands had a freemasonry of gossip. An hour, and all Jansen
+knew, or thought they knew; and the "saved" rejoiced; and the rest of the
+population, represented by Nicolle Terasse at one end and Flood Rawley at
+the other, flew to arms. No vigilance committee was ever more determined
+and secret and organized than the unconverted civic patriots who were
+determined to restore Jansen to its old-time condition. They pointed out
+cold-bloodedly that the Faith Healer had failed three times where he had
+succeeded once; and that, admitting the successes, there was no proof that
+his religion was their cause. There were such things as hypnotism and
+magnetism and will-power, and abnormal mental stimulus on the part of the
+healed--to say nothing of the Healing Springs.
+
+Carefully laying their plans, they quietly spread the rumor that Ingles
+had promised to restore to health old Mary Jewell, who had been bedridden
+ten years, and had sent word and prayed to have him lay his hands upon
+her--Catholic though she was. The Faith Healer, face to face with this
+supreme and definite test, would have retreated from it but for Laura
+Sloly. She expected him to do it, believed that he could, said that he
+would, herself arranged the day and the hour, and sang so much exaltation
+into him that at last a spurious power seemed to possess him. He felt that
+there had entered into him something that could be depended on, not the
+mere flow of natural magnetism fed by an out-door life and a temperament
+of great emotional force and chance and suggestion--and other things. If,
+at first, he had influenced Laura, some ill-controlled, latent idealism in
+him, working on a latent poetry and spirituality in her, somehow bringing
+her into nearer touch with her lost Playmates than she had been in the
+long years that had passed; she, in turn, had made his unrationalized
+brain reel; had caught him up into a higher air, on no wings of his own;
+had added another lover to her company of lovers--and the first impostor
+she had ever had. She who had known only honest men as friends, in one
+blind moment lost her perspicuous sense; her instinct seemed asleep. She
+believed in the man and in his healing. Was there anything more than
+that?
+
+The day of the great test came, hot, brilliant, vivid. The air was of a
+delicate sharpness, and, as it came toward evening, the glamour of an
+August when the reapers reap was upon Jansen; and its people gathered
+round the house of Mary Jewell to await the miracle of faith. Apart from
+the emotional many who sang hymns and spiritual songs were a few
+determined men, bent on doing justice to Jansen though the heavens might
+fall. Whether or no Laura Sloly was in love with the Faith Healer, Jansen
+must look to its own honor--and hers. In any case, this peripatetic saint
+at Sloly's Ranch--the idea was intolerable; women must be saved in spite
+of themselves.
+
+Laura was now in the house by the side of the bedridden Mary Jewell,
+waiting, confident, smiling, as she held the wasted hand on the coverlet.
+With her was a minister of the Baptist persuasion, who was swimming with
+the tide, and who approved of the Faith Healer's immersions in the hot
+Healing Springs; also a medical student who had pretended belief in
+Ingles, and two women weeping with unnecessary remorse for human failings
+of no dire kind. The windows were open, and those outside could see.
+Presently, in a lull of the singing, there was a stir in the crowd, and
+then sudden loud greetings--
+
+"My, if it ain't Tim Denton! Jerusalem! You back, Tim!"
+
+These and other phrases caught the ear of Laura Sloly in the sick-room. A
+strange look flashed across her face, and the depth of her eyes was
+troubled for a moment, as to the face of the old comes a tremor at the
+note of some long-forgotten song. Then she steadied herself and waited,
+catching bits of the loud talk which still floated toward her from
+without.
+
+"What's up? Some one getting married--or a legacy, or a saw-off? Why, what
+a lot of Sunday-go-to-meeting folks _to_ be sure!" Tim laughed loudly.
+
+After which the quick tongue of Nicolle Terasse: "You want know? _Tiens_,
+be quiet; here he come. He cure you body and soul, ver' queeck--yes."
+
+The crowd swayed and parted, and slowly, bare head uplifted, face looking
+to neither right nor left, the Faith Healer made his way to the door of
+the little house. The crowd hushed. Some were awed, some were
+overpoweringly interested, some were cruelly patient. Nicolle Terasse and
+others were whispering loudly to Tim Denton. That was the only sound,
+until the Healer got to the door. Then, on the steps, he turned to the
+multitude.
+
+"Peace be to you all, and upon this house," he said, and stepped through
+the doorway.
+
+Tim Denton, who had been staring at the face of the Healer, stood for an
+instant like one with all his senses arrested. Then he gasped and
+exclaimed, "Well, I'm eternally--!" and broke off with a low laugh, which
+was at first mirthful, and then became ominous and hard.
+
+"Oh, magnificent!--magnificent!--jerickety!" he said into the sky above
+him.
+
+His friends who were not "saved" closed in on him to find the meaning of
+his words, but he pulled himself together, looked blankly at them, and
+asked them questions. They told him so much more than he cared to hear
+that his face flushed a deep red--the bronze of it most like the color of
+Laura Sloly's hair; then he turned pale. Men saw that he was roused beyond
+any feeling in themselves.
+
+"'Sh!" he said. "Let's see what he can do." With the many who were
+silently praying, as they had been bidden to do, the invincible ones
+leaned forward, watching the little room where healing--or tragedy--was
+afoot. As in a picture, framed by the window, they saw the kneeling
+figures, the Healer standing with outstretched arms. They heard his voice,
+sonorous and appealing, then commanding--and yet Mary Jewell did not rise
+from her bed and walk. Again, and yet again, the voice rang out, and still
+the woman lay motionless. Then he laid his hands upon her, and again he
+commanded her to rise.
+
+There was a faint movement, a desperate struggle to obey, but Nature and
+Time and Disease had their way.
+
+Yet again there was the call. An agony stirred the bed. Then another great
+Healer came between and mercifully dealt the sufferer a blow--Death has a
+gentle hand sometimes. Mary Jewell was bedridden still--and forever.
+
+Like a wind from the mountains the chill knowledge of death wailed through
+the window and over the heads of the crowd. All the figures were upright
+now in the little room. Then those outside saw Laura Sloly lean over and
+close the sightless eyes. This done, she came to the door and opened it,
+and motioned for the Healer to leave. He hesitated, hearing the harsh
+murmur from the outskirts of the crowd. Once again she motioned, and he
+came. With a face deadly pale she surveyed the people before her silently
+for a moment, her eyes all huge and staring. Presently she turned to
+Ingles and spoke to him quickly in a low voice; then, descending the
+steps, passed out through the lane made for her by the crowd, he following
+with shaking limbs and bowed head.
+
+Warning words had passed among the few invincible ones who waited where
+the Healer must pass into the open, and there was absolute stillness as
+Laura advanced. Their work was to come--quiet and swift and sure; but not
+yet.
+
+Only one face Laura saw as she led the way to the moment's safety--Tim
+Denton's; and it was as stricken as her own. She passed, then turned and
+looked at him again. He understood; she wanted him.
+
+He waited till she sprang into her wagon, after the Healer had mounted his
+mule and ridden away with ever-quickening pace into the prairie. Then he
+turned to the set, fierce men beside him.
+
+"Leave him alone," he said--"leave him to me. I know him. You hear? Ain't
+I no rights? I tell you I knew him--South. You leave him to me."
+
+They nodded, and he sprang into his saddle and rode away. They watched the
+figure of the Healer growing smaller in the dusty distance.
+
+"Tim'll go to her," one said, "and perhaps they'll let the snake get off.
+Hadn't we best make sure?"
+
+"Perhaps you'd better let him vamoose," said Flood Rawley, anxiously.
+"Jansen is a law-abiding place."
+
+The reply was decisive. Jansen had its honor to keep. It was the home of
+the Pioneers--Laura Sloly was a Pioneer.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Tim Denton was a Pioneer, with all the comradeship which lay in the word,
+and he was that sort of lover who has seen one woman and can never see
+another--not the product of the most modern civilization. Before Laura had
+had Playmates he had given all he had to give; he had waited and hoped
+ever since; and when the ruthless gossips had said to him before Mary
+Jewell's house that she was in love with the Faith Healer, nothing changed
+in him. For the man--for Ingles--Tim belonged to a primitive breed, and
+love was not in his heart. As he rode out to Sloly's Ranch, he ground his
+teeth in rage. But Laura had called him to her, and--
+
+"Well, what you say goes, Laura," he muttered at the end of a long hour of
+human passion and its repression. "If he's to go scot-free, then he's got
+to go; but the boys yonder'll drop on me if he gets away. Can't you see
+what a swab he is, Laura?"
+
+The brown eyes of the girl looked at him gently. The struggle between them
+was over; she had had her way--to save the preacher, impostor though he
+was; and now she felt, as she had never felt before in the same fashion,
+that this man was a man of men.
+
+"Tim, you do not understand," she urged. "You say he was a landsharp in
+the South, and that he had to leave--"
+
+"He had to vamoose, or take tar and feathers."
+
+"But he had to leave. And he came here preaching and healing; and he is a
+hypocrite and a fraud--I know that now, my eyes are opened. He didn't do
+what he said he could do, and it killed Mary Jewell--the shock; and there
+were other things he said he could do, and didn't do them. Perhaps he is
+all bad, as you say--I don't think so. But he did some good things, and
+through him I've felt as I've never felt before about God and life, and
+about Walt and the baby--as though I'll see them again, sure. I've never
+felt that before. It was all as if they were lost in the hills, and no
+trail home, or out to where they are. Like as not God was working in him
+all the time, Tim; and he failed because he counted too much on the little
+he had, and made up for what he hadn't by what he pretended."
+
+"He can pretend to himself, or God Almighty, or that lot down there"--he
+jerked a finger toward the town--"but to you, a girl, and a Pioneer--"
+
+A flash of humor shot into her eyes at his last words, then they filled
+with tears, through which the smile shone. To pretend to "a Pioneer"--the
+splendid vanity and egotism of the West!
+
+"He didn't pretend to me, Tim. People don't usually have to _pretend_ to
+like me."
+
+"You know what I'm driving at."
+
+"Oh yes, I know. And whatever he is, you've said that you will save him.
+I'm straight, you know that. Somehow, what I felt from his
+preaching--well, everything got sort of mixed up with him, and he was--was
+different. It was like the long dream of Walt and the baby, and he a part
+of it. I don't know what I felt, or what I might have felt for him. I'm a
+woman--I can't understand. But I know what I feel now. I never want to see
+him again on earth--or in heaven. It needn't be necessary even in heaven;
+but what happened between God and me through him stays, Tim; and so you
+must help him get away safe. It's in your hands--you say they left it to
+you."
+
+"I don't trust that too much."
+
+Suddenly he pointed out of the window toward the town. "See, I'm right;
+there they are, a dozen of 'em mounted. They're off, to run him down."
+
+Her face paled; she glanced toward the Hill of Healing. "He's got an
+hour's start," she said; "he'll get into the mountains and be safe."
+
+"If they don't catch him 'fore that."
+
+"Or if you don't get to him first," she said, with nervous insistence.
+
+He turned to her with a hard look; then, as he met her soft, fearless,
+beautiful eyes, his own grew gentle.
+
+"It takes a lot of doing. Yet I'll do it for you, Laura," he said. "But
+it's hard on the Pioneers."
+
+Once more her humor flashed, and it seemed to him that "getting religion"
+was not so depressing after all--wouldn't be, anyhow, when this nasty job
+was over.
+
+"The Pioneers will get over it, Tim," she rejoined. "They've swallowed a
+lot in their time. Heaven's gate will have to be pretty wide to let in a
+real Pioneer," she added. "He takes up so much room--ah, Timothy Denton!"
+she added, with an outburst of whimsical merriment.
+
+"It hasn't spoiled you--being converted--has it?" he said, and gave a
+quick little laugh, which somehow did more for his ancient cause with her
+than all he had ever said or done. Then he stepped outside and swung into
+his saddle.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+It had been a hard and anxious ride, but Tim had won, and was keeping his
+promise. The night had fallen before he got to the mountains, which he and
+the Pioneers had seen the Faith Healer enter. They had had four miles'
+start of Tim, and had ridden fiercely, and they entered the gulch into
+which the refugee had disappeared still two miles ahead.
+
+The invincibles had seen Tim coming, but they had determined to make a
+sure thing of it, and would themselves do what was necessary with the
+impostor, and take no chances. So they pressed their horses, and he saw
+them swallowed by the trees as darkness gathered. Changing his course, he
+entered the familiar hills, which he knew better than any Pioneer of
+Jansen, and rode a diagonal course over the trail they would take. But
+night fell suddenly, and there was nothing to do but to wait till morning.
+There was comfort in this--the others must also wait, and the refugee
+could not go far. In any case, he must make for settlement or perish,
+since he had left behind his sheep and his cow.
+
+It fell out better than Tim hoped. The Pioneers were as good hunters as
+was he, their instinct was as sure, their scouts and trackers were many,
+and he was but one. They found the Faith Healer by a little stream, eating
+bread and honey, and, like an ancient woodlander, drinking from a
+horn--relic of his rank imposture. He made no resistance. They tried him,
+formally if perfunctorily; he admitted his imposture, and begged for his
+life. Then they stripped him naked, tied a bit of canvas round his waist,
+fastened him to a tree, and were about to complete his punishment when Tim
+Denton burst upon them.
+
+Whether the rage Tim showed was all real or not; whether his accusations
+of bad faith came from so deeply wounded a spirit as he would have them
+believe, he was not likely to tell; but he claimed the prisoner as his
+own, and declined to say what he meant to do. When, however, they saw the
+abject terror of the Faith Healer as he begged not to be left alone with
+Tim--for they had not meant death, and Ingles thought he read death in
+Tim's ferocious eyes--they laughed cynically, and left it to Tim to uphold
+the honor of Jansen and the Pioneers.
+
+As they disappeared, the last thing they saw was Tim with his back to
+them, his hands on his hips, and a knife clasped in his fingers.
+
+"He'll lift his scalp and make a monk of him," chuckled the oldest and
+hardest of them.
+
+"Dat Tim will cut his heart out, I t'ink--_bagosh_!" said Nicolle Terasse,
+and took a drink of white whiskey.
+
+For a long time Tim stood looking at the other, until no sound came from
+the woods whither the Pioneers had gone. Then at last, slowly and with no
+roughness, as the terror-stricken impostor shrank and withered, he cut the
+cords.
+
+"Dress yourself," he said, shortly, and sat down beside the stream, and
+washed his face and hands as though to cleanse them from contamination. He
+appeared to take no notice of the other, though his ears keenly noted
+every movement.
+
+The impostor dressed nervously, yet slowly; he scarce comprehended
+anything, except that he was not in immediate danger. When he had
+finished, he stood looking at Tim, who was still seated on a log plunged
+in meditation.
+
+It seemed hours before Tim turned round, and now his face was quiet, if
+set and determined. He walked slowly over, and stood looking at his victim
+for some time without speaking. The other's eyes dropped, and a grayness
+stole over his features. This steely calm was even more frightening than
+the ferocity which had previously been in his captor's face. At length the
+tense silence was broken:
+
+"Wasn't the old game good enough? Was it played out? Why did you take to
+this? Why did you do it, Scranton?"
+
+The voice quavered a little in reply: "I don't know. Something sort of
+pushed me into it."
+
+"How did you come to start it?"
+
+There was a long silence, then the husky reply came:
+
+"I got a sickener last time--"
+
+"Yes, I remember, at Waywing."
+
+"I got into the desert, and had hard times--awful for a while. I hadn't
+enough to eat, and I didn't know whether I'd die by hunger or fever or
+Indians--or snakes."
+
+"Oh, you were seeing snakes!" said Tim, grimly.
+
+"Not the kind you mean; I hadn't anything to drink--"
+
+"No, you never did drink, I remember--just was crooked, and slopped over
+women. Well, about the snakes?"
+
+"I caught them to eat, and they were poison-snakes often. And I wasn't
+quick at first to get them safe by the neck--they're quick, too."
+
+Tim laughed inwardly. "Getting your food by the sweat of your brow--and a
+snake in it, same as Adam! Well, was it in the desert you got your taste
+for honey, too, same as John the Baptist--that was his name, if I
+recomember?" He looked at the tin of honey on the ground.
+
+"Not in the desert, but when I got to the grass-country."
+
+"How long were you in the desert?"
+
+"Close to a year."
+
+Tim's eyes opened wider. He saw that the man was speaking the truth.
+
+"Got to thinking in the desert, and sort of willing things to come to
+pass, and mooning along, you and the sky and the vultures and the hot
+hills and the snakes and the flowers--eh?"
+
+"There weren't any flowers till I got to the grass-country."
+
+"Oh, cuss me, if you ain't simple for your kind! I know all about that.
+And when you got to the grass-country you just picked up the honey and the
+flowers, and a calf and a lamb and a mule here and there, 'without money
+and without price,' and walked on--that it?"
+
+The other shrank before the steel in the voice, and nodded his head.
+
+"But you kept thinking in the grass-country of what you'd felt and said
+and done--and willed, in the desert, I suppose?"
+
+Again the other nodded.
+
+"It seemed to you in the desert as if you'd saved your own life a hundred
+times, as if you'd just willed food and drink and safety to come; as if
+Providence had been at your elbow?"
+
+"It was like a dream, and it stayed with me. I had to think in the desert
+things I'd never thought before," was the half-abstracted answer.
+
+"You _felt_ good in the desert?"
+
+The other hung his head in shame.
+
+"Makes you seem pretty small, doesn't it? You didn't stay long enough, I
+guess, to get what you were feeling for; you started in on the new racket
+too soon. You never got really possessed that you was a sinner. I expect
+that's it."
+
+The other made no reply.
+
+"Well, I don't know much about such things. I was loose brought up; but
+I've a friend"--Laura was before his eyes--"that says religion's all
+right, and long ago as I can remember my mother used to pray three times a
+day--with grace at meals, too. I know there's a lot in it for them that
+need it; and there seems to be a lot of folks needing it, if I'm to judge
+by folks down there at Jansen, 'specially when there's the laying-on of
+hands and the Healing Springs. Oh, that was a pigsty game, Scranton, that
+about God giving you the Healing Springs, like Moses and the rock! Why, I
+discovered them springs myself two years ago, before I went South, and I
+guess God wasn't helping me any--not after I've kept out of His way as I
+have. But, anyhow, religion's real; that's my sense of it; and you can get
+it, I bet, if you try. I've seen it got. A friend of mine got it--got it
+under your preaching; not from you; but you was the accident that brought
+it about, I expect. It's funny--it's merakilous, but it's so. Kneel down!"
+he added, with peremptory suddenness. "Kneel, Scranton!"
+
+In fear the other knelt.
+
+"You're going to get religion now--here. You're going to pray for what you
+didn't get--and almost got--in the desert. You're going to ask forgiveness
+for all your damn tricks, and pray like a fanning-mill for the Spirit to
+come down. You ain't a scoundrel at heart--a friend of mine says so.
+You're a weak vessel--cracked, perhaps. You've got to be saved, and start
+right over again--and 'Praise God from whom all blessings flow!'
+Pray--pray, Scranton, and tell the whole truth, and get it--get religion.
+Pray like blazes. You go on, and pray out loud. Remember the desert, and
+Mary Jewell, and your mother--did you have a mother, Scranton?--say, did
+you have a mother, lad?"
+
+Tim's voice suddenly lowered before the last word, for the Faith Healer
+had broken down in a torrent of tears.
+
+"Oh, my mother--O God!" he groaned.
+
+"Say, that's right--that's right--go on," said the other and drew back a
+little, and sat down on a log.
+
+The man on his knees was convulsed with misery. Denton, the world,
+disappeared. He prayed in agony.
+
+Presently Tim moved uneasily, then got up and walked about; and at last,
+with a strange, awed look, when an hour was past, he stole back into the
+shadow of the trees while still the wounded soul poured out its misery and
+repentance.
+
+Time moved on. A curious shyness possessed Tim now, a thing which he had
+never felt in his life. He moved about self-consciously, awkwardly, until
+at last there was a sudden silence over by the brook.
+
+Tim looked, and saw the face of the kneeling man cleared and quiet and
+shining. He hesitated, then stepped out, and came over.
+
+"Have you got it?" he asked, quietly. "It's noon now."
+
+"May God help me to redeem my past," answered the other, in a new voice.
+
+"You've got it--sure?" Tim's voice was meditative.
+
+"God has spoken to me," was the simple answer.
+
+"I've got a friend'll be glad to hear that," he said; and once more, in
+imagination, he saw Laura Sloly standing at the door of her home, with a
+light in her eyes he had never seen before.
+
+"You'll want some money for your journey?" Tim asked.
+
+"I want nothing but to go away--far away," was the low reply.
+
+"Well, you've lived in the desert--I guess you can live in the
+grass-country," came the dry response, "Good-bye--and good-luck,
+Scranton."
+
+Tim turned to go, moved on a few steps, then looked back.
+
+"Don't be afraid--they'll not follow," he said. "I'll fix it for you all
+right."
+
+But the man appeared not to hear; he was still on his knees.
+
+Tim faced the woods once more.
+
+He was about to mount his horse when he heard a step behind him. He turned
+sharply--and faced Laura.
+
+"I couldn't rest. I came out this morning. I've seen everything," she
+said.
+
+"You didn't trust me," he said, heavily.
+
+"I never did anything else," she answered.
+
+He gazed half-fearfully into her eyes. "Well?" he asked. "I've done my
+best, as I said I would."
+
+"Tim," she said, and slipped a hand in his, "would you mind the
+religion--if you had me?"
+
+
+
+
+THE LITTLE WIDOW OF JANSEN
+
+
+Her advent to Jansen was propitious. Smallpox in its most virulent form
+had broken out in the French-Canadian portion of the town, and, coming
+with some professional nurses from the East, herself an amateur, to attend
+the sufferers, she worked with such skill and devotion that the official
+thanks of the Corporation were offered her, together with a tiny gold
+watch, the gift of grateful citizens. But she still remained on at Jansen,
+saying always, however, that she was "going East in the spring."
+
+Five years had passed, and still she had not gone East, but remained
+perched in the rooms she had first taken, over the Imperial Bank, while
+the town grew up swiftly round her. And even when the young bank manager
+married, and wished to take over the rooms, she sent him to the
+right-about from his own premises in her gay, masterful way. The young
+manager behaved well in the circumstances, because he had asked her to
+marry him, and she had dismissed him with a warning against challenging
+his own happiness--that was the way she had put it. Perhaps he was galled
+the less because others had striven for the same prize, and had been
+thrust back, with an almost tender misgiving as to their sense of
+self-preservation and sanity. Some of them were eligible enough, and all
+were of some position in the West. Yet she smiled them firmly away, to the
+wonder of Jansen, and to its satisfaction, for was it not a tribute to all
+that she would distinguish no particular unit by her permanent favor? But
+for one so sprightly and almost frivolous in manner at times, the
+self-denial seemed incongruous. She was unconventional enough to sit on
+the sidewalk with a half-dozen children round her blowing bubbles, or to
+romp in any garden, or in the street, playing Puss-in-the-ring; yet this
+only made her more popular. Jansen's admiration was at its highest,
+however, when she rode in the annual steeplechase with the best horsemen
+of the province. She had the gift of doing as well as of being.
+
+"'Tis the light heart she has, and slippin' in and out of things like a
+hummin'-bird, no easier to ketch and no longer to stay," said Finden, the
+rich Irish landbroker, suggestively to Father Bourassa, the huge
+French-Canadian priest who had worked with her through all the dark weeks
+of the smallpox epidemic, and who knew what lay beneath the outer gayety.
+She had been buoyant of spirit beside the beds of the sick, and her words
+were full of raillery and humor, yet there was ever a gentle note behind
+all; and the priest had seen her eyes shining with tears as she bent over
+some stricken sufferer bound upon an interminable journey.
+
+"Bedad! as bright a little spark as ever struck off the steel," added
+Finden to the priest, with a sidelong, inquisitive look, "but a heart no
+bigger than a marrowfat pea--selfishness, all self. Keepin' herself for
+herself when there's many a good man needin' her. Mother o' Moses, how
+many! From Terry O'Ryan, brother of a peer, at Latouche, to Bernard Bapty,
+son of a millionaire, at Vancouver, there's a string o' them. All pride
+and self; and as fair a lot they've been as ever entered for the Marriage
+Cup. Now isn't that so, father?"
+
+Finden's brogue did not come from a plebeian origin. It was part of his
+commercial equipment, an asset of his boyhood spent among the peasants on
+the family estate in Galway.
+
+Father Bourassa fanned himself with the black broadbrim hat he wore, and
+looked benignly but quizzically on the wiry, sharp-faced Irishman.
+
+"You t'ink her heart is leetla. But perhaps it is your mind is not so
+big enough to see--_hien_?" The priest laughed noiselessly, showing
+white teeth. "Was it so selfish in Madame to refuse the name of
+Finden--_n'est-ce pas_?"
+
+Finden flushed, then burst into a laugh. "I'd almost forgotten I was one
+of them--the first almost. Blessed be he that expects nothing, for he'll
+get it sure. It was my duty, and I did it. Was she to feel that Jansen did
+not price her high? Bedad, father, I rose betimes and did it, before anny
+man should say he set me the lead. Before the carpet in the parlor was
+down, and with the bare boards soundin' to my words, I offered her the
+name of Finden."
+
+"And so--the first of the long line! _Bien_, it is an honor." The priest
+paused a moment, looked at Finden with a curious reflective look, and then
+said, "And so you t'ink there is no one; that she will say yes not at
+all--no?"
+
+They were sitting on Father Bourassa's verandah, on the outskirts of the
+town, above the great river, along which had travelled millions of bygone
+people, fighting, roaming, hunting, trapping; and they could hear it
+rushing past, see the swirling eddies, the impetuous currents, the
+occasional rafts moving majestically down the stream. They were facing the
+wild North, while civilization was hacking and hewing and ploughing its
+way to newer and newer cities, in an empire ever spreading to the Pole.
+
+Finden's glance loitered on this scene before he replied. At length,
+screwing up one eye, and with a suggestive smile, he answered: "Sure, it's
+all a matter of time, to the selfishest woman. 'Tis not the same with
+women as with men; you see, they don't get younger--that's a point.
+But"--he gave a meaning glance at the priest--"but perhaps she's not going
+to wait for that, after all. And there he rides, a fine figure of a man,
+too, if I have to say it!"
+
+"M'sieu' Varley?" the priest responded, and watched a galloping horseman
+to whom Finden had pointed till he rounded a corner of a little wood.
+
+"Varley, the great London surgeon, sure! Say, father, it's a hundred to
+one she'd take him if--"
+
+There was a curious look in Father Bourassa's face, a cloud in his eyes.
+He sighed. "London, it is ver' far away," he remarked, obliquely.
+
+"What's to that? If she is with the right man, near or far is nothing."
+
+"So far--from home," said the priest, reflectively, but his eyes furtively
+watched the other's face.
+
+"But home's where man and wife are."
+
+The priest now looked him straight in the eyes. "Then, as you say, she
+will not marry M'sieu' Varley--_hein_?"
+
+The humor died out of Finden's face. His eyes met the priest's eyes
+steadily. "Did I say that? Then my tongue wasn't making a fool of me,
+after all. How did you guess I knew--everything, father?"
+
+"A priest knows many t'ings--so."
+
+There was a moment of gloom, then the Irishman brightened. He came
+straight to the heart of the mystery around which they had been
+manoeuvring. "Have you seen her husband--Meydon--this year? It isn't his
+usual time to come yet."
+
+Father Bourassa's eyes drew those of his friend into the light of a new
+understanding and revelation. They understood and trusted each other.
+
+[Illustration: "AS PURTY A WOMAN, TOO--AS PURTY AND AS STRAIGHT BEWHILES"]
+
+"_Hélas!_ He is there in the hospital," he answered, and nodded toward a
+building not far away, which had been part of an old Hudson Bay Company's
+fort. It had been hastily adapted as a hospital for the smallpox victims.
+
+"Oh, it's Meydon, is it, that bad case I heard of to-day?"
+
+The priest nodded again and pointed. "_Voilà_, Madame Meydon, she is
+coming. She has seen him--her hoosban'."
+
+Finden's eyes followed the gesture. The little widow of Jansen was coming
+from the hospital, walking slowly toward the river.
+
+"As purty a woman, too--as purty and as straight bewhiles. What is the
+matter with him--with Meydon?" Finden asked, after a moment.
+
+"An accident in the woods--so. He arrive, it is las' night, from Great
+Slave Lake."
+
+Finden sighed. "Ten years ago he was a man to look at twice--before he did
+_It_ and got away. Now his own mother wouldn't know him--bad 'cess to him!
+I knew him from the cradle almost. I spotted him here by a knife-cut I
+gave him in the hand when we were lads together. A divil of a timper
+always both of us had, but the good-nature was with me, and I didn't drink
+and gamble and carry a pistol. It's ten years since he did the killing,
+down in Quebec, and I don't suppose the police will get him now. He's been
+counted dead. I recognized him here the night after I asked her how she
+liked the name of Finden. She doesn't know that I ever knew him. And he
+didn't recognize me--twenty-five years since we met before! It would be
+better if he went under the sod. Is he pretty sick, father?"
+
+"He will die unless the surgeon's knife it cure him before twenty-four
+hours, and--"
+
+"And Doctor Brydon is sick, and Doctor Hadley away at Winnipeg, and this
+is two hundred miles from nowhere! It looks as if the police'll never get
+him, eh?"
+
+"You have not tell any one--never?"
+
+Finden laughed. "Though I'm not a priest, I can lock myself up as tight as
+anny. There's no tongue that's so tied, when tying's needed, as the one
+that babbles most bewhiles. Babbling covers a lot of secrets."
+
+"So you t'ink it better Meydon should die, as Hadley is away and Brydon is
+sick--_hein_?"
+
+"Oh, I think--"
+
+Finden stopped short, for a horse's hoofs sounded on the turf beside the
+house, and presently Varley, the great London surgeon, rounded the corner
+and stopped his horse in front of the veranda.
+
+He lifted his hat to the priest. "I hear there's a bad case at the
+hospital," he said.
+
+"It is ver' dangerous," answered Father Bourassa; "but, _voilà_, come in!
+There is something cool to drink. Ah, yes, he is ver' bad, that man from
+the Great Slave Lake."
+
+Inside the house, with the cooling drinks, Varley pressed his questions,
+and presently, much interested, told at some length of singular cases
+which had passed through his hands--one a man with his neck broken, who
+had lived for six months afterward.
+
+"Broken as a man's neck is broken by hanging--dislocation, really--the
+disjointing of the _medulla oblongata_, if you don't mind technicalities,"
+he said. "But I kept him living just the same. Time enough for him to
+repent in and get ready to go. A most interesting case. He was a criminal,
+too, and wanted to die; but you have to keep life going if you can, to the
+last inch of resistance."
+
+The priest looked thoughtfully out of the window; Finden's eyes were
+screwed up in a questioning way, but neither made any response to Varley's
+remarks. There was a long minute's silence. They were all three roused by
+hearing a light footstep on the veranda.
+
+Father Bourassa put down his glass and hastened into the hallway. Finden
+caught a glimpse of a woman's figure, and, without a word, passed abruptly
+from the dining-room, where they were, into the priest's study, leaving
+Varley alone. Varley turned to look after him, stared, and shrugged his
+shoulders.
+
+"The manners of the West," he said, good-humoredly, and turned again to
+the hallway, from whence came the sound of the priest's voice. Presently
+there was another voice--a woman's. He flushed slightly and involuntarily
+straightened himself.
+
+"Valerie," he murmured.
+
+An instant afterward she entered the room with the priest. She was dressed
+in a severely simple suit of gray, which set off to advantage her slim,
+graceful figure. There seemed no reason why she should have been called
+the little widow of Jansen, for she was not small, but she was very finely
+and delicately made, and the name had been but an expression of Jansen's
+paternal feeling for her. She had always had a good deal of fresh color,
+but to-day she seemed pale, though her eyes had a strange disturbing
+light. It was not that they brightened on seeing this man before her; they
+had been brighter, burningly bright, when she left the hospital, where,
+since it had been built, she had been the one visitor of authority--Jansen
+had given her that honor. She had a gift of smiling, and she smiled now,
+but it came from grace of mind rather than from humor. As Finden had said,
+"She was forever acting, and never doin' any harm by it."
+
+Certainly she was doing no harm by it now; nevertheless, it was acting.
+Could it be otherwise, with what was behind her life--a husband who had
+ruined her youth, had committed homicide, had escaped capture, but who had
+not subsequently died, as the world believed he had done, so
+circumstantial was the evidence. He was not man enough to make the
+accepted belief in his death a fact. What could she do but act, since the
+day she got a letter from the Far North, which took her out to Jansen,
+nominally to nurse those stricken with smallpox under Father Bourassa's
+care, actually to be where her wretched husband could come to her once a
+year, as he had asked with an impossible selfishness?
+
+Each year she had seen him for an hour or less, giving him money, speaking
+to him over a gulf so wide that it seemed sometimes as though her voice
+could not be heard across it; each year opening a grave to look at the
+embalmed face of one who had long since died in shame, which only brought
+back the cruellest of all memories, that which one would give one's best
+years to forget. With a fortitude beyond description she had faced it,
+gently, quietly, but firmly faced it--firmly, because she had to be firm
+in keeping him within those bounds the invasion of which would have killed
+her. And after the first struggle with his unchangeable brutality it had
+been easier: for into his degenerate brain there had come a faint
+understanding of the real situation and of her. He had kept his side of
+the gulf, but gloating on this touch between the old luxurious, indulgent
+life, with its refined vices, and this present coarse, hard life, where
+pleasures were few and gross. The free Northern life of toil and hardship
+had not refined him. He greedily hung over this treasure, which was not
+for his spending, yet was his own--as though in a bank he had hoards of
+money which he might not withdraw.
+
+So the years had gone on, with their recurrent dreaded anniversaries,
+carrying misery almost too great to be borne by this woman mated to the
+loathed phantom of a sad, dead life; and when this black day of each year
+was over, for a few days afterwards she went nowhere, was seen by none.
+Yet, when she did appear again, it was with her old laughing manner, her
+cheerful and teasing words, her quick response to the emotions of others.
+
+So it had gone till Varley had come to follow the open-air life for four
+months, after a heavy illness due to blood-poisoning got in his surgical
+work in London. She had been able to live her life without too great a
+struggle till he came. Other men had flattered her vanity, had given her a
+sense of power, had made her understand her possibilities, but nothing
+more--nothing of what Varley brought with him. And before three months had
+gone, she knew that no man had ever interested her as Varley had done. Ten
+years before, she would not have appreciated or understood him, this
+intellectual, clean-shaven, rigidly abstemious man, whose pleasures
+belonged to the fishing-rod and the gun and the horse, and who had come to
+be so great a friend of him who had been her best friend--Father Bourassa.
+Father Bourassa had come to know the truth--not from her, for she had ever
+been a Protestant, but from her husband, who, Catholic by birth and a
+renegade from all religion, had had a moment of spurious emotion, when he
+went and confessed to Father Bourassa and got absolution, pleading for the
+priest's care of his wife. Afterward Father Bourassa made up his mind that
+the confession had a purpose behind it other than repentance, and he
+deeply resented the use to which he thought he was being put--a kind of
+spy upon the beautiful woman whom Jansen loved, and who, in spite of any
+outward flippancy, was above reproach.
+
+In vital things the instinct becomes abnormally acute, and, one day, when
+the priest looked at her commiseratingly, she had divined what moved him.
+However it was, she drove him into a corner with a question to which he
+dare not answer yes, but to which he might not answer no, and did not; and
+she realized that he knew the truth, and she was the better for his
+knowing, though her secret was no longer a secret. She was not aware that
+Finden also knew. Then Varley came, bringing a new joy and interest in her
+life, and a new suffering also, for she realized that if she were free,
+and Varley asked her to marry him, she would consent.
+
+But when he did ask her, she said no with a pang that cut her heart in
+two. He had stayed his four months, and it was now six months, and he
+was going at last--to-morrow. He had stayed to give her time to learn to
+say yes, and to take her back with him to London; and she knew that he
+would speak again to-day, and that she must say no again; but she had
+kept him from saying the words till now. And the man who had ruined
+her life and had poisoned her true spirit was come back broken and
+battered. He was hanging between life and death; and now--for he was
+going to-morrow--Varley would speak again.
+
+The half-hour she had just spent in the hospital with Meydon had tried her
+cruelly. She had left the building in a vortex of conflicting emotions,
+with the call of duty and of honor ringing through a thousand other voices
+of temptation and desire, the inner pleadings for a little happiness while
+yet she was young. After she married Meydon, there had only been a few
+short weeks of joy before her black disillusion came, and she had realized
+how bitter must be her martyrdom.
+
+When she left the hospital, she seemed moving in a dream, as one
+intoxicated by some elixir might move unheeding among event and accident
+and vexing life and roaring multitudes. And all the while the river
+flowing through the endless prairies, high-banked, ennobled by living
+woods, lipped with green, kept surging in her ears, inviting her, alluring
+her--alluring her with a force too deep and powerful for weak human nature
+to bear for long. It would ease her pain, it said; it would still the
+tumult and the storm; it would solve her problem, it would give her peace.
+But as she moved along the river-bank among the trees, she met the little
+niece of the priest, who lived in his house, singing, as though she was
+born but to sing, a song which Finden had written and Father Bourassa had
+set to music. Did not the distant West know Father Bourassa's gift, and
+did not Protestants attend Mass to hear him play the organ afterward? The
+fresh, clear voice of the child rang through the trees, stealing the
+stricken heart away from the lure of the river:
+
+"Will you come back home, where the young larks are singin'?
+The door is open wide, and the bells of Lynn are ringin';
+      There's a little lake I know,
+      And a boat you used to row
+To the shore beyond that's quiet--will you come back home?
+
+"Will you come back, darlin'? Never heed the pain and blightin',
+Never trouble that you're wounded, that you bear the scars of fightin';
+      Here's the luck o' Heaven to you,
+      Here's the hand of love will brew you
+The cup of peace--ah, darlin', will you come back home?"
+
+She stood listening for a few moments, and, under the spell of the fresh,
+young voice, the homely, heart-searching words, and the intimate sweetness
+of the woods, the despairing apathy lifted slowly away. She started
+forward again with a new understanding, her footsteps quickened. She would
+go to Father Bourassa. He would understand. She would tell him all. He
+would help her to do what now she knew she must do, ask Leonard Varley to
+save her husband's life--Leonard Varley to save her husband's life!
+
+When she stepped upon the veranda of the priest's house, she did not know
+that Varley was inside. She had no time to think. She was ushered into the
+room where he was, with the confusing fact of his presence fresh upon her.
+She had had but a word or two with the priest, but enough for him to know
+what she meant to do, and that it must be done at once.
+
+Varley advanced to meet her. She shuddered inwardly to think what a
+difference there was between the fallen creature she had left behind in
+the hospital and this tall, dark, self-contained man, whose name was
+familiar in the surgeries of Europe, who had climbed from being the son of
+a clockmaker to his present distinguished place.
+
+"Have you come for absolution, also?" he asked, with a smile; "or is it to
+get a bill of excommunication against your only enemy--there couldn't be
+more than one?"
+
+Cheerful as his words were, he was shrewdly observing her, for her
+paleness and the strange light in her eyes gave him a sense of anxiety. He
+wondered what trouble was on her.
+
+"Excommunication?" he repeated.
+
+The unintended truth went home. She winced, even as she responded with
+that quaint note in her voice which gave humor to her speech. "Yes,
+excommunication," she replied; "but why an enemy? Do we not need to
+excommunicate our friends sometimes?"
+
+"That is a hard saying," he answered, soberly.
+
+Tears sprang to her eyes, but she mastered herself, and brought the crisis
+abruptly.
+
+"I want you to save a man's life," she said, with her eyes looking
+straight into his. "Will you do it?"
+
+His face grew grave and eager. "I want you to save a man's happiness," he
+answered. "Will you do it?"
+
+"That man yonder will die unless your skill saves him," she urged.
+
+"This man here will go away unhappy and alone, unless your heart befriends
+him," he replied, coming closer to her. "At sunrise to-morrow he goes." He
+tried to take her hand.
+
+"Oh, please, please," she pleaded, with a quick, protesting gesture.
+"Sunrise is far off, but the man's fate is near, and you must save him.
+You only can do so, for Doctor Hadley is away, and Doctor Brydon is sick,
+and in any case Doctor Brydon dare not attempt the operation alone. It is
+too critical and difficult, he says."
+
+"So I have heard," he answered, with a new note in his voice, his
+professional instinct roused in spite of himself. "Who is this man? What
+interests you in him?"
+
+"To how many unknown people have you given your skill for nothing--your
+skill and all your experience to utter strangers, no matter how low or
+poor! Is it not so? Well, I cannot give to strangers what you have given
+to so many, but I can help in my own way."
+
+"You want me to see the man at once?"
+
+"If you will."
+
+"What is his name? I know of his accident and the circumstances."
+
+She hesitated for an instant, then said, "He is called Draper--a trapper
+and a woodsman."
+
+"But I was going away to-morrow at sunrise. All my arrangements are made,"
+he urged, his eyes holding hers, his passion swimming in his eyes again.
+
+"But you will not see a man die, if you can save him?" she pleaded, unable
+now to meet his look, its mastery and its depth.
+
+Her heart had almost leaped with joy at the suggestion that he could not
+stay; but as suddenly self-reproach and shame filled her mind, and she had
+challenged him so. But yet, what right had she to sacrifice this man she
+loved to the perverted criminal who had spoiled her youth and taken away
+from her every dear illusion of her life and heart? By every right of
+justice and humanity she was no more the wife of Henry Meydon than if she
+had never seen him. He had forfeited every claim upon her, dragged in the
+mire her unspotted life--unspotted, for in all temptation, in her
+defenceless position, she had kept the whole commandment; she had, while
+at the mercy of her own temperament, fought her way through all, with a
+weeping heart and laughing lips. Had she not longed for a little home with
+a great love, and a strong, true man? Ah, it had been lonely, bitterly
+lonely! Yet she had remained true to the scoundrel, from whom she could
+not free herself without putting him in the grasp of the law to atone for
+his crime. She was punished for his crimes; she was denied the exercise of
+her womanhood in order to shield him. Still she remembered that once she
+had loved him, those years ago, when he first won her heart from those so
+much better than he, who loved her so much more honestly; and this memory
+had helped her in a way. She had tried to be true to it, that dead, lost
+thing, of which this man who came once a year to see her, and now, lying
+with his life at stake in the hospital, was the repellent ghost.
+
+"Ah, you will not see him die?" she urged.
+
+"It seems to move you greatly what happens to this man," he said, his
+determined dark eyes searching hers, for she baffled him. If she could
+feel so much for a "casual," why not a little more feeling for him?
+Suddenly, as he drew her eyes to him again, there came the conviction that
+they were full of feeling for him. They were sending a message, an
+appealing, passionate message, which told him more than he had ever heard
+from her or seen in her face before. Yes, she was his! Without a word
+spoken she had told him so. What, then, held her back? But women were a
+race by themselves, and he knew that he must wait till she chose to have
+him know what she had unintentionally conveyed but now.
+
+"Yes, I am moved," she continued, slowly. "Who can tell what this man
+might do with his life if it is saved! Don't you think of that? It isn't
+the importance of a life that's at stake; it's the importance of living;
+and we do not live alone, do we?"
+
+His mind was made up. "I will not, cannot promise anything till I have
+seen him. But I will go and see him, and I'll send you word later what I
+can do or not do. Will that satisfy you? If I cannot do it, I will come to
+say good-bye."
+
+Her face was set with suppressed feeling. She held out her hand to him
+impulsively, and was about to speak, but suddenly caught the hand away
+again from his thrilling grasp and, turning hurriedly, left the room. In
+the hall she met Father Bourassa.
+
+"Go with him to the hospital," she whispered, and disappeared through the
+doorway.
+
+Immediately after she had gone, a man came driving hard to bring Father
+Bourassa to visit a dying Catholic in the prairie, and it was Finden who
+accompanied Varley to the hospital, waited for him till his examination of
+the "casual" was concluded, and met him outside.
+
+"Can it be done?" he asked of Varley. "I'll take word to Father
+Bourassa."
+
+"It can be done--it will be done," answered Varley, absently. "I do not
+understand the man. He has been in a different sphere of life. He tried to
+hide it, but the speech--occasionally! I wonder."
+
+"You wonder if he's worth saving?"
+
+Varley shrugged his shoulders impatiently. "No; that's not what I meant."
+
+Finden smiled to himself. "Is it a difficult case?" he asked.
+
+"Critical and delicate; but it has been my specialty."
+
+"One of the local doctors couldn't do it, I suppose?"
+
+"They would be foolish to try."
+
+"And you are going away at sunrise to-morrow?"
+
+"Who told you that?" Varley's voice was abrupt, impatient.
+
+"I heard you say so--everybody knows it.... That's a bad man yonder,
+Varley." He jerked his thumb toward the hospital. "A terrible bad man,
+he's been. A gentleman once, and fell down--fell down hard. He's done more
+harm than most men. He's broken a woman's heart and spoiled her life, and,
+if he lives, there's no chance for her, none at all. He killed a man, and
+the law wants him; and she can't free herself without ruining him; and she
+can't marry the man she loves because of that villain yonder, crying for
+his life to be saved. By Josh and by Joan, but it's a shame, a dirty
+shame, it is!"
+
+Suddenly Varley turned and gripped his arm with fingers of steel.
+
+"His name--his real name?"
+
+"His name's Meydon--and a dirty shame it is, Varley."
+
+Varley was white. He had been leading his horse and talking to Finden. He
+mounted quickly now, and was about to ride away, but stopped short again.
+"Who knows--who knows the truth?" he asked.
+
+"Father Bourassa and me--no others," he answered. "I knew Meydon thirty
+years ago."
+
+There was a moment's hesitation, then Varley said, hoarsely, "Tell
+me--tell me all."
+
+When all was told, he turned his horse toward the wide waste of the
+prairie, and galloped away. Finden watched him till he was lost to view
+beyond the bluff.
+
+"Now, a man like that, you can't guess what he'll do," he said,
+reflectively. "He's a high-stepper, and there's no telling what
+foolishness will get hold of him. It'd be safer if he got lost on the
+prairie for twenty-four hours. He said that Meydon's only got twenty-four
+hours, if the trick isn't done! Well--"
+
+He took a penny from his pocket. "I'll toss for it. Heads he does it, and
+tails he doesn't."
+
+He tossed. It came down heads. "Well, there's one more fool in the world
+than I thought," he said, philosophically, as though he had settled the
+question; as though the man riding away into the prairie with a dark
+problem to be solved had told the penny what he meant to do.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mrs. Meydon, Father Bourassa, and Finden stood in the little waiting-room
+of the hospital at Jansen, one at each window, and watched the wild
+thunderstorm which had broken over the prairie. The white heliographs of
+the elements flashed their warnings across the black sky, and the roaring
+artillery of the thunder came after, making the circle of prairie and tree
+and stream a theatre of anger and conflict. The streets of Jansen were
+washed with flood, and the green and gold things of garden and field and
+harvest crumbled beneath the sheets of rain.
+
+The faces at the window of the little room of the hospital, however, were
+but half-conscious of the storm; it seemed only an accompaniment of their
+thoughts, to typify the elements of tragedy surrounding them.
+
+For Varley there had been but one thing to do. A life might be saved, and
+it was his duty to save it. He had ridden back from the prairie as the sun
+was setting the night before, and had made all arrangements at the
+hospital, giving orders that Meydon should have no food whatever till the
+operation was performed the next afternoon, and nothing to drink except a
+little brandy-and-water.
+
+The operation was performed successfully, and Varley had issued from the
+operating-room with the look of a man who had gone through an ordeal which
+had taxed his nerve to the utmost, to find Valerie Meydon waiting, with a
+piteous, dazed look in her eyes. But this look passed when she heard him
+say, "All right!"
+
+The words brought a sense of relief, for if he had failed, it would have
+seemed almost unbearable in the circumstances--the cup of trembling must
+be drunk to the dregs.
+
+Few words had passed between them, and he had gone, while she remained
+behind with Father Bourassa, till the patient should wake from the sleep
+into which he had fallen when Varley left.
+
+But within two hours they sent for Varley again, for Meydon was in evident
+danger. Varley had come, and had now been with the patient for some time.
+
+At last the door opened and Varley came in quickly. He beckoned to Mrs.
+Meydon and to Father Bourassa. "He wishes to speak with you," he said to
+her. "There is little time."
+
+Her eyes scarcely saw him, as she left the room and passed to where Meydon
+lay nerveless, but with wide-open eyes, waiting for her. The eyes closed,
+however, before she reached the bed. Presently they opened again, but the
+lids remained fixed. He did not hear what she said.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the little waiting-room, Finden said to Varley, "What happened?"
+
+"Food was absolutely forbidden, but he got it from another patient early
+this morning while the nurse was out for a moment. It has killed him."
+
+"'Twas the least he could do, but no credit's due him. It was to be. I'm
+not envying Father Bourassa nor her there with him."
+
+Varley made no reply. He was watching the receding storm with eyes which
+told nothing.
+
+Finden spoke once more, but Varley did not hear him. Presently the door
+opened and Father Bourassa entered. He made a gesture of the hand to
+signify that all was over.
+
+Outside, the sun was breaking through the clouds upon the Western prairie,
+and there floated through the evening air the sound of a child's voice
+singing beneath the trees that fringed the river:
+
+"Will you come back, darlin'? Never heed the pain and blightin',
+Never trouble that you're wounded, that you bear the scars of fightin';
+      Here's the luck o' Heaven to you,
+      Here's the hand of love will brew you
+The cup of peace--ah, darlin', will you come back home?"
+
+
+
+
+WATCHING THE RISE OF ORION
+
+
+"In all the wide border his steed was the best," and the name and fame of
+Terence O'Ryan were known from Strathcona to Qu'appelle. He had ambition
+of several kinds, and he had the virtue of not caring who knew of it. He
+had no guile, and little money; but never a day's work was too hard for
+him, and he took bad luck, when it came, with a jerk of the shoulder and a
+good-natured surprise on his clean-shaven face that suited well his wide
+gray eyes and large, luxurious mouth. He had an estate, half ranch, half
+farm, with a French-Canadian manager named Vigon, an old prospector who
+viewed every foot of land in the world with the eye of the discoverer.
+Gold, coal, iron, oil, he searched for them everywhere, making sure that
+sooner or later he would find them. Once Vigon had found coal. That was
+when he worked for a man called Constantine Jopp, and had given him great
+profit; but he, the discoverer, had been put off with a horse and a
+hundred dollars. He was now as devoted to Terence O'Ryan as he had been
+faithful to Constantine Jopp, whom he cursed waking and sleeping.
+
+In his time O'Ryan had speculated, and lost; he had floated a coal-mine,
+and "been had"; he had run for the local legislature, had been elected,
+and then unseated for bribery committed by an agent; he had run races at
+Regina, and won--he had won for three years in succession; and this had
+kept him going and restored his finances when they were at their worst. He
+was, in truth, the best rider in the country, and, so far, was the owner
+also of the best three-year-old that the West had produced. He achieved
+popularity without effort. The West laughed at his enterprises and loved
+him; he was at once a public moral and a hero. It was a legend of the West
+that his forebears had been kings in Ireland like Brian Boroihme. He did
+not contradict this; he never contradicted anything. His challenge to all
+fun and satire and misrepresentation was, "What'll be the differ a hundred
+years from now!"
+
+He did not use this phrase, however, toward one experience--the advent of
+Miss Molly Mackinder, the heiress, and the challenge that reverberated
+through the West after her arrival. Philosophy deserted him then; he fell
+back on the primary emotions of mankind.
+
+A month after Miss Mackinder's arrival at La Touche a dramatic performance
+was given at the old fort, in which the officers of the Mounted Police
+took part, together with many civilians who fancied themselves. By that
+time the district had realized that Terry O'Ryan had surrendered to what
+they called "the laying on of hands" by Molly Mackinder. It was not
+certain, however, that the surrender was complete, because O'Ryan had been
+wounded before, and yet had not been taken captive altogether. His
+complete surrender seemed now more certain to the public because the lady
+had a fortune of two hundred thousand dollars, and that amount of money
+would be useful to an ambitious man in the growing West. It would, as Gow
+Johnson said, "Let him sit back and view the landscape o'er before he puts
+his ploughshare in the mud."
+
+There was an out-door scene in the play produced by the impetuous
+amateurs, and dialogue had been interpolated by three "imps of fame" at
+the suggestion of Constantine Jopp, one of the three, who bore malice
+toward O'Ryan, though this his colleagues did not know distinctly. The
+scene was a camp-fire--a starlit night, a colloquy between the three, upon
+which the hero of the drama, played by Terry O'Ryan, should break, after
+having, unknown to them, but in sight of the audience, overheard their
+kind intentions toward himself.
+
+The night came. When the curtain rose for the third act there was exposed
+a star-sown sky, in which the galaxy of Orion was shown with distinctness,
+each star sharply twinkling from the electric power behind--a pretty
+scene, evoking great applause. O'Ryan had never seen this back
+curtain--they had taken care that he should not--and, standing in the
+wings awaiting his cue, he was unprepared for the laughter of the
+audience, first low and uncertain, then growing, then insistent, and now a
+peal of ungovernable mirth, as one by one they understood the significance
+of the stars of Orion on the back curtain.
+
+O'Ryan got his cue, and came on to an outburst of applause which shook the
+walls. La Touche rose at him, among them Miss Molly Mackinder in the front
+row with the notables.
+
+He did not see the back curtain, or Orion blazing in the ultramarine blue.
+According to the stage directions, he was to steal along the trees at the
+wings, and listen to the talk of the men at the fire plotting against him,
+who were presently to pretend good comradeship to his face. It was a
+vigorous melodrama, with some touches of true Western feeling. After
+listening for a moment, O'Ryan was to creep up the stage again toward the
+back curtain, giving a cue for his appearance.
+
+When the hilarious applause at his entrance had somewhat subsided, the
+three took up their parable, but it was not the parable of the play. They
+used dialogue not in the original. It had a significance which the
+audience were not slow to appreciate, and went far to turn _The Sunburst
+Trail_ at this point into a comedy-farce. When this new dialogue began,
+O'Ryan could scarcely trust his ears or realize what was happening.
+
+"Ah, look," said Dicky Fergus at the fire, "as fine a night as I ever saw
+in the West! The sky's a picture. You could almost hand the stars down,
+they're so near."
+
+"What's that clump together on the right--what are they called in
+astronomy?" asked Constantine Jopp, with a leer.
+
+"Orion is the name--a beauty, ain't it?" answered Fergus.
+
+"I've been watching Orion rise," said the third--Holden was his name.
+"Many's the time I've watched Orion rising. Orion's the star for me. Say,
+he wipes 'em all out--right out. Watch him rising now."
+
+By a manipulation of the lights Orion moved up the back curtain slowly and
+blazed with light nearer the zenith. And La Touche had more than the worth
+of its money in this opening to the third act of the play. O'Ryan was a
+favorite, at whom La Touche loved to jeer, and the parable of the stars
+convulsed them.
+
+At the first words O'Ryan put a hand on himself and tried to grasp the
+meaning of it all, but his entrance and the subsequent applause had
+confused him. Presently, however, he turned to the back curtain, as Orion
+moved slowly up the heavens, and found the key to the situation. He
+gasped. Then he listened to the dialogue, which had nothing to do with
+"_The Sunburst Trail_."
+
+"What did Orion do, and why does he rise? Has he got to rise? Why was the
+gent called Orion in them far-off days?" asked Holden.
+
+"He did some hunting in his time--with a club," Fergus replied. "He kept
+making hits, he did. Orion was a spoiler. When he took the field there was
+no room for the rest of the race. Why does he rise? Because it is a habit.
+They could always get a rise out of Orion. The Athens _Eirenicon_ said
+that yeast might fail to rise, but touch the button and Orion would rise
+like a bird."
+
+At that instant the galaxy jerked up the back curtain again, and, when the
+audience could control itself, Constantine Jopp, grinning meanly, asked:
+
+"Why does he wear the girdle?"
+
+"It is not a girdle--it is a belt," was Dicky Fergus' reply. "The gods
+gave it to him because he was a favorite. There was a lady called
+Artemis--she was the last of them. But he went visiting with Eos, another
+lady of previous acquaintance, down at a place called Ortygia, and Artemis
+shot him dead with a shaft Apollo had given her; but she didn't marry
+Apollo neither. She laid Orion out on the sky, with his glittering belt
+around him. And Orion keeps on rising."
+
+"Will he ever stop rising?" asked Holden.
+
+Followed for the conspirators a disconcerting moment; for, when the
+laughter had subsided, a lazy voice came from the back of the hall, "He'll
+stop long enough to play with Apollo a little, I guess."
+
+It was Gow Johnson who had spoken, and no man knew Terry O'Ryan better, or
+could gauge more truly the course he would take. He had been in many an
+enterprise, many a brush with O'Ryan, and his friendship would bear any
+strain.
+
+O'Ryan recovered himself from the moment he saw the back curtain, and he
+did not find any fun in the thing. It took a hold on him out of all
+proportion to its importance. He realized that he had come to the parting
+of the ways in his life. It suddenly came upon him that something had been
+lacking in him in the past, and that his want of success in many things
+had not been wholly due to bad luck. He had been eager, enterprising, a
+genius almost at seeing good things; and yet others had reaped where he
+had sown. He had believed too much in his fellow-man. For the first time
+in his life he resented the friendly, almost affectionate satire of his
+many friends. It was amusing, it was delightful; but down beneath it all
+there was a little touch of ridicule. He had more brains than any of them,
+and he had known it in a way; he had led them sometimes, too, as on raids
+against cattle-stealers, and in a brush with half-breeds and Indians; as
+when he stood for the legislature; but he felt now for the first time that
+he had not made the most of himself, that there was something hurting to
+self-respect in this prank played upon him. When he came to that point his
+resentment went higher. He thought of Molly Mackinder, and he heard all
+too acutely the vague veiled references to her in their satire. By the
+time Gow Johnson spoke he had mastered himself, however, and had made up
+his mind. He stood still for a moment.
+
+"Now, please, my cue," he said, quietly and satirically from the trees
+near the wings.
+
+He was smiling, but Gow Johnson's prognostication was right; and ere long
+the audience realized that he was right. There was standing before them
+not the Terry O'Ryan they had known, but another. He threw himself fully
+into his part--a young rancher made deputy-sheriff, who by the occasional
+exercise of his duty had incurred the hatred of a small floating
+population that lived by fraud, violence, and cattle-stealing. The
+conspiracy was to raid his cattle, to lure him to pursuit, to ambush him,
+and kill him. Terry now played the part with a naturalness and force which
+soon lifted the play away from the farcical element introduced into it by
+those who had interpolated the gibes at himself. They had gone a step too
+far.
+
+"He's going large," said Gow Johnson, as the act drew near its close and
+the climax neared where O'Ryan was to enter upon a physical struggle with
+his assailants. "His blood's up. There'll be hell to pay."
+
+To Gow Johnson the play had instantly become real, and O'Ryan an injured
+man at bay, the victim of the act--not of the fictitious characters of the
+play, but of the three men, Fergus, Holden, and Constantine Jopp, who had
+planned the discomfiture of O'Ryan; and he felt that the victim's
+resentment would fall heaviest on Constantine Jopp, the bully, an old
+schoolmate of Terry's.
+
+Jopp was older than O'Ryan by three years, which in men is little, but in
+boys, at a certain time of life, is much. It means, generally, weight and
+height, an advantage in a scrimmage. Constantine Jopp had been the plague
+and tyrant of O'Ryan's boyhood. He was now a big, leering fellow, with
+much money of his own, got chiefly from the coal discovered on his place
+by Vigon, the half-breed French-Canadian. He had a sense of dark and
+malicious humor, a long, horse-like face, with little, beady eyes, and a
+huge frame.
+
+Again and again had Terry fought him as a boy at school, and often he had
+been badly whipped, but he had never refused the challenge of an insult
+when he was twelve and Jopp fifteen. The climax to their enmity at school
+had come one day when Terry was seized with a cramp while bathing, and
+after having gone down twice was rescued by Jopp, who dragged him out by
+the hair of the head. He had been restored to consciousness on the bank
+and carried to his home, where he lay ill for days. During the course of
+the slight fever which followed the accident his hair was cut close to his
+head. Impetuous always, his first thought was to go and thank Constantine
+Jopp for having saved his life. As soon as he was able he went forth to
+find his rescuer, and met him suddenly on turning a corner of the street.
+Before he could stammer out the gratitude that was in his heart, Jopp,
+eying him with a sneering smile, said, drawlingly:
+
+"If you'd had your hair cut like that I couldn't have got you out, could
+I? Holy, what a sight! Next time I'll take you by the scruff, putty
+face--bah!"
+
+That was enough for Terry. He had swallowed the insult, stuttered his
+thanks to the jeering laugh of the lank bully, and had gone home and cried
+in shame and rage.
+
+It was the one real shadow in his life. Ill-luck and good luck had been
+taken with an equable mind; but the fact that he must, while he lived, own
+the supreme debt of his life to a boy and afterward to a man whom he hated
+by instinct was a constant cloud on him. Jopp owned him. For some years
+they did not meet, and then at last they again were thrown together in the
+West, when Jopp settled at La Touche. It was gall and wormwood to Terry,
+but he steeled himself to be friendly, although the man was as great a
+bully as the boy, as offensive in mind and character; but withal acute and
+able in his way, and with a reputation for commercial sharpness which
+would be called by another name in a different civilization. They met
+constantly, and O'Ryan always put a hand on himself, and forced himself to
+be friendly. Once when Jopp became desperately ill there had been--though
+he fought it down, and condemned himself in every term of reproach--a
+sense of relief in the thought that perhaps his ancient debt would now be
+cancelled. It had gone on so long. And Constantine Jopp had never lost an
+opportunity of vexing him, of turturing him, of giving veiled thrusts,
+which he knew O'Ryan could not resent. It was the constant pin-prick of a
+mean soul, who had an advantage of which he could never be
+dispossessed--unless the ledger was balanced in some inscrutable way.
+
+Apparently bent on amusement only, and hiding his hatred from his
+colleagues, Jopp had been the instigator and begetter of the huge joke of
+the play; but it was the brains of Dick Fergus which had carried it out,
+written the dialogue, and planned the electric appliances of the back
+curtain--for he was an engineer and electrician. Neither he nor Holden had
+known the old antipathy of Terry and Constantine Jopp. There was only one
+man who knew the whole truth, and that was Gow Johnson, to whom Terry had
+once told all. At the last moment Fergus had interpolated certain points
+in the dialogue which were not even included at rehearsal. These referred
+to Apollo. He had a shrewd notion that Jopp had an idea of marrying Molly
+Mackinder if he could, cousins though they were; and he was also aware
+that Jopp, knowing Molly's liking for Terry, had tried to poison her mind
+against him, through suggestive gossip about a little widow at Jansen,
+thirty miles away. He had in so far succeeded that, on the very day of the
+performance, Molly had declined to be driven home from the race-course by
+Terry, despite the fact that Terry had won the chief race and owned the
+only dog-cart in the West.
+
+As the day went on, Fergus realized, as had Gow Johnson, that Jopp had
+raised a demon. The air was electric. The play was drawing near to its
+climax--an attempt to capture the deputy-sheriff, tie him to a tree, and
+leave him bound and gagged alone in the waste. There was a glitter in
+Terry's eyes, belying the lips which smiled in keeping with the character
+he presented. A look of harshness was stamped on his face, and the
+outlines of the temples were as sharp as the chin was set and the voice
+slow and penetrating.
+
+Molly Mackinder's eyes were riveted on him. She sat very still, her hands
+clasped in her lap, watching his every move. Instinct told her that Terry
+was holding himself in; that some latent fierceness and iron force in him
+had emerged into life; and that he meant to have revenge on Constantine
+Jopp one way or another, and that soon; for she had heard the rumor flying
+through the hall that her cousin was the cause of the practical joke just
+played. From hints she had had from Constantine that very day she knew
+that the rumor was the truth; and she recalled now with shrinking dislike
+the grimace accompanying the suggestion. She had not resented it then,
+being herself angry with Terry because of the little widow at Jansen.
+
+Presently the silence in the hall became acute; the senses of the audience
+were strained to the utmost. The acting before them was more realistic
+than anything they had ever seen, or were ever likely to see again in La
+Touche. All three conspirators, Fergus, Holden, and Jopp, realized that
+O'Ryan's acting had behind it an animal anger which transformed him. When
+he looked into their eyes it was with a steely directness harder and
+fiercer than was observed by the audience. Once there was an occasion for
+O'Ryan to catch Fergus by the arm, and Fergus winced from the grip. When
+standing in the wings with Terry he ventured to apologize playfully for
+the joke, but Terry made no answer; and once again he had whispered
+good-naturedly as they stood together on the stage; but the reply had been
+a low, scornful laugh. Fergus realized that a critical moment was at hand.
+The play provided for some dialogue between Jopp and Terry, and he
+observed with anxiety that Terry now interpolated certain phrases meant to
+warn Constantine, and to excite him to anger also.
+
+The moment came upon them sooner than the text of the play warranted.
+O'Ryan deliberately left out several sentences, and gave a later cue, and
+the struggle for his capture was precipitated. Terry meant to make the
+struggle real. So thrilling had been the scene that to an extent the
+audience was prepared for what followed; but they did not grasp the full
+reality--that the play was now only a vehicle for a personal issue of a
+desperate character. No one had ever seen O'Ryan angry; and now that the
+demon of rage was on him, directed by a will suddenly grown to its full
+height, they saw not only a powerful character in a powerful melodrama,
+but a man of wild force. When the three desperadoes closed in on O'Ryan,
+and, with a blow from the shoulder which was not a pretence, he sent
+Holden into a far corner gasping for breath and moaning with pain, the
+audience broke out into wild cheering. It was superb acting, they thought.
+As most of them had never seen the play, they were not surprised when
+Holden did not again join the attack on the deputy-sheriff. Those who did
+know the drama--among them Molly Mackinder--became dismayed, then
+anxious.
+
+Fergus and Jopp knew well from the blow O'Ryan had given that, unless they
+could drag him down, the end must be disaster to some one. They were
+struggling with him for personal safety now. The play was forgotten,
+though mechanically O'Ryan and Fergus repeated the exclamations and the
+few phrases belonging to the part. Jopp was silent, fighting with a malice
+which belongs to only half-breed, or half-bred, natures; and from far back
+in his own nature the distant Indian strain in him was working in savage
+hatred. The two were desperately hanging onto O'Ryan like pumas on a
+grizzly, when suddenly, with a twist he had learned from Ogami the Jap on
+the Smoky River, the slim Fergus was slung backward to the ground with the
+tendons of his arm strained and the arm itself useless for further work.
+There remained now Constantine Jopp, heavier and more powerful than
+O'Ryan.
+
+For O'Ryan the theatre, the people, disappeared. He was a boy again on the
+village-green, with the bully before him who had tortured his young days.
+He forgot the old debt to the foe who saved his life; he forgot everything
+except that once again, as of old, Constantine Jopp was fighting him, with
+long, strong arms trying to bring him to the ground. Jopp's superior
+height gave him an advantage in a close grip; the strength of his
+gorilla-like arms was difficult to withstand. Both were forgetful of the
+world, and the two other injured men, silent and awed, were watching the
+fight, in which one of them, at least, was powerless to take part.
+
+The audience was breathless. Most now saw the grim reality of the scene
+before them; and when at last O'Ryan's powerful right hand got a grip upon
+the throat of Jopp, and they saw the grip tighten, tighten, and Jopp's
+face go from red to purple, a hundred people gasped. Excited men made as
+though to move toward the stage; but the majority still believed that it
+all belonged to the play, and shouted, "Sit down!"
+
+Suddenly the voice of Gow Johnson was heard: "Don't kill him--let go,
+boy!"
+
+The voice rang out with sharp anxiety, and pierced the fog of passion and
+rage in which O'Ryan was moving. He realized what he was doing, the real
+sense of it came upon him. Suddenly he let go the lank throat of his
+enemy, and, by a supreme effort, flung him across the stage, where Jopp
+lay resting on his hands, his bleared eyes looking at Terry with the fear
+and horror still in them which had come with that tightening grip on his
+throat.
+
+Silence fell suddenly on the theatre. The audience was standing. A woman
+sobbed somewhere in a far corner, but the rest were dismayed and
+speechless. A few steps before them all was Molly Mackinder, white and
+frightened, but in her eyes was a look of understanding as she gazed at
+Terry. Breathing hard, Terry stood still in the middle of the stage, the
+red fog not yet gone out of his eyes, his hands clasped at his side,
+vaguely realizing the audience again. Behind him was the back curtain, in
+which the lights of Orion twinkled aggressively. The three men who had
+attacked him were still where he had thrown them.
+
+The silence was intense, the strain oppressive. But now a drawling voice
+came from the back of the hall.
+
+"Are you watching the rise of Orion?" it said. It was the voice of Gow
+Johnson.
+
+The strain was broken; the audience dissolved in laughter; but it was not
+hilarious; it was the nervous laughter of relief, touched off by a native
+humor always present in the dweller of the prairie.
+
+"I beg your pardon," said Terry, quietly and abstractedly, to the
+audience.
+
+And the scene-shifter bethought himself and let down the curtain.
+
+The fourth act was not played that night. The people had had more than the
+worth of their money. In a few moments the stage was crowded with people
+from the audience, but both Jopp and O'Ryan had disappeared.
+
+Among the visitors to the stage was Molly Mackinder. There was a meaning
+smile upon her face as she said to Dicky Fergus:
+
+"It was quite wonderful, wasn't it--like a scene out of the classics--the
+gladiators or something?"
+
+Fergus gave a wary smile as he answered: "Yes. I felt like saying '_Ave,
+Cæsar, ave!_' and I watched to see Artemis drop her handkerchief."
+
+"She dropped it, but you were too busy to pick it up. It would have been a
+useful sling for your arm," she added, with thoughtful malice. "It seemed
+so real--you all acted so well, so appropriately. And how you keep it up!"
+she added, as he cringed when some one knocked against his elbow, hurting
+the injured tendons.
+
+Fergus looked at her meditatively before he answered. "Oh, I think we'll
+likely keep it up for some time," he rejoined, ironically.
+
+"Then the play isn't finished?" she added. "There is another act? Yes, I
+thought there was; the programme said four."
+
+"Oh yes, there's another act," he answered, "but it isn't to be played
+now; and I'm not in it."
+
+"No, I suppose you are not in it. You really weren't in the last act. Who
+will be in it?"
+
+Fergus suddenly laughed outright as he looked at Holden expostulating
+intently to a crowd of people round him. "Well, honor bright, I don't
+think there'll be anybody in it except little Conny Jopp and gentle Terry
+O'Ryan; and Conny mayn't be in it very long. But he'll be in it for a
+while, I guess. You see, the curtain came down in the middle of a
+situation, not at the end of it. The curtain has to rise again."
+
+"Perhaps Orion will rise again--you think so?" She laughed in satire; for
+Dicky Fergus had made love to her during the last three months with
+unsuppressed activity, and she knew him in his sentimental moments; which
+is fatal. It is fatal if, in a duet, one breathes fire and the other
+frost.
+
+"If you want my opinion," he said, in a lower voice, as they moved toward
+the door, while people tried to listen to them--"if you want it straight,
+I think Orion has risen--right up where shines the evening star--Oh, say,
+now," he broke off, "haven't you had enough fun out of me? I tell you, it
+was touch and go. He nearly broke my arm--would have done it, if I hadn't
+gone limp to him; and your cousin Conny Jopp, little Conny Jopp, was as
+near Kingdom Come as a man wants at his age. I saw an elephant go _must_
+once in India, and it was as like O'Ryan as putty is to dough. It isn't
+all over, either, for O'Ryan will forget and forgive, and Jopp won't. He's
+your cousin, but he's a sulker. If he has to sit up nights to do it, he'll
+try to get back on O'Ryan. He'll sit up nights, but he'll do it, if he
+can. And, whatever it is, it won't be pretty."
+
+Outside the door they met Gow Johnson, excitement in his eyes. He heard
+Fergus' last words.
+
+"He'll see Orion rising if he sits up nights," Gow Johnson said. "The game
+is with Terry--at last."
+
+Then he called to the dispersing, gossiping crowd: "Hold on--hold on, you
+people! I've got news for you. Folks, this is O'Ryan's night. It's his in
+the starry firmament. Look at him shine!" he cried, stretching out his arm
+toward the heavens, where the glittering galaxy hung near the zenith.
+"Terry O'Ryan--our O'Ryan--he's struck oil--on his ranch it's been struck.
+Old Vigon found it. Terry's got his own at last. O'Ryan's in it--in it
+alone. Now, let's hear the prairie-whisper!" he shouted, in a great,
+raucous voice. "Let's hear the prairie-whisper! What is it?"
+
+The crowd responded in a hoarse shout for O'Ryan and his fortune. Even the
+women shouted--all except Molly Mackinder. She was wondering if O'Ryan
+risen would be the same to her as O'Ryan rising. She got into her carriage
+with a sigh, though she said to the few friends with her:
+
+"If it's true, it's splendid. He deserves it, too. Oh, I'm glad--I'm so
+glad!" She laughed; but the laugh was a little hysterical.
+
+She was both glad and sorry. Yet as she drove home over the prairie she
+was silent. Far off in the east was a bright light. It was a bonfire built
+on O'Ryan's ranch, near where he had struck oil--struck it rich. The light
+grew and grew, and the prairie was alive with people hurrying toward it.
+La Touche should have had the news hours earlier, but the half-breed
+French-Canadian, Vigon, who had made the discovery, and had started for La
+Touche with the news, went suddenly off his head with excitement, and had
+ridden away into the prairie fiercely shouting his joy to an invisible
+world. The news had been brought in later by a farm-hand.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Terry O'Ryan had really struck oil, and his ranch was a scene of decent
+revelry, of which Gow Johnson was master. But the central figure of it
+all, the man who had, in truth, risen like a star, had become to La Touche
+all at once its notoriety as well as its favorite, its great man as well
+as its friend, he was nowhere to be found. He had been seen riding full
+speed into the prairie toward the Kourmash Wood, and the starlit night had
+swallowed him. Constantine Jopp had also disappeared; but at first no one
+gave that thought or consideration.
+
+As the night went on, however, a feeling began to stir which it is not
+good to rouse in frontier lands. It is sure to exhibit itself in forms
+more objective than are found in great populations where methods of
+punishment are various, and even when deadly are often refined. But
+society in new places has only limited resources, and is thrown back on
+primary ways and means. La Touche was no exception, and the keener
+spirits, to whom O'Ryan had ever been "a white man," and who so rejoiced
+in his good-luck now that they drank his health a hundred times in his own
+whiskey and cider, were simmering with desire for a public reproval of
+Constantine Jopp's conduct. Though it was pointed out to them by the
+astute Gow Johnson that Fergus and Holden had participated in the colossal
+joke of the play, they had learned indirectly also the whole truth
+concerning the past of the two men. They realized that Fergus and Holden
+had been duped by Jopp into the escapade. Their primitive sense of justice
+exonerated the humorists and arraigned the one malicious man. As the night
+wore on they decided on the punishment to be meted out by La Touche to the
+man who had not "acted on the square."
+
+Gow Johnson saw, too late, that he had roused a spirit as hard to appease
+as the demon roused in O'Ryan earlier in the evening. He would have
+enjoyed the _battue_ of punishment under ordinary circumstances; but he
+knew that Miss Molly Mackinder would be humiliated and indignant at the
+half-savage penalty they meant to exact. He had determined that O'Ryan
+should marry her; and this might be an obstruction in the path. It was
+true that O'Ryan now would be a rich man--one of the richest in the West,
+unless all signs failed; but, meanwhile, a union of fortunes would only be
+an added benefit. Besides, he had seen that O'Ryan was in earnest, and
+what O'Ryan wanted he himself wanted even more strongly. He was not
+concerned greatly for O'Ryan's absence. He guessed that Terry had ridden
+away into the night to work off the dark spirit that was on him, to have
+it out with himself. Gow Johnson was a philosopher. He was twenty years
+older than O'Ryan, and he had studied his friend as a pious monk his
+missal.
+
+He was right in his judgment. When Terry left the theatre he was like one
+in a dream, every nerve in his body at tension, his head aflame, his
+pulses throbbing. For miles he rode away into the waste along the northern
+trail, ever away from La Touche and his own home. He did not know of the
+great good-fortune that had come to him; and if, in this hour, he had
+known, he would not have cared. As he rode on and on remorse drew him into
+its grasp. Shame seized him that he had let passion be his master, that he
+had lost his self-control, had taken a revenge out of all proportion to
+the injury and insult to himself. It did not ease his mind that he knew
+Constantine Jopp had done the thing out of meanness and malice; for he was
+alive to-night in the light of the stars, with the sweet, crisp air
+blowing in his face, because of an act of courage on the part of his
+school-days' foe. He remembered now that, when he was drowning, he had
+clung to Jopp with frenzied arms and had endangered the bully's life also.
+The long torture of owing this debt to so mean a soul was on him still,
+was rooted in him; but suddenly, in the silent, searching night, some
+spirit whispered in his ear that this was the price which he must pay for
+his life saved to the world, a compromise with the Inexorable Thing. On
+the verge of oblivion and the end, he had been snatched back by relenting
+Fate, which requires something for something given when laws are overriden
+and doom defeated. Yes, the price he was meant to pay was gratitude to one
+of shrivelled soul and innate antipathy; and he had not been man enough to
+see the trial through to the end! With a little increased strain put upon
+his vanity and pride, he had run amuck. Like some heathen gladiator, he
+had ravaged in the ring. He had gone down into the basements of human life
+and there made a cockpit for his animal rage, till, in the contest, brain
+and intellect had been saturated by the fumes and sweat of fleshly fury.
+
+How quiet the night was, how soothing to the fevered mind and body, how
+the cool air laved the heated head and flushed the lungs of the rheum of
+passion! He rode on and on, farther and farther away from home, his back
+upon the scenes where his daily deeds were done. It was long past midnight
+before he turned his horse's head again homeward.
+
+Buried in his thoughts, now calm and determined, with a new life grown up
+in him, a new strength different from the mastering force which gave him a
+strength in the theatre like one in a delirium, he noticed nothing. He was
+only conscious of the omniscient night and its warm, penetrating
+friendliness; as, in a great trouble, when no words can be spoken, a cool,
+kind palm steals into the trembling hand of misery and stills it, gives it
+strength and life and an even pulse. He was now master in the house of his
+soul, and had no fear or doubt as to the future or as to his course.
+
+His first duty was to go to Constantine Jopp and speak his regret like a
+man. And after that it would be his duty to carry a double debt his life
+long for the life saved, for the wrong done. He owed an apology to La
+Touche, and he was scarcely aware that the native gentlemanliness in him
+had said through his fever of passion over the footlights, "I beg your
+pardon." In his heart he felt that he had offered a mean affront to every
+person present, to the town where his interests lay, where his heart lay.
+
+Where his heart lay--Molly Mackinder! He knew now that vanity had
+something to do, if not all to do, with his violent acts, and though there
+suddenly shot through his mind, as he rode back, a savage thrill at the
+remembrance of how he had handled the three, it was only a passing
+emotion. He was bent on putting himself right with Jopp and with La
+Touche. With the former his way was clear; he did not yet see his way as
+to La Touche. How would he be able to make the _amende honorable_ to La
+Touche?
+
+By-and-by he became somewhat less absorbed and enveloped by the comforting
+night. He saw the glimmer of red light afar, and vaguely wondered what it
+was. It was in the direction of O'Ryan's Ranch, but he thought nothing of
+it, because it burned steadily. It was probably a fire lighted by settlers
+trailing to the farther North. While the night wore on he rode as slowly
+back to the town as he had galloped from it like a centaur with a
+captive.
+
+Again and again Molly Mackinder's face came before him, but he resolutely
+shut it out of his thoughts. He felt that he had no right to think of her
+until he had "done the right thing" by Jopp and by La Touche. Yet the look
+in her face as the curtain came down, it was not that of one indifferent
+to him or to what he did. He neared the town half-way between midnight and
+morning. Almost unconsciously avoiding the main streets, he rode a
+roundabout way toward the little house where Constantine Jopp lived. He
+could hear loud noises in the streets, singing, and hoarse shouts. Then
+silence came, then shouts, and silence again. It was all quiet as he rode
+up to Jopp's house, standing on the outskirts of the town. There was a
+bright light in the window of a room.
+
+Jopp, then, was still up. He would not wait till to-morrow. He would do
+the right thing now. He would put things straight with his foe before he
+slept; he would do it at any sacrifice to his pride. He had conquered his
+pride.
+
+He dismounted, threw the bridle over a post, and, going into the garden,
+knocked gently at the door. There was no response. He knocked again, and
+listened intently. Now he heard a sound--like a smothered cry or groan. He
+opened the door quickly and entered. It was dark. In another room beyond
+was a light. From it came the same sound he had heard before, but louder;
+also there was a shuffling footstep. Springing forward to the half-open
+door, he pushed it wide, and met the terror-stricken eyes of Constantine
+Jopp--the same look that he had seen at the theatre when his hands were on
+Jopp's throat, but more ghastly.
+
+Jopp was bound to a chair by a lasso. Both arms were fastened to the
+chair-arm, and beneath them, on the floor, were bowls into which blood
+dropped from his punctured wrists.
+
+He had hardly taken it all in--the work of an instant--when he saw
+crouched in a corner, madness in his eyes, his half-breed Vigon. He
+grasped the situation in a flash. Vigon had gone mad, had lain in wait in
+Jopp's house, and, when the man he hated had seated himself in the chair,
+had lassoed him, bound him, and was slowly bleeding him to death.
+
+He had no time to think. Before he could act Vigon was upon him also,
+frenzy in his eyes, a knife clutched in his hand. Reason had fled, and he
+only saw in O'Ryan the frustrator of his revenge. He had watched the drip,
+drip from his victim's wrists with a dreadful joy.
+
+They were man and man, but O'Ryan found in this grisly contest a vaster
+trial of strength than in the fight upon the stage a few hours ago. The
+first lunge that Vigon made struck him on the tip of the shoulder and drew
+blood; but he caught the hand holding the knife in an iron grasp, while
+the half-breed, with superhuman strength, tried in vain for the long,
+brown throat of the man for whom he had struck oil. As they struggled and
+twisted, the eyes of the victim in the chair watched them with agonized
+emotions. For him it was life or death. He could not cry out--his mouth
+was gagged; but to O'Ryan his groans were like a distant echo of his own
+hoarse gasps as he fought his desperate fight. Terry was as one in an
+awful dream battling with vague, impersonal powers which slowly strangled
+his life, yet held him back in torture from the final surrender.
+
+For minutes they struggled. At last O'Ryan's strength came to a point of
+breaking, for Vigon was a powerful man, and to this was added a madman's
+energy. He felt that the end was coming. But all at once, through the
+groans of the victim in the chair, Terry became conscious of noises
+outside--such noises as he had heard before he entered the house, only
+nearer and louder. At the same time he heard a horse's hoofs, then a knock
+at the door, and a voice calling, "Jopp! Jopp!"
+
+He made a last desperate struggle, and shouted hoarsely.
+
+An instant later there were footsteps in the room, followed by a cry of
+fright and amazement.
+
+It was Gow Johnson. He had come to warn Constantine Jopp that a crowd were
+come to tar and feather him, and to get him away on his own horse.
+
+Now he sprang to the front door, called to the approaching crowd for help,
+then ran back to help O'Ryan. A moment later a dozen men had Vigon secure,
+and had released Constantine Jopp, now almost dead from loss of blood.
+
+As they took the gag from his mouth and tied their handkerchiefs round his
+bleeding wrists, Jopp sobbed aloud. His eyes were fixed on Terry O'Ryan.
+Terry met the look, and grasped the limp hand lying on the chair-arm.
+
+"I'm sorry, O'Ryan, I'm sorry for all I've done to you," Jopp sobbed. "I
+was a sneak, but I want to own it. I want to be square now. You can tar
+and feather me, if you like. I deserve it." He looked at the others. "I
+deserve it," he repeated.
+
+"That's what the boys had thought would be appropriate," said Gow Johnson,
+with a dry chuckle, and the crowd looked at one another and winked. The
+wink was kindly, however. "To own up and take your gruel!" was the easiest
+way to touch the men of the prairie.
+
+A half-hour later the roisterers, who had meant to carry Constantine Jopp
+on a rail, carried Terry O'Ryan on their shoulders through the town,
+against his will. As they passed the house where Miss Mackinder lived,
+some one shouted:
+
+"Are you watching the rise of Orion?"
+
+Many a time thereafter Terry O'Ryan and Molly Mackinder looked at the
+galaxy in the evening sky with laughter and with pride. It had played its
+part with Fate against Constantine Jopp and the little widow at Jansen. It
+had never shone so brightly as on the night when Vigon struck oil on
+O'Ryan's ranch. But Vigon had no memory of that. Such is the irony of
+life.
+
+
+
+
+THE ERROR OF THE DAY
+
+
+  The "Error of the Day" may be defined as the "The difference between
+  the distance or range which must be put upon the sights in order to
+  hit the target and the actual distance from the gun to the
+  target."--_Admiralty Note._
+
+  A great naval gun never fires twice alike. It varies from day to day,
+  and expert allowance has to be made in sighting every time it is
+  fired. Variations in atmosphere, condition of ammunition, and the
+  wear of the gun are the contributory causes to the ever-varying
+  "Error of the Day."
+
+"Say, ain't he pretty?"
+
+"A Jim-dandy--oh, my!"
+
+"What's his price in the open market?"
+
+"Thirty millions--I think not."
+
+Then was heard the voice of Billy Goat--his name was William Goatry----
+
+              "Out in the cold world, out in the street,
+              Nothing to wear and nothing to eat,
+              Fatherless, motherless, sadly I roam,
+              Child of misfortune, I'm driven from home."
+
+A loud laugh followed, for Billy Goat was a popular person at Kowatin, in
+the Saskatchewan country. He had an inimitable drollery, heightened by a
+cast in his eye, a very large mouth, and a round, good-humored face; also
+he had a hand and arm like iron, and was altogether a great man on a
+"spree."
+
+There had been a two days' spree at Kowatin, for no other reason than that
+there had been great excitement over the capture and subsequent escape of
+a prairie-rover who had robbed the contractor's money-chest at the
+rail-head on the Canadian Pacific Railroad. Forty miles from Kowatin he
+had been caught by, and escaped from, the tall, brown-eyed man with the
+hard-bitten face who leaned against the open window of the tavern, looking
+indifferently at the jeering crowd before him. For a police officer, he
+was not unpopular with them, but he had been a failure for once, and, as
+Billy Goat had said, "It tickled us to death to see a rider of the plains
+off his trolley--on the cold, cold ground, same as you and me."
+
+They did not undervalue him. If he had been less a man than he was, they
+would not have taken the trouble to cover him with their drunken ribaldry.
+He had scored off them in the past in just such sprees as this, when he
+had the power to do so, and used the power good-naturedly and quietly--but
+used it.
+
+Then he was Sergeant Foyle, of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police, on duty
+in a district as large as the United Kingdom. And he had no greater
+admirer than Billy Goat, who now reviled him. Not without cause, in a way,
+for he had reviled himself to this extent that, when the prairie-rover,
+Halbeck, escaped on the way to Prince Albert, after six months' hunt for
+him and a final capture in the Kowatin district, Foyle resigned the Force
+before the Commissioner could reproach him or call him to account. Usually
+so exact, so certain of his target, some care had not been taken, he had
+miscalculated, and there had been the Error of the Day. Whatever it was,
+it had seemed to him fatal; and he had turned his face from the
+barrack-yard.
+
+Then he had made his way to the Happy Land Hotel at Kowatin, to begin life
+as "a free and independent gent on the loose," as Billy Goat had said. To
+resign had seemed extreme; because, though the Commissioner was vexed at
+Halbeck's escape, Foyle was the best non-commissioned officer in the
+Force. He had frightened horse-thieves and bogus land-agents and
+speculators out of the country; had fearlessly tracked down a criminal or
+a band of criminals when the odds were heavy against him. He carried on
+his cheek the scars of two bullets, and there was one white lock in his
+brown hair where an arrow had torn the scalp away as, alone, he drove into
+the Post a score of Indians, fresh from raiding the cattle of an immigrant
+trailing north.
+
+Now he was out of work, or so it seemed; he had stepped down from his
+scarlet-coated dignity, from the place of guardian and guide to
+civilization, into the idleness of a tavern stoop.
+
+As the little group swayed round him, and Billy Goat started another song,
+Foyle roused himself as though to move away--he was waiting for the
+mail-stage to take him south--
+
+           "Oh, father, dear father, come home with me now,
+             The clock in the steeple strikes one;
+           You said you were coming right home from the shop
+             As soon as your day's work was done.
+                 Come home--come home--"
+
+The song arrested him, and he leaned back against the window again. A
+curious look came into his eyes, a look that had nothing to do with the
+acts of the people before him. It was searching into a scene beyond this
+bright sunlight and the far green-brown grass, and the little oasis of
+trees in the distance marking a homestead, and the dust of the
+wagon-wheels out on the trail beyond the grain-elevator--beyond the blue
+horizon's rim, quivering in the heat, and into regions where this crisp,
+clear, life-giving, life-saving air never blew.
+
+           "You said you were coming right home from the shop
+             As soon as your day's work was done.
+                 Come home--come home--"
+
+He remembered when he had first heard this song in a play called _Ten
+Nights in a Bar-Room_, many years before, and how it had wrenched his
+heart and soul, and covered him with a sudden cloud of shame and anger.
+For his father had been a drunkard, and his brother had grown up a
+drunkard, that brother whom he had not seen for ten years until--until--
+
+He shuddered, closed his eyes, as though to shut out something that the
+mind saw. He had had a rough life, he had become inured to the seamy side
+of things--there was a seamy side even in this clean, free, wide land; and
+he had no sentimentality; though something seemed to hurt and shame him
+now.
+
+                 "As soon as your day's work was done.
+                       Come home--come home--"
+
+The crowd was uproarious. The exhilaration had become a kind of delirium.
+Men were losing their heads; there was an element of irresponsibility in
+the new outbreak likely to breed some violent act, which every man of them
+would lament when sober again.
+
+Nettlewood Foyle watched the dust rising from the wheels of the stage,
+which had passed the elevator and was nearing the Prairie Home Hotel, far
+down the street. He would soon leave behind him this noisy ribaldry of
+which he was the centre. He tossed his cheroot away. Suddenly he heard a
+low voice behind him.
+
+"Why don't you hit out, sergeant?" it said.
+
+He started almost violently, and turned round. Then his face flushed, his
+eyes blurred with feeling and deep surprise, and his lips parted in a
+whispered exclamation and greeting.
+
+A girl's face from the shade of the sitting-room was looking out at him,
+half smiling, but with heightened color and a suppressed agitation. The
+girl was not more than twenty-five, graceful, supple, and strong. Her chin
+was dimpled; across her right temple was a slight scar. She had eyes of a
+wonderful deep blue; they seemed to swim with light. As Foyle gazed at her
+for a moment dumfounded, with a quizzical suggestion and smiling still a
+little more, she said:
+
+"You used to be a little quicker, Nett." The voice appeared to attempt
+unconcern; but it quivered from a force of feeling underneath. It was so
+long since she had seen him.
+
+He was about to reply, but, at the instant, a reveller pushed him with a
+foot behind the knees so that they were sprung forward. The crowd
+laughed--all save Billy Goat, who knew his man.
+
+Like lightning, and with cold fury in his eyes, Foyle caught the tall
+cattleman by the forearm, and, with a swift, dexterous twist, had the
+fellow in his power.
+
+"Down--down to your knees, you skunk!" he said, in a low, fierce voice.
+
+The knees of the big man bent--Foyle had not taken lessons of Ogami, the
+Jap, for nothing--they bent, and the cattleman squealed, so intense was
+the pain. It was break or bend; and he bent--to the ground and lay there.
+Foyle stood over him for a moment, a hard light in his eyes, and then, as
+if bethinking himself, he looked at the other roisterers and said:
+
+"There's a limit, and he reached it. Your mouths are your own, and you can
+blow off to suit your fancy, but if any one thinks I'm a tame coyote to be
+poked with a stick--!" He broke off, stooped over, and helped the man
+before him to his feet. The arm had been strained, and the big fellow
+nursed it.
+
+"Hell, but you're a twister!" the cattleman said, with a grimace of pain.
+
+Billy Goat was a gentleman, after his kind, and he liked Sergeant Foyle
+with a great liking. He turned to the crowd and spoke.
+
+"Say, boys, this mine's worked out. Let's leave the Happy Land to Foyle.
+Boys, what is he--what--is--he? What--is--Sergeant Foyle--boys?"
+
+The roar of the song they all knew came in reply, as Billy Goat waved his
+arms about like the wild leader of a wild orchestra:
+
+    "Sergeant Foyle, oh, he's a knocker from the West,
+      He's a chase-me-Charley, come-and-kiss-me tiger from the zoo;
+    He's a dandy on the pinch, and he's got a double cinch
+      On the gent that's going careless, and he'll soon cinch you:
+      And he'll soon--and he'll soon--cinch you!"
+
+Foyle watched them go, dancing, stumbling, calling back at him, as they
+moved toward the Prairie Home Hotel:
+
+              "And he'll soon--and he'll soon--cinch you!"
+
+His under-lip came out, his eyes half closed, as he watched them. "I've
+done my last cinch. I've done my last cinch," he murmured.
+
+Then, suddenly, the look in his face changed, the eyes swam as they had
+done a minute before at the sight of the girl in the room behind. Whatever
+his trouble was, that face had obscured it in a flash, and the pools of
+feeling far down in the depths of a lonely nature had been stirred.
+Recognition, memory, tenderness, desire swam in his face, made generous
+and kind the hard lines of the strong mouth. In an instant he had swung
+himself over the window-sill. The girl had drawn away now into a more
+shaded corner of the room, and she regarded him with a mingled anxiety and
+eagerness. Was she afraid of something? Did she fear that--she knew not
+quite what, but it had to do with a long ago?
+
+"It was time you hit out, Nett," she said, half shyly. "You're more
+patient than you used to be, but you're surer. My, that was a twist you
+gave him, Nett. Aren't you glad to see me?" she added, hastily and with an
+effort to hide her agitation.
+
+He reached out and took her hand with a strange shyness and a
+self-consciousness which was alien to his nature. The touch of her hand
+thrilled him. Their eyes met. She dropped hers. Then he gathered himself
+together. "Glad to see you? Of course, of course, I'm glad. You stunned
+me, Jo. Why, do you know where you are? You're a thousand miles from home.
+I can't get it through my head, not really. What brings you here? It's ten
+years--ten years since I saw you, and you were only fifteen, but a fifteen
+that was as good as twenty."
+
+He scanned her face closely. "What's that scar on your forehead, Jo? You
+hadn't that--then."
+
+"I ran up against something," she said, evasively, her eyes glittering,
+"and it left that scar. Does it look so bad?"
+
+"No, you'd never notice it, if you weren't looking close as I am. You see,
+I knew your face so well ten years ago."
+
+He shook his head with a forced kind of smile. It became him, however, for
+he smiled rarely; and the smile was like a lantern turned on his face; it
+gave light and warmth to its quiet strength--or hardness.
+
+"You were always quizzing," she said, with an attempt at a laugh--"always
+trying to find things out. That's why you made them reckon with you out
+here. You always could see behind things; always would have your own way;
+always were meant to be a success."
+
+She was beginning to get control of herself again, was trying hard to keep
+things on the surface. "You were meant to succeed--you had to," she
+added.
+
+"I've been a failure--a dead failure," he answered, slowly. "So they say.
+So they said. You heard them, Jo."
+
+He jerked his head toward the open window.
+
+"Oh, those drunken fools!" she exclaimed, indignantly, and her face
+hardened. "How I hate drink! It spoils everything."
+
+There was silence for a moment. They were both thinking of the same
+thing--_of the same man_. He repeated a question.
+
+"What brings you out here, Jo?" he asked, gently.
+
+"Dorland," she answered, her face setting into determination and anxiety.
+
+His face became pinched. "Dorl!" he said, heavily. "What for, Jo? What do
+you want with Dorl?"
+
+"When Cynthy died she left her five hundred dollars a year to the baby,
+and--"
+
+"Yes, yes, I know. Well, Jo?"
+
+"Well, it was all right for five years--Dorland paid it in; but for five
+years he hasn't paid anything. He's taken it, stolen it from his own child
+by his own honest wife. I've come to get it--anyway, to stop him from
+doing it any more. His own child--it puts murder in my heart, Nett! I
+could kill him."
+
+He nodded grimly. "That's likely. And you've kept Dorl's child with your
+own money all these years?"
+
+"I've got four hundred dollars a year, Nett, you know; and I've been
+dressmaking--they say I've got taste," she added, with a whimsical smile.
+
+Nett nodded his head. "Five years. That's twenty-five hundred dollars he's
+stolen from his own child. It's eight years old now, isn't it?"
+
+"Bobby is eight and a half," she answered.
+
+"And his schooling, and his clothing, and everything; and you have to pay
+for it all?"
+
+"Oh, I don't mind, Nett; it isn't that. Bobby is Cynthy's child, and I
+love him--love him; but I want him to have his rights. Dorl must give up
+his hold on that money--or--"
+
+He nodded gravely. "Or you'll set the law on him?"
+
+"It's one thing or the other. Better to do it now when Bobby is young and
+can't understand."
+
+"Or read the newspapers," he commented, thoughtfully.
+
+"I don't think I've a hard heart," she continued, "but I'd like to punish
+him, if it wasn't that he's your brother, Nett, and if it wasn't for
+Bobby. Dorland was dreadfully cruel, even to Cynthy."
+
+"How did you know he was up here?" he asked.
+
+"From the lawyer that pays over the money. Dorland has had it sent out
+here to Kowatin this two years. And he sent word to the lawyer a month ago
+that he wanted it to get here as usual. The letter left the same day as I
+did, and it got here yesterday with me, I suppose. He'll be after
+it--perhaps to-day. He wouldn't let it wait long, Dorl wouldn't."
+
+Foyle started. "To-day--to-day--"
+
+There was a gleam in his eyes, a setting of the lips, a line sinking into
+the forehead between the eyes.
+
+"I've been watching for him all day, and I'll watch till he comes. I'm
+going to say some things to him that he won't forget. I'm going to get
+Bobby's money, or have the law to do it--unless you think I'm a brute,
+Nett." She looked at him wistfully.
+
+"That's all right. Don't worry about me, Jo. He's my brother, but I know
+him--I know him through and through. He's done everything that a man can
+do and not be hanged. A thief, a drunkard, and a brute--and he killed a
+man out here," he added, hoarsely. "I found it out myself--myself. It was
+murder."
+
+Suddenly, as he looked at her, an idea seemed to flash into his mind. He
+came very near and looked at her closely. Then he reached over and almost
+touched the scar on her forehead.
+
+"Did he do that, Jo?"
+
+For an instant she was silent and looked down at the floor. Presently she
+raised her eyes, her face suffused. Once or twice she tried to speak, but
+failed. At last she gained courage, and said:
+
+"After Cynthy's death I kept house for him for a year, taking care of
+little Bobby. I loved Bobby so--he has Cynthy's eyes. One day Dorland--oh,
+Nett, of course I oughtn't to have stayed there--I know it now; but I was
+only sixteen, and what did I understand! And my mother was dead. One
+day--oh, please, Nett, you can guess. He said something to me. I made him
+leave the house. Before I could make plans what to do, he came back mad
+with drink. I went for Bobby, to get out of the house, but he caught hold
+of me. I struck him in the face, and he threw me against the edge of the
+open door. It made the scar."
+
+Foyle's face was white. "Why did you never write and tell me that, Jo? You
+know that I--" He stopped suddenly.
+
+"You had gone out of our lives down there. I didn't know where you were
+for a long time; and then--then it was all right about Bobby and me,
+except that Bobby didn't get the money that was his. But now--"
+
+Foyle's voice was hoarse and low. "He made that scar, and he--and you only
+sixteen--Oh, my God!"
+
+Suddenly his face reddened, and he choked with shame and anger. "And he's
+my brother!" was all that he could say.
+
+"Do you see him up here ever?" she asked, pityingly.
+
+"I never saw him till a week ago." A moment, then he added, "The letter
+wasn't to be sent here in his own name, was it?"
+
+She nodded. "Yes, in his own name, Dorland W. Foyle. Didn't he go by that
+name when you saw him?"
+
+There was an oppressive silence, in which she saw that something moved him
+strangely, and then he answered, "No, he was going by the name of
+Halbeck--Hiram Halbeck."
+
+The girl gasped. Then the whole thing burst upon her. "Hiram Halbeck!
+Hiram Halbeck, the thief--I read it all in the papers--the thief that you
+caught, and that got away. And you've left the Mounted Police because of
+it--oh, Nett!" Her eyes were full of tears, her face was drawn and gray.
+
+He nodded. "I didn't know who he was till I arrested him," he said. "Then,
+afterward, I thought of his child, and let him get away; and for my poor
+old mother's sake. She never knew how bad he was, even as a boy. But I
+remember how he used to steal and drink the brandy from her bedside, when
+she had the fever. She never knew the worst of him. But I let him away in
+the night, Jo, and I resigned, and they thought that Halbeck had beaten
+me, had escaped. Of course I couldn't stay in the Force, having done that.
+But, by the heaven above us, if I had him here now I'd do the thing--do
+it, so help me God!"
+
+"Why should you ruin your life for him?" she said, with an outburst of
+indignation. All that was in her heart welled up in her eyes at the
+thought of what Foyle was. "You must not do it. You shall not do it. _He_
+must pay for his wickedness, not you. It would be a sin. You and what
+becomes of you mean so much." Suddenly, with a flash of purpose, she
+added, "He will come for that letter, Nett. He would run any kind of risk
+to get a dollar. He will come here for that letter--perhaps to-day."
+
+He shook his head moodily, oppressed by the trouble that was on him. "He's
+not likely to venture here, after what's happened."
+
+"You don't know him as well as I do, Nett. He is so vain he'd do it, just
+to show that he could. He'd probably come in the evening. Does any one
+know him here? So many people pass through Kowatin every day. Has any one
+seen him?"
+
+"Only Billy Goatry," he answered, working his way to a solution of the
+dark problem. "Only Billy Goatry knows him. The fellow that led the
+singing--that was Goatry."
+
+"There he is now," he added, as Billy Goat passed the window.
+
+She came and laid a hand on his arm. "We've got to settle things with
+him," she said. "If Dorl comes, Nett--"
+
+There was silence for a moment, then he caught her hand in his and held
+it. "If he comes, leave him to me, Jo. You will leave him to me?" he
+added, anxiously.
+
+"Yes," she answered. "You'll do what's right--by Bobby?"
+
+"And by Dorl, too," he replied, strangely.
+
+There were loud footsteps without.
+
+"It's Goatry," said Foyle. "You stay here. I'll tell him everything. He's
+all right; he's a true friend. He'll not interfere."
+
+The handle of the door turned slowly. "You keep watch on the post-office,
+Jo," he added.
+
+Goatry came round the opening door with a grin.
+
+"Hope I don't intrude," he said, stealing a half-leering look at the girl.
+As soon as he saw her face, however, he straightened himself up and took
+on different manners. He had not been so intoxicated as he had made out,
+and he seemed only "mellow" as he stood before them, with his corrugated
+face and queer, quaint look, the eye with the cast in it blinking faster
+than the other.
+
+"It's all right, Goatry," said Foyle. "This lady is one of my family from
+the East."
+
+"Goin' on by stage?" Goatry said, vaguely, as they shook hands.
+
+She did not reply, for she was looking down the street, and presently she
+started as she gazed. She laid a hand suddenly on Foyle's arm.
+
+"See--he's come," she said, in a whisper, and as though not realizing
+Goatry's presence. "He's come."
+
+Goatry looked, as well as Foyle. "Halbeck--the devil!" he said.
+
+Foyle turned to him. "Stand by, Goatry. I want you to keep a shut mouth.
+I've work to do."
+
+Goatry held out his hand. "I'm with you. If you get him this time, clamp
+him, clamp him like a tooth in a harrow."
+
+Halbeck had stopped his horse at the post-office door. Dismounting, he
+looked quickly round, then drew the reins over the horse's head, letting
+them trail, as is the custom of the West.
+
+A few swift words passed between Goatry and Foyle.
+
+"I'll do this myself, Jo," he whispered to the girl presently. "Go into
+another room. I'll bring him here."
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+In another minute Goatry was leading the horse away from the post-office,
+while Foyle stood waiting quietly at the door. The departing footsteps of
+the horse brought Halbeck swiftly to the doorway, with a letter in his
+hand.
+
+"Hi, there, you damned sucker!" he called after Goatry, and then saw Foyle
+waiting.
+
+"What the hell--!" he said, fiercely, his hand on something in his
+hip-pocket.
+
+"Keep quiet, Dorl. I want to have a little talk with you. Take your hand
+away from that gun--take it away!" he added, with a meaning not to be
+misunderstood.
+
+Halbeck knew that one shout would have the town on him, and he did not
+know what card his brother was going to play. He let his arm drop to his
+side. "What's your game? What do you want?" he asked, surlily.
+
+"Come over to the Happy Land Hotel," Foyle answered, and in the light of
+what was in his mind his words had a grim irony.
+
+With a snarl Halbeck stepped out. Goatry, who had handed the horse over to
+the hostler, watched them coming.
+
+"Why did I never notice the likeness before?" Goatry said to himself.
+"But, gosh! what a difference in the men. Foyle's going to double cinch
+him this time, I guess."
+
+He followed them inside the hall of the Happy Land. When they stepped into
+the sitting-room, he stood at the door waiting. The hotel was entirely
+empty, the roisterers at the Prairie Home having drawn off the idlers and
+spectators. The barman was nodding behind the bar, the proprietor was
+moving about in the backyard inspecting a horse. There was a cheerful
+warmth everywhere; the air was like an elixir; the pungent smell of a
+pine-tree at the door gave a kind of medicament to the indrawn breath. And
+to Billy Goat, who sometimes sang in the choir of a church not a hundred
+miles away--for the people agreed to forget his occasional sprees--there
+came, he knew not why, the words of a hymn he had sung only the preceding
+Sunday:
+
+                "As pants the hart for cooling streams,
+                  When heated in the chase--"
+
+The words kept ringing in his ears as he listened to the conversation
+inside the room--the partition was thin, the door thinner, and he heard
+much. Foyle had asked him not to intervene, but only to stand by and await
+the issue of this final conference. He meant, however, to take a hand in
+if he thought he was needed, and he kept his ear glued to the door. If he
+thought Foyle needed him--his fingers were on the handle of the door.
+
+"Now, hurry up! What do you want with me?" asked Halbeck of his brother.
+
+"Take your time," said ex-Sergeant Foyle, as he drew the blind
+three-quarters down, so that they could not be seen from the street.
+
+"I'm in a hurry, I tell you. I've got my plans. I'm going South. I've only
+just time to catch the Canadian Pacific three days from now, riding
+hard."
+
+"You're not going South, Dorl."
+
+"Where am I going, then?" was the sneering reply.
+
+"Not farther than the Happy Land."
+
+"What the devil's all this? You don't mean you're trying to arrest me
+again, after letting me go?"
+
+"You don't need to ask. You're my prisoner. You're my prisoner," he said,
+in a louder voice--"_until you free yourself_."
+
+"I'll do that damn quick, then," said the other, his hand flying to his
+hip.
+
+"Sit down," was the sharp rejoinder, and a pistol was in his face before
+he could draw his own weapon.
+
+"Put your gun on the table," Foyle said, quietly. Halbeck did so. There
+was no other way.
+
+Foyle drew it over to himself. His brother made a motion to rise.
+
+"Sit still, Dorl," came the warning voice.
+
+White with rage, the freebooter sat still, his dissipated face and heavy
+angry lips, looking like a debauched and villanous caricature of his
+brother before him.
+
+"Yes, I suppose you'd have potted me, Dorl," said the ex-sergeant. "You'd
+have thought no more of doing that than you did of killing Linley, the
+ranchman; than you did of trying to ruin Jo Byndon, your wife's sister,
+when she was sixteen years old, when she was caring for your child--giving
+her life for the child you brought into the world."
+
+"What in the name of hell--it's a lie!"
+
+"Don't bluster. I know the truth."
+
+"Who told you--the truth?"
+
+"She did--to-day--an hour ago."
+
+"She here--out here?" There was a new, cowed note in the voice.
+
+"She is in the next room."
+
+"What did she come here for?"
+
+"To make you do right by your own child. I wonder what a jury of decent
+men would think about a man who robbed his child for five years, and let
+that child be fed and clothed and cared for by the girl he tried to
+destroy, the girl he taught what sin there was in the world."
+
+"She put you up to this. She was always in love with you, and you know
+it."
+
+There was a dangerous look in Foyle's eyes, and his jaw set hard. "There
+would be no shame in a decent woman caring for me, even if it was true. I
+haven't put myself outside the boundary as you have. You're my brother,
+but you're the worst scoundrel in the country--the worst unhanged. Put on
+the table there the letter in your pocket. It holds five hundred dollars
+belonging to your child. There's twenty-five hundred dollars more to be
+accounted for."
+
+The other hesitated, then with an oath threw the letter on the table.
+"I'll pay the rest as soon as I can, if you'll stop this damned
+tomfoolery," he said, sullenly, for he saw that he was in a hole.
+
+"You'll pay it, I suppose, out of what you stole from the C. P. R.
+contractor's chest. No, I don't think that will do."
+
+"You want me to go to prison, then?"
+
+"I think not. The truth would come out at the trial--the whole truth--the
+murder and all. There's your child, Bobby. You've done him enough wrong
+already. Do you want him--but it doesn't matter whether you do or not--do
+you want him to carry through life the fact that his father was a
+jail-bird and a murderer, just as Jo Byndon carries the scar you made when
+you threw her against the door?"
+
+"What do you want with me, then?" The man sank slowly and heavily back
+into the chair.
+
+"There is a way--have you never thought of it? When you threatened others
+as you did me, and life seemed such a little thing in others--can't you
+think?"
+
+Bewildered, the man looked around helplessly. In the silence which
+followed Foyle's words his brain was struggling to see a way out. Foyle's
+further words seemed to come from a great distance.
+
+"It's not too late to do the decent thing. You'll never repent of all
+you've done; you'll never do different."
+
+The old, reckless, irresponsible spirit revived in the man; he had both
+courage and bravado; he was not hopeless yet of finding an escape from the
+net. He would not beg, he would struggle.
+
+"I've lived as I meant to, and I'm not going to snivel or repent now. It's
+all a rotten business, anyhow," he rejoined.
+
+With a sudden resolution the ex-sergeant put his own pistol in his pocket,
+then pushed Halbeck's pistol over toward him on the table. Halbeck's eyes
+lighted eagerly, grew red with excitement, then a change passed over them.
+They now settled on the pistol, and stayed.
+
+He heard Foyle's voice. "It's with you to do what you ought to do. Of
+course you can kill me. My pistol's in my pocket. But I don't think you
+will. You've murdered one man. You won't load your soul up with another.
+Besides, if you kill me, you will never get away from Kowatin alive. But
+it's with you--take your choice. It's me or you."
+
+Halbeck's fingers crept out and found the pistol.
+
+"Do your duty, Dorl," said the ex-sergeant, as he turned his back on his
+brother.
+
+The door of the room opened, and Goatry stepped inside softly. He had work
+to do, if need be, and his face showed it. Halbeck did not see him.
+
+There was a demon in Halbeck's eyes, as his brother stood, his back
+turned, taking his chances. A large mirror hung on the wall opposite
+Halbeck. Goatry was watching Halbeck's face in the glass, and saw the
+danger. He measured his distance.
+
+All at once Halbeck caught Goatry's face in the mirror. The dark devilry
+faded out of his eyes. His lips moved in a whispered oath. Every way was
+blocked.
+
+With a sudden wild resolution he raised the pistol to his head. It
+cracked, and he fell back heavily in the chair. There was a red trickle at
+the temple.
+
+He had chosen the best way out.
+
+"He had the pluck," said Goatry, as Foyle swung round with a face of
+misery.
+
+A moment afterward came a rush of people. Goatry kept them back.
+
+"Sergeant Foyle arrested Halbeck, and Halbeck's shot himself," Goatry
+explained to them.
+
+A white-faced girl with a scar on her temple made her way into the room.
+
+[Illustration: "IF YOU KILL ME, YOU WILL NEVER GET AWAY
+FROM KOWATIN ALIVE"]
+
+"Come away--come away, Jo," said the voice of the man she loved; and he
+did not let her see the lifeless figure in the chair.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Three days later the plains swallowed them, as they made their way with
+Billy Goatry to the headquarters of the Riders of the Plains, where
+Sergeant Foyle was asked to reconsider his resignation: which he did.
+
+
+
+
+THE WHISPERER
+
+
+  "And thou shalt be brought down and shalt speak out of the ground,
+  and thy speech shall be low out of the dust, and thy voice shall be
+  as of one that hath a familiar spirit out of the ground, and thy
+  speech shall whisper out of the dust."
+
+The harvest was all in, and, as far as eye could observe, nothing remained
+of the golden sea of wheat which had covered the wide prairie save the
+yellow stubble, the bed of an ocean of wealth which had been gathered.
+Here the yellow level was broken by a dark patch of fallow land, there by
+a covert of trees also tinged with yellow, or deepening to crimson and
+mauve--the harbinger of autumn. The sun had not the insistent and
+intensive strength of more southerly climes; it was buoyant, confident,
+and heartening, and it shone in a turquoise vault which covered and
+endeared the wide, even world beneath. Now and then a flock of wild ducks
+whirred past, making for the marshes or the innumerable lakes that
+vitalized the expanse, or buzzards hunched heavily along, frightened from
+some far resort by eager sportsmen.
+
+That was above; but beneath, on a level with the unlifted eye, were houses
+here and there, looking in the vastness like dolls' habitations. Many of
+the houses stood blank and staring in the expanse, but some had trees, and
+others little oases of green. Everywhere prosperity, everywhere the
+strings of life pulled taut, signs that energy had been straining on the
+leash.
+
+Yet there was one spot where it seemed that deadness made encampment. It
+could not be seen in the sweep of the eye, you must have travelled and
+looked vigilantly to find it; but it was there--a lake shimmering in the
+eager sun, washing against a reedy shore, a little river running into the
+reedy lake at one end and out at the other, a small, dilapidated house
+half hid in a wood that stretched for half a mile or so upon a rising
+ground. In front of the house, not far from the lake, a man was lying
+asleep upon the ground, a rough felt hat drawn over his eyes.
+
+Like the house, the man seemed dilapidated also: a slovenly, ill-dressed,
+demoralized figure he looked, even with his face covered. He seemed in a
+deep sleep. Wild ducks settled on the lake not far from him with a swish
+and flutter; a coyote ran past, veering as it saw the recumbent figure; a
+prairie hen rustled by with a shrill cluck, but he seemed oblivious to
+all. If asleep, he was evidently dreaming, for now and then he started, or
+his body twitched and a muttering came from beneath the hat.
+
+The battered house, the absence of barn or stable or garden, or any token
+of thrift or energy, marked the man as an excrescence in this theatre of
+hope and fruitful toil. It all belonged to some degenerate land, some
+exhausted civilization, not to this field of vigor where life rang like
+silver.
+
+So the man lay for hour upon hour. He slept as though he had been upon a
+long journey in which the body was worn to helplessness. Or was it that
+sleep of the worn-out spirit which, tortured by remembrance and remorse,
+at last sinks into the depths where the conscious vexes the unconscious--a
+little of fire, a little of ice, and now and then the turn of the screw?
+
+The day marched nobly on toward evening, growing out of its blue and
+silver into a pervasive golden gleam; the bare, grayish houses on the
+prairie were transformed into miniature palaces of light. Presently a girl
+came out of the woods behind, looking at the neglected house with a
+half-pitying curiosity. She carried in one hand a fishing-rod which had
+been telescoped till it was no bigger than a cane; in the other she
+carried a small fishing-basket. Her father's shooting and fishing camp was
+a few miles away by a lake of greater size than this which she approached.
+She had tired of the gay company in camp, brought up for sport from beyond
+the American border where she also belonged, and she had come to explore
+the river running into this reedy lake. She turned from the house and came
+nearer to the lake, shaking her head, as though compassionating the poor
+folk who lived there. She was beautiful. Her hair was brown, going to
+tawny, but in this soft light which enwrapped her she was in a sort of
+topaz flame. As she came on, suddenly she stopped as though transfixed.
+She saw the man--and saw also a tragedy afoot.
+
+The man stirred violently in his sleep, cried out, and started up. As he
+did so, a snake, disturbed in its travel past him, suddenly raised itself
+in anger. Startled out of sleep by some inner torture, the man heard the
+sinister rattle he knew so well, and gazed paralyzed.
+
+The girl had been but a few feet away when she first saw the man and his
+angry foe. An instant, then, with the instinct of the woods and the
+plains, and the courage that has habitation everywhere, dropping her
+basket she sprang forward noiselessly. The short, telescoped fishing-rod
+she carried swung round her head and completed its next half-circle at the
+head of the reptile, even as it was about to strike. The blow was sure,
+and with half-severed head the snake fell dead upon the ground beside the
+man.
+
+He was like one who has been projected from one world to another, dazed,
+stricken, fearful. Presently the look of agonized dismay gave way to such
+an expression of relief as might come upon the face of a reprieved victim
+about to be given to the fire or to the knife that flays. The place of
+dreams from which he had emerged was like hell, and this was some world of
+peace that he had not known these many years. Always one had been at his
+elbow--"a familiar spirit out of the ground"--whispering in his ear. He
+had been down in the abysses of life.
+
+He glanced again at the girl, and realized what she had done: she had
+saved his life. Whether it had been worth saving was another question; but
+he had been near to the brink, had looked in, and the animal in him had
+shrunk back from the precipice in a confused agony of fear. He staggered
+to his feet.
+
+"Where do you come from?" he said, pulling his coat closer to hide the
+ragged waistcoat underneath, and adjusting his worn and dirty hat--in his
+youth he had been vain and ambitious, and good-looking also.
+
+He asked his question in no impertinent tone, but in the low voice of one
+who "shall whisper out of the dust." He had not yet recovered from the
+first impression of his awakening, that the world in which he now stood
+was not a real world.
+
+She understood, and half in pity and half in conquered repugnance said:
+
+"I come from a camp beyond"--she indicated the direction by a gesture. "I
+had been fishing"--she took up the basket--"and chanced on you--then." She
+glanced at the snake significantly.
+
+"You killed it in the nick of time," he said, in a voice that still spoke
+of the ground, but with a note of half-shamed gratitude. "I want to thank
+you," he added. "You were brave. It would have turned on you if you had
+missed. I know them. I've killed five." He spoke very slowly, huskily.
+
+"Well, you are safe--that is the chief thing," she rejoined, making as
+though to depart. But presently she turned back. "Why are you so
+dreadfully poor--and everything?" she asked, gently.
+
+His eye wandered over the lake and back again before he answered her, in a
+dull, heavy tone, "I've had bad luck, and, when you get down, there are
+plenty to kick you farther."
+
+"You weren't always poor as you are now--I mean long ago, when you were
+young."
+
+"I'm not so old," he rejoined, sluggishly--"only thirty-four."
+
+She could not suppress her astonishment. She looked at the hair already
+gray, the hard, pinched face, the lustreless eyes.
+
+"Yet it must seem long to you," she said, with meaning.
+
+Now he laughed--a laugh sodden and mirthless. He was thinking of his
+boyhood. Everything, save one or two spots all fire or all darkness, was
+dim in his debilitated mind.
+
+"Too far to go back," he said, with a gleam of the intelligence which had
+been strong in him once.
+
+She caught the gleam. She had wisdom beyond her years. It was the greater
+because her mother was dead, and she had had so much wealth to dispense,
+for her father was rich beyond counting, and she controlled his household
+and helped to regulate his charities. She saw that he was not of the
+laboring classes, that he had known better days; his speech, if abrupt and
+cheerless, was grammatical.
+
+"If you cannot go back, you can go forward," she said, firmly. "Why should
+you be the only man in this beautiful land who lives like this, who is
+idle when there is so much to do, who sleeps in the daytime when there is
+so much time to sleep at night?"
+
+A faint flush came on the grayish, colorless face. "I don't sleep at
+night," he returned, moodily.
+
+"Why don't you sleep?" she asked.
+
+He did not answer, but stirred the body of the snake with his foot. The
+tail moved; he stamped upon the head with almost frenzied violence, out of
+keeping with his sluggishness.
+
+She turned away, yet looked back once more--she felt tragedy around her.
+"It is never too late to mend," she said, and moved on, but stopped, for a
+young man came running from the woods toward her.
+
+"I've had a hunt--such a hunt for you!" the young man said, eagerly, then
+stopped short when he saw to whom she had been talking. A look of disgust
+came upon his face as he drew her away, his hand on her arm.
+
+"In Heaven's name, why did you talk to that man?" he said. "You ought not
+to have trusted yourself near him."
+
+"What has he done?" she asked. "Is he so bad?"
+
+"I've heard about him. I inquired the other day. He was once in a better
+position as a ranchman--ten years ago; but he came into some money one
+day, and he changed at once. He never had a good character; even before he
+got his money he used to gamble, and was getting a bad name. Afterward he
+began drinking, and he took to gambling harder than ever. Presently his
+money all went and he had to work; but his bad habits had fastened on him,
+and now he lives from hand to mouth, sometimes working for a month,
+sometimes idle for months. There's something sinister about him, there's
+some mystery; for poverty, or drink even--and he doesn't drink much
+now--couldn't make him what he is. He doesn't seek company, and he walks
+sometimes endless miles talking to himself, going as hard as he can. How
+did you come to speak to him, Grace?"
+
+She told him all, with a curious abstraction in her voice, for she was
+thinking of the man from a standpoint which her companion could not
+realize. She was also trying to verify something in her memory. Ten years
+ago, so her lover had just said, the poor wretch behind them had been a
+different man; and there had shot into her mind the face of a ranchman she
+had seen with her father, the railway king, one evening when his "special"
+had stopped at a railway station on his tour through Montana--ten years
+ago. Why did the face of the ranchman which had fixed itself on her memory
+then, because he had come on the evening of her birthday and had spoiled
+it for her, having taken her father away from her for an hour--why did his
+face come to her now? What had it to do with the face of this outcast she
+had just left?
+
+"What is his name?" she asked at last.
+
+"Roger Lygon," he answered.
+
+"Roger Lygon," she repeated, mechanically. Something in the man chained
+her thought--his face that moment when her hand saved him and the awful
+fear left him and a glimmer of light came into his eyes.
+
+But her lover beside her broke into song. He was happy with her.
+Everything was before him, her beauty, her wealth, herself. He could not
+dwell upon dismal things; his voice rang out on the sharp, sweet, evening
+air:
+
+     "Oh, where did you get them, the bonny, bonny roses
+       That blossom in your cheeks, and the morning in your eyes?'
+     'I got them on the North Trail, the road that never closes,
+       That widens to the seven gold gates of paradise.'
+     'Oh, come, let us camp in the North Trail together,
+       With the night-fires lit and the tent-pegs down.'"
+
+Left alone, the man by the reedy lake stood watching them until they were
+out of view. The song came back to him, echoing across the waters:
+
+          "'Oh, come, let us camp on the North Trail together,
+            With the night-fires lit and the tent-pegs down.'"
+
+The sunset glow, the girl's presence, had given him a moment's illusion,
+had absorbed him for a moment, acting on his deadened nature like a
+narcotic at once soothing and stimulating. As some wild animal in a
+forgotten land, coming upon ruins of a vast civilization, towers, temples
+and palaces, in the golden glow of an Eastern evening, stands abashed and
+vaguely wondering, having neither reason to understand nor feeling to
+enjoy, yet is arrested and abashed, so he stood. He had lived the last
+three years so much alone, had been cut off so completely from his
+kind--had lived so much alone. Yet to-night, at last, he would not be
+alone.
+
+Some one was coming to-night, some one whom he had not seen for a long
+time. Letters had passed, the object of the visit had been defined, and he
+had spent the intervening days since the last letter had arrived, now
+agitated, now apathetic and sullen, now struggling with some invisible
+being that kept whispering in his ear, saying to him: "It was the price of
+fire and blood and shame. You did it--you--you--you! You are down, and you
+will never get up. You can only go lower still--fire and blood and
+shame!"
+
+Criminal as he was, he had never become hardened, he had only become
+degraded. Crime was not his vocation. He had no gift for it; still, the
+crime he had committed had never been discovered--the crime that he did
+with others. There were himself and Dupont and another. Dupont was coming
+to-night--Dupont, who had profited by the crime, and had not spent his
+profits, but had built upon them to further profit; for Dupont was
+avaricious and prudent, and a born criminal. Dupont had never had any
+compunctions or remorse, had never lost a night's sleep because of what
+they two had done, instigated thereto by the other, who had paid them so
+well for the dark thing.
+
+The other was Henderley, the financier. He was worse perhaps than Dupont,
+for he was in a different sphere of life, was rich beyond counting, and
+had been early nurtured in quiet Christian surroundings. The spirit of
+ambition, rivalry, and the methods of a degenerate and cruel finance had
+seized him, mastered him; so that, under the cloak of power--as a toreador
+hides the blade under the red cloth before his enemy the _toro_--he held a
+sword of capital which did cruel and vicious things, at last becoming
+criminal also. Henderley had incited and paid; the others, Dupont and
+Lygon, had acted and received. Henderley had had no remorse, none at any
+rate that weighed upon him, for he had got used to ruining rivals and
+seeing strong men go down, and those who had fought him come to beg or
+borrow of him in the end. He had seen more than one commit suicide, and
+those they loved go down and farther down, and he had helped these up a
+little, but not near enough to put them near his own plane again; and he
+could not see--it never occurred to him--that he had done any evil to
+them. Dupont thought upon his crimes now and then, and his heart hardened,
+for he had no moral feeling; Henderley did not think at all. It was left
+to the man of the reedy lake to pay the penalty of apprehension, to suffer
+the effects of crime upon a nature not naturally criminal.
+
+Again and again, how many hundreds of times, had Roger Lygon seen in his
+sleep--had even seen awake, so did hallucination possess him--the new
+cattle trail he had fired for scores of miles. The fire had destroyed the
+grass over millions of acres, two houses had been burned and three people
+had lost their lives; all to satisfy the savage desire of one man, to
+destroy the chance of a cattle trade over a great section of country for
+the railway which was to compete with his own--an act which, in the end,
+was futile, failed of its purpose. Dupont and Lygon had been paid their
+price, and had disappeared and been forgotten--they were but pawns in his
+game--and there was no proof against Henderley. Henderley had forgotten.
+Lygon wished to forget, but Dupont remembered, and meant now to reap fresh
+profit by the remembrance.
+
+Dupont was coming to-night, and the hatchet of crime was to be dug up
+again. So it had been planned.
+
+As the shadows fell, Lygon roused himself from his trance with a shiver.
+It was not cold, but in him there was a nervous agitation, making him cold
+from head to foot; his body seemed as impoverished as his mind. Looking
+with heavy-lidded eyes across the prairie, he saw in the distance the
+barracks of the Riders of the Plains and the jail near by, and his
+shuddering ceased. There was where he belonged, within four stone walls;
+yet here he was free to go where he willed, to live as he willed, with no
+eye upon him. With no eye upon him? There was no eye, but there was the
+Whisperer whom he could never drive away. Morning and night he heard the
+words: "You--you--you! Fire and blood and shame!" He had snatched sleep
+when he could find it, after long, long hours of tramping over the plains,
+ostensibly to shoot wild fowl, but in truth to bring on a great bodily
+fatigue--and sleep. His sleep only came then in the first watches of the
+night. As the night wore on the Whisperer began again, as the cloud of
+weariness lifted a little from him and the senses were released from the
+heavy sedative of unnatural exertion.
+
+The dusk deepened. The moon slowly rose. He cooked his scanty meal and
+took a deep draught from a horn of whiskey from beneath a board in the
+flooring. He had not the courage to face Dupont without it, nor yet to
+forget what he must forget if he was to do the work Dupont came to
+arrange--he must forget the girl who had saved his life and the influence
+of those strange moments in which she had spoken down to him, in the abyss
+where he had been lying.
+
+He sat in the doorway, a fire gleaming behind him; he drank in the good
+air as though his lungs were thirsty for it, and saw the silver glitter of
+the moon upon the water. Not a breath of wind stirred, and the shining
+path the moon made upon the reedy lake fascinated his eye. Everything was
+so still except that whisper, louder in his ear than it had ever been
+before.
+
+Suddenly, upon the silver path upon the lake there shot a silent canoe,
+with a figure as silently paddling toward him. He gazed for a moment
+dismayed, and then got to his feet with a jerk.
+
+"Dupont," he said, mechanically.
+
+The canoe swished among the reeds and rushes, scraped on the shore, and a
+tall, burly figure sprang from it and stood still, looking at the house.
+
+"_Qui reste là_--Lygon?" he asked.
+
+"Dupont," was the nervous, hesitating reply.
+
+Dupont came forward quickly. "_Ah_, _ben_, here we are again--so," he
+grunted, cheerily.
+
+Entering the house, they sat before the fire, holding their hands to the
+warmth from force of habit, though the night was not cold.
+
+"_Ben_, you will do it to-night--then?" Dupont said. "_Sacré_, it is
+time!"
+
+"Do what?" rejoined the other, heavily.
+
+An angry light leaped into Dupont's eyes. "You not unnerstan' my
+letters--bah! You know it all right, so queeck."
+
+The other remained silent, staring into the fire with wide, searching
+eyes.
+
+Dupont put a hand on him. "You ketch my idee queeck. We mus' have more
+money from that Henderley--certainlee. It is ten years, and he t'ink it is
+all right. He t'ink we come no more becos' he give five t'ousand dollars
+to us each. That was to do the t'ing, to fire the country. Now we want
+another ten t'ousan' to us each, to forget we do it for him--_hein_?"
+
+Still there was no reply. Dupont went on, watching the other furtively,
+for he did not like this silence. But he would not resent it till he was
+sure there was good cause.
+
+"It comes to suit us. He is over there at the Old Man Lak', where you can
+get at him easy, not like in the city where he lif'. Over in the States,
+he laugh mebbe, becos' he is at home, an' can buy off the law. But
+here--it is Canadaw, an' they not care eef he have hunder' meellion
+dollar. He know that--sure. Eef you say you not care a dam to go to jail,
+so you can put him there, too, becos' you have not'ing, an' so dam seeck
+of everyt'ing, he will t'ink ten t'ousan' dollar same as one cent to Nic
+Dupont--_ben sûr_!"
+
+Lygon nodded his head, still holding his hands to the blaze. With ten
+thousand dollars he could get away into--into another world somewhere,
+some world where he could forget, as he forgot for a moment this afternoon
+when the girl said to him, "It is never too late to mend."
+
+Now, as he thought of her, he pulled his coat together and arranged the
+rough scarf at his neck involuntarily. Ten thousand dollars--but ten
+thousand dollars by blackmail, hush-money, the reward of fire and blood
+and shame! Was it to go on? Was he to commit a new crime?
+
+He stirred, as though to shake off the net that he felt twisting round
+him, in the hands of the robust and powerful Dupont, on whom crime sat so
+lightly, who had flourished while he, Lygon, had gone lower and lower. Ten
+years ago he had been the better man, had taken the lead, was the master,
+Dupont the obedient confederate, the tool. Now, Dupont, once the rough
+river-driver, grown prosperous in a large way for him--who might yet be
+mayor of his town in Quebec--he held the rod of rule. Lygon was conscious
+that the fifty dollars sent him every New Year for five years by Dupont
+had been sent with a purpose, and that he was now Dupont's tool.
+Debilitated, demoralized, how could he, even if he wished, struggle
+against this powerful confederate, as powerful in will as in body? Yet if
+he had his own way he would not go to Henderley. He had lived with a
+"familiar spirit" so long, he feared the issue of this next excursion into
+the fens of crime.
+
+Dupont was on his feet now. "He will be here only three days more--I haf
+find it so. To-night it mus' be done. As we go I will tell you what to
+say. I will wait at the Forks, an' we will come back togedder. His check
+will do. Eef he gif at all, the check is all right. He will not stop it.
+Eef he have the money, it is better--_sacré_--yes. Eef he not gif--well, I
+will tell you, there is the other railway man he try to hurt, how would he
+like--But I will tell you on the river. _Maint'nant_--queeck, we go."
+
+Without a word Lygon took down another coat and put it on. Doing so he
+concealed a weapon quickly, as Dupont stooped to pick a coal for his pipe
+from the blaze. Lygon had no fixed purpose in taking a weapon with him; it
+was only a vague instinct of caution that moved him.
+
+In the canoe on the river, in an almost speechless apathy, he heard
+Dupont's voice giving him instructions.
+
+Henderley, the financier, had just finished his game of whist and
+dismissed his friends--it was equivalent to dismissal, rough yet genial as
+he seemed to be, so did immense wealth and its accompanying power affect
+his relations with those about him. In everything he was "considered." He
+was in good-humor, for he had won all the evening, and with a smile he
+rubbed his hands among the notes--three thousand dollars it was. It was
+like a man with a pocketful of money chuckling over a coin he had found in
+the street. Presently he heard a rustle of the inner tent-curtain and
+swung round. He faced the man from the reedy lake.
+
+Instinctively he glanced round for a weapon, mechanically his hands firmly
+grasped the chair in front of him. He had been in danger of his life many
+times, and he had no fear. He had been threatened with assassination more
+than once, and he had got used to the idea of danger; life to him was only
+a game.
+
+He kept his nerve; he did not call out; he looked his visitor in the
+eyes.
+
+"What are you doing here? Who are you?" he said.
+
+"Don't you know me?" answered Lygon, gazing intently at him.
+
+Face to face with the man who had tempted him to crime, Lygon had a new
+sense of boldness, a sudden feeling of reprisal, a rushing desire to put
+the screw upon him. At sight of this millionaire with the pile of notes
+before him there vanished the sickening hesitation of the afternoon, of
+the journey with Dupont. The look of the robust, healthy financier was
+like acid in a wound; it maddened him.
+
+"You will know me better soon," Lygon added, his head twitching with
+excitement.
+
+Henderley recognized him now. He gripped the armchair spasmodically, but
+presently regained a complete composure. He knew the game that was forward
+here, and he also thought that if once he yielded to blackmail there would
+never be an end to it. He made no pretence, but came straight to the
+point.
+
+"You can do nothing; there is no proof," he said, with firm assurance.
+
+"There is Dupont," answered Lygon, doggedly.
+
+"Who is Dupont?"
+
+"The French Canadian who helped me--I divided with him."
+
+"You said the man who helped you died. You wrote that to me. I suppose you
+are lying now."
+
+Henderley coolly straightened the notes on the table, smoothing out the
+wrinkles, arranging them according to their denominations with an
+apparently interested eye; yet he was vigilantly watching the outcast
+before him. To yield to blackmail would be fatal; not to yield to it--he
+could not see his way. He had long ago forgotten the fire and blood and
+shame. No Whisperer reminded him of that black page in the history of his
+life; he had been immune of conscience. He could not understand this man
+before him. It was as bad a case of human degradation as ever he had
+seen--he remembered the stalwart, if dissipated, ranchman who had acted on
+his instigation. He knew now that he had made a foolish blunder then, that
+the scheme had been one of his failures; but he had never looked on it as
+with eyes reproving crime. As a hundred thoughts tending toward the
+solution of the problem by which he was faced flashed through his mind,
+and he rejected them all, he repeated mechanically the phrase "I suppose
+you are lying now."
+
+"Dupont is here--not a mile away," was the reply. "He will give proof. He
+would go to jail or to the gallows to put you there, if you do not pay. He
+is a devil--Dupont."
+
+Still the great man could not see his way out. He must temporize for a
+little longer, for rashness might bring scandal or noise; and near by was
+his daughter, the apple of his eye.
+
+"What do you want? How much did you figure you could get out of me, if I
+let you bleed me?" he asked, sneeringly and coolly. "Come now, how much?"
+
+Lygon, in whom a blind hatred of the man still raged, was about to reply,
+when he heard a voice calling, "Daddy, Daddy!"
+
+Suddenly the red, half-insane light died down in Lygon's eyes. He saw the
+snake upon the ground by the reedy lake, the girl standing over it--the
+girl with the tawny hair. This was her voice.
+
+Henderley had made a step toward a curtain opening into another room of
+the great tent, but before he could reach it the curtain was pushed back
+and the girl entered with a smile.
+
+"May I come in?" she said; then stood still, astonished, seeing Lygon.
+
+"Oh!" she exclaimed. "Oh--you!"
+
+All at once a look came into her face which stirred it as a flying insect
+stirs the water of a pool. On the instant she remembered that she had seen
+the man before.
+
+It was ten years ago in Montana, on the night of her birthday. Her father
+had been called away to talk with this man, and she had seen him from the
+steps of the "special." It was only the caricature of the once strong,
+erect ranchman that she saw; but there was no mistake, she recognized him
+now.
+
+Lygon, dumfounded, looked from her to her father, and he saw now in
+Henderley's eyes a fear that was not to be misunderstood.
+
+Here was where Henderley could be smitten, could be brought to his knees.
+It was the vulnerable part of him. Lygon could see that he was stunned.
+The great financier was in his power. He looked back again to the girl,
+and her face was full of trouble.
+
+A sharp suspicion was in her heart that somehow or other her father was
+responsible for this man's degradation and ruin. She looked Lygon in the
+eyes.
+
+"Did you want to see me?" she asked.
+
+She scarcely knew why she said it; but she was sensible of trouble, maybe
+of tragedy, somewhere; and she had a vague dread of she knew not what,
+for, hide it, avoid it, as she had done so often, there was in her heart
+an unhappy doubt concerning her father.
+
+A great change had come over Lygon. Her presence had altered him. He was
+again where she had left him in the afternoon.
+
+He heard her say to her father: "This was the man I told you of--at the
+reedy lake. Did you come to see me?" she repeated.
+
+"I did not know you were here," he answered. "I came"--he was conscious of
+Henderley's staring eyes fixed upon his helplessly--"I came to ask your
+father if he would not buy my shack. There is good shooting at the lake;
+the ducks come plenty, sometimes. I want to get away, to start again
+somewhere. I've been a failure. I want to get away, right away south. If
+he would buy it, I could start again. I've had no luck."
+
+He had invented it on the moment, but the girl understood better than
+Lygon or Henderley could have dreamed. She had seen the change pass over
+Lygon.
+
+Henderley had a hand on himself again, and the startled look went out of
+his eyes.
+
+"What do you want for your shack and the lake?" he asked, with restored
+confidence. The fellow no doubt was grateful that his daughter had saved
+his life, he thought.
+
+"Five hundred dollars," answered Lygon, quickly.
+
+Henderley would have handed over all that lay on the table before him,
+but he thought it better not to do so. "I'll buy it," he said. "You seem
+to have been hit hard. Here is the money. Bring me the deed
+to-morrow--to-morrow."
+
+"I'll not take the money till I give you the deed," said Lygon. "It will
+do to-morrow. It's doing me a good turn. I'll get away and start again
+somewhere. I've done no good up here. Thank you, sir--thank you."
+
+Before they realized it, the tent-curtain rose and fell, and he was gone
+into the night.
+
+The trouble was still deep in the girl's eyes as she kissed her father,
+and he, with an overdone cheerfulness, wished her a good-night.
+
+The man of iron had been changed into a man of straw once at least in his
+lifetime.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Lygon found Dupont at the Forks.
+
+"_Eh_, _ben_, it is all right--yes?" Dupont asked, eagerly, as Lygon
+joined him.
+
+"Yes, it is all right," answered Lygon.
+
+With an exulting laugh and an obscene oath, Dupont pushed out the canoe,
+and they got away into the moonlight. No word was spoken for some
+distance, but Dupont kept giving grunts of satisfaction.
+
+"You got the ten t'ousan' each--in cash or check, eh? The check or the
+money--_hein_?"
+
+"I've got nothing," answered Lygon.
+
+Dupont dropped his paddle with a curse.
+
+"You got not'ing! You said eet was all right!" he growled.
+
+"It is all right. I got nothing. I asked for nothing. I have had enough. I
+have finished."
+
+With a roar of rage Dupont sprang on him, and caught him by the throat as
+the canoe swayed and dipped. He was blind with fury.
+
+Lygon tried with one hand for his knife, and got it, but the pressure on
+his throat was growing terrible.
+
+For minutes the struggle continued, for Lygon was fighting with the
+desperation of one who makes his last awful onset against fate and doom.
+
+Dupont also had his knife at work. At last it drank blood, but as he got
+it home he suddenly reeled blindly, lost his balance, and lurched into the
+water with a groan.
+
+Lygon, weapon in hand and bleeding freely, waited for him to rise and make
+for the canoe again.
+
+Ten, twenty, fifty seconds passed. Dupont did not rise. A minute went by,
+and still there was no stir, no sign. Dupont would never rise again. In
+his wild rage he had burst a blood-vessel on the brain.
+
+Lygon bound up his reeking wound as best he could. He did it calmly,
+whispering to himself the while.
+
+"I must do it. I must get there if I can. I will not be afraid to die
+then," he muttered to himself.
+
+Presently he grasped an oar and paddled feebly.
+
+A slight wind had risen, and, as he turned the boat in to face the Forks
+again, it helped to carry the canoe to the landing-place.
+
+Lygon dragged himself out. He did not try to draw the canoe up, but began
+this journey of a mile back to the tent he had left so recently. First,
+step by step, leaning against trees, drawing himself forward, a journey as
+long to his determined mind as from youth to age. Would it never end? It
+seemed a terrible climbing-up the sides of a cliff, and, as he struggled
+fainting on, all sorts of sounds were in his ears, but he realized that
+the Whisperer was no longer there. The sounds he heard did not torture,
+they helped his stumbling feet. They were like the murmur of waters, like
+the sounds of the forest and soft, booming bells. But the bells were only
+the beatings of his heart--so loud, so swift.
+
+[Illustration: FOR MINUTES THE STRUGGLE CONTINUED]
+
+He was on his knees now, crawling on--on--on. At last there came a light,
+suddenly bursting on him from a tent he was so near. Then he called, and
+called again, and fell forward on his face. But now he heard a voice above
+him. It was _her_ voice. He had blindly struggled on to die near her, near
+where she was, she was so pitiful and good.
+
+He had accomplished his journey, and her voice was speaking above him.
+There were other voices, but it was only hers that he heard.
+
+"God help him--oh, God help him!" she was saying.
+
+He drew a long, quiet breath. "I will sleep now," he said, clearly.
+
+He would hear the Whisperer no more.
+
+
+
+
+AS DEEP AS THE SEA
+
+
+"What can I do, Dan? I'm broke, too. My last dollar went to pay my last
+debt to-day. I've nothing but what I stand in. I've got prospects, but I
+can't discount prospects at the banks." The speaker laughed bitterly.
+"I've reaped and I'm sowing, the same as you, Dan."
+
+The other made a nervous motion of protest. "No; not the same as me,
+Flood--not the same. It's sink or swim with me, and if you can't help
+me--oh, I'd take my gruel without whining, if it wasn't for Di! It's that
+that knocks me over. It's the shame to her. Oh, what a cursed ass and
+fool--and thief, I've been!"
+
+"Thief?--thief?"
+
+Flood Rawley dropped the flaming match with which he was about to light a
+cheroot, and stood staring, his dark-blue eyes growing wider, his worn,
+handsome face becoming drawn, as swift conviction mastered him. He felt
+that the black words which had fallen from his friend's lips--from the
+lips of Diana Welldon's brother--were the truth. He looked at the plump
+face, the full, amiable eyes, now misty with fright, at the characterless
+hand nervously feeling the golden mustache, at the well-fed, inert body;
+and he knew that, whatever the trouble or the peril, Dan Welldon could not
+surmount it alone.
+
+"What is it?" Rawley asked, rather sharply, his fingers running through
+his slightly grizzled black hair, but not excitedly, for he wanted no
+scenes; and if this thing could hurt Di Welldon, and action was necessary,
+he must remain cool. What she was to do, Heaven and he only knew; what she
+had done for him, perhaps neither understood fully as yet. "What is
+it--quick?" he added, and his words were like a sharp grip upon Dan
+Welldon's shoulder. "Racing?--cards?"
+
+Dan nodded. "Yes, over at Askatoon; five hundred on Jibway, the
+favorite--he fell at the last fence; five hundred at poker with Nick
+Fison; and a thousand in land speculation at Edmonton, on margin.
+Everything went wrong."
+
+"And so you put your hand in the railway company's money-chest?"
+
+"It seemed such a dead certainty--Jibway; and the Edmonton corner-blocks,
+too. I'd had luck with Nick before; but--well, there it is, Flood."
+
+"They know--the railway people--Shaughnessy knows?"
+
+"Yes, the president knows. He's at Calgary now. They telegraphed him, and
+he wired to give me till midnight to pay up or go to jail. They're
+watching me now. I can't stir. There's no escape, and there's no one I can
+ask for help but you. That's why I've come, Flood."
+
+"Lord, what a fool! Couldn't you see what the end would be if your
+plunging didn't come off? You--you oughtn't to bet, or speculate, or play
+cards, you're not clever enough. You've got blind rashness, and so you
+think you're bold. And Di--oh, you idiot! And on a salary of a thousand
+dollars a year!"
+
+"I suppose Di would help me; but I couldn't explain." The weak face
+puckered, a lifeless kind of tear gathered in the ox-like eyes.
+
+"Yes, she probably would help you. She'd probably give you all she's saved
+to go to Europe with and study, saved from her pictures sold at twenty per
+cent. of their value; and she'd mortgage the little income she's got to
+keep her brother out of jail. Of course she would, and of course you ought
+to be ashamed of yourself for thinking of it." Rawley lighted his cigar
+and smoked fiercely.
+
+"It would be better for her than my going to jail," stubbornly replied the
+other. "But I don't want to tell her, or to ask her for money. That's why
+I've come to you. You needn't be so hard, Flood; you've not been a saint;
+and Di knows it."
+
+Rawley took the cheroot from his mouth, threw back his head, and laughed
+mirthlessly, ironically. Then suddenly he stopped and looked round the
+room till his eyes rested on a portrait-drawing which hung on the wall
+opposite the window, through which the sun poured. It was the face of a
+girl with beautiful bronzed hair, and full, fine, beautifully modelled
+face, with brown eyes deep and brooding, which seemed to have time and
+space behind them--not before them. The lips were delicate and full, and
+had the look suggesting a smile which the inward thought has stayed. It
+was like one of the Titian women--like a Titian that hangs on the wall of
+the Gallery at Munich. The head and neck, the whole personality, had an
+air of distinction and destiny. The drawing had been done by a wandering
+duchess who had seen the girl sketching in the foothills when on a visit
+to that "Wild West" which has such power to refine and inspire minds not
+superior to Nature. Its replica was carried to a castle in Scotland. It
+had been the gift of Diana Welldon on a certain day not long ago, when
+Flood Rawley had made a pledge to her, which was as vital to him and to
+his future as two thousand dollars were vital to Dan Welldon now.
+
+"You've not been a saint, and Di knows it," repeated the weak brother of a
+girl whose fame belonged to the West; whose name was a signal for cheerful
+looks; whose buoyant humor and impartial friendliness gained her
+innumerable friends; and whose talent, understood by few, gave her a
+certain protection, lifting her a little away from the outwardly crude and
+provincial life around her.
+
+When Rawley spoke, it was with quiet deliberation, and even gentleness. "I
+haven't been a saint, and she knows it, as you say, Dan; but the law is on
+my side as yet, it isn't on yours. There's the difference."
+
+"You used to gamble yourself; you were pretty tough, and you oughtn't to
+walk up my back with hobnailed boots."
+
+"Yes, I gambled, Dan, and I drank, and I raised a dust out here. My record
+was writ pretty big. But I didn't lay my hands on the ark of the social
+covenant, whose inscription is, _Thou shalt not steal_; and that's why I'm
+poor but proud, and no one's watching for me round the corner, same as
+you."
+
+Welldon's half-defiant petulance disappeared. "What's done can't be
+undone." Then, with a sudden burst of anguish, "Oh, get me out of this
+somehow!"
+
+"How? I've got no money. By speaking to your sister?"
+
+The other was silent.
+
+"Shall I do it?" Rawley peered anxiously into the other's face, and he
+knew that there was no real security against the shameful trouble being
+laid bare to her.
+
+"I want a chance to start straight again."
+
+The voice was fluttered, almost whining; it carried no conviction; but the
+words had in them a reminder of words that Rawley himself had said to
+Diana Welldon but a few months ago, and a new spirit stirred in him. He
+stepped forward and, gripping Dan's shoulder with a hand of steel, said,
+fiercely:
+
+"No, Dan. I'd rather take you to her in your coffin. She's never known
+you, never seen what most of us have seen, that all you have--or nearly
+all--is your lovely looks and what they call a kind heart. There's only
+you two in your family, and she's got to live with you--awhile, anyhow.
+She couldn't stand this business. She mustn't stand it. She's had enough
+to put up with in me; but at the worst she could pass me by on the other
+side, and there would be an end. It would have been said that Flood Rawley
+had got his deserts. It's different with you." His voice changed,
+softened. "Dan, I made a pledge to her that I'd never play cards again for
+money while I lived, and it wasn't a thing to take on without some
+cogitation. But I cogitated, and took it on, and started life over
+again--me! Began practising law again--barrister, solicitor, notary
+public--at forty. And at last I've got my chance in a big case against the
+Canadian Pacific. It'll make me or break me, Dan.... There, I wanted you
+to see where I stand with Di; and now I want you to promise me that you'll
+not leave these rooms till I see you again. I'll get you clear; I'll save
+you, Dan."
+
+"Flood! Oh, my God, Flood!" The voice was broken.
+
+"You've got to stay here, and you're to remember not to get the funk, even
+if I don't come before midnight. I'll be here then, if I'm alive. If you
+don't keep your word--but, there, you will." Both hands gripped the
+graceful shoulders of the miscreant like a vise.
+
+"So help me, Flood," was the frightened, whispered reply. "I'll make it up
+to you somehow, some day. I'll pay you back."
+
+Rawley caught up his cap from the table.
+
+"Steady!--steady! Don't go at a fence till you're sure of your seat, Dan,"
+he said. Then, with a long look at the portrait on the wall and an
+exclamation which the other did not hear, he left the room with a set,
+determined face.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Who told you? What brought you, Flood?" the girl asked, her chin in her
+long, white hands, her head turned from the easel to him, a book in her
+lap, the sun breaking through the leaves upon her hat, touching the Titian
+hair with splendor.
+
+"Fate brought me, and didn't tell me," he answered, with a whimsical quirk
+of the mouth and his trouble lurking behind the sea-deep eyes.
+
+"Wouldn't you have come if you knew I was here?" she urged, archly.
+
+"Not for two thousand dollars," he answered, the look of trouble deepening
+in his eyes, but his lips were smiling. He had a quaint sense of humor,
+and at his last gasp would have noted the ridiculous thing. And surely it
+was a droll malignity of Fate to bring him here to her whom, in this
+moment of all moments in his life, he wished far away. Fate meant to try
+him to the uttermost. This hurdle of trial was high, indeed.
+
+"Two thousand dollars--nothing less?" she inquired, gayly. "You are too
+specific for a real lover."
+
+"Fate fixed the amount," he added, dryly.
+
+"Fate--you talk so much of Fate," she replied, gravely, and her eyes
+looked into the distance. "You make me think of it, too, and I don't want
+to do so. I don't want to feel helpless, to be the child of Accident and
+Destiny."
+
+"Oh, you get the same thing in the 'fore-ordination' that old Minister
+M'Gregor preaches every Sunday. 'Be elect or be damned,' he says to us
+all. Names aren't important; but, anyhow, it was Fate that led me here."
+
+"Are you sure it wasn't me?" she asked, softly. "Are you sure I wasn't
+calling you, and you had to come?"
+
+"Well, it was _en route_, anyhow; and you are always calling, if I must
+tell you," he laughed. Suddenly he became grave. "I hear you call me in
+the night sometimes, and I start up and say 'Yes, Di!' out of my sleep.
+It's a queer hallucination. I've got you on the brain, certainly."
+
+"It seems to vex you--certainly," she said, opening the book that lay in
+her lap, "and your eyes trouble me to-day. They've got a look that used to
+be in them, Flood, before--before you promised; and another look I don't
+understand and don't like. I suppose it's always so. The real business of
+life is trying to understand each other."
+
+"You have wonderful thoughts for one that's had so little chance," he
+said. "That's because you're a genius, I suppose. Teaching can't give that
+sort of thing--the insight."
+
+"What is the matter, Flood?" she asked, suddenly, again, her breast
+heaving, her delicate, rounded fingers interlacing. "I heard a man say
+once that you were 'as deep as the sea.' He did not mean it kindly, but I
+do. You are in trouble, and I want to share it if I can. Where were you
+going when you came across me here?"
+
+"To see old Busby, the quack-doctor up there," he answered, nodding toward
+a shrubbed and wooded hillock behind them.
+
+"Old Busby!" she rejoined, in amazement. "What do you want with him--not
+medicine of that old quack, that dreadful man?"
+
+"He cures people sometimes. A good many out here owe him more than they'll
+ever pay him."
+
+"Is he as rich an old miser as they say?"
+
+"He doesn't look rich, does he?" was the enigmatical answer.
+
+"Does any one know his real history? He didn't come from nowhere. He must
+have had friends once. Some one must once have cared for him, though he
+seems such a monster now."
+
+"Yet he cures people sometimes," he rejoined, abstractedly. "Probably
+there's some good underneath. I'm going to try and see."
+
+"What is it? What is your business with him? Won't you tell me? Is it so
+secret?"
+
+"I want him to help me in a case I've got in hand. A client of mine is in
+trouble--you mustn't ask about it; and he can help, I think--I think so."
+He got to his feet. "I must be going, Di," he added. Suddenly a flush
+swept over his face, and he reached out and took both her hands. "Oh, you
+are a million times too good for me!" he said. "But if all goes well, I'll
+do my best to make you forget it."
+
+"Wait--wait one moment," she answered. "Before you go I want you to hear
+what I've been reading over and over to myself just now. It is from a book
+I got from Quebec, called _When Time Shall Pass_. It is a story of two
+like you and me. The man is writing to the woman, and it has things that
+you have said to me--in a different way."
+
+"No, I don't talk like a book, but I know a star in a dark night when I
+see it," he answered, with a catch in his throat.
+
+"Hush!" she said, catching his hand in hers as she read, while all around
+them the sounds of summer--the distant clack of a reaper, the crack of a
+whip, the locusts droning, the whir of a young partridge, the squeak of a
+chipmunk--were tuned to the harmony of the moment and her voice:
+
+  "'Night and the sombre silence, oh, my love, and one star shining!
+  First, warm, velvety sleep, and then this quick, quiet waking to your
+  voice which seems to call me. Is it--_is_ it you that calls? Do you
+  sometimes, even in your dreams, speak to me? Far beneath
+  unconsciousness is there the summons of your spirit to me?... I like
+  to think so. I like to think that this thing which has come to us is
+  deeper, greater than we are. Sometimes day and night there flash
+  before my eyes--my mind's eyes--pictures of you and me in places
+  unfamiliar, landscapes never before seen, activities uncomprehended
+  and unknown, bright, alluring glimpses of some second being, some
+  possible, maybe never-to-be-realized future, alas! Yet these
+  swift-moving shutters of the soul, or imagination, _or_ reality--who
+  shall say which?--give me a joy never before felt in life. If I am
+  not a better man for this love of mine for you, I am _more_ than I
+  was, and shall be more than I am. Much of my life in the past was
+  mean and small, so much that I have said and done has been
+  unworthy--my love for you is too sharp a light for my gross
+  imperfections of the past! Come what will, be what must, I stake my
+  life, my heart, my soul on you--that beautiful, beloved face; those
+  deep eyes in which my being is drowned; those lucid, perfect hands
+  that have bound me to the mast of your destiny. I cannot go back, I
+  must go forward: now I must keep on loving you or be shipwrecked. I
+  did not know that this was in me, this tide of love, this current of
+  devotion. Destiny plays me beyond my ken, beyond my dreams. "_O
+  Cithoeron!_" Turn from me now--or never, O my love! Loose me from the
+  mast, and let the storm and wave wash me out into the sea of your
+  forgetfulness now--or never!... But keep me, keep me, if your love is
+  great enough, if I bring you any light or joy; for I am yours to my
+  uttermost note of life.'"
+
+"He knew!--he knew!" Rawley said, catching her wrists in his hands and
+drawing her to him. "If I could write, that's what I should have said to
+you, beautiful and beloved. How mean and small and ugly my life was till
+you made me over! I was a bad lot."
+
+"So much hung on one little promise," she said, and drew closer to him.
+"You were never bad," she added; then, with an arm sweeping the universe,
+"Oh, isn't it all good, and isn't it all worth living?"
+
+[Illustration: "OH, ISN'T IT ALL WORTH LIVING?" SHE SAID]
+
+His face lost its glow. Over in the town her brother faced a ruined life,
+and the girl beside him a dark humiliation and a shame which would poison
+her life hereafter, unless--his look turned to the little house where the
+quack-doctor lived. He loosed her hands.
+
+"Now for Caliban," he said.
+
+"I shall be Ariel and follow you--in my heart," she said. "Be sure and
+make him tell you the story of his life," she added, with a laugh, as his
+lips swept the hair behind her ears.
+
+As he moved swiftly away, watching his long strides, she said, proudly,
+"As deep as the sea."
+
+After a moment she added: "And he was once a gambler, until, until"
+she--glanced at the open book, then with sweet mockery looked at her
+hands--"until 'those lucid, perfect hands bound me to the mast of your
+destiny.' O vain Diana! But they are rather beautiful," she added, softly,
+"and I am rather happy." There was something like a gay little chuckle in
+her throat.
+
+"O vain Diana!" she repeated.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Rawley entered the door of the hut on the hill without ceremony. There was
+no need for courtesy, and the work he had come to do could be easier done
+without it.
+
+Old Busby was crouched over a table, his mouth lapping milk from a full
+bowl on the table. He scarcely raised his head when Rawley
+entered--through the open door he had seen his visitor coming. He sipped
+on, his straggling beard dripping. There was silence for a time.
+
+"What do you want?" he growled at last.
+
+"Finish your swill, and then we can talk," said Rawley, carelessly. He
+took a chair near the door, lighted a cheroot and smoked, watching the old
+man, as he tipped the great bowl toward his face, as though it were some
+wild animal feeding. The clothes were patched and worn, the coat-front was
+spattered with stains of all kinds, the hair and beard were unkempt and
+long, giving him what would have been the look of a mangy lion but that
+the face had the expression of some beast less honorable. The eyes,
+however, were malignantly intelligent; the hands, ill-cared for, were
+long, well-shaped, and capable, but of a hateful yellow color like the
+face. And through all was a sense of power, dark and almost mediæval.
+Secret, evilly wise, and inhuman, he looked a being apart, whom men might
+seek for help in dark purposes.
+
+"What do you want--medicine?" he muttered at last, wiping his beard and
+mouth with the palm of his hand, and the palm on his knees.
+
+Rawley looked at the ominous-looking bottles on the shelves above the old
+man's head, at the forceps, knives, and other surgical instruments on the
+walls--they at least were bright and clean--and, taking the cheroot slowly
+from his mouth, he said:
+
+"Shin-plasters are what I want. A friend of mine has caught his leg in a
+trap."
+
+The old man gave an evil chuckle at the joke, for a "shin-plaster" was a
+money-note worth a quarter of a dollar.
+
+"I've got some," he growled in reply, "but they cost twenty-five cents
+each. You can have them for your friend at the price."
+
+"I want eight thousand of them from you. He's hurt pretty bad," was the
+dogged, dry answer.
+
+The shaggy eyebrows of the quack drew together, and the eyes peered out
+sharply through half-closed lids. "There's plenty of wanting and not much
+getting in this world," he rejoined, with a leer of contempt, and spat on
+the floor, while yet the furtive watchfulness of the eyes indicated a mind
+ill at ease.
+
+Smoke came in placid puffs from the cheroot--Rawley was smoking very hard,
+but with a judicial meditation, as it seemed.
+
+"Yes, but if you want a thing so bad that, to get it, you'll face the
+devil or the Beast of Revelations, it's likely to come to you."
+
+"You call me a beast?" The reddish-brown face grew black like that of a
+Bedouin in his rage.
+
+"I said the Beast of Revelations--don't you know the Scriptures?"
+
+"I know that a fool is to be answered according to his folly," was the
+hoarse reply, and the great head wagged to and fro in its smarting rage.
+
+"Well, I'm doing my best; and perhaps when the folly is all out we'll come
+to the revelations of the Beast."
+
+There was a silence, in which the gross impostor shifted heavily in his
+seat, while a hand twitched across the mouth and then caught at the breast
+of the threadbare black coat abstractedly.
+
+Rawley leaned forward, one elbow on a knee, the cheroot in his fingers. He
+spoke almost confidentially, as to some ignorant and misguided savage--as
+he had talked to Indian chiefs in his time when searching for the truth
+regarding some crime.
+
+"I've had a lot of revelations in my time. A lawyer and a doctor always
+do. And though there are folks who say I'm no lawyer, as there are those
+who say with greater truth that you're no doctor, speaking technically,
+we've both had 'revelations.' You've seen a lot that's seamy, and so have
+I. You're pretty seamy yourself. In fact, you're as bad a man as ever
+saved lives--and lost them. You've had a long tether, and you've swung on
+it--swung wide. But you've had a lot of luck that you haven't swung high,
+too."
+
+He paused and flicked away the ash from his cheroot, while the figure
+before him swayed animal-like from side to side, muttering.
+
+"You've got brains, a great lot of brains of a kind--however you came by
+them," Rawley continued; "and you've kept a lot of people in the West from
+passing in their checks before their time. You've rooked 'em, chiselled
+'em out of a lot of cash, too. There was old Lamson--fifteen hundred for
+the goitre on his neck; and Mrs. Gilligan for the cancer--two thousand,
+wasn't it? 'Tincture of Lebanon Leaves' you called the medicine, didn't
+you? You must have made fifty thousand or so in the last ten years."
+
+"What I've made I'll keep," was the guttural answer, and the talon-like
+fingers clawed the table.
+
+"You've made people pay high for curing them, saving them sometimes; but
+you haven't paid me high for saving you in the courts; and there's one
+case that you haven't paid me for at all. That was when the patient
+died--and you didn't."
+
+The face of the old man became mottled with a sudden fear, but he jerked
+it forward once or twice with an effort at self-control. Presently he
+steadied to the ordeal of suspense, while he kept saying to himself, "What
+does he know--what--which?"
+
+"Malpractice resulting in death--that was poor Jimmy Tearle; and something
+else resulting in death--that was the switchman's wife. And the law is
+hard in the West where a woman's in the case--quick and hard. Yes, you've
+swung wide on your tether; look out that you don't swing high, old man."
+
+"You can prove nothing; it's bluff!" came the reply in a tone of malice
+and of fear.
+
+"You forget. I was your lawyer in Jimmy Tearle's case, and a letter's been
+found written by the switchman's wife to her husband. It reached me the
+night he was killed by the avalanche. It was handed over to me by the
+post-office, as the lawyer acting for the relatives. I've read it. I've
+got it. It gives you away."
+
+"I wasn't alone." Fear had now disappeared, and the old man was fighting.
+
+"No, you weren't alone; and if the switchman and the switchman's wife
+weren't dead and out of it all, and if the other man that didn't matter
+any more than you wasn't alive and hadn't a family that does matter, I
+wouldn't be asking you peaceably for two thousand dollars as my fee for
+getting you off two cases that might have sent you to prison for twenty
+years, or, maybe, hung you to the nearest tree."
+
+The heavy body pulled itself together, the hands clinched. "Blackmail--you
+think I'll stand it?"
+
+"Yes, I think you will. I want two thousand dollars to help a friend in a
+hole, and I mean to have it, if you think your neck's worth it."
+
+Teeth, wonderfully white, showed through the shaggy beard. "If I had to go
+to prison--or swing, as you say--do you think I'd go with my mouth shut?
+I'd not pay up alone. The West would crack--holy Heaven, I know enough to
+make it sick. Go on and see! I've got the West in my hand." He opened and
+shut his fingers with a grimace of cruelty which shook Rawley in spite of
+himself.
+
+Rawley had trusted to the inspiration of the moment; he had had no clearly
+defined plan; he had believed that he could frighten the old man, and by
+force of will bend him to his purposes. It had all been more difficult
+than he had expected. He kept cool, imperturbable, and determined,
+however. He knew that what the old quack said was true--the West might
+shake with scandal concerning a few who, no doubt, in remorse and secret
+fear, had more than paid the penalty of their offences. But he thought of
+Di Welldon and of her criminal brother, and every nerve, every faculty,
+was screwed to its utmost limit of endurance and capacity.
+
+Suddenly the old man gave a new turn to the event. He got up and,
+rummaging in an old box, drew out a dice-box. Rattling the dice, he threw
+them out on the table before him, a strange, excited look crossing his
+face.
+
+"Play for it," he said, in a harsh, croaking voice. "Play for the two
+thousand. Win it, if you can. You want it bad. I want to keep it bad. It's
+nice to have; it makes a man feel warm--money does. I'd sleep in
+ten-dollar bills, I'd have my clothes made of them, if I could; I'd have
+my house papered with them; I'd eat 'em. Oh, I know, I know about you--and
+her--Diana Welldon! You've sworn off gambling, and you've kept your pledge
+for near a year. Well, it's twenty years since I gambled--twenty years. I
+gambled with these then." He shook the dice in the box. "I gambled
+everything I had away--more than two thousand dollars--more than two
+thousand dollars." He laughed a raw, mirthless laugh. "Well, you're the
+greatest gambler in the West. So was I--in the East. It pulverized me at
+last, when I'd nothing left--and drink, drink, drink. I gave up both one
+night and came out West. I started doctoring here. I've got money, plenty
+of money--medicine, mines, land got it for me. I've been lucky. Now you
+come to bluff me--me! You don't know old Busby." He spat on the floor.
+"I'm not to be bluffed. I know too much. Before they could lynch me I'd
+talk. But to play you, the greatest gambler in the West, for two thousand
+dollars--yes, I'd like the sting of it again. Twos, fours,
+double-sixes--the gentleman's game!" He rattled the dice and threw them
+with a flourish out on the table, his evil face lighting up. "Come! You
+can't have something for nothing!" he growled.
+
+As he spoke, a change came over Rawley's face. It lost its cool
+imperturbability, it grew paler, the veins on the fine forehead stood out,
+a new, flaring light came into the eyes. The old gambler's spirit was
+alive. But even as it rose, sweeping him into that area of fiery
+abstraction where every nerve is strung to a fine tension and the
+surrounding world disappears, he saw the face of Diana Welldon, he
+remembered her words to him not an hour before, and the issue of the
+conflict, other considerations apart, was without doubt. But there was her
+brother and his certain fate if the two thousand dollars were not paid in
+by midnight. He was desperate. It was in reality for Diana's sake. He
+approached the table, and his old calm returned.
+
+"I have no money to play with," he said, quietly.
+
+With a gasp of satisfaction, the old man fumbled in the inside of his coat
+and drew out layers of ten, fifty, and hundred dollar bills. It was lined
+with them. He passed a pile over to Rawley--two thousand dollars. He
+placed a similar pile before himself.
+
+As Rawley laid his hand on the bills, the thought rushed through his mind,
+"You have it--keep it!" but he put it away from him. With a gentleman he
+might have done it, with this man before him it was impossible. He must
+take his chances; and it was the only chance in which he had hope now,
+unless he appealed for humanity's sake, for the girl's sake, and told the
+real truth. It might avail. Well, that would be the last resort.
+
+"For small stakes?" said the grimy quack, in a gloating voice.
+
+Rawley nodded, and then added: "We stop at eleven o'clock, unless I've
+lost or won all before that."
+
+"And stake what's left on the last throw?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+There was silence for a moment, in which Rawley seemed to grow older, and
+a set look came to his mouth--a broken pledge, no matter what the cause,
+brings heavy penalties to the honest mind. He shut his eyes for an
+instant, and, when he opened them, he saw that his fellow-gambler was
+watching him with an enigmatical and furtive smile. Did this Caliban have
+some understanding of what was at stake in his heart and soul?
+
+"Play!" Rawley said, sharply, and was himself again.
+
+For hour after hour there was scarce a sound, save the rattle of the dice
+and an occasional exclamation from the old man as he threw a double-six.
+As dusk fell, the door had been shut and a lighted lantern was hung over
+their heads.
+
+Fortune had fluctuated. Once the old man's pile had diminished to two
+notes, then the luck had changed and his pile grew larger; then fell
+again; but, as the hands of the clock on the wall above the blue medicine
+bottles reached a quarter to eleven, it increased steadily throw after
+throw.
+
+Now the player's fever was in Rawley's eyes. His face was deadly pale, but
+his hand threw steadily, calmly, almost negligently, as it might seem. All
+at once, at eight minutes to eleven, the luck turned in his favor, and his
+pile mounted again. Time after time he dropped double-sixes. It was almost
+uncanny. He seemed to see the dice in the box, and his hand threw them out
+with the precision of a machine. Long afterward he had this vivid illusion
+that he could see the dice in the box. As the clock was about to strike
+eleven he had before him three thousand eight hundred dollars. It was his
+throw.
+
+"Two hundred," he said, in a whisper, and threw. He won.
+
+With a gasp of relief, he got to his feet, the money in his hand. He
+stepped backward from the table, then staggered, and a faintness passed
+over him. He had sat so long without moving that his legs bent under him.
+There was a pail of water with a dipper in it on a bench. He caught up a
+dipperful of water, drank it empty, and let it fall in the pail again with
+a clatter.
+
+"Dan," he said, abstractedly--"Dan, you're all safe now."
+
+Then he seemed to wake, as from a dream, and looked at the man at the
+table. Busby was leaning on it with both hands, and staring at Rawley like
+some animal jaded and beaten from pursuit. Rawley walked back to the table
+and laid down two thousand dollars.
+
+"I only wanted two thousand," he said, and put the other two thousand in
+his pocket.
+
+The evil eyes gloated, the long fingers clutched the pile and swept it
+into a great inside pocket. Then the shaggy head bent forward.
+
+"You said it was for Dan," he said--"Dan Welldon?"
+
+Rawley hesitated. "What is that to you?" he replied, at last.
+
+With a sudden impulse the old impostor lurched round, opened a box, drew
+out a roll, and threw it on the table.
+
+"It's got to be known sometime," he said, "and you'll be my lawyer when
+I'm put into the ground--you're clever. They call me a quack.
+Malpractice--bah! There's my diploma--James Clifton Welldon. Right enough,
+isn't it?"
+
+Rawley was petrified. He knew the forgotten story of James Clifton
+Welldon, the specialist, turned gambler, who had almost ruined his own
+brother--the father of Dan and Diana--at cards and dice, and had then
+ruined himself and disappeared. Here, where his brother had died, he had
+come years ago and practised medicine as a quack.
+
+"Oh, there's plenty of proof, if it's wanted!" he said. "I've got it
+here." He tapped the box behind him. "Why did I do it? Because it's my
+way. And you're going to marry my niece, and'll have it all some day. But
+not till I've finished with it--not unless you win it from me at dice or
+cards.... But no"--something human came into the old, degenerate face--"no
+more gambling for the man that's to marry Diana. There's a wonder and a
+beauty!" He chuckled to himself. "She'll be rich when I've done with it.
+You're a lucky man--ay, you're lucky."
+
+Rawley was about to tell the old man what the two thousand dollars was
+for, but a fresh wave of repugnance passed over him, and, hastily drinking
+another dipperful of water, he opened the door. He looked back. The old
+man was crouching forward, lapping milk from the great bowl, his beard
+dripping. In disgust he swung round again. The fresh, clear air caught his
+face.
+
+With a gasp of relief he stepped out into the night, closing the door
+behind him.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Northern Lights, by Gilbert Parker
+
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+<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
+"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
+<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
+<head>
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" />
+<title>
+The Project Gutenberg eBook of Northern Lights, by Gilbert Parker.
+</title>
+
+<style type="text/css">
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+    .caption          {font-size:.8em;}
+    table             {margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; clear: both;}
+    hr.tb             {width: 35%; margin-top: 0.5em; margin-bottom: 0.5em; border:none; border-bottom:1px solid black; clear:both;}
+    .blockquot        {margin-left:5%; margin-right:5%;}
+    .pagenum          {display: inline; font-size: x-small; text-align: right; position: absolute; right: 2%; padding: 1px 3px; font-style: normal; font-variant:normal; font-weight:normal; text-decoration: none; background-color: inherit; border:1px solid #eee;}
+    hr.major          {width: 65%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 2em; border:none; border-bottom:1px solid black; clear:both;}
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+    hr.silver         {width: 100%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 2em; border:none; border-bottom:1px solid silver;}
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+</head>
+<body>
+
+
+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Northern Lights, by Gilbert Parker
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Northern Lights
+
+Author: Gilbert Parker
+
+Release Date: October 12, 2008 [EBook #26905]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NORTHERN LIGHTS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+<hr class='silver' />
+
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<a name='linki_1' id='linki_1'></a>
+<img src='images/pfpc.jpg' alt='' title='' style='width: 381px; height: 545px;' /><br />
+<p class='caption' style='margin: 0 auto; text-align:center;width: 381px;'>
+BUT NOW HE HEARD A VOICE ABOVE HIM. IT WAS HER VOICE See page 353 <br />
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class='silver' />
+
+<div class='ce'>
+<p style=' font-size:2.2em; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:2em;'>NORTHERN LIGHTS</p>
+<p>BY</p>
+<p style=' font-size:1.2em; margin-bottom:2em;'>GILBERT PARKER</p>
+<p style=' margin-bottom:2em;'>ILLUSTRATED</p>
+</div>
+
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<img src='images/emb.png' alt='' title=''  /><br />
+</div>
+
+<div class='ce'>
+<p style=' font-size:1.2em; margin-top:2em;'>HARPER &amp; BROTHERS PUBLISHERS</p>
+<p>NEW YORK AND LONDON</p>
+<p style=' margin-bottom:2em;'>MCMIX</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class='silver' />
+
+<div style='font-size:smaller; margin-top: 1em; margin-bottom:1em;'>
+<table width='420' summary='' style='border:1px solid black; padding:1em;'>
+
+<col style='width:50%' />
+<col style='width:50%' />
+
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'><span style='font-size:larger; font-variant:small-caps;'>Books by<br />GILBERT PARKER</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'>&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;</td></tr>
+<tr><td><span style='font-variant:small-caps;'>Northern Lights. Illustrated </span></td><td align='right'>Post 8vo $1.50</td></tr>
+<tr><td><span style='font-variant:small-caps;'>The Weavers.</span> Illustrated</td><td align='right'>Post 8vo 1.50</td></tr>
+<tr><td><span style='font-variant:small-caps;'>The Right of Way. Illustrated</span></td><td align='right'>Post 8vo 1.50</td></tr>
+<tr><td><span style='font-variant:small-caps;'>A Ladder of Swords.</span> Illustrated</td><td align='right'>Post 8vo 1.50</td></tr>
+<tr><td align='center' colspan='2'>&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;</td></tr>
+<tr><td><span style='font-variant:small-caps;'>Pierre and His People.</span></td><td><span style='font-variant:small-caps;'>The Pomp of the Lavilettes.</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td><span style='font-variant:small-caps;'>Mrs. Falchion.</span></td><td><span style='font-variant:small-caps;'>The Battle of the Strong.</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td><span style='font-variant:small-caps;'>The Trespasser.</span></td><td><span style='font-variant:small-caps;'>The Lane that Had No Turning.</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td><span style='font-variant:small-caps;'>The Translation of a Savage.</span></td><td><span style='font-variant:small-caps;'>Donovan Pasha.</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td valign='top'><span style='font-variant:small-caps;'>The Trail of the Sword.</span></td><td><span style='font-variant:small-caps;'>Old Quebec</span> (In collaboration with C. G. Bryan).</td></tr>
+<tr><td><span style='font-variant:small-caps;'>When Valmond Came to Pontiac.</span></td><td><span style='font-variant:small-caps;'>Round the Compass in Australia.</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td><span style='font-variant:small-caps;'>An Adventurer of the North.</span></td><td><span style='font-variant:small-caps;'>A Lover's Diary.</span></td></tr>
+<tr><td><span style='font-variant:small-caps;'>The Seats of the Mighty.</span></td><td><span style='font-variant:small-caps;'>Embers</span> (Private Publication only).</td></tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+<div style='font-size:smaller; margin-top: 3em; margin-bottom:1em; text-align:center;'>
+<table width='300' summary='' style='border:1px solid black; padding:1em;'>
+<tr><td>Copyright, 1909, by <span style='font-variant:small-caps;'>Harper &amp; Brothers</span>.</td></tr>
+<tr><td>&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;</td></tr>
+<tr><td><i>All rights reserved.</i></td></tr>
+<tr><td>Published September, 1909.</td></tr>
+</table>
+</div>
+
+<hr class='silver' />
+
+<div class='ce'>
+<p>TO</p>
+<p>ISHBEL, COUNTESS OF ABERDEEN</p>
+<p>A TRUE FRIEND</p>
+<p>OF THE GREAT DOMINION</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class='silver' />
+
+<div class='ce'>
+<p>NOTE</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>The tales in this book belong to two different epochs
+in the life of the Far West. The first five are reminiscent
+of &#8220;border days and deeds&#8221;&mdash;of days before the great
+railway was built which changed a waste into a fertile
+field of civilization. The remaining stories cover the
+period passed since the Royal Northwest Mounted Police
+and the Pullman Car first startled the early pioneer,
+and sent him into the land of the farther North or drew
+him into the quiet circle of civic routine and humdrum
+occupation.</p>
+<div class='ra'>
+<p>G. P.</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class='silver' />
+
+<div class='ce'>
+<p style=' font-size:1.4em; margin-bottom:1em;'>CONTENTS</p>
+</div>
+
+<table border='0' width='500' cellpadding='2' cellspacing='0' summary='Contents' style='margin:1em auto;'>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'><span style='font-size:small;'>CHAPTER</span></td>
+  <td align='right'><span style='font-size:small;'>PAGE</span></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:1em;'>A Lodge in the Wilderness</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#A_LODGE_IN_THE_WILDERNESS'>1</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:1em;'>Once at Red Man&#8217;s River</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#ONCE_AT_RED_MAN_S_RIVER'>21</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:1em;'>The Stroke of the Hour</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#THE_STROKE_OF_THE_HOUR'>38</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:1em;'>Buckmaster&#8217;s Boy</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#BUCKMASTER_S_BOY'>57</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:1em;'>To-Morrow</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#TOMORROW'>72</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:1em;'>Qu&#8217;appelle </td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#QU_APPELLE'>94</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:1em;'>The Stake and the Plumb-Line</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#THE_STAKE_AND_THE_PLUMBLINE'>118</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:1em;'>When the Swallows Homeward Fly</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#WHEN_THE_SWALLOWS_HOMEWARD_FLY'>160</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:1em;'>George&#8217;s Wife</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#GEORGE_S_WIFE'>174</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:1em;'>Marcile</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#MARCILE'>196</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:1em;'>A Man, a Famine, and a Heathen Boy</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#A_MAN_A_FAMINE_AND_A_HEATHEN_BOY'>216</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:1em;'>The Healing Springs and the Pioneers</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#THE_HEALING_SPRINGS_AND_THE_PIONEERS'>234</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:1em;'>The Little Widow of Jansen</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#THE_LITTLE_WIDOW_OF_JANSEN'>253</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:1em;'>Watching The Rise of Orion</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#WATCHING_THE_RISE_OF_ORION'>272</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:1em;'>The Error of the Day</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#THE_ERROR_OF_THE_DAY'>295</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:1em;'>The Whisperer</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#THE_WHISPERER'>314</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:1em;'>As Deep as the Sea</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#AS_DEEP_AS_THE_SEA'>334</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<hr class='silver' />
+
+<div class='ce'>
+<p style=' font-size:1.4em; margin-bottom:1em;'>ILLUSTRATIONS</p>
+</div>
+
+<table border='0' width='500' cellpadding='2' cellspacing='0' summary='Illustrations' style='margin:1em auto'>
+<col style='width:80%;' />
+<col style='width:20%;' />
+<tr>
+  <td></td>
+  <td align='right'><span style='font-size:small'>PAGE</span></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'>BUT NOW HE HEARD A VOICE ABOVE HIM. IT WAS HER VOICE</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#linki_1'><i>Frontispiece</i></a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'>THE BIRD SHE HEARD IN THE NIGHT WAS CALLING IN HIS EARS NOW</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#linki_2'>14</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'>THE START ON THE NORTH TRAIL</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#linki_3'>36</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'>SHE SWAYED AND FELL FAINTING AT THE FEET OF BA&#8217;TISTE</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#linki_4'>56</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'>LITTLE BY LITTLE THEY DREW TO THE EDGE OF THE ROCK</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#linki_5'>70</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'>&#8220;THEY SHOT ME AN&#8217; HURT ME&#8221;</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#linki_6'>74</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'>&#8220;PAULINE,&#8221; HE SAID, FEEBLY, AND FAINTED IN HER ARMS</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#linki_7'>114</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'>THE OLD MAN SHOOK HIS HEAD. THOUGH NOT WITH UNDERSTANDING</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#linki_8'>166</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'>GEORGE&#8217;S WIFE</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#linki_9'>184</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'>THEN HAD HAPPENED THE REAL EVENT OF HIS LIFE</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#linki_10'>198</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'>THE FAITH HEALER</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#linki_11'>236</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'>&#8220;AS PURTY A WOMAN, TOO&mdash;AS PURTY AND AS STRAIGHT BEWHILES&#8221;</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#linki_12'>256</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'>&#8220;IF YOU KILL ME, YOU WILL NEVER GET AWAY FROM KOWATIN ALIVE&#8221;</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#linki_13'>312</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'>FOR MINUTES THE STRUGGLE CONTINUED</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#linki_14'>332</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' align='left'>&#8220;OH, ISN&#8217;T IT ALL WORTH LIVING?&#8221; SHE SAID</td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#linki_15'>342</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<hr class='silver' />
+
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_1' name='page_1'></a>1</span></div>
+<div class='ce'>
+<p style=' font-size:1.4em;'>NORTHERN LIGHTS</p>
+</div>
+
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<a name='A_LODGE_IN_THE_WILDERNESS' id='A_LODGE_IN_THE_WILDERNESS'></a>
+<h2>A LODGE IN THE WILDERNESS</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>&#8220;Hai-yai, so bright a day, so clear!&#8221; said Mitiahwe
+as she entered the big lodge and laid upon a wide, low
+couch, covered with soft skins, the fur of a grizzly which
+had fallen to her man&#8217;s rifle. &#8220;<i>Hai-yai</i>, I wish it would
+last forever&mdash;so sweet!&#8221; she added, smoothing the fur
+lingeringly and showing her teeth in a smile.</p>
+<p>&#8220;There will come a great storm, Mitiahwe. See, the
+birds go south so soon,&#8221; responded a deep voice from a
+corner by the doorway.</p>
+<p>The young Indian wife turned quickly, and, in a defiant,
+fantastic mood&mdash;or was it the inward cry against
+an impending fate, the tragic future of those who will
+not see, because to see is to suffer?&mdash;she made some
+quaint, odd motions of the body which belonged to a
+mysterious dance of her tribe, and, with flashing eyes,
+challenged the comely old woman seated on a pile of
+deer-skins.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It is morning, and the day will last forever,&#8221; she
+said, nonchalantly, but her eyes suddenly took on a
+far-away look, half apprehensive, half wondering. The
+birds were indeed going south very soon, yet had there
+ever been so exquisite an autumn as this, had her man
+ever had so wonderful a trade, her man with the brown
+hair, blue eyes, and fair, strong face?
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_2' name='page_2'></a>2</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;The birds go south, but the hunters and buffalo still
+go north,&#8221; Mitiahwe urged, searchingly, looking hard at
+her mother&mdash;Oanita, the Swift Wing.</p>
+<p>&#8220;My dream said that the winter will be dark and
+lonely, that the ice will be thick, the snow deep, and
+that many hearts will be sick because of the black days
+and the hunger that sickens the heart,&#8221; answered Swift
+Wing.</p>
+<p>Mitiahwe looked into Swift Wing&#8217;s dark eyes, and an
+anger came upon her. &#8220;The hearts of cowards will
+freeze,&#8221; she rejoined, &#8220;and to those that will not see
+the sun the world will be dark,&#8221; she added. Then suddenly
+she remembered to whom she was speaking, and
+a flood of feeling ran through her; for Swift Wing had
+cherished her like a fledgling in the nest till her young
+white man came from &#8220;down East.&#8221; Her heart had
+leaped up at sight of him, and she had turned to him
+from all the young men of her tribe, waiting in a kind
+of mist till he, at last, had spoken to her mother, and
+then one evening, her shawl over her head, she had come
+along to his lodge.</p>
+<p>A thousand times as the four years passed by she
+had thought how good it was that she had become his
+wife&mdash;the young white man&#8217;s wife, rather than the wife
+of Breaking Rock, son of White Buffalo, the chief, who
+had four hundred horses and a face that would have
+made winter and sour days for her. Now and then
+Breaking Rock came and stood before the lodge, a distance
+off, and stayed there hour after hour, and once or
+twice he came when her man was with her; but nothing
+could be done, for earth and air and space were common
+to them all, and there was no offence in Breaking Rock
+gazing at the lodge where Mitiahwe lived. Yet it seemed
+as though Breaking Rock was waiting&mdash;waiting and
+hoping. That was the impression made upon all who
+saw him, and even old White Buffalo, the chief, shook
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_3' name='page_3'></a>3</span>
+his head gloomily when he saw Breaking Rock, his son,
+staring at the big lodge which was so full of happiness,
+and so full also of many luxuries never before seen at
+a trading-post on the Koonee River. The father of
+Mitiahwe had been chief, but because his three sons had
+been killed in battle the chieftainship had come to White
+Buffalo, who was of the same blood and family. There
+were those who said that Mitiahwe should have been
+chieftainess; but neither she nor her mother would ever
+listen to this, and so White Buffalo and the tribe loved
+Mitiahwe because of her modesty and goodness. She
+was even more to White Buffalo than Breaking Rock,
+and he had been glad that Dingan the white man&mdash;Long
+Hand he was called&mdash;had taken Mitiahwe for his woman.
+Yet behind this gladness of White Buffalo, and that
+of Swift Wing, and behind the silent watchfulness of
+Breaking Rock, there was a thought which must ever
+come when a white man mates with an Indian maid,
+without priest or preacher, or writing, or book, or bond.</p>
+<p>Yet four years had gone; and all the tribe, and all
+who came and went, half-breeds, traders, and other
+tribes, remarked how happy was the white man with
+his Indian wife. They never saw anything but light
+in the eyes of Mitiahwe, nor did the old women of the
+tribe who scanned her face as she came and went, and
+watched and waited too for what never came&mdash;not even
+after four years.</p>
+<p>Mitiahwe had been so happy that she had not really
+missed what never came; though the desire to have
+something in her arms which was part of them both had
+flushed up in her veins at times, and made her restless
+till her man had come home again. Then she had forgotten
+the unseen for the seen, and was happy that they
+two were alone together&mdash;that was the joy of it all, so
+much alone together; for Swift Wing did not live with
+them, and, like Breaking Rock, she watched her daughter&#8217;s
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_4' name='page_4'></a>4</span>
+life, standing afar off, since it was the unwritten law
+of the tribe that the wife&#8217;s mother must not cross the
+path or enter the home of her daughter&#8217;s husband. But
+at last Dingan had broken through this custom, and insisted
+that Swift Wing should be with her daughter when
+he was away from home, as now on this wonderful autumn
+morning, when Mitiahwe had been singing to the
+Sun, to which she prayed for her man and for everlasting
+days with him.</p>
+<p>She had spoken angrily but now, because her soul
+sharply resented the challenge to her happiness which
+her mother had been making. It was her own eyes
+that refused to see the cloud which the sage and bereaved
+woman had seen and conveyed in images and
+figures of speech natural to the Indian mind.</p>
+<p>&#8220;<i>Hai-yai</i>,&#8221; she said now, with a strange, touching sigh
+breathing in the words, &#8220;you are right, my mother, and
+a dream is a dream; also, if it be dreamed three times,
+then is it to be followed, and it is true. You have lived
+long, and your dreams are of the Sun and the Spirit.&#8221;
+She shook a little as she laid her hand on a buckskin coat
+of her man hanging by the lodge door; then she steadied
+herself again, and gazed earnestly into her mother&#8217;s
+eyes. &#8220;Have all your dreams come true, my mother?&#8221;
+she asked, with a hungering heart.</p>
+<p>&#8220;There was the dream that came out of the dark
+five times, when your father went against the Crees, and
+was wounded, and crawled away into the hills, and all
+our warriors fled&mdash;they were but a handful, and the
+Crees like a young forest in number! I went with my
+dream, and found him after many days, and it was
+after that you were born, my youngest and my last.
+There was also&#8221;&mdash;her eyes almost closed, and the needle
+and thread she held lay still in her lap&mdash;&#8220;when two of
+your brothers were killed in the drive of the buffalo.
+Did I not see it all in my dream, and follow after them
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_5' name='page_5'></a>5</span>
+to take them to my heart? And when your sister was
+carried off, was it not my dream which saw the trail, so
+that we brought her back again to die in peace, her eyes
+seeing the Lodge whither she was going, open to her,
+and the Sun, the Father, giving her light and promise&mdash;for
+she had wounded herself to die that the thief who
+stole her should leave her to herself! Behold, my
+daughter, these dreams have I had, and others; and I
+have lived long and have seen the bright day break into
+storm, and the herds flee into the far hills where none
+could follow, and hunger come, and&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;<i>Hai-yo</i>, see, the birds flying south,&#8221; said the girl,
+with a gesture toward the cloudless sky. &#8220;Never since
+I lived have they gone south so soon.&#8221; Again she
+shuddered slightly, then she spoke slowly: &#8220;I also have
+dreamed, and I will follow my dream. I dreamed&#8221;&mdash;she
+knelt down beside her mother and rested her hands
+in her mother&#8217;s lap&mdash;&#8220;I dreamed that there was a wall
+of hills dark and heavy and far away, and that whenever
+my eyes looked at them they burned with tears; and
+yet I looked and looked, till my heart was like lead in
+my breast; and I turned from them to the rivers and
+the plains that I loved. But a voice kept calling to me,
+&#8216;Come, come! Beyond the hills is a happy land. The
+trail is hard, and your feet will bleed, but beyond is the
+happy land.&#8217; And I would not go for the voice that
+spoke, and at last there came an old man in my dream
+and spoke to me kindly, and said, &#8216;Come with me, and
+I will show thee the way over the hills to the Lodge
+where thou shalt find what thou hast lost!&#8217; And I said
+to him, &#8216;I have lost nothing&#8217;; and I would not go.
+Twice I dreamed this dream, and twice the old man
+came, and three times I dreamed it; and then I spoke
+angrily to him, as but now I did to thee; and behold he
+changed before my eyes, and I saw that he was now become&mdash;&#8221;
+She stopped short, and buried her face in her
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_6' name='page_6'></a>6</span>
+hands for a moment, then recovered herself. &#8220;Breaking
+Rock it was I saw before me, and I cried out and fled.
+Then I waked with a cry, but my man was beside me,
+and his arm was round my neck; and this dream, is it
+not a foolish dream, my mother?&#8221;</p>
+<p>The old woman sat silent, clasping the hands of her
+daughter firmly, and looking out of the wide doorway
+toward the trees that fringed the river; and presently,
+as she looked, her face changed and grew pinched all
+at once, and Mitiahwe, looking at her, turned a startled
+face toward the river also.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Breaking Rock!&#8221; she said, in alarm, and got to her
+feet quickly.</p>
+<p>Breaking Rock stood for a moment looking toward
+the lodge, then came slowly forward to them. Never
+in all the four years had he approached this lodge of
+Mitiahwe, who, the daughter of a chief, should have
+married himself, the son of a chief! Slowly, but with
+long, slouching stride, Breaking Rock came nearer. The
+two women watched him without speaking. Instinctively
+they knew that he brought news, that something
+had happened; yet Mitiahwe felt at her belt for what
+no Indian girl would be without; and this one was a
+gift from her man on the anniversary of the day she
+first came to his lodge.</p>
+<p>Breaking Rock was at the door now, his beady eyes
+fixed on Mitiahwe&#8217;s, his figure jerked to its full height,
+which made him, even then, two inches less than Long
+Hand. He spoke in a loud voice:</p>
+<p>&#8220;The last boat this year goes down the river to-morrow.
+Long Hand, your man, is going to his people.
+He will not come back. He has had enough of the
+Blackfoot woman. You will see him no more.&#8221; He
+waved a hand to the sky. &#8220;The birds are going south.
+A hard winter is coming quick. You will be alone.
+Breaking Rock is rich. He has five hundred horses.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_7' name='page_7'></a>7</span>
+Your man is going to his own people. Let him go.
+He is no man. It is four years, and still there are but
+two in your lodge. How!&#8221;</p>
+<p>He swung on his heel with a chuckle in his throat, for
+he thought he had said a good thing, and that in truth
+he was worth twenty white men. His quick ear caught
+a movement behind him, however, and he saw the girl
+spring from the lodge-door, something flashing from her
+belt. But now the mother&#8217;s arms were round her, with
+cries of protest, and Breaking Rock, with another laugh,
+slipped away softly toward the river.</p>
+<p>&#8220;That is good,&#8221; he muttered. &#8220;She will kill him, perhaps,
+when she goes to him. She will go, but he will not
+stay. I have heard.&#8221;</p>
+<p>As he disappeared among the trees, Mitiahwe disengaged
+herself from her mother&#8217;s arms, went slowly
+back into the lodge, and sat down on the great couch
+where for so many moons she had lain with her man
+beside her.</p>
+<p>Her mother watched her closely, though she moved
+about doing little things. She was trying to think what
+she would have done if such a thing had happened to
+her, if her man had been going to leave her. She assumed
+that Dingan would leave Mitiahwe, for he would
+hear the voices of his people calling far away, even as
+the red man who went East into the great cities heard
+the prairies and the mountains and the rivers and his
+own people calling, and came back, and put off the
+clothes of civilization, and donned his buckskins again,
+and sat in the Medicine Man&#8217;s tent, and heard the spirits
+speak to him through the mist and smoke of the sacred
+fire. When Swift Wing first gave her daughter to the
+white man she foresaw the danger now at hand, but this
+was the tribute of the lower race to the higher, and&mdash;who
+could tell? White men had left their Indian wives,
+but had come back again, and forever renounced the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_8' name='page_8'></a>8</span>
+life of their own nations, and become great chiefs, teaching
+useful things to their adopted people, bringing up
+their children as tribesmen&mdash;bringing up their children!
+There it was, the thing which called them back, the
+bright-eyed children, with the color of the brown prairie
+in their faces, and their brains so sharp and strong. But
+here was no child to call Dingan back, only the eloquent,
+brave, sweet face of Mitiahwe..... If he went! Would
+he go? Was he going? And now that Mitiahwe had
+been told that he would go, what would she do? In her
+belt was&mdash;but, no, that would be worse than all, and
+she would lose Mitiahwe, her last child, as she had lost
+so many others. What would she herself do if she were
+in Mitiahwe&#8217;s place? Ah, she would make him stay
+somehow&mdash;by truth or by falsehood; by the whispered
+story in the long night; by her head upon his knee before
+the lodge-fire, and her eyes fixed on his, luring him,
+as the dream lures the dreamer into the far trail, to
+find the Sun&#8217;s hunting-ground, where the plains are
+filled with the deer and the buffalo and the wild horse;
+by the smell of the cooking-pot and the favorite spiced
+drink in the morning; by the child that ran to him with
+his bow and arrows and the cry of the hunter&mdash;but there
+was no child; she had forgotten. She was always recalling
+her own happy early life with her man, and the clean-faced
+papooses that crowded round his knee&mdash;one wife
+and many children, and the old Harvester of the Years
+reaping them so fast, till the children stood up as tall
+as their father and chief. That was long ago, and she
+had had her share&mdash;twenty-five years of happiness; but
+Mitiahwe had had only four. She looked at Mitiahwe,
+standing still for a moment like one rapt, then suddenly
+she gave a little cry. Something had come into her
+mind, some solution of the problem, and she ran and
+stooped over the girl and put both hands on her head.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Mitiahwe, heart&#8217;s blood of mine,&#8221; she said, &#8220;the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_9' name='page_9'></a>9</span>
+birds go south, but they return. What matter if they
+go so soon, if they return soon. If the Sun wills that
+the winter be dark, and he sends the Coldmaker to close
+the rivers and drive the wild ones far from the arrow
+and the gun, yet he may be sorry, and send a second
+summer&mdash;has it not been so, and the Coldmaker has
+hurried away&mdash;away! The birds go south, but they
+will return, Mitiahwe.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I heard a cry in the night while my man slept,&#8221;
+Mitiahwe answered, looking straight before her, &#8220;and
+it was like the cry of a bird&mdash;calling, calling, calling.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But he did not hear&mdash;he was asleep beside Mitiahwe.
+If he did not wake, surely it was good-luck. Thy breath
+upon his face kept him sleeping. Surely it was good-luck
+to Mitiahwe that he did not hear.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She was smiling a little now, for she had thought of a
+thing which would, perhaps, keep the man here in this
+lodge in the wilderness; but the time to speak of it was
+not yet. She must wait and see.</p>
+<p>Suddenly Mitiahwe got to her feet with a spring, and
+a light in her eyes. &#8220;<i>Hai-yai!</i>&#8221; she said with plaintive
+smiling, ran to a corner of the lodge, and from a leather
+bag drew forth a horseshoe and looked at it, murmuring
+to herself.</p>
+<p>The old woman gazed at her wonderingly. &#8220;What is
+it, Mitiahwe?&#8221; she asked.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It is good-luck. So my man has said. It is the
+way of his people. It is put over the door, and if a
+dream come it is a good dream; and if a bad thing
+come, it will not enter; and if the heart prays for a
+thing hid from all the world, then it brings good-luck.
+<i>Hai-yai!</i> I will put it over the door, and then&mdash;&#8221; All
+at once her hand dropped to her side, as though some
+terrible thought had come to her, and, sinking to the
+floor, she rocked her body backward and forward for a
+time, sobbing. But presently she got to her feet again,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_10' name='page_10'></a>10</span>
+and, going to the door of the lodge, fastened the horseshoe
+above it with a great needle and a string of buckskin.</p>
+<p>&#8220;O great Sun,&#8221; she prayed, &#8220;have pity on me and
+save me. I cannot live alone. I am only a Blackfoot
+wife; I am not blood of his blood. Give, O great One,
+blood of his blood, bone of his bone, soul of his soul,
+that he will say, &#8216;This is mine, body of my body,&#8217; and
+he will hear the cry and will stay. O great Sun, pity
+me!&#8221;</p>
+<p>The old woman&#8217;s heart beat faster as she listened.
+The same thought was in the mind of both. If there
+were but a child, bone of his bone, then perhaps he
+would not go; or, if he went, then surely he would return
+when he heard his papoose calling in the lodge in
+the wilderness.</p>
+<p>As Mitiahwe turned to her, a strange burning light in
+her eyes, Swift Wing said: &#8220;It is good. The white man&#8217;s
+Medicine for a white man&#8217;s wife. But if there were the
+red man&#8217;s Medicine too&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What is the red man&#8217;s Medicine?&#8221; asked the young
+wife, as she smoothed her hair, put a string of bright
+beads around her neck, and wound a red sash round her
+waist.</p>
+<p>The old woman shook her head, a curious, half-mystic
+light in her eyes, her body drawn up to its full height,
+as though waiting for something. &#8220;It is an old Medicine.
+It is of winters ago as many as the hairs of the
+head. I have forgotten almost, but it was a great
+Medicine when there were no white men in the land.
+And so it was that to every woman&#8217;s breast there hung
+a papoose, and every woman had her man, and the red
+men were like leaves in the forest&mdash;but it was a winter
+of winters ago, and the Medicine Men have forgotten;
+and thou hast no child! When Long Hand comes, what
+will Mitiahwe say to him?&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_11' name='page_11'></a>11</span></p>
+<p>Mitiahwe&#8217;s eyes were determined, her face was set,
+she flushed deeply, then the color fled. &#8220;What my
+mother would say, I will say. Shall the white man&#8217;s
+Medicine fail? If I wish it, then it will be so; and I
+will say so.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But if the white man&#8217;s Medicine fail?&#8221; Swift Wing
+made a gesture toward the door where the horseshoe
+hung. &#8220;It is Medicine for a white man, will it be Medicine
+for an Indian?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Am I not a white man&#8217;s wife?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But if there were the Sun Medicine also, the Medicine
+of the days long ago?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Tell me. If you remember&mdash;<i>Kai!</i> but you do remember&mdash;I
+see it in your face. Tell me, and I will
+make that Medicine also, my mother.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;To-morrow, if I remember it&mdash;I will think, and if I
+remember it, to-morrow I will tell you, my heart&#8217;s blood.
+Maybe my dream will come to me and tell me. Then,
+even after all these years a papoose&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But the boat will go at dawn to-morrow, and if he
+go also&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Mitiahwe is young, her body is warm, her eyes are
+bright, the songs she sings, her tongue&mdash;if these keep
+him not, and the Voice calls him still to go, then still
+Mitiahwe shall whisper, and tell him&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;<i>Hai-yo</i>&mdash;hush,&#8221; said the girl, and trembled a little,
+and put both hands on her mother&#8217;s mouth.</p>
+<p>For a moment she stood so, then with an exclamation
+suddenly turned and ran through the doorway, and
+sped toward the river, and into the path which would
+take her to the post, where her man traded with the
+Indians and had made much money during the past six
+years, so that he could have had a thousand horses and
+ten lodges like that she had just left. The distance between
+the lodge and the post was no more than a mile,
+but Mitiahwe made a détour, and approached it from
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_12' name='page_12'></a>12</span>
+behind, where she could not be seen. Darkness was
+gathering now, and she could see the glimmer of the light
+of lamps through the windows, and as the doors opened
+and shut. No one had seen her approach, and she stole
+through a door which was open at the rear of the warehousing
+room, and went quickly to another door leading
+into the shop. There was a crack through which she
+could see, and she could hear all that was said. As she
+came she had seen Indians gliding through the woods
+with their purchases, and now the shop was clearing
+fast, in response to the urging of Dingan and his partner,
+a Scotch half-breed. It was evident that Dingan was at
+once abstracted and excited.</p>
+<p>Presently only two visitors were left&mdash;a French half-breed
+called Lablache, a swaggering, vicious fellow, and
+the captain of the steamer <i>Ste. Anne</i>, which was to
+make its last trip south in the morning&mdash;even now it
+would have to break its way through the young ice.</p>
+<p>Dingan&#8217;s partner dropped a bar across the door of the
+shop, and the four men gathered about the fire. For a
+time no one spoke. At last the captain of the <i>Ste. Anne</i>
+said: &#8220;It&#8217;s a great chance, Dingan. You&#8217;ll be in civilization
+again, and in a rising town of white people&mdash;Groise&#8217;ll
+be a city in five years, and you can grow up
+and grow rich with the place. The Company asked
+me to lay it all before you, and Lablache here will buy
+out your share of the business, at whatever your partner
+and you prove it&#8217;s worth. You&#8217;re young; you&#8217;ve got
+everything before you. You&#8217;ve made a name out here
+for being the best trader west of the Great Lakes, and
+now&#8217;s your time. It&#8217;s none of my affair, of course, but
+I like to carry through what I&#8217;m set to do, and the
+Company said, &#8216;You bring Dingan back with you. The
+place is waiting for him, and it can&#8217;t wait longer than
+the last boat down.&#8217; You&#8217;re ready to step in when he
+steps out, ain&#8217;t you, Lablache?&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_13' name='page_13'></a>13</span></p>
+<p>Lablache shook back his long hair, and rolled about
+in his pride. &#8220;I give him cash for his share to-night&mdash;some
+one is behin&#8217; me, <i>sacré</i>, yes! It is worth so much,
+I pay and step in&mdash;I take the place over. I take half
+the business here, and I work with Dingan&#8217;s partner. I
+take your horses, Dingan, I take your lodge, I take all
+in your lodge&mdash;<i>everyt&#8217;ing</i>.&#8221;</p>
+<p>His eyes glistened, and a red spot came to each cheek
+as he leaned forward. At his last word Dingan, who
+had been standing abstractedly listening as it were,
+swung round on him with a muttered oath, and the skin
+of his face appeared to tighten. Watching through the
+crack of the door, Mitiahwe saw the look she knew well,
+though it had never been turned on her, and her heart
+beat faster. It was a look that came into Dingan&#8217;s face
+whenever Breaking Rock crossed his path, or when one
+or two other names were mentioned in his presence, for
+they were names of men who had spoken of Mitiahwe
+lightly, and had attempted to be jocular about her.</p>
+<p>As Mitiahwe looked at him, now unknown to himself,
+she was conscious of what that last word of Lablache&#8217;s
+meant. <i>Everyt&#8217;ing</i> meant herself. Lablache&mdash;who had
+neither the good qualities of the white man nor the
+Indian, but who had the brains of the one and the
+subtlety of the other, and whose only virtue was that he
+was a successful trader, though he looked like a mere
+woodsman, with rings in his ears, gayly decorated
+buckskin coat and moccasins, and a furtive smile always
+on his lips! <i>Everyt&#8217;ing!</i> Her blood ran cold at the
+thought of dropping the lodge-curtain upon this man
+and herself alone. For no other man than Dingan had
+her blood run faster, and he had made her life blossom.
+She had seen in many a half-breed&#8217;s and in many an
+Indian&#8217;s face the look which was now in that of Lablache,
+and her fingers gripped softly the thing in her
+belt that had flashed out on Breaking Rock such a short
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_14' name='page_14'></a>14</span>
+while ago. As she looked, it seemed for a moment as
+though Dingan would open the door and throw Lablache
+out, for in quick reflection his eyes ran from the man to
+the wooden bar across the door.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;ll talk of the shop, and the shop only, Lablache,&#8221;
+he said, grimly. &#8220;I&#8217;m not huckstering my home, and
+I&#8217;d choose the buyer if I was selling. My lodge ain&#8217;t to
+be bought, nor <i>anything</i> in it&mdash;not even the broom to
+keep it clean of any half-breeds that&#8217;d enter it without
+leave.&#8221;</p>
+<p>There was malice in the words, but there was greater
+malice in the tone, and Lablache, who was bent on
+getting the business, swallowed his ugly wrath, and
+determined that, if he got the business, he would get the
+lodge also in due time; for Dingan, if he went, would
+not take the lodge&mdash;or the woman&mdash;with him; and Dingan
+was not fool enough to stay when he could go to
+Groise to a sure fortune.</p>
+<p>The captain of the <i>Ste. Anne</i> again spoke. &#8220;There&#8217;s
+another thing the Company said, Dingan. You needn&#8217;t
+go to Groise, not at once. You can take a month and
+visit your folks down East, and lay in a stock of home-feelings
+before you settle down at Groise for good.
+They was fair when I put it to them that you&#8217;d mebbe
+want to do that. &#8216;You tell Dingan,&#8217; they said, &#8216;that he
+can have the month glad and grateful, and a free ticket
+on the railway back and forth. He can have it at once,&#8217;
+they said.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Watching, Mitiahwe could see her man&#8217;s face brighten,
+and take on a look of longing at this suggestion; and it
+seemed to her that the bird she heard in the night was
+calling in his ears now. Her eyes went blind for a
+moment.</p>
+<p>&#8220;The game is with you, Dingan. All the cards are
+in your hands; you&#8217;ll never get such another chance
+again; and you&#8217;re only thirty,&#8221; said the captain.</p>
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<a name='linki_2' id='linki_2'></a>
+<img src='images/p014.jpg' alt='' title='' style='width: 583px; height: 374px;' /><br />
+<p class='caption' style='margin: 0 auto; text-align:center;width: 583px;'>
+THE BIRD SHE HEARD IN THE NIGHT WAS CALLING IN HIS EARS NOW<br />
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_15' name='page_15'></a>15</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;I wish they&#8217;d ask me,&#8221; said Dingan&#8217;s partner, with a
+sigh, as he looked at Lablache. &#8220;I want my chance
+bad, though we&#8217;ve done well here&mdash;good gosh, yes, all
+through Dingan.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;The winters, they go queeck in Groise,&#8221; said Lablache.
+&#8220;It is life all the time, trade all the time, plenty
+to do and see&mdash;and a <i>bon fortune</i> to make, bagosh!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Your old home was in Nova Scotia, wasn&#8217;t it, Dingan?&#8221;
+asked the captain, in a low voice. &#8220;I kem from
+Connecticut, and I was East to my village las&#8217; year. It
+was good, seein&#8217; all my old friends again; but I kem
+back content, I kem back full of home-feelin&#8217;s and content.
+You&#8217;ll like the trip, Dingan. It&#8217;ll do you good.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Dingan drew himself up with a start. &#8220;All right. I
+guess I&#8217;ll do it. Let&#8217;s figure up again,&#8221; he said to his
+partner, with a reckless air.</p>
+<p>With a smothered cry Mitiahwe turned and fled into
+the darkness, and back to the lodge. The lodge was
+empty. She threw herself upon the great couch in an
+agony of despair.</p>
+<p>A half-hour went by. Then she rose, and began to
+prepare supper. Her face was aflame, her manner was
+determined, and once or twice her hand went to her
+belt, as though to assure herself of something.</p>
+<p>Never had the lodge looked so bright and cheerful;
+never had she prepared so appetizing a supper; never
+had the great couch seemed so soft and rich with furs,
+so homelike and so inviting after a long day&#8217;s work.
+Never had Mitiahwe seemed so good to look at, so graceful
+and alert and refined&mdash;suffering does its work even
+in the wild woods, with &#8220;wild people.&#8221; Never had the
+lodge such an air of welcome and peace and home as
+to-night; and so Dingan thought as he drew aside the
+wide curtains of deerskin and entered.</p>
+<p>Mitiahwe was bending over the fire, and appeared not
+to hear him. &#8220;Mitiahwe,&#8221; he said, gently.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_16' name='page_16'></a>16</span>
+She was singing to herself, to an Indian air, the words
+of a song Dingan had taught her:</p>
+<table summary='poetry' style='margin:0 auto'><tr><td>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>&#8220;Open the door: cold is the night, and my feet are heavy,</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>Heap up the fire, scatter upon it the cones and the scented</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.367917586460633em;'>leaves;</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>Spread the soft robe on the couch for the chief that</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.367917586460633em;'>returns,</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>Bring forth the cup of remembrance&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>It was like a low recitative, and it had a plaintive
+cadence, as of a dove that mourned.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Mitiahwe,&#8221; he said, in a louder voice, but with a
+break in it, too; for it all rushed upon him, all that she
+had been to him&mdash;all that had made the great West
+glow with life, made the air sweeter, the grass greener,
+the trees more companionable and human: who it was
+that had given the waste places a voice. Yet&mdash;yet,
+there were his own people in the East, there was another
+life waiting for him, there was the life of ambition and
+wealth, and, and home&mdash;and children.</p>
+<p>His eyes were misty as she turned to him with a
+little cry of surprise, how much natural and how much
+assumed&mdash;for she had heard him enter&mdash;it would have
+been hard to say. She was a woman, and therefore the
+daughter of pretence even when most real. He caught
+her by both arms as she shyly but eagerly came to him.
+&#8220;Good girl, good little girl,&#8221; he said. He looked round
+him. &#8220;Well, I&#8217;ve never seen our lodge look nicer than
+it does to-night; and the fire, and the pot on the fire,
+and the smell of the pine-cones, and the cedar-boughs,
+and the skins, and&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And everything,&#8221; she said, with a queer little laugh,
+as she moved away again to turn the steaks on the
+fire.</p>
+<p>Everything! He started at the word. It was so
+strange that she should use it by accident, when but
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_17' name='page_17'></a>17</span>
+a little while ago he had been ready to choke the wind
+out of a man&#8217;s body for using it concerning herself.</p>
+<p>It stunned him for a moment, for the West, and the
+life apart from the world of cities, had given him superstition,
+like that of the Indians, whose life he had made
+his own.</p>
+<p>Herself!&mdash;to leave her here, who had been so much to
+him? As true as the sun she worshipped, her eyes had
+never lingered on another man since she came to his
+lodge; and, to her mind, she was as truly sacredly
+married to him as though a thousand priests had spoken,
+or a thousand Medicine Men had made their incantations.
+She was his woman and he was her man. As he
+chatted to her, telling her of much that he had done
+that day, and wondering how he could tell her of <i>all</i>
+he had done, he kept looking round the lodge, his eye
+resting on this or that; and everything had its own personal
+history, had become part of their lodge-life, because
+it had a use as between him and her, and not a
+conventional domestic place. Every skin, every utensil,
+every pitcher and bowl and pot and curtain had been
+with them at one time or another when it became of
+importance and renowned in the story of their days and
+deeds.</p>
+<p>How could he break it to her&mdash;that he was going to
+visit his own people, and that she must be alone with
+her mother all winter, to await his return in the spring?
+His return? As he watched her sitting beside him,
+helping him to his favorite dish, the close, companionable
+trust and gentleness of her, her exquisite cleanness
+and grace in his eyes, he asked himself if, after all, it
+was not true that he would return in the spring. The
+years had passed without his seriously thinking of this
+inevitable day. He had put it off and off, content to
+live each hour as it came and take no real thought for
+the future; and yet, behind all was the warning fact
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_18' name='page_18'></a>18</span>
+that he must go one day, and that Mitiahwe could not
+go with him. Her mother must have known that when
+she let Mitiahwe come to him. Of course; and, after all,
+she would find another mate, a better mate, one of her
+own people.</p>
+<p>But her hand was in his now, and it was small and
+very warm, and suddenly he shook with anger at the
+thought of one like Breaking Rock taking her to his
+wigwam; or Lablache&mdash;this roused him to an inward
+fury; and Mitiahwe saw and guessed the struggle that
+was going on in him, and she leaned her head against
+his shoulder, and once she raised his hand to her lips,
+and said, &#8220;My chief!&#8221;</p>
+<p>Then his face cleared again, and she got him his pipe
+and filled it, and held a coal to light it; and, as the
+smoke curled up, and he leaned back contentedly for
+the moment, she went to the door, drew open the curtains,
+and, stepping outside, raised her eyes to the horseshoe.
+Then she said softly to the sky: &#8220;O Sun, great
+Father, have pity on me, for I love him, and would keep
+him. And give me bone of his bone, and one to nurse
+at my breast that is of him. O Sun, pity me this night,
+and be near me when I speak to him, and hear what I say.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What are you doing out there, Mitiahwe?&#8221; Dingan
+cried; and when she entered again he beckoned her to
+him. &#8220;What was it you were saying? Who were you
+speaking to?&#8221; he asked. &#8220;I heard your voice.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I was thanking the Sun for his goodness to me. I
+was speaking for the thing that is in my heart, that is
+life of my life,&#8221; she added, vaguely.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, I have something to say to you, little girl,&#8221; he
+said, with an effort.</p>
+<p>She remained erect before him waiting for the blow&mdash;outwardly
+calm, inwardly crying out in pain. &#8220;Do you
+think you could stand a little parting?&#8221; he asked, reaching
+out and touching her shoulder.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_19' name='page_19'></a>19</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;I have been alone before&mdash;for five days,&#8221; she answered,
+quietly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;But it must be longer this time.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;How long?&#8221; she asked, with eyes fixed on his. &#8220;If
+it is more than a week, I will go too.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It is longer than a month,&#8221; he said.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then I will go.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I am going to see my people,&#8221; he faltered.</p>
+<p>&#8220;By the <i>Ste. Anne</i>?&#8221;</p>
+<p>He nodded. &#8220;It is the last chance this year; but I
+will come back&mdash;in the spring.&#8221;</p>
+<p>As he said it he saw her shrink, and his heart smote
+him. Four years such as few men ever spent, and all
+the luck had been with him, and the West had got into
+his bones! The quiet, starry nights, the wonderful days,
+the hunt, the long journeys, the life free of care, and
+the warm lodge; and, here, the great couch&mdash;ah, the
+cheek pressed to his, the lips that whispered at his ear,
+the smooth arm round his neck. It all rushed upon
+him now. His people! His people in the East, who
+had thwarted his youth, vexed and cramped him, saw
+only evil in his widening desires, and threw him over
+when he came out West&mdash;the scallywag, they called
+him, who had never wronged a man&mdash;or a woman?
+Never&mdash;wronged&mdash;a&mdash;woman? The question sprang to
+his lips now. Suddenly he saw it all in a new light.
+White or brown or red, this heart and soul and body
+before him were all his, sacred to him; he was in very
+truth her &#8220;chief.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Untutored as she was, she read him, felt what was
+going on in him. She saw the tears spring to his eyes.
+Then, coming close to him, she said, softly, slowly: &#8220;I
+must go with you if you go, because you must be with
+me when&mdash;Oh, <i>hai-yai</i>, my chief, shall we go from here?
+Here in this lodge wilt thou be with thine own people&mdash;thine
+own, thou and I&mdash;<i>and thine to come</i>.&#8221; The
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_20' name='page_20'></a>20</span>
+great passion in her heart made the lie seem very
+truth.</p>
+<p>With a cry he got to his feet, and stood staring at her
+for a moment, scarcely comprehending; then suddenly
+he clasped her in his arms.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Mitiahwe&mdash;Mitiahwe, oh, my little girl!&#8221; he cried.
+&#8220;You and me&mdash;and our own&mdash;our own people!&#8221; Kissing
+her, he drew her down beside him on the couch.
+&#8220;Tell me again&mdash;is it so at last?&#8221; he said, and she whispered
+in his ear once more.</p>
+<p>In the middle of the night he said to her, &#8220;Some day,
+perhaps, we will go East&mdash;some day, perhaps.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But now?&#8221; she asked, softly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Not now&mdash;not if I know it,&#8221; he answered. &#8220;I&#8217;ve
+got my heart nailed to the door of this lodge.&#8221;</p>
+<p>As he slept she got quietly out, and, going to the
+door of the lodge, reached up a hand and touched the
+horseshoe.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Be good Medicine to me,&#8221; she said. Then she
+prayed. &#8220;O Sun, pity me, that it may be as I have
+said to him. Oh, pity me, great Father!&#8221;</p>
+<p>In the days to come Swift Wing said that it was her
+Medicine&mdash;when her hand was burned to the wrist in
+the dark ritual she had performed with the Medicine
+Man the night that Mitiahwe fought for her man; but
+Mitiahwe said it was her Medicine, the horseshoe, which
+brought one of Dingan&#8217;s own people to the lodge&mdash;a little
+girl with Mitiahwe&#8217;s eyes and form and her father&#8217;s
+face. Truth has many mysteries, and the faith of the
+woman was great; and so it was that, to the long end,
+Mitiahwe kept her man. But truly she was altogether
+a woman, and had good-fortune.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<a name='ONCE_AT_RED_MAN_S_RIVER' id='ONCE_AT_RED_MAN_S_RIVER'></a>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_21' name='page_21'></a>21</span>
+<h2>ONCE AT RED MAN&#8217;S RIVER</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s got to be settled to-night, Nance, This game
+is up here, up forever. The redcoat police from Ottawa
+are coming, and they&#8217;ll soon be roostin&#8217; in this post, the
+Injuns are goin&#8217;, the buffaloes are most gone, and the
+fur trade&#8217;s dead in these parts. D&#8217;ye see?&#8221;</p>
+<p>The woman did not answer the big, broad-shouldered
+man bending over her, but remained looking into the
+fire with wide, abstracted eyes, and a face somewhat set.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You and your brother Bantry&#8217;s got to go. This
+store ain&#8217;t worth a cent now. The Hudson&#8217;s Bay Company&#8217;ll
+come along with the redcoats, and they&#8217;ll set
+up a nice little Sunday-school business here for what
+they call &#8216;agricultural settlers.&#8217; There&#8217;ll be a railway,
+and the Yankees&#8217;ll send up their marshals to work with
+the redcoats on the border, and&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And the days of smuggling will be over,&#8221; put in the
+girl, in a low voice. &#8220;No more bull-whackers and mule-skinners
+&#8216;whooping-it up&#8217;; no more Blackfeet and Piegans
+drinking alcohol and water, and cutting one anothers&#8217;
+throats. A nice, quiet time coming on the border
+Abe, eh?&#8221;</p>
+<p>The man looked at her queerly. She was not prone
+to sarcasm, she had not been given to sentimentalism in
+the past; she had taken the border-life as it was, had
+looked it straight between the eyes. She had lived up
+to it, or down to it, without any fuss, as good as any
+man in any phase of the life, and the only white woman
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_22' name='page_22'></a>22</span>
+in this whole West country. It was not in the words,
+but in the tone, that Abe Hawley found something unusual
+and defamatory.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why, gol darn it, Nance, what&#8217;s got into you? You
+bin a man out West, as good a pioneer as ever was on
+the border. But now you don&#8217;t sound friendly to what&#8217;s
+been the game out here, and to all of us that&#8217;ve been
+risking our lives to get a livin&#8217;.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What did I say?&#8221; asked the girl, unmoved.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It ain&#8217;t what you said, it&#8217;s the sound o&#8217; your voice.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You don&#8217;t know my voice, Abe. It ain&#8217;t always the
+same. You ain&#8217;t always about; you don&#8217;t always hear
+it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He caught her arm suddenly. &#8220;No, but I want to
+hear it always. I want to be always where you are,
+Nance. That&#8217;s what&#8217;s got to be settled to-day&mdash;to-night.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, it&#8217;s got to be settled to-night!&#8221; said the girl,
+meditatively, kicking nervously at a log on the fire.
+&#8220;It takes two to settle a thing like that, and there&#8217;s only
+one says it&#8217;s got to be settled. Maybe it takes more
+than two&mdash;or three&mdash;to settle a thing like that.&#8221; Now
+she laughed mirthlessly.</p>
+<p>The man started, and his face flushed with anger;
+then he put a hand on himself, drew a step back, and
+watched her.</p>
+<p>&#8220;<i>One</i> can settle a thing, if there&#8217;s a dozen in it. You
+see, Nance, you and Bantry&#8217;ve got to close out. He&#8217;s
+fixing it up to-night over at Dingan&#8217;s Drive, and you
+can&#8217;t go it alone when you quit this place. Now, it&#8217;s
+this way: you can go West with Bantry, or you can go
+North with me. Away North there&#8217;s buffalo and deer,
+and game a-plenty, up along the Saskatchewan, and
+farther up on the Peace River. It&#8217;s going to be all right
+up there for half a lifetime, and we can have it in our
+own way yet. There&#8217;ll be no smuggling, but there&#8217;ll
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_23' name='page_23'></a>23</span>
+be trading, and land to get; and, mebbe, there&#8217;d be no
+need of smuggling, for we can make it, I know how&mdash;good
+white whiskey&mdash;and we&#8217;ll still have this free life
+for our own. I can&#8217;t make up my mind to settle down
+to a clean collar and going to church on Sundays, and
+all that. And the West&#8217;s in your bones, too. You look
+like the West&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>The girl&#8217;s face brightened with pleasure, and she gazed
+at him steadily.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You got its beauty and its freshness, and you got
+its heat and cold&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>She saw the tobacco-juice stain at the corners of his
+mouth, she became conscious of the slight odor of spirits
+in the air, and the light in her face lowered in intensity.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You got the ways of the deer in your walk, the song
+o&#8217; the birds in your voice; and you&#8217;re going North with
+me, Nance, for I bin talkin&#8217; to you stiddy four years.
+It&#8217;s a long time to wait on the chance, for there&#8217;s always
+<i>women</i> to be got, same as others have done&mdash;men like
+Dingan with Injun girls, and men like Tobey with half-breeds.
+But I ain&#8217;t bin lookin&#8217; that way. I bin lookin&#8217;
+only toward you.&#8221; He laughed eagerly, and lifted a tin
+cup of whiskey standing on a table near. &#8220;I&#8217;m lookin&#8217;
+toward you now, Nance. Your health and mine together.
+It&#8217;s got to be settled now. You got to go to
+the &#8217;Cific Coast with Bantry, or North with me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The girl jerked a shoulder and frowned a little. He
+seemed so sure of himself.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Or South with Nick Pringle, or East with someone
+else,&#8221; she said, quizzically. &#8220;There&#8217;s always four
+quarters to the compass, even when Abe Hawley thinks
+he owns the world and has a mortgage on eternity. I&#8217;m
+not going West with Bantry, but there&#8217;s three other
+points that&#8217;s open.&#8221;</p>
+<p>With an oath the man caught her by the shoulders,
+and swung her round to face him. He was swelling
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_24' name='page_24'></a>24</span>
+with anger. &#8220;You&mdash;Nick Pringle, that trading cheat,
+that gambler! After four years, I&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Let go my shoulders,&#8221; she said, quietly. &#8220;I&#8217;m not
+your property. Go and get some Piegan girl to bully.
+Keep your hands off. I&#8217;m not a bronco for you to bit
+and bridle. You&#8217;ve got no rights. You&mdash;&#8221; Suddenly
+she relented, seeing the look in his face, and realizing
+that, after all, it was a tribute to herself that she could
+keep him for four years and rouse him to such fury.
+&#8220;But yes, Abe,&#8221; she added, &#8220;you have some rights.
+We&#8217;ve been good friends all these years, and you&#8217;ve
+been all right out here. You said some nice things
+about me just now, and I liked it, even if it was as if
+you&#8217;d learned it out of a book. I&#8217;ve got no po&#8217;try in
+me; I&#8217;m plain homespun. I&#8217;m a sapling, I&#8217;m not any
+prairie-flower, but I like when I like, and I like a lot
+when I like. I&#8217;m a bit of hickory, I&#8217;m not a prairie-flower&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Who said you was a prairie-flower? Did I? Who&#8217;s
+talking about prairie-flowers&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>He stopped suddenly, turned round at the sound of
+a footstep behind him, and saw, standing in a doorway
+leading to another room, a man who was digging his
+knuckles into his eyes and stifling a yawn. He was a
+refined-looking stripling of not more than twenty-four,
+not tall, but well-made, and with an air of breeding,
+intensified rather than hidden by his rough clothes.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Je-rick-ety! How long have I slept?&#8221; he said, blinking
+at the two beside the fire. &#8220;How long?&#8221; he added,
+with a flutter of anxiety in his tone.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I said I&#8217;d wake you,&#8221; said the girl, coming forward.
+&#8220;You needn&#8217;t have worried.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t worry,&#8221; answered the young man. &#8220;I
+dreamed myself awake, I suppose. I got dreaming of
+redcoats and U. S. marshals, and an ambush in the
+Barfleur Coulée, and&mdash;&#8221; He saw a secret, warning
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_25' name='page_25'></a>25</span>
+gesture from the girl, and laughed, then turned to Abe
+and looked him in the face. &#8220;Oh, I know him! Abe
+Hawley&#8217;s all O.K.&mdash;I&#8217;ve seen him over at Dingan&#8217;s
+Drive. Honor among rogues. We&#8217;re all in it. How
+goes it&mdash;all right?&#8221; he added, carelessly, to Hawley, and
+took a step forward, as though to shake hands. Seeing
+the forbidding look by which he was met, however, he
+turned to the girl again, as Hawley muttered something
+they could not hear.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What time is it?&#8221; he asked.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s nine o&#8217;clock,&#8221; answered the girl, her eyes watching
+his every movement, her face alive.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then the moon&#8217;s up almost?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;ll be up in an hour.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Jerickety! Then I&#8217;ve got to get ready.&#8221; He turned
+to the other room again and entered.</p>
+<p>&#8220;College pup!&#8221; said Hawley, under his breath, savagely.
+&#8220;Why didn&#8217;t you tell me he was here?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Was it any of your business, Abe?&#8221; she rejoined,
+quietly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Hiding him away here&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Hiding? Who&#8217;s been hiding him? He&#8217;s doing
+what you&#8217;ve done. He&#8217;s smuggling&mdash;the last lot for
+the traders over by Dingan&#8217;s Drive. He&#8217;ll get it there
+by morning. He has as much right here as you. What&#8217;s
+got into you, Abe?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What does he know about the business? Why, he&#8217;s
+a college man from the East. I&#8217;ve heard o&#8217; him. Ain&#8217;t
+got no more sense for this life than a dicky-bird. White-faced
+college pup! What&#8217;s he doing out here? If
+you&#8217;re a friend o&#8217; his, you&#8217;d better look after him. He&#8217;s
+green.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He&#8217;s going East again,&#8221; she said, &#8220;and if I don&#8217;t
+go West with Bantry, or South over to Montana with
+Nick Pringle, <i>or North</i>&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Nance!&#8221; His eyes burned, his lips quivered.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_26' name='page_26'></a>26</span></p>
+<p>She looked at him and wondered at the power she
+had over this bully of the border, who had his own way
+with most people, and was one of the most daring
+fighters, hunters, and smugglers in the country. He
+was cool, hard, and well in hand in his daily life, and
+yet, where she was concerned, &#8220;went all to pieces,&#8221; as
+some one else had said about himself to her.</p>
+<p>She was not without the wiles and tact of her sex.
+&#8220;You go now, and come back, Abe,&#8221; she said, in a soft
+voice. &#8220;Come back in an hour. Come back then, and
+I&#8217;ll tell you which way I&#8217;m going from here.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He was all right again. &#8220;It&#8217;s with you, Nance,&#8221; he
+said, eagerly. &#8220;I bin waiting four years.&#8221;</p>
+<p>As he closed the door behind him the &#8220;college pup&#8221;
+entered the room again. &#8220;Oh, Abe&#8217;s gone!&#8221; he said,
+excitedly. &#8220;I hoped you&#8217;d get rid of the old rip-roarer.
+I wanted to be alone with you for a while. I don&#8217;t
+really need to start yet. With the full moon I can do
+it before daylight.&#8221; Then, with quick warmth, &#8220;Ah,
+Nancy, Nancy, you&#8217;re a flower&mdash;the flower of all the
+prairies,&#8221; he added, catching her hand and laughing
+into her eyes.</p>
+<p>She flushed, and for a moment seemed almost bewildered.
+His boldness, joined to an air of insinuation
+and understanding, had influenced her greatly from the
+first moment they had met, two months ago, as he was
+going South on his smuggling enterprise. The easy
+way in which he had talked to her, the extraordinary
+sense he seemed to have of what was going on in her
+mind, the confidential meaning in voice and tone and
+words had, somehow, opened up a side of her nature
+hitherto unexplored. She had talked with him freely
+then, for it was only when he left her that he said what
+he instinctively knew she would remember till they met
+again. His quick comments, his indirect but acute
+questions, his exciting and alluring reminiscences of the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_27' name='page_27'></a>27</span>
+East, his subtle yet seemingly frank compliments, had
+only stimulated a new capacity in her, evoked comparisons
+of this delicate-looking, fine-faced gentleman
+with the men of the West by whom she was surrounded.
+But later he appeared to stumble into expressions of
+admiration for her, as though he was carried off his feet
+and had been stunned by her charm. He had done it
+all like a master. He had not said that she was beautiful&mdash;she
+knew she was not&mdash;but that she was wonderful
+and fascinating, and with &#8220;something about her&#8221; he
+had never seen in all his life: like her own prairies, thrilling,
+inspiring, and adorable. His first look at her had
+seemed full of amazement. She had noticed that, and
+thought it meant only that he was surprised to find
+a white girl out here among smugglers, hunters, squaw-men,
+and Indians. But he said that the first look at
+her had made him feel things, feel life and women different
+from ever before; and he had never seen any one
+like her, nor a face with so much in it. It was all very
+brilliantly done.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You make me want to live,&#8221; he had said, and she,
+with no knowledge of the nuances of language, had
+taken it literally, and had asked him if it had been his
+wish to die; and he had responded to her mistaken
+interpretation of his meaning, saying that he had had
+such sorrow he had not wanted to live. As he said it
+his face looked, in truth, overcome by some deep, inward
+care; so that there came a sort of feeling she had
+never had so far for any man&mdash;that he ought to have
+some one to look after him. This was the first real
+stirring of the maternal and protective spirit in her toward
+men, though it had shown itself amply enough regarding
+animals and birds. He had said he had not
+wanted to live, and yet he had come out West in order
+to try and live, to cure the trouble that had started in
+his lungs. The Eastern doctors had told him that the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_28' name='page_28'></a>28</span>
+rough, out-door life would cure him, or nothing would,
+and he had vanished from the college walls and the
+pleasant purlieus of learning and fashion into the wilds.
+He had not lied directly to her when he said that he
+had had deep trouble; but he had given the impression
+that he was suffering from wrongs which had broken his
+spirit and ruined his health. Wrongs there certainly had
+been in his life, by whomever committed.</p>
+<p>Two months ago he had left this girl with her mind
+full of memories of what he had said to her, and there
+was something in the sound of the slight cough following
+his farewell words which had haunted her ever since.
+Her tremendous health and energy, the fire of life burning
+so brightly in her, reached out toward this man living
+on so narrow a margin of force, with no reserve for any
+extra strain, with just enough for each day&#8217;s use and no
+more. Four hours before he had come again with his
+team of four mules and an Indian youth, having covered
+forty miles since his last stage. She was at the door,
+and saw him coming while he was yet a long distance
+off. Some instinct had told her to watch that afternoon,
+for she knew of his intended return and of his dangerous
+enterprise. The Indians had trailed south and east,
+the traders had disappeared with them, her brother
+Bantry had gone up and over to Dingan&#8217;s Drive, and,
+save for a few loiterers and last hangers-on, she was
+alone with what must soon be a deserted post; its walls,
+its great enclosed yard, and its gun-platforms (for it had
+been fortified) left for law and order to enter upon, in
+the persons of the red-coated watchmen of the law.</p>
+<p>Out of the South, from over the border, bringing the
+last great smuggled load of whiskey which was to be
+handed over at Dingan&#8217;s Drive, and then floated on Red
+Man&#8217;s River to settlements up North, came the &#8220;college
+pup,&#8221; Kelly Lambton, worn out, dazed with fatigue, but
+smiling too, for a woman&#8217;s face was ever a tonic to his
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_29' name='page_29'></a>29</span>
+blood since he was big enough to move in life for himself.
+It needed courage&mdash;or recklessness&mdash;to run the
+border now; for, as Abe Hawley had said, the American
+marshals were on the pounce, the red-coated mounted
+police were coming west from Ottawa, and word had
+winged its way along the prairie that these redcoats were
+only a few score miles away, and might be at Fort Stay-Awhile
+at any moment. The trail to Dingan&#8217;s Drive
+lay past it. Through Barfleur Coulée, athwart a great,
+open stretch of country, along a wooded belt, and then,
+suddenly, over a ridge, Dingan&#8217;s Drive and Red Man&#8217;s
+River would be reached.</p>
+<p>The Government had a mind to make an example, if
+necessary, by killing some smugglers in conflict, and the
+United States marshals had been goaded by vanity and
+anger at one or two escapes &#8220;to have something for
+their money,&#8221; as they said. That, in their language,
+meant, &#8220;to let the red run,&#8221; and Kelly Lambton had
+none too much blood to lose.</p>
+<p>He looked very pale and beaten as he held Nance
+Machell&#8217;s hands now, and called her a prairie-flower, as
+he had done when he left her two months before. On
+his arrival, but now he had said little, for he saw that
+she was glad to see him, and he was dead for sleep, after
+thirty-six hours of ceaseless travel and watching and
+danger. Now, with the most perilous part of his journey
+still before him, and worn physically as he was,
+his blood was running faster as he looked into the girl&#8217;s
+face, and something in her abundant force and bounding
+life drew him to her. Such vitality in a man like Abe
+Hawley would have angered him almost, as it did a
+little time ago, when Abe was there; but possessed by
+the girl, it roused in him a hunger to draw from the well
+of her perfect health, from the unused vigor of her
+being, something for himself. The touch of her hands
+warmed him. In the fulness of her life, in the strong
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_30' name='page_30'></a>30</span>
+eloquence of face and form, he forgot she was not
+beautiful. The lightness passed from his words, and
+his face became eager.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Flower, yes, the flower of the life of the West&mdash;that&#8217;s
+what I mean,&#8221; he said. &#8220;You are like an army marching.
+When I look at you, my blood runs faster. I want
+to march too. When I hold your hand I feel that life&#8217;s
+worth living&mdash;I want to do things.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She drew her hand away rather awkwardly. She had
+not now that command of herself which had ever been
+easy with the men of the West, except, perhaps, with
+Abe Hawley when&mdash;</p>
+<p>But with an attempt, only half-meant, to turn the
+topic, she said: &#8220;You must be starting if you want to
+get through to-night. If the redcoats catch you this
+side of Barfleur Coulée, or in the Coulée itself, you&#8217;ll
+stand no chance. I heard they was only thirty miles
+north this afternoon. Maybe they&#8217;ll come straight on
+here to-night, instead of camping. If they have news of
+your coming, they might. You can&#8217;t tell.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;re right.&#8221; He caught her hand again. &#8220;I&#8217;ve
+got to be going now. But Nance&mdash;Nance&mdash;Nancy,
+I want to stay here, here with you; or to take you
+with me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She drew back. &#8220;What do you mean?&#8221; she asked.
+&#8220;Take me with you&mdash;me&mdash;where?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;East&mdash;away down East.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Her brain throbbed, her pulses beat so hard. She
+scarcely knew what to say, did not know what she said.
+&#8220;Why do you do this kind of thing? Why do you
+smuggle?&#8221; she asked. &#8220;You wasn&#8217;t brought up to
+this.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;To get this load of stuff through is life and death to
+me,&#8221; he answered. &#8220;I&#8217;ve made six thousand dollars
+out here. That&#8217;s enough to start me again in the East,
+where I lost everything. But I&#8217;ve got to have six
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_31' name='page_31'></a>31</span>
+hundred dollars clear for the travel&mdash;railways and things;
+and I&#8217;m having this last run to get it. Then I&#8217;ve finished
+with the West, I guess. My health&#8217;s better; the
+lung is closed up, I&#8217;ve only got a little cough now and
+again, and I&#8217;m off East. I don&#8217;t want to go alone.&#8221;
+He suddenly caught her in his arms. &#8220;I want you&mdash;you,
+to go with me, Nancy&mdash;Nance!&#8221;</p>
+<p>Her brain swam. To leave the West behind, to go
+East to a new life full of pleasant things, as this man&#8217;s
+wife! Her great heart rose, and suddenly the mother
+in her as well as the woman in her was captured by
+his wooing. She had never known what it was to be
+wooed like this.</p>
+<p>She was about to answer when there came a sharp
+knock at the door leading from the back yard, and
+Lambton&#8217;s Indian lad entered. &#8220;The soldier&mdash;he come&mdash;many.
+I go over the ridge, I see. They come
+quick here,&#8221; he said.</p>
+<p>Nance gave a startled cry, and Lambton turned to
+the other room for his pistols, overcoat, and cap, when
+there was the sound of horses&#8217; hoofs, the door suddenly
+opened, and an officer stepped inside.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;re wanted for smuggling, Lambton,&#8221; he said,
+brusquely. &#8220;Don&#8217;t stir!&#8221; In his hand was a revolver.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, bosh! Prove it,&#8221; answered the young man,
+pale and startled, but cool in speech and action.</p>
+<p>&#8220;We&#8217;ll prove it all right. The stuff is hereabouts.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The girl said something to the officer in the Chinook
+language. She saw he did not understand. Then she
+spoke quickly to Lambton in the same tongue.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Keep him here a bit,&#8221; she said. &#8220;His men haven&#8217;t
+come yet. Your outfit is well hid. I&#8217;ll see if I can get
+away with it before they find it. They&#8217;ll follow, and
+bring you with them, that&#8217;s sure. So if I have luck and
+get through, we&#8217;ll meet at Dingan&#8217;s Drive.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Lambton&#8217;s face brightened. He quickly gave her a
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_32' name='page_32'></a>32</span>
+few directions in Chinook, and told her what to do at
+Dingan&#8217;s if she got there first. Then she was gone.</p>
+<p>The officer did not understand what Nance had said,
+but he realized that, whatever she intended to do, she
+had an advantage over him. With an unnecessary
+courage he had ridden on alone to make his capture,
+and, as it proved, without prudence. He had got his
+man, but he had not got the smuggled whiskey and
+alcohol he had come to seize. There was no time to be
+lost. The girl had gone before he realized it. What
+had she said to the prisoner? He was foolish enough
+to ask Lambton, and Lambton replied coolly: &#8220;She
+said she&#8217;d get you some supper, but she guessed it would
+have to be cold&mdash;What&#8217;s your name? Are you a
+colonel, or a captain, or only a principal private?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I am Captain MacFee, Lambton. And you&#8217;ll now
+bring me where your outfit is. March!&#8221;</p>
+<p>The pistol was still in his hand, and he had a determined
+look in his eye. Lambton saw it. He was
+aware of how much power lay in the threatening face
+before him, and how eager that power was to make
+itself felt, and provide &#8220;Examples&#8221;; but he took his
+chances.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll march all right,&#8221; he answered; &#8220;but I&#8217;ll march
+to where you tell me. You can&#8217;t have it both ways.
+You can take me, because you&#8217;ve found me, and you
+can take my outfit, too, when you&#8217;ve found it; but I&#8217;m
+not doing your work, not if I know it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>There was a blaze of anger in the eyes of the officer,
+and it looked for an instant as though something of
+the lawlessness of the border was going to mark the
+first step of the Law in the Wilderness, but he bethought
+himself in time, and said, quietly, yet in a voice which
+Lambton knew he must heed:</p>
+<p>&#8220;Put on your things&mdash;quick.&#8221;</p>
+<p>When this was accomplished, and MacFee had
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_33' name='page_33'></a>33</span>
+secured the smuggler&#8217;s pistols, he said again, &#8220;March,
+Lambton!&#8221;</p>
+<p>Lambton marched through the moonlit night toward
+the troop of men who had come to set up the flag of
+order in the plains and hills, and as he went his keen
+ear heard his own mules galloping away down toward
+the Barfleur Coulée. His heart thumped in his breast.
+This girl, this prairie-flower, was doing this for him, was
+risking her life, was breaking the law for him. If she
+got through, and handed over the whiskey to those who
+were waiting for it, and it got bundled into the boats
+going North before the redcoats reached Dingan&#8217;s Drive,
+it would be as fine a performance as the West had ever
+seen; and he would be six hundred dollars to the good.
+He listened to the mules galloping, till the sounds had
+died into the distance, but he saw now that his captor
+had heard too, and that the pursuit would be desperate.</p>
+<p>A half-hour later it began, with MacFee at the head
+and a dozen troopers pounding behind, weary, hungry,
+bad-tempered, ready to exact payment for their hardships
+and discouragement.</p>
+<p>They had not gone a dozen miles when a shouting
+horseman rode furiously on them from behind. They
+turned with carbines cocked, but it was Abe Hawley
+who cursed them, flung his fingers in their faces, and
+rode on harder and harder. Abe had got the news
+from one of Nancy&#8217;s half-breeds, and, with the devil
+raging in his heart, had entered on the chase. His
+spirit was up against them all: against the Law represented
+by the troopers camped at Fort Stay-Awhile,
+against the troopers and their captain speeding after
+Nancy Machell&mdash;his Nance, who was risking her life
+and freedom for the hated, pale-faced smuggler riding
+between the troopers; and his spirit was up against
+Nance herself.</p>
+<p>Nance had said to him, &#8220;Come back in an hour,&#8221; and
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_34' name='page_34'></a>34</span>
+he had come back to find her gone. She had broken
+her word. She had deceived him. She had thrown
+the four years of his waiting to the winds, and a savage
+lust was in his heart, which would not be appeased till
+he had done some evil thing to some one.</p>
+<p>The girl and the Indian lad were pounding through
+the night with ears strained to listen for hoof-beats
+coming after, with eyes searching forward into the trail
+for swollen creeks and direful obstructions. Through
+Barfleur Coulée it was a terrible march, for there was
+no road, and again and again they were nearly overturned,
+while wolves hovered in their path, ready to
+reap a midnight harvest. But once in the open again,
+with the full moonlight on their trail, the girl&#8217;s spirits
+rose. If she could do this thing for the man who had
+looked into her eyes as no one had ever done, what a
+finish to her days in the West! For they were finished,
+finished forever, and she was going&mdash;she was going
+East; not West with Bantry, nor South with Nick
+Pringle, nor North with Abe Hawley&mdash;ah, Abe Hawley!
+He had been a good friend, he had a great heart, he was
+the best man of all the Western men she had known;
+but another man had come from the East, a man who
+had roused something in her never felt before, a man
+who had said she was wonderful; and he needed some
+one to take good care of him, to make him love life
+again. Abe would have been all right if Lambton had
+never come, and she had meant to marry Abe in the
+end; but it was different now, and Abe must get over
+it. Yet she had told Abe to come back in an hour.
+He was sure to do it; and, when he had done it, and
+found her gone on this errand, what would he do? She
+knew what he would do. He would hurt someone.
+He would follow, too. But at Dingan&#8217;s Drive, if she
+reached it before the troopers and before Abe, and did
+the thing she had set out to do; and because no whiskey
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_35' name='page_35'></a>35</span>
+could be found, Lambton must go free; and they all
+stood there together, what would be the end? Abe
+would be terrible; but she was going East, not North,
+and, when the time came she would face it and put things
+right somehow.</p>
+<p>The night seemed endless to her fixed and anxious
+eyes and mind, yet dawn came, and there had fallen no
+sound of hoof-beats on her ear. The ridge above Dingan&#8217;s
+Drive was reached and covered, but yet there was
+no sign of her pursuers. At Red Man&#8217;s River she delivered
+her load of contraband to the traders waiting
+for it, and saw it loaded into the boats and disappear
+beyond the wooded bend above Dingan&#8217;s.</p>
+<p>Then she collapsed into the arms of her brother
+Bantry, and was carried, fainting, into Dingan&#8217;s Lodge.</p>
+<p>A half-hour later MacFee and his troopers and Lambton
+came. MacFee grimly searched the post and the
+shore, but he saw by the looks of all that he had been
+foiled. He had no proof of anything, and Lambton
+must go free.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;ve fooled us,&#8221; he said to Nance, sourly, yet with
+a kind of admiration, too. &#8220;Through you, they got
+away with it. But I wouldn&#8217;t try it again, if I were
+you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Once is enough,&#8221; answered the girl, laconically, as
+Lambton, set free, caught both her hands in his and
+whispered in her ear.</p>
+<p>MacFee turned to the others. &#8220;You&#8217;d better drop
+this kind of thing,&#8221; he said. &#8220;I mean business.&#8221; They
+saw the troopers by the horses, and nodded.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, we was about quit of it anyhow,&#8221; said Bantry.
+&#8220;We&#8217;ve had all we want out here.&#8221;</p>
+<p>A loud laugh went up, and it was still ringing when
+there burst into the group, out of the trail, Abe Hawley,
+on foot.</p>
+<p>He looked round the group savagely till his eyes
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_36' name='page_36'></a>36</span>
+rested on Nance and Lambton. &#8220;I&#8217;m last in,&#8221; he said,
+in a hoarse voice. &#8220;My horse broke its leg cutting
+across to get here before her&mdash;&#8221; He waved a hand
+toward Nance. &#8220;It&#8217;s best stickin&#8217; to old trails, not
+tryin&#8217; new ones.&#8221; His eyes were full of hate as he
+looked at Lambton. &#8220;I&#8217;m keeping to old trails. I&#8217;m
+for goin&#8217; North, far up, where these two-dollar-a-day
+and hash-and-clothes people ain&#8217;t come yet.&#8221; He
+made a contemptuous gesture toward MacFee and his
+troopers. &#8220;I&#8217;m goin&#8217; North&mdash;&#8221; He took a step forward
+and fixed his bloodshot eyes on Nance. &#8220;I say
+I&#8217;m goin&#8217; North. You comin&#8217; with me, Nance?&#8221; He
+took off his cap to her.</p>
+<p>He was haggard, his buckskins were torn, his hair was
+dishevelled, and he limped a little; but he was a massive
+and striking figure, and MacFee watched him
+closely, for there was that in his eyes which meant
+trouble. &#8220;You said, &#8216;Come back in an hour,&#8217; Nance,
+and I come back, as I said I would,&#8221; he went on. &#8220;You
+didn&#8217;t stand to your word. I&#8217;ve come to git it. I&#8217;m
+goin&#8217; North, Nance, and I bin waitin&#8217; for four years for
+you to go with me. Are you comin&#8217;?&#8221;</p>
+<p>His voice was quiet, but it had a choking kind of
+sound, and it struck strangely in the ears of all. MacFee
+came nearer.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Are you comin&#8217; with me, Nance, dear?&#8221;</p>
+<p>She reached a hand toward Lambton, and he took it,
+but she did not speak. Something in Abe&#8217;s eyes overwhelmed
+her&mdash;something she had never seen before, and
+it seemed to stifle speech in her. Lambton spoke instead.</p>
+<p>&#8220;She&#8217;s going East with me,&#8221; he said. &#8220;That&#8217;s settled.&#8221;</p>
+<p>MacFee started. Then he caught Abe&#8217;s arm. &#8220;Wait!&#8221;
+he said, peremptorily. &#8220;Wait one minute.&#8221;</p>
+<p>There was something in his voice which held Abe
+back for the instant.</p>
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<a name='linki_3' id='linki_3'></a>
+<img src='images/p036.jpg' alt='' title='' style='width: 403px; height: 581px;' /><br />
+<p class='caption' style='margin: 0 auto; text-align:center;width: 403px;'>
+THE START ON THE NORTH TRAIL<br />
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_37' name='page_37'></a>37</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;You say she is going East with you,&#8221; MacFee said
+sharply to Lambton. &#8220;What for?&#8221; He fastened
+Lambton with his eyes, and Lambton quailed. &#8220;Have
+you told her you&#8217;ve got a wife&mdash;down East? I&#8217;ve got
+your history, Lambton. Have you told her that you&#8217;ve
+got a wife you married when you were at college&mdash;and
+as good a girl as ever lived?&#8221;</p>
+<p>It had come with terrible suddenness even to Lambton,
+and he was too dazed to make any reply. With a
+cry of shame and anger, Nancy started back. Growling
+with rage and hate, Abe Hawley sprang toward Lambton,
+but the master of the troopers stepped between.</p>
+<p>No one could tell who moved first, or who first made
+the suggestion, for the minds of all were the same, and
+the general purpose was instantaneous; but in the
+fraction of a minute Lambton, under menace, was on
+his hands and knees crawling to the riverside. Watchful,
+but not interfering, the master of the troopers saw
+him set adrift in a canoe without a paddle, while he
+was pelted with mud from the shore.</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+
+<p>The next morning at sunrise Abe Hawley and the
+girl he had waited for so long started on the North
+trail together, MacFee, master of the troopers and justice
+of the peace, handing over the marriage lines.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<a name='THE_STROKE_OF_THE_HOUR' id='THE_STROKE_OF_THE_HOUR'></a>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_38' name='page_38'></a>38</span>
+<h2>THE STROKE OF THE HOUR</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>&#8220;They won&#8217;t come to-night&mdash;sure.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The girl looked again toward the west, where, here
+and there, bare poles, or branches of trees, or slips of
+underbrush, marked a road made across the plains
+through the snow. The sun was going down golden
+red, folding up the sky a wide, soft curtain of pink and
+mauve and deep purple merging into the fathomless
+blue, where already the stars were beginning to quiver.
+The house stood on the edge of a little forest, which
+had boldly asserted itself in the wide flatness. At this
+point in the west the prairie merged into an undulating
+territory, where hill and wood rolled away from the banks
+of the Saskatchewan, making another England in beauty.
+The forest was a sort of advance-post of that land of
+beauty.</p>
+<p>Yet there was beauty, too, on this prairie, though
+there was nothing to the east but snow and the forest
+so far as eye could see. Nobility and peace and power
+brooded over the white world.</p>
+<p>As the girl looked, it seemed as though the bosom of
+the land rose and fell. She had felt this vibrating life
+beat beneath the frozen surface. Now, as she gazed,
+she smiled sadly to herself, with drooping eyelids looking
+out from beneath strong brows.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I know you&mdash;I know you,&#8221; she said, aloud. &#8220;You&#8217;ve
+got to take your toll. And when you&#8217;re lying asleep
+like that, or pretending to, you reach up&mdash;and kill.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_39' name='page_39'></a>39</span>
+And yet you can be kind&mdash;ah, but you can be kind
+and beautiful! But you must have your toll one way
+or t&#8217;other.&#8221; She sighed and paused; then, after a
+moment, looking along the trail&mdash;&#8220;I don&#8217;t expect they&#8217;ll
+come to-night, and mebbe not to-morrow, if&mdash;if they
+stay for <i>that</i>.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Her eyes closed, she shivered a little. Her lips drew
+tight, and her face seemed suddenly to get thinner.
+&#8220;But dad wouldn&#8217;t&mdash;no, he couldn&#8217;t, not considerin&#8217;&mdash;&#8221;
+Again she shut her eyes in pain.</p>
+<p>Her face was now turned from the western road by
+which she had expected her travellers, and toward the
+east, where already the snow was taking on a faint
+bluish tint, a reflection of the sky deepening toward
+night in that half-circle of the horizon. Distant and a
+little bleak and cheerless the half-circle was looking now.</p>
+<p>&#8220;No one&mdash;not for two weeks,&#8221; she said, in comment
+on the eastern trail, which was so little frequented in
+winter, and this year had been less travelled than ever.
+&#8220;It would be nice to have a neighbor,&#8221; she added, as
+she faced the west and the sinking sun again. &#8220;I get
+so lonely&mdash;just minutes I get lonely. But it&#8217;s them
+minutes that seem to count more than all the rest when
+they come. I expect that&#8217;s it&mdash;we don&#8217;t live in months
+and years, but just in minutes. It doesn&#8217;t take long
+for an earthquake to do its work&mdash;it&#8217;s seconds then....
+P&#8217;r&#8217;aps dad won&#8217;t even come to-morrow,&#8221; she added,
+as she laid her hand on the latch. &#8220;It never seemed
+so long before, not even when he&#8217;s been away a week.&#8221;
+She laughed bitterly. &#8220;Even bad company&#8217;s better
+than no company at all. Sure. And Mickey has been
+here always when dad&#8217;s been away past times. Mickey
+was a fool, but he was company; and mebbe he&#8217;d have
+been better company if he&#8217;d been more of a scamp and
+less a fool. I dunno, but I really think he would. Bad
+company doesn&#8217;t put you off so.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_40' name='page_40'></a>40</span></p>
+<p>There was a scratching at the inside of the door.
+&#8220;My, if I didn&#8217;t forget Shako,&#8221; she said, &#8220;and he dying
+for a run!&#8221;</p>
+<p>She opened the door quickly, and out jumped a
+Russian dog of almost full breed, with big, soft eyes
+like those of his mistress, and with the air of the north
+in every motion&mdash;like his mistress also.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Come, Shako, a run&mdash;a run!&#8221;</p>
+<p>An instant after she was flying off on a path toward
+the woods, her short skirts flying and showing limbs as
+graceful and shapely as those of any woman of that
+world of social grace which she had never seen; for she
+was a prairie girl through and through, born on the
+plains and fed on its scanty fare&mdash;scanty as to variety,
+at least. Backward and forward they ran, the girl shouting
+like a child of ten&mdash;she was twenty-three&mdash;her eyes
+flashing, her fine white teeth showing, her hands thrown
+up in sheer excess of animal life, her hair blowing about
+her face&mdash;brown, strong hair, wavy and plentiful.</p>
+<p>Fine creature as she was, her finest features were her
+eyes and her hands. The eyes might have been found
+in the most savage places; the hands, however, only
+could have come through breeding. She had got them
+honestly; for her mother was descended from an old
+family of the French province. That was why she had
+the name of Loisette&mdash;and had a touch of distinction.
+It was the strain of the patrician in the full blood of the
+peasant; but it gave her something which made her
+what she was&mdash;what she had been since a child, noticeable
+and besought, sometimes beloved. It was too
+strong a nature to compel love often, but it never failed
+to compel admiration. Not greatly a creature of words,
+she had become moody of late; and even now, alive with
+light and feeling and animal life, she suddenly stopped
+her romp and run, and called the dog to her.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Heel, Shako!&#8221; she said, and made for the door of
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_41' name='page_41'></a>41</span>
+the little house, which looked so snug and homelike.
+She paused before she came to the door, to watch the
+smoke curling up from the chimney straight as a column,
+for there was not a breath of air stirring. The sun was
+almost gone, and the strong bluish light was settling
+on everything, giving even the green spruce-trees a
+curious burnished tone.</p>
+<p><i>Swish! Thud!</i> She faced the woods quickly. It
+was only a sound that she had heard how many hundreds
+of times! It was the snow slipping from some
+broad branch of the fir-trees to the ground. Yet she
+started now. Something was on her mind, agitating
+her senses, affecting her self-control.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll be jumping out of my boots when the fire snaps,
+or the frost cracks the ice, next,&#8221; she said, aloud, contemptuously.
+&#8220;I dunno what&#8217;s the matter with me.
+I feel as if some one was hiding somewhere ready to pop
+out on me. I haven&#8217;t never felt like that before.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She had formed the habit of talking to herself, for it
+had seemed at first, as she was left alone when her father
+went trapping or upon journeys for the Government,
+that by-and-by she would start at the sound of her own
+voice if she didn&#8217;t think aloud. So she was given to
+soliloquy, defying the old belief that people who talked
+to themselves were going mad. She laughed at that.
+She said that birds sang to themselves and didn&#8217;t go
+mad, and crickets chirruped, and frogs croaked, and owls
+hooted, and she would talk and not go crazy either.
+So she talked to herself and to Shako when she was
+alone.</p>
+<p>How quiet it was inside when her light supper was
+eaten&mdash;bread and beans and pea-soup; she had got this
+from her French mother. Now she sat, her elbows on
+her knees, her chin on her hands, looking into the fire.
+Shako was at her feet upon the great musk-ox rug,
+which her father had got on one of his hunting trips in
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_42' name='page_42'></a>42</span>
+the Athabasca country years ago. It belonged as she
+belonged. It breathed of the life of the north-land, for
+the timbers of the hut were hewn cedar; the rough
+chimney, the seats, and the shelves on which a few books
+made a fair show beside the bright tins and the scanty
+crockery, were of pine; and the horned heads of deer
+and wapiti made pegs for coats and caps, and rests for
+guns and rifles. It was a place of comfort; it had an
+air of well-to-do thrift, even as the girl&#8217;s dress, though
+plain, was made of good, sound stuff, gray, with a touch
+of dark red to match the auburn of her hair.</p>
+<p>A book lay open in her lap, but she had scarcely
+tried to read it. She had put it down after a few moments
+fixed upon it. It had sent her thoughts off into
+a world where her life had played a part too big for
+books, too deep for the plummet of any save those who
+had lived through the storm of life&#8217;s trials; and life
+when it is bitter to the young is bitter with an agony
+the old never know. At last she spoke to herself.</p>
+<p>&#8220;She knows now! Now she knows what it is, how it
+feels&mdash;your heart like red-hot coals, and something in
+your head that&#8217;s like a turnscrew, and you want to die
+and can&#8217;t, for you&#8217;ve got to live and suffer!&#8221;</p>
+<p>Again she was quiet, and only the dog&#8217;s heavy breathing,
+the snap of the fire, or the crack of a timber in the
+deadly frost broke the silence. Inside it was warm and
+bright and homelike; outside it was twenty degrees below
+zero, and like some vast tomb where life itself was
+congealed, and only the white stars, low, twinkling, and
+quizzical, lived&mdash;a life of sharp corrosion, not of fire.</p>
+<p>Suddenly she raised her head and listened. The dog
+did the same. None but those whose lives are lived in
+lonely places can be so acute, so sensitive to sound.
+It was a feeling delicate and intense, the whole nature
+getting the vibration. You could have heard nothing,
+had you been there; none but one who was of the wide
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_43' name='page_43'></a>43</span>
+spaces could have done so. But the dog and the woman
+felt, and both strained toward the window. Again they
+heard, and started to their feet. It was far, far away,
+and still you could not have heard; but now they heard
+clearly&mdash;a cry in the night, a cry of pain and despair.
+The girl ran to the window and pulled aside the bearskin
+curtain which had completely shut out the light.
+Then she stirred the fire, threw a log upon it, snuffed
+the candles, hastily put on her moccasins, fur coat, wool
+cap, and gloves, and went to the door quickly, the dog
+at her heels. Opening it, she stepped out into the night.</p>
+<p>&#8220;<i>Qui va là?</i> Who is it? Where?&#8221; she called, and
+strained toward the west. She thought it might be her
+father or Mickey the hired man, or both.</p>
+<p>The answer came from the east, out of the homeless,
+neighborless, empty east&mdash;a cry, louder now. There
+were only stars, and the night was dark, though not
+deep dark. She sped along the prairie road as fast as
+she could, once or twice stopping to call aloud. In
+answer to her calls the voice sounded nearer and nearer.
+Now suddenly she left the trail and bore away northward.
+At last the voice was very near. Presently a
+figure appeared ahead, staggering toward her.</p>
+<p>&#8220;<i>Qui va là?</i> Who is it?&#8221; she asked.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ba&#8217;tiste Caron,&#8221; was the reply in English, in a faint
+voice. She was beside him in an instant.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What has happened? Why are you off the trail?&#8221;
+she said, and supported him.</p>
+<p>&#8220;My Injun stoled my dogs and run off,&#8221; he replied.
+&#8220;I run after. Then, when I am to come to the trail&#8221;&mdash;he
+paused to find the English word, and could not&mdash;&#8220;<i>encore</i>
+to this trail I no can. So. Ah, <i>bon Dieu</i>, it
+has so awful!&#8221; He swayed and would have fallen, but
+she caught him, bore him up. She was so strong, and
+he was as slight as a girl, though tall.</p>
+<p>&#8220;When was that?&#8221; she asked.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_44' name='page_44'></a>44</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;Two nights ago,&#8221; he answered, and swayed.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Wait,&#8221; she said, and pulled a flask from her pocket.
+&#8220;Drink this&mdash;quick!&#8221;</p>
+<p>He raised it to his lips, but her hand was still on it,
+and she only let him take a little. Then she drew it
+away, though she had almost to use force, he was so
+eager for it. Now she took a biscuit from her pocket.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Eat; then some more brandy, after,&#8221; she urged.
+&#8220;Come on; it&#8217;s not far. See, there&#8217;s the light,&#8221; she
+added, cheerily, raising her head toward the hut.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I saw it just when I have fall down&mdash;it safe me. I
+sit down to die&mdash;like that! But it safe me, that light&mdash;so.
+Ah, <i>bon Dieu</i>, it was so far, and I want eat so!&#8221;</p>
+<p>Already he had swallowed the biscuit.</p>
+<p>&#8220;When did you eat last?&#8221; she asked, as she urged
+him on.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Two nights&mdash;except for one leetla piece of bread&mdash;I
+fin&#8217; it in my pocket. <i>Grâce!</i> I have travel so far.
+<i>Jésu</i>, I think it ees ten thousan&#8217; miles, I go. But I mus&#8217;
+go on, I mus&#8217; go&mdash;<i>certainement</i>.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The light came nearer and nearer. His footsteps
+quickened, though he staggered now and then, and
+went like a horse that has run its race, but is driven
+upon its course again, going heavily with mouth open
+and head thrown forward and down.</p>
+<p>&#8220;But I mus&#8217; to get there, an&#8217; you&mdash;you will to help
+me, eh?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Again he swayed, but her strong arm held him up.
+As they ran on, in a kind of dog-trot, her hand firm
+upon his arm&mdash;he seemed not to notice it&mdash;she became
+conscious, though it was half dark, of what sort of man
+she had saved. He was about her own age, perhaps a
+year or two older, with little, if any, hair upon his face,
+save a slight mustache. His eyes, deep sunken as they
+were, she made out were black, and the face, though
+drawn and famished, had a handsome look. Presently
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_45' name='page_45'></a>45</span>
+she gave him another sip of brandy, and he quickened
+his steps, speaking to himself the while.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I haf to do it&mdash;if I lif. It is to go, go, go, till I
+get.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Now they came to the hut where the firelight flickered
+on the window-pane; the door was flung open, and, as
+he stumbled on the threshold, she helped him into the
+warm room. She almost pushed him over to the fire.</p>
+<p>Divested of his outer coat, muffler, cap, and leggings,
+he sat on a bench before the fire, his eyes wandering
+from the girl to the flames, and his hands clasping and
+unclasping between his knees. His eyes dilating with
+hunger, he watched her preparations for his supper;
+and when at last&mdash;and she had been but a moment&mdash;it
+was placed before him, his head swam, and he turned
+faint with the stress of his longing. He would have
+swallowed a basin of pea-soup at a draught, but she
+stopped him, holding the basin till she thought he
+might venture again. Then came cold beans, and
+some meat which she toasted at the fire and laid upon
+his plate. They had not spoken since first entering the
+house, when tears had shone in his eyes, and he had said:</p>
+<p>&#8220;You have safe&mdash;ah, you have safe me, and so I will
+do it yet by help <i>bon Dieu</i>&mdash;yes.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The meal was done at last, and he sat with a great
+dish of tea beside him, and his pipe alight.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What time, if please?&#8221; he asked. &#8220;I t&#8217;ink nine
+hour, but no sure.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It is near nine,&#8221; she said. She hastily tidied up
+the table after his meal, and then came and sat in her
+chair over against the wall of the rude fireplace.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Nine&mdash;dat is good. The moon rise at &#8217;leven; den
+I go. I go on,&#8221; he said, &#8220;if you show me de queeck
+way.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You go on&mdash;how can you go on?&#8221; she asked, almost
+sharply.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_46' name='page_46'></a>46</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;Will you not to show me?&#8221; he asked.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Show you what?&#8221; she asked, abruptly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;The queeck way to Askatoon,&#8221; he said, as though
+surprised that she should ask. &#8220;They say me if I get
+here you will tell me queeck way to Askatoon. Time,
+he go so fas&#8217;, an&#8217; I have loose a day an&#8217; a night, an&#8217; I
+mus&#8217; get Askatoon if I lif&mdash;I mus&#8217; get dere in time. It
+is all safe to de stroke of de hour, <i>mais</i>, after, it is&mdash;<i>bon
+Dieu</i>!&mdash;it is hell then. Who shall forgif me&mdash;no!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;The stroke of the hour&mdash;the stroke of the hour!&#8221;
+It beat into her brain. Were they both thinking of
+the same thing now?</p>
+<p>&#8220;You will show me queeck way. I mus&#8217; be Askatoon
+in two days, or it is all over,&#8221; he almost moaned. &#8220;Is
+no man here&mdash;I forget dat name, my head go round like
+a wheel; but I know dis place, an&#8217; de good God, He
+help me fin&#8217; my way to where I call out, <i>bien sûr</i>. Dat
+man&#8217;s name I have forget.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;My father&#8217;s name is John Alroyd,&#8221; she answered,
+absently, for there were hammering at her brain the
+words, &#8220;<i>The stroke of the hour.</i>&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ah, now I get&mdash;yes. An&#8217; your name, it is Loisette
+Alroy&mdash;ah, I have it in my mind now&mdash;Loisette. I
+not forget dat name, I not forget you&mdash;no.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why do you want to go the &#8216;quick&#8217; way to Askatoon?&#8221;
+she asked.</p>
+<p>He puffed a moment at his pipe before he answered
+her. Presently he said, holding out his pipe, &#8220;You not
+like smoke, mebbe?&#8221;</p>
+<p>She shook her head in negation, making an impatient
+gesture.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I forget ask you,&#8221; he said. &#8220;Dat journee make me
+forget. When Injun Jo, he leave me with the dogs, an&#8217;
+I wake up all alone, an&#8217; not know my way&mdash;not like
+Jo, I think I die, it is so bad, so <i>terrible</i> in my head.
+Not&#8217;ing but snow, not&#8217;ing. But dere is de sun; it shine.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_47' name='page_47'></a>47</span>
+It say to me, &#8216;Wake up, Ba&#8217;tiste; it will be all right
+bime-bye.&#8217; But all time I t&#8217;ink I go mad, for I mus&#8217;
+get Askatoon before&mdash;<i>dat</i>.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She started. Had she not used the same word in
+thinking of Askatoon. &#8220;<i>That</i>,&#8221; she had said.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why do you want to go the &#8216;quick&#8217; way to Askatoon?&#8221;
+she asked again, her face pale, her foot beating
+the floor impatiently.</p>
+<p>&#8220;To save him before <i>dat</i>!&#8221; he answered, as though
+she knew of what he was speaking and thinking.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What is <i>that</i>?&#8221; she asked. She knew now, surely,
+but she must ask it nevertheless.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Dat hanging&mdash;of Haman,&#8221; he answered. He nodded
+to himself. Then he took to gazing into the fire. His
+lips moved as though talking to himself, and the hand
+that held the pipe lay forgotten on his knee.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What have you to do with Haman?&#8221; she asked,
+slowly, her eyes burning.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I want safe him&mdash;I mus&#8217; give him free.&#8221; He tapped
+his breast. &#8220;It is here to mak&#8217; him free.&#8221; He still
+tapped his breast.</p>
+<p>For a moment she stood frozen still, her face thin
+and drawn and white; then suddenly the blood rushed
+back into her face, and a red storm raged in her eyes.</p>
+<p>She thought of the sister, younger than herself, whom
+Rube Haman had married and driven to her grave within
+a year&mdash;the sweet Lucy, with the name of her father&#8217;s
+mother. Lucy had been all English in face and tongue,
+a flower of the west, driven to darkness by this horse-dealing
+brute, who, before he was arrested and tried
+for murder, was about to marry Kate Wimper. Kate
+Wimper had stolen him from Lucy before Lucy&#8217;s first
+and only child was born, the child that could not survive
+the warm mother-life withdrawn, and so had gone
+down the valley whither the broken-hearted mother had
+fled. It was Kate Wimper, who, before that, had waylaid
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_48' name='page_48'></a>48</span>
+the one man for whom she herself had ever cared,
+and drawn him from her side by such attractions as she
+herself would keep for an honest wife, if such she ever
+chanced to be. An honest wife she would have been
+had Kate Wimper not crossed the straight path of her
+life. The man she had loved was gone to his end also,
+reckless and hopeless, after he had thrown away his
+chance of a lifetime with Loisette Alroyd. There had
+been left behind this girl, to whom tragedy had come
+too young, who drank humiliation with a heart as proud
+as ever straightly set its course through crooked ways.</p>
+<p>It had hurt her, twisted her nature a little, given a
+fountain of bitterness to her soul, which welled up and
+flooded her life sometimes. It had given her face no
+sourness, but it put a shadow into her eyes.</p>
+<p>She had been glad when Haman was condemned for
+murder, for she believed he had committed it, and ten
+times hanging could not compensate for that dear life
+gone from their sight&mdash;Lucy, the pride of her father&#8217;s
+heart. She was glad when Haman was condemned,
+because of the woman who had stolen him from Lucy,
+because of that other man, her lover, gone out of her
+own life. The new hardness in her rejoiced that now
+the woman, if she had any heart at all, must have it
+bowed down by this supreme humiliation and wrung by
+the ugly tragedy of the hempen rope.</p>
+<p>And now this man before her, this man with a boy&#8217;s
+face, with the dark, luminous eyes, whom she had saved
+from the frozen plains, he had that in his breast which
+would free Haman, so he had said. A fury had its
+birth in her at that moment. Something seemed to
+seize her brain and master it, something so big that it
+held all her faculties in perfect control, and she felt
+herself in an atmosphere where all life moved round her
+mechanically, she herself the only sentient thing, so
+much greater than all she saw, or all that she realized
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_49' name='page_49'></a>49</span>
+by her subconscious self. Everything in the world
+seemed small. How calm it was even with the fury
+within!</p>
+<p>&#8220;Tell me,&#8221; she said, quietly&mdash;&#8220;tell me how you are
+able to save Haman?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He not kill Wakely. It is my brudder Fadette dat
+kill and get away. Haman he is drunk, and everyt&#8217;ing
+seem to say Haman he did it, an&#8217; every one know Haman
+is not friend to Wakely. So the juree say he must be
+hanging. But my brudder he go to die with hawful
+bad cold queeck, an&#8217; he send for the priest an&#8217; for me,
+an&#8217; tell all. I go to Governor with the priest, an&#8217;
+Governor gif me dat writing here.&#8221; He tapped his
+breast, then took out a wallet and showed the paper to
+her. &#8220;It is life of dat Haman, <i>voici</i>! And so I safe
+him for my brudder. Dat was a bad boy, Fadette.
+He was bad all time since he was a baby, an&#8217; I t&#8217;ink
+him pretty lucky to die on his bed, an&#8217; get absolve, and
+go to purgatore. If he not have luck like dat he go to
+hell, an&#8217; stay there.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He sighed, and put the wallet back in his breast carefully,
+his eyes half shut with weariness, his handsome
+face drawn and thin, his limbs lax with fatigue.</p>
+<p>&#8220;If I get Askatoon before de time for <i>dat</i>, I be happy
+in my heart, for dat brudder off mine he get out of
+purgatore bime-bye, I t&#8217;ink.&#8221;</p>
+<p>His eyes were almost shut, but he drew himself together
+with a great effort, and added desperately: &#8220;No
+sleep. If I sleep it is all smash. Man say me I can
+get Askatoon by dat time from here, if I go queeck way
+across lak&#8217;&mdash;it is all froze now, dat lak&#8217;&mdash;an&#8217; down dat
+Foxtail Hills. Is it so, ma&#8217;m&#8217;selle?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;By the &#8216;quick&#8217; way if you can make it in time,&#8221; she
+said; &#8220;but it is no way for the stranger to go. There
+are always bad spots on the ice&mdash;it is not safe. You
+could not find your way.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_50' name='page_50'></a>50</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;I mus&#8217; get dere in time,&#8221; he said, desperately.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You can&#8217;t do it&mdash;alone,&#8221; she said. &#8220;Do you want
+to risk all and lose?&#8221;</p>
+<p>He frowned in self-suppression. &#8220;Long way, I no
+can get dere in time?&#8221; he asked.</p>
+<p>She thought a moment. &#8220;No; it can&#8217;t be done by
+the long way. But there is another way&mdash;a third trail,
+the trail the Gover&#8217;ment men made a year ago when
+they came to survey. It is a good trail. It is blazed
+in the woods and staked on the plains. You cannot
+miss. But&mdash;but there is so little time.&#8221; She looked at
+the clock on the wall. &#8220;You cannot leave here much
+before sunrise, and&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I will leef when de moon rise, at eleven,&#8221; he interjected.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You have had no sleep for two nights, and no food.
+You can&#8217;t last it out,&#8221; she said, calmly.</p>
+<p>The deliberate look on his face deepened to stubbornness.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It is my vow to my brudder&mdash;he is in purgatore.
+An&#8217; I mus&#8217; do it,&#8221; he rejoined, with an emphasis there
+was no mistaking. &#8220;You can show me dat way?&#8221;</p>
+<p>She went to a drawer and took out a piece of paper.
+Then, with a point of blackened stick, as he watched
+her and listened, she swiftly drew his route for him.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, I get it in my head,&#8221; he said. &#8220;I go dat way,
+but I wish&mdash;I wish it was dat queeck way. I have
+no fear, not&#8217;ing. I go w&#8217;en dat moon rise&mdash;I go, <i>bien
+sûr.</i>&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You must sleep, then, while I get some food for
+you.&#8221; She pointed to a couch in a corner. &#8220;I will
+wake you when the moon rises.&#8221;</p>
+<p>For the first time he seemed to realize her, for a
+moment to leave the thing which consumed him, and
+put his mind upon her.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You not happy&mdash;you not like me here?&#8221; he asked,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_51' name='page_51'></a>51</span>
+simply; then added, quickly, &#8220;I am not bad man like
+me brudder&mdash;no.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Her eyes rested on him for a moment as though
+realizing him, while some thought was working in her
+mind behind.</p>
+<p>&#8220;No, you are not a bad man,&#8221; she said. &#8220;Men and
+women are equal on the plains. You have no fear&mdash;I
+have no fear.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He glanced at the rifles on the walls, then back at
+her. &#8220;My mudder, she was good woman. I am glad
+she did not lif to know what Fadette do.&#8221; His eyes
+drank her in for a minute, then he said: &#8220;I go sleep now,
+t&#8217;ank you&mdash;till moontime.&#8221;</p>
+<p>In a moment his deep breathing filled the room, the
+only sound save for the fire within and the frost outside.</p>
+<p>Time went on. The night deepened.</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+
+<p>Loisette sat beside the fire, but her body was half-turned
+from it toward the man on the sofa. She was
+not agitated outwardly, but within there was that fire
+which burns up life and hope and all the things that
+come between us and great issues. It had burned up
+everything in her except one thought, one powerful
+motive. She had been deeply wronged, and justice
+had been about to give &#8220;an eye for an eye and a tooth
+for a tooth.&#8221; But the man lying there had come to
+sweep away the scaffolding of justice&mdash;he had come for
+that.</p>
+<p>Perhaps he might arrive at Askatoon before the
+stroke of the hour, but still he would be too late, for
+in her pocket now was the Governor&#8217;s reprieve. The
+man had slept soundly. His wallet was still in his
+breast; but the reprieve was with her.</p>
+<p>If he left without discovering his loss, and got well
+on his way, and discovered it then, it would be too late.
+If he returned&mdash;she only saw one step before her, she
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_52' name='page_52'></a>52</span>
+would wait for that, and deal with it when it came.
+She was thinking of Lucy, of her own lover ruined and
+gone. She was calm in her madness.</p>
+<p>At the first light of the moon she roused him. She
+had put food into his fur-coat pocket, and after he had
+drunk a bowl of hot pea-soup, while she told him his
+course again, she opened the door, and he passed out
+into the night. He started forward without a word,
+but came back again and caught her hand.</p>
+<p>&#8220;<i>Pardon</i>,&#8221; he said; &#8220;I go forget everyt&#8217;ing except
+<i>dat</i>. But I t&#8217;ink what you do for me, it is better than
+all my life. <i>Bien sûr</i>, I will come again, when I get my
+mind to myself. Ah, but you are beautibul,&#8221; he said,
+&#8220;an&#8217; you not happy. Well, I come again&mdash;yes, <i>à Dieu.</i>&#8221;</p>
+<p>He was gone into the night, with the moon silvering
+the sky, and the steely frost eating into the sentient
+life of this northern world. Inside the house, with the
+bearskin blind dropped at the window again, and the
+fire blazing high, Loisette sat with the Governor&#8217;s
+reprieve in her hand. Looking at it, she wondered why
+it had been given to Ba&#8217;tiste Caron and not to a police-officer.
+Ah yes, it was plain&mdash;Ba&#8217;tiste was a woodsman
+and plainsman, and could go far more safely than a
+constable, and faster. Ba&#8217;tiste had reason for going
+fast, and he would travel night and day&mdash;he was travelling
+night and day indeed. And now Ba&#8217;tiste might
+get there, but the reprieve would not. He would not
+be able to stop the hanging of Haman&mdash;the hanging
+of Rube Haman.</p>
+<p>A change came over her. Her eyes blazed, her
+breast heaved now. She had been so quiet, so cold and
+still. But life seemed moving in her once again. The
+woman, Kate Wimper, who had helped to send two
+people to their graves, would now drink the dregs of
+shame, if she was capable of shame&mdash;would be robbed
+of her happiness, if so be she loved Rube Haman.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_53' name='page_53'></a>53</span></p>
+<p>She stood up, as though to put the paper in the fire,
+but paused suddenly at one thought&mdash;<i>Rube Haman was
+innocent of murder.</i></p>
+<p>Even so, he was not innocent of Lucy&#8217;s misery and
+death, or the death of the little one who only opened its
+eyes to the light for an instant, and then went into the
+dark again. But truly she was justified! When Haman
+was gone things would go on just the same&mdash;and she
+had been so bitter, her heart had been pierced as with
+a knife these past three years. Again she held out her
+hand to the fire, but suddenly she gave a little cry and
+put her hand to her head. There was Ba&#8217;tiste!</p>
+<p>What was Ba&#8217;tiste to her? Nothing&mdash;nothing at all.
+She had saved his life&mdash;even if she wronged Ba&#8217;tiste,
+her debt would be paid. No, she would not think of
+Ba&#8217;tiste. Yet she did not put the paper in the fire, but
+in the pocket of her dress. Then she went to her room,
+leaving the door open. The bed was opposite the fire,
+and, as she lay there&mdash;she did not take off her clothes,
+she knew not why&mdash;she could see the flames. She
+closed her eyes but could not sleep, and more than
+once when she opened them she thought she saw Ba&#8217;tiste
+sitting there as he had sat hours before. Why did
+Ba&#8217;tiste haunt her so? What was it he had said in his
+broken English as he went away?&mdash;that he would come
+back; that she was &#8220;beautibul.&#8221;</p>
+<p>All at once as she lay still, her head throbbing, her
+feet and hands icy cold, she sat up listening.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ah&mdash;again!&#8221; she cried. She sprang from her bed,
+rushed to the door, and strained her eyes into the silver
+night. She called into the icy void, &#8220;<i>Qui va là?</i> Who
+goes?&#8221;</p>
+<p>She leaned forward, her hand at her ear, but no
+sound came in reply. Once more she called, but
+nothing answered. The night was all light and frost
+and silence.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_54' name='page_54'></a>54</span></p>
+<p>She had only heard, in her own brain, the iteration
+of Ba&#8217;tiste&#8217;s calling. Would he reach Askatoon in time?
+she wondered, as she shut the door. Why had she
+not gone with him and attempted the shorter way&mdash;the
+quick way, he had called it? All at once the truth
+came back upon her, stirring her now. It would do no
+good for Ba&#8217;tiste to arrive in time. He might plead to
+them all and tell the truth about the reprieve, but it
+would not avail&mdash;Rube Haman would hang. That did
+not matter&mdash;even though he was innocent; but Ba&#8217;tiste&#8217;s
+brother would be so long in purgatory. And even that
+would not matter; but she would hurt Ba&#8217;tiste&mdash;Ba&#8217;tiste&mdash;Ba&#8217;tiste!
+And Ba&#8217;tiste he would know that she&mdash;and
+he had called her &#8220;beautibul&#8221;&mdash;that she had&mdash;</p>
+<p>With a cry she suddenly clothed herself for travel.
+She put some food and drink in a leather bag and slung
+them over her shoulder. Then she dropped on a knee
+and wrote a note to her father, tears falling from her
+eyes. She heaped wood on the fire and moved toward
+the door. All at once she turned to the crucifix on the
+wall which had belonged to her mother, and, though
+she had followed her father&#8217;s Protestant religion, she
+kissed the feet of the sacred figure.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, Christ, have mercy on me, and bring me safe
+to my journey&#8217;s end&mdash;in time,&#8221; she said, breathlessly;
+then she went softly to the door, leaving the dog behind.</p>
+<p>It opened, closed, and the night swallowed her. Like
+a ghost she sped the quick way to Askatoon. She was
+six hours behind Ba&#8217;tiste, and, going hard all the time,
+it was doubtful if she could get there before the fatal hour.</p>
+<p>On the trail Ba&#8217;tiste had taken there were two huts
+where he could rest, and he had carried his blanket
+slung on his shoulder. The way she went gave no
+shelter save the trees and caves which had been used
+to <i>câche</i> buffalo meat and hides in old days. But beyond
+this there was danger in travelling by night, for
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_55' name='page_55'></a>55</span>
+the springs beneath the ice of the three lakes she must
+cross made it weak and rotten even in the fiercest
+weather, and what would no doubt have been death to
+Ba&#8217;tiste would be peril at least to her. Why had she
+not gone with him?</p>
+<p>&#8220;He had in his face what was in Lucy&#8217;s,&#8221; she said to
+herself, as she sped on. &#8220;She was fine like him, ready
+to break her heart for those she cared for. My, if she
+had seen him first instead of&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>She stopped short, for the ice gave way to her foot,
+and she only sprang back in time to save herself. But
+she trotted on, mile after mile, the dog-trot of the Indian,
+head bent forward, toeing in, breathing steadily but
+sharply.</p>
+<p>The morning came, noon, then a fall of snow and a
+keen wind, and despair in her heart; but she had passed
+the danger-spots, and now, if the storm did not overwhelm
+her, she might get to Askatoon in time. In the
+midst of the storm she came to one of the caves of
+which she had known. Here was wood for a fire, and
+here she ate, and in weariness unspeakable fell asleep.
+When she waked it was near sundown, the storm had
+ceased, and, as on the night before, the sky was stained
+with color and drowned in splendor.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I will do it&mdash;I will do it, Ba&#8217;tiste!&#8221; she called, and
+laughed aloud into the sunset. She had battled with
+herself all the way, and she had conquered. Right was
+right, and Rube Haman must not be hung for what he
+did not do. Her heart hardened whenever she thought
+of the woman, but softened again when she thought of
+Ba&#8217;tiste, who had to suffer for the deed of a brother in
+&#8220;purgatore.&#8221; Once again the night and its silence and
+loneliness followed her, the only living thing near the
+trail till long after midnight. After that, as she knew,
+there were houses here and there where she might have
+rested, but she pushed on unceasing.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_56' name='page_56'></a>56</span></p>
+<p>At daybreak she fell in with a settler going to Askatoon
+with his dogs. Seeing how exhausted she was, he
+made her ride a few miles upon his sledge; then she
+sped on ahead again till she came to the borders of
+Askatoon.</p>
+<p>People were already in the streets, and all were tending
+one way. She stopped and asked the time. It was
+within a quarter of an hour of the time when Haman
+was to pay another&#8217;s penalty. She spurred herself on,
+and came to the jail blind with fatigue. As she neared
+the jail she saw her father and Mickey. In amazement
+her father hailed her, but she would not stop. She was
+admitted to the prison on explaining that she had a
+reprieve. Entering a room filled with excited people,
+she heard a cry.</p>
+<p>It came from Ba&#8217;tiste. He had arrived but ten
+minutes before, and, in the Sheriff&#8217;s presence, had discovered
+his loss. He had appealed in vain.</p>
+<p>But now, as he saw the girl, he gave a shout of joy
+which pierced the hearts of all.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ah, you haf it! Say you haf it, or it is no use&mdash;he
+mus&#8217; hang. Spik&mdash;spik! Ah, my brudder&mdash;it is to
+do him right! Ah, Loisette&mdash;<i>bon Dieu, merci!</i>&#8221;</p>
+<p>For answer she placed the reprieve in the hands of
+the Sheriff. Then she swayed and fell fainting at the
+feet of Ba&#8217;tiste.</p>
+<p>She had come at the stroke of the hour.</p>
+<p>When she left for her home again the Sheriff kissed
+her.</p>
+<p>And that was not the only time he kissed her. He
+did it again six months later, at the beginning of the
+harvest, when she and Ba&#8217;tiste Caron started off on the
+long trail of life together. None but Ba&#8217;tiste knew the
+truth about the loss of the reprieve, and to him she was
+&#8220;beautibul&#8221; just the same, and greatly to be desired.</p>
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<a name='linki_4' id='linki_4'></a>
+<img src='images/p056.jpg' alt='' title='' style='width: 377px; height: 526px;' /><br />
+<p class='caption' style='margin: 0 auto; text-align:center;width: 377px;'>
+SHE SWAYED AND FELL FAINTING AT THE FEET OF BA&#8217;TISTE<br />
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<a name='BUCKMASTER_S_BOY' id='BUCKMASTER_S_BOY'></a>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_57' name='page_57'></a>57</span>
+<h2>BUCKMASTER&#8217;S BOY</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>&#8220;I bin waitin&#8217; for him, an&#8217; I&#8217;ll git him ef it takes all
+winter. I&#8217;ll get him&mdash;plumb.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The speaker smoothed the barrel of his rifle with
+mittened hand, which had, however, a trigger-finger
+free. With black eyebrows twitching over sunken gray
+eyes, he looked doggedly down the frosty valley from
+the ledge of high rock where he sat. The face was
+rough and weather-beaten, with the deep tan got in
+the open life of a land of much sun and little cloud,
+and he had a beard which, untrimmed and growing
+wild, made him look ten years older than he was.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I bin waitin&#8217; a durn while,&#8221; the mountain-man
+added, and got to his feet slowly, drawing himself out
+to six and a half feet of burly manhood. The shoulders
+were, however, a little stooped, and the head was thrust
+forward with an eager, watchful look&mdash;a habit become
+a physical characteristic.</p>
+<p>Presently he caught sight of a hawk sailing southward
+along the peaks of the white icebound mountains
+above, on which the sun shone with such sharp insistence,
+making sky and mountain of a piece in deep purity and
+serene stillness.</p>
+<p>&#8220;That hawk&#8217;s seen him, mebbe,&#8221; he said, after a
+moment. &#8220;I bet it went up higher when it got him in
+its eye. Ef it&#8217;d only speak and tell me where he is&mdash;ef
+he&#8217;s a day, or two days, or ten days north.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Suddenly his eyes blazed and his mouth opened in
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_58' name='page_58'></a>58</span>
+superstitious amazement, for the hawk stopped almost
+directly overhead at a great height, and swept round in
+a circle many times, waveringly, uncertainly. At last
+it resumed its flight southward, sliding down the mountains
+like a winged star.</p>
+<p>The mountaineer watched it with a dazed expression
+for a moment longer, then both hands clutched the rifle
+and half swung it to position involuntarily.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s seen him, and it stopped to say so. It&#8217;s seen
+him, I tell you, an&#8217; I&#8217;ll git him. Ef it&#8217;s an hour, or a
+day, or a week, it&#8217;s all the same. I&#8217;m here watchin&#8217;,
+waitin&#8217; dead on to him, the poison skunk!&#8221;</p>
+<p>The person to whom he had been speaking now rose
+from the pile of cedar boughs where he had been sitting,
+stretched his arms up, then shook himself into place,
+as does a dog after sleep. He stood for a minute looking
+at the mountaineer with a reflective yet a furtively
+sardonic look. He was not above five feet nine inches
+in height, and he was slim and neat; and though his
+buckskin coat and breeches were worn and even frayed
+in spots, he had an air of some distinction and of concentrated
+force. It was a face that men turned to look
+at twice and shook their heads in doubt afterward&mdash;a
+handsome, worn, secretive face, in as perfect control as
+the strings of an instrument under the bow of a great
+artist. It was the face of a man without purpose in
+life beyond the moment&mdash;watchful, careful, remorselessly
+determined, an adventurer&#8217;s asset, the dial-plate
+of a hidden machinery.</p>
+<p>Now he took the handsome meerschaum pipe from
+his mouth, from which he had been puffing smoke slowly,
+and said in a cold, yet quiet voice, &#8220;How long you
+been waitin&#8217;, Buck?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;A month. He&#8217;s overdue near that. He always
+comes down to winter at Fort o&#8217; Comfort, with his
+string of half-breeds, an&#8217; Injuns, an&#8217; the dogs.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_59' name='page_59'></a>59</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;No chance to get him at the Fort?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It ain&#8217;t so certain. They&#8217;d guess what I was doin&#8217;
+there. It&#8217;s surer here. He&#8217;s got to come down the
+trail, an&#8217; when I spot him by the Juniper clump&#8221;&mdash;he
+jerked an arm toward a spot almost a mile farther up
+the valley&mdash;&#8220;I kin scoot up the underbrush a bit and
+git him&mdash;plumb. I could do it from here, sure, but
+I don&#8217;t want no mistake. Once only, jest one shot,
+that&#8217;s all I want, Sinnet.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He bit off a small piece of tobacco from a black plug
+Sinnet offered him, and chewed it with nervous fierceness,
+his eyebrows working, as he looked at the other
+eagerly. Deadly as his purpose was, and grim and
+unvarying as his vigil had been, the loneliness had told
+on him, and he had grown hungry for a human face and
+human companionship. Why Sinnet had come he had
+not thought to inquire. Why Sinnet should be going
+north instead of south had not occurred to him. He
+only realized that Sinnet was not the man he was waiting
+for with murder in his heart; and all that mattered
+to him in life was the coming of his victim down the
+trail. He had welcomed Sinnet with a sullen eagerness,
+and had told him in short, detached sentences the dark
+story of a wrong and a waiting revenge, which brought
+a slight flush to Sinnet&#8217;s pale face and awakened a curious
+light in his eyes.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Is that your shack&mdash;that where you shake down?&#8221;
+Sinnet said, pointing toward a lean-to in the fir-trees to
+trees to the right.</p>
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s it. I sleep there. It&#8217;s straight on to the
+Juniper clump, the front door is.&#8221; He laughed viciously,
+grimly. &#8220;Outside or inside, I&#8217;m on to the Juniper
+clump. Walk into the parlor?&#8221; he added, and drew
+open a rough-made door, so covered with green cedar
+boughs that it seemed of a piece with the surrounding
+underbrush and trees. Indeed, the little hut was so
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_60' name='page_60'></a>60</span>
+constructed that it could not be distinguished from the
+woods even a short distance away.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Can&#8217;t have a fire, I suppose?&#8221; Sinnet asked.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Not daytimes. Smoke &#8217;d give me away if he suspicioned
+me,&#8221; answered the mountaineer. &#8220;I don&#8217;t
+take no chances. Never can tell.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Water?&#8221; asked Sinnet, as though interested in the
+surroundings, while all the time he was eying the
+mountaineer furtively&mdash;as it were, prying to the inner
+man, or measuring the strength of the outer man. He
+lighted a fresh pipe and seated himself on a rough
+bench beside the table in the middle of the room, and
+leaned on his elbows, watching.</p>
+<p>The mountaineer laughed. It was not a pleasant
+laugh to hear. &#8220;Listen,&#8221; he said. &#8220;You bin a long
+time out West. You bin in the mountains a good while.
+Listen.&#8221;</p>
+<p>There was silence. Sinnet listened intently. He
+heard the faint drip, drip, drip of water, and looked
+steadily at the back wall of the room.</p>
+<p>&#8220;There&mdash;rock?&#8221; he said, and jerked his head toward
+the sound.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You got good ears,&#8221; answered the other, and drew
+aside a blanket which hung on the back wall of the
+room. A wooden trough was disclosed hanging under
+a ledge of rock, and water dripped into it softly, slowly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Almost providential, that rock,&#8221; remarked Sinnet.
+&#8220;You&#8217;ve got your well at your back door. Food&mdash;but
+you can&#8217;t go far, and keep your eye on the Bend too,&#8221;
+he nodded toward the door, beyond which lay the
+frost-touched valley in the early morning light of
+autumn.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Plenty of black squirrels and pigeons come here on
+account of the springs like this one, and I get &#8217;em with
+a bow and arrow. I didn&#8217;t call myself Robin Hood and
+Daniel Boone not for nothin&#8217; when I was knee-high to
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_61' name='page_61'></a>61</span>
+a grasshopper.&#8221; He drew from a rough cupboard some
+cold game, and put it on the table, with some scones
+and a pannikin of water. Then he brought out a small
+jug of whiskey and placed it beside his visitor. They
+began to eat.</p>
+<p>&#8220;How d&#8217;ye cook without fire?&#8221; asked Sinnet.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Fire&#8217;s all right at nights. He&#8217;d never camp &#8217;twixt
+here an&#8217; Juniper Bend at night. The next camp&#8217;s six
+miles north from here. He&#8217;d only come down the valley
+daytimes. I studied it all out, and it&#8217;s a dead sure
+thing. From daylight till dusk I&#8217;m on to him&mdash;I got
+the trail in my eye.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He showed his teeth like a wild dog, as his look swept
+the valley. There was something almost revolting in
+his concentrated ferocity.</p>
+<p>Sinnet&#8217;s eyes half closed as he watched the mountaineer,
+and the long, scraggy hands and whipcord neck
+seemed to interest him greatly. He looked at his own
+slim, brown hands with a half smile, and it was almost
+as cruel as the laugh of the other. Yet it had, too,
+a knowledge and an understanding which gave it
+humanity.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;re sure he did it?&#8221; Sinnet asked, presently,
+after drinking a very small portion of liquor, and tossing
+some water from the pannikin after it. &#8220;You&#8217;re
+sure Greevy killed your boy, Buck?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;My name&#8217;s Buckmaster, ain&#8217;t it&mdash;Jim Buckmaster?
+Don&#8217;t I know my own name? It&#8217;s as sure as that.
+My boy said it was Greevy when he was dying. He
+told Bill Ricketts so, and Bill told me afore he went
+East. Bill didn&#8217;t want to tell, but he said it was fair
+I should know, for my boy never did nobody any harm&mdash;an&#8217;
+Greevy&#8217;s livin&#8217; on! But I&#8217;ll git him. Right&#8217;s
+right.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Wouldn&#8217;t it be better for the law to hang him if
+you&#8217;ve got the proof, Buck? A year or so in jail, an&#8217;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_62' name='page_62'></a>62</span>
+a long time to think over what&#8217;s going round his neck
+on the scaffold&mdash;wouldn&#8217;t that suit you, if you&#8217;ve got
+the proof?&#8221;</p>
+<p>A rigid, savage look came into Buckmaster&#8217;s face.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I ain&#8217;t lettin&#8217; no judge and jury do my business.
+I&#8217;m for certain sure, not for <i>p&#8217;r&#8217;aps</i>! An&#8217; I want to do
+it myself. Clint was only twenty. Like boys we was
+together. I was eighteen when I married, an&#8217; he come
+when <i>she</i> went&mdash;jest a year&mdash;jest a year. An&#8217; ever since
+then we lived together, him an&#8217; me, an&#8217; shot together,
+an&#8217; trapped together, an&#8217; went gold-washin&#8217; together
+on the Cariboo, an&#8217; eat out of the same dish, an&#8217; slept
+under the same blanket, and jawed together nights&mdash;ever
+since he was five, when old Mother Lablache
+had got him into pants, an&#8217; he was fit to take the
+trail.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The old man stopped a minute, his whipcord neck
+swelling, his lips twitching. He brought a fist down on
+the table with a bang. &#8220;The biggest little rip he was,
+as full of fun as a squirrel, an&#8217; never a smile&mdash;jest his
+eyes dancin&#8217;, an&#8217; more sense than a judge. He laid
+hold o&#8217; me, that cub did&mdash;it was like his mother and
+himself together; an&#8217; the years flowin&#8217; in an&#8217; peterin&#8217;
+out, an&#8217; him gettin&#8217; older, an&#8217; always jest the same.
+Always on rock-bottom, always bright as a dollar, an&#8217;
+we livin&#8217; at Black Nose Lake, layin&#8217; up cash agin&#8217; the
+time we was to go South, an&#8217; set up a house along the
+railway, an&#8217; him to git married. I was for his gittin&#8217;
+married same as me, when we had enough cash. I use
+to think of that when he was ten, and when he was
+eighteen I spoke to him about it; but he wouldn&#8217;t listen&mdash;jest
+laughed at me. You remember how Clint used
+to laugh, sort of low and teasin&#8217; like&mdash;you remember
+that laugh o&#8217; Clint&#8217;s, don&#8217;t you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Sinnet&#8217;s face was toward the valley and Juniper
+Bend, but he slowly turned his head and looked at
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_63' name='page_63'></a>63</span>
+Buckmaster strangely out of his half-shut eyes. He
+took the pipe from his mouth slowly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I can hear it now,&#8221; he answered, slowly. &#8220;I hear
+it often, Buck.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The old man gripped his arm so suddenly that Sinnet
+was startled&mdash;in so far as anything could startle any
+one who had lived a life of chance and danger and
+accident&mdash;and his face grew a shade paler; but he
+did not move, and Buckmaster&#8217;s hand tightened
+convulsively.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You liked him, an&#8217; he liked you; he first learnt
+poker off you, Sinnet. He thought you was a tough,
+but he didn&#8217;t mind that no more than I did. It ain&#8217;t
+for us to say what we&#8217;re goin&#8217; to be, not always. Things
+in life git stronger than we are. You was a tough, but
+who&#8217;s goin&#8217; to judge you? I ain&#8217;t; for Clint took to
+you, Sinnet, an&#8217; he never went wrong in his thinkin&#8217;.
+God! he was wife an&#8217; child to me&mdash;an&#8217; he&#8217;s dead&mdash;dead&mdash;dead!&#8221;</p>
+<p>The man&#8217;s grief was a painful thing to see. His
+hands gripped the table, while his body shook with
+sobs, though his eyes gave forth no tears. It was an
+inward convulsion, which gave his face the look of
+unrelieved tragedy and suffering&mdash;Laocoon struggling
+with the serpents of sorrow and hatred which were
+strangling him.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Dead an&#8217; gone,&#8221; he repeated, as he swayed to and
+fro, and the table quivered in his grasp. Presently,
+however, as though arrested by a thought, he peered
+out of the doorway toward Juniper Bend. &#8220;That
+hawk seen him&mdash;it seen him. He&#8217;s comin&#8217;, I know it,
+an&#8217; I&#8217;ll git him&mdash;plumb.&#8221; He had the mystery and
+imagination of the mountain-dweller.</p>
+<p>The rifle lay against the wall behind him, and he
+turned and touched it almost caressingly. &#8220;I ain&#8217;t let
+go like this since he was killed, Sinnet. It don&#8217;t do. I
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_64' name='page_64'></a>64</span>
+got to keep myself stiddy to do the trick when the
+minute comes. At first I usen&#8217;t to sleep at nights,
+thinkin&#8217; of Clint, an&#8217; missin&#8217; him, an&#8217; I got shaky and
+no good. So I put a cinch on myself, an&#8217; got to sleepin&#8217;
+again&mdash;from the full dusk to dawn, for Greevy wouldn&#8217;t
+take the trail at night. I&#8217;ve kept stiddy.&#8221; He held out
+his hand as though to show that it was firm and steady,
+but it trembled with the emotion which had conquered
+him. He saw it, and shook his head angrily.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It was seein&#8217; you, Sinnet. It burst me. I ain&#8217;t
+seen no one to speak to in a month, an&#8217; with you sittin&#8217;
+there, it was like Clint an&#8217; me cuttin&#8217; and comin&#8217; again
+off the loaf an&#8217; the knuckle-bone of ven&#8217;son.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Sinnet ran a long finger slowly across his lips, and
+seemed meditating what he should say to the mountaineer.
+At length he spoke, looking into Buckmaster&#8217;s
+face: &#8220;What was the story Ricketts told you? What
+did your boy tell Ricketts? I&#8217;ve heard, too, about it,
+and that&#8217;s why I asked you if you had proofs that
+Greevy killed Clint. Of course, Clint should know, and
+if he told Ricketts, that&#8217;s pretty straight; but I&#8217;d like
+to know if what I heard tallies with what Ricketts heard
+from Clint. P&#8217;r&#8217;aps it&#8217;d ease your mind a bit to tell
+it. I&#8217;ll watch the Bend&mdash;don&#8217;t you trouble about that.
+You can&#8217;t do these two things at one time. I&#8217;ll watch
+for Greevy; you give me Clint&#8217;s story to Ricketts. I
+guess you know I&#8217;m feelin&#8217; for you, an&#8217; if I was in your
+place I&#8217;d shoot the man that killed Clint, if it took ten
+years. I&#8217;d have his heart&#8217;s blood&mdash;all of it. Whether
+Greevy was in the right or in the wrong, I&#8217;d have him&mdash;<i>plumb</i>.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Buckmaster was moved. He gave a fierce exclamation
+and made a gesture of cruelty. &#8220;Clint right or
+wrong? There ain&#8217;t no question of that. My boy
+wasn&#8217;t the kind to be in the wrong. What did he ever
+do but what was right? If Clint was in the wrong I&#8217;d
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_65' name='page_65'></a>65</span>
+kill Greevy jest the same, for Greevy robbed him of all
+the years that was before him&mdash;only a sapling he was,
+an&#8217; all his growin&#8217; to do, all his branches to widen an&#8217;
+his roots to spread. But that don&#8217;t enter in it, his bein&#8217;
+in the wrong. It was a quarrel, and Clint never did
+Greevy any harm. It was a quarrel over cards, an&#8217;
+Greevy was drunk, an&#8217; followed Clint out into the
+prairie in the night and shot him like a coyote. Clint
+hadn&#8217;t no chance, an&#8217; he jest lay there on the ground
+till morning, when Ricketts and Steve Joicey found
+him. An&#8217; Clint told Ricketts who it was.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why didn&#8217;t Ricketts tell it right out at once?&#8221;
+asked Sinnet.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Greevy was his own cousin&mdash;it was in the family,
+an&#8217; he kept thinkin&#8217; of Greevy&#8217;s gal, Em&#8217;ly. Her&mdash;what&#8217;ll
+it matter to her? She&#8217;ll get married, an she&#8217;ll
+forgit. I know her, a gal that&#8217;s got no deep feelin&#8217; like
+Clint had for me. But because of her Ricketts didn&#8217;t
+speak for a year. Then he couldn&#8217;t stand it any longer,
+an&#8217; he told me&mdash;seein&#8217; how I suffered, an&#8217; everybody
+hidin&#8217; their suspicions from me, an&#8217; me up here out o&#8217;
+the way, an&#8217; no account. That was the feelin&#8217; among
+&#8217;em: What was the good of making things worse? They
+wasn&#8217;t thinkin&#8217; of the boy or of Jim Buckmaster, his
+father. They was thinkin&#8217; of Greevy&#8217;s gal&mdash;to save
+her trouble.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Sinnet&#8217;s face was turned toward Juniper Bend, and
+the eyes were fixed, as it were, on a still more distant
+object&mdash;a dark, brooding, inscrutable look.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Was that all Ricketts told you, Buck?&#8221; The voice
+was very quiet, but it had a suggestive note.</p>
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s all Clint told Bill before he died. That was
+enough.&#8221;</p>
+<p>There was a moment&#8217;s pause, and then, puffing out
+long clouds of smoke, and in a tone of curious detachment,
+as though he were telling something that he
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_66' name='page_66'></a>66</span>
+saw now in the far distance, or as a spectator of a battle
+from a far vantage-point might report to a blind man
+standing near, Sinnet said:</p>
+<p>&#8220;P&#8217;r&#8217;aps Ricketts didn&#8217;t know the whole story;
+p&#8217;r&#8217;aps Clint didn&#8217;t know it all to tell him; p&#8217;r&#8217;aps Clint
+didn&#8217;t remember it all. P&#8217;r&#8217;aps he didn&#8217;t remember anything
+except that he and Greevy quarrelled, and that
+Greevy and he shot at each other in the prairie. He&#8217;d
+only be thinking of the thing that mattered most to
+him&mdash;that his life was over, an&#8217; that a man had put a
+bullet in him, an&#8217;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>Buckmaster tried to interrupt him, but he waved a
+hand impatiently, and continued: &#8220;As I say, maybe he
+didn&#8217;t remember everything; he had been drinkin&#8217; a bit
+himself, Clint had. He wasn&#8217;t used to liquor, and
+couldn&#8217;t stand much. Greevy was drunk, too, and gone
+off his head with rage. He always gets drunk when he
+first comes south to spend the winter with his girl
+Em&#8217;ly.&#8221; He paused a moment, then went on a little
+more quickly. &#8220;Greevy was proud of her&mdash;couldn&#8217;t
+even bear her being crossed in any way; and she has
+a quick temper, and if she quarrelled with anybody
+Greevy quarrelled too.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t want to know anything about her,&#8221; broke in
+Buckmaster, roughly. &#8220;She isn&#8217;t in this thing. I&#8217;m
+goin&#8217; to get Greevy. I bin waitin&#8217; for him, an&#8217; I&#8217;ll git
+him.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;re going to kill the man that killed your boy,
+if you can, Buck; but I&#8217;m telling my story in my own
+way. You told Rickett&#8217;s story; I&#8217;ll tell what I&#8217;ve
+heard. And before you kill Greevy you ought to know
+all there is that anybody else knows&mdash;or suspicions
+about it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I know enough. Greevy done it, an&#8217; I&#8217;m here.&#8221;</p>
+<p>With no apparent coherence and relevancy Sinnet
+continued, but his voice was not so even as before.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_67' name='page_67'></a>67</span>
+&#8220;Em&#8217;ly was a girl that wasn&#8217;t twice alike. She was
+changeable. First it was one, then it was another, and
+she didn&#8217;t seem to be able to fix her mind. But that
+didn&#8217;t prevent her leadin&#8217; men on. She wasn&#8217;t changeable,
+though, about her father. She was to him what
+your boy was to you. There she was like you, ready to
+give everything up for her father.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I tell y&#8217; I don&#8217;t want to hear about her,&#8221; said
+Buckmaster, getting to his feet and setting his jaws.
+&#8220;You needn&#8217;t talk to me about her. She&#8217;ll git over
+it. I&#8217;ll never git over what Greevy done to me or to
+Clint&mdash;jest twenty, jest twenty! I got my work to
+do.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He took his gun from the wall, slung it into the
+hollow of his arm, and turned to look up the valley
+through the open doorway.</p>
+<p>The morning was sparkling with life&mdash;the life and
+vigor which a touch of frost gives to the autumn world
+in a country where the blood tingles to the dry, sweet
+sting of the air. Beautiful, and spacious, and buoyant,
+and lonely, the valley and the mountains seemed waiting,
+like a new-born world, to be peopled by man. It
+was as though all had been made ready for him&mdash;the
+birds whistling and singing in the trees, the whisk of
+the squirrels leaping from bough to bough, the peremptory
+sound of the woodpecker&#8217;s beak against the
+bole of a tree, the rustle of the leaves as a wood-hen
+ran past&mdash;a waiting, virgin world.</p>
+<p>Its beauty and its wonderful dignity had no appeal
+to Buckmaster. His eyes and mind were fixed on a
+deed which would stain the virgin wild with the ancient
+crime that sent the first marauder on human life into
+the wilderness.</p>
+<p>As Buckmaster&#8217;s figure darkened the doorway Sinnet
+seemed to waken as from a dream, and he got swiftly to
+his feet.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_68' name='page_68'></a>68</span>
+&#8220;Wait&mdash;you wait, Buck. You&#8217;ve got to hear all.
+You haven&#8217;t heard my story yet. Wait, I tell you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>His voice was so sharp and insistent, so changed, that
+Buckmaster turned from the doorway and came back
+into the room.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What&#8217;s the use of my hearin&#8217;? You want me not to
+kill Greevy, because of that gal. What&#8217;s she to me?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Nothing to you, Buck, but Clint was everything to
+her.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The mountaineer stood like one petrified.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What&#8217;s that&mdash;what&#8217;s that you say? It&#8217;s a damn
+lie!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It wasn&#8217;t cards&mdash;the quarrel, not the real quarrel.
+Greevy found Clint kissing her. Greevy wanted her
+to marry Gatineau, the lumber-king. That was the
+quarrel.&#8221;</p>
+<p>A snarl was on the face of Buckmaster. &#8220;Then she&#8217;ll
+not be sorry when I git him. It took Clint from her as
+well as from me.&#8221; He turned to the door again.</p>
+<p>&#8220;But, wait, Buck, wait one minute and hear&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>He was interrupted by a low, exultant growl, and he
+saw Buckmaster&#8217;s rifle clutched as a hunter, stooping,
+clutches his gun to fire on his prey.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Quick, the spy-glass!&#8221; he flung back at Sinnet.
+&#8220;It&#8217;s him, but I&#8217;ll make sure.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Sinnet caught the telescope from the nails where it
+hung, and looked out toward Juniper Bend. &#8220;It&#8217;s
+Greevy&mdash;and his girl, and the half-breeds,&#8221; he said,
+with a note in his voice that almost seemed agitation,
+and yet few had ever seen Sinnet agitated. &#8220;Em&#8217;ly
+must have gone up the trail in the night.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s my turn now,&#8221; the mountaineer said, hoarsely,
+and, stooping, slid away quickly into the undergrowth.</p>
+<p>Sinnet followed, keeping near him, neither speaking.
+For a half mile they hastened on, and now and then
+Buckmaster drew aside the bushes, and looked up the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_69' name='page_69'></a>69</span>
+valley, to keep Greevy and his <i>bois brûlées</i> in his eye.
+Just so had he and his son and Sinnet stalked the
+wapiti and the red deer along these mountains; but
+this was a man that Buckmaster was stalking now, with
+none of the joy of the sport which had been his since
+a lad; only the malice of the avenger. The lust of a
+mountain feud was on him; he was pursuing the price
+of blood.</p>
+<p>At last Buckmaster stopped at a ledge of rock just
+above the trail. Greevy would pass below, within three
+hundred yards of his rifle. He turned to Sinnet with
+cold and savage eyes. &#8220;You go back,&#8221; he said. &#8220;It&#8217;s
+my business. I don&#8217;t want you to see. You don&#8217;t
+want to see, then you won&#8217;t know, and you won&#8217;t need
+to lie. You said that the man that killed Clint ought
+to die. He&#8217;s going to die, but it&#8217;s none o&#8217; your business.
+I want to be alone. In a minute he&#8217;ll be where I kin
+git him&mdash;plumb. You go, Sinnet&mdash;right off. It&#8217;s my
+business.&#8221;</p>
+<p>There was a strange, desperate look in Sinnet&#8217;s face;
+it was as hard as stone, but his eyes had a light of
+battle in them.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s my business right enough, Buck,&#8221; he said, &#8220;and
+you&#8217;re not going to kill Greevy. That girl of his has
+lost her lover, your boy. It&#8217;s broke her heart almost,
+and there&#8217;s no use making her an orphan too. She
+can&#8217;t stand it. She&#8217;s had enough. You leave her father
+alone&mdash;you hear me, let up!&#8221; He stepped between
+Buckmaster and the ledge of rock from which the
+mountaineer was to take aim.</p>
+<p>There was a terrible look in Buckmaster&#8217;s face. He
+raised his single-barrelled rifle, as though he would shoot
+Sinnet; but, at the moment, he remembered that a
+shot would warn Greevy, and that he might not have
+time to reload. He laid his rifle against a tree swiftly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Git away from here,&#8221; he said, with a strange rattle
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_70' name='page_70'></a>70</span>
+in his throat. &#8220;Git away quick; he&#8217;ll be down past
+here in a minute.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Sinnet pulled himself together as he saw Buckmaster
+snatch at a great clasp-knife in his belt. He jumped
+and caught Buckmaster&#8217;s wrist in a grip like a vise.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Greevy didn&#8217;t kill him, Buck,&#8221; he said. But the
+mountaineer was gone mad, and did not grasp the
+meaning of the words. He twined his left arm round
+the neck of Sinnet, and the struggle began, he fighting
+to free Sinnet&#8217;s hand from his wrist, to break Sinnet&#8217;s
+neck. He did not realize what he was doing. He only
+knew that this man stood between him and the murderer
+of his boy, and all the ancient forces of barbarism
+were alive in him. Little by little they drew to the
+edge of the rock, from which there was a sheer drop
+of two hundred feet. Sinnet fought like a panther for
+safety, but no sane man&#8217;s strength could withstand
+the demoniacal energy that bent and crushed him.
+Sinnet felt his strength giving. Then he said,
+in a hoarse whisper: &#8220;Greevy didn&#8217;t kill him. I killed him,
+and&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>At that moment he was borne to the ground with a
+hand on his throat, and an instant after the knife went
+home.</p>
+<p>Buckmaster got to his feet and looked at his victim
+for an instant, dazed and wild; then he sprang for his
+gun. As he did so the words that Sinnet had said as
+they struggled rang in his ears, &#8220;<i>Greevy didn&#8217;t kill him;
+I killed him</i>!&#8221;</p>
+<p>He gave a low cry and turned back toward Sinnet,
+who lay in a pool of blood.</p>
+<p>Sinnet was speaking. He went and stooped over
+him.</p>
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<a name='linki_5' id='linki_5'></a>
+<img src='images/p070.jpg' alt='' title='' style='width: 384px; height: 601px;' /><br />
+<p class='caption' style='margin: 0 auto; text-align:center;width: 384px;'>
+LITTLE BY LITTLE THEY DREW TO THE EDGE OF THE ROCK<br />
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_71' name='page_71'></a>71</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;Em&#8217;ly threw me over for Clint,&#8221; the voice said,
+huskily, &#8220;and I followed to have it out with Clint. So
+did Greevy, but Greevy was drunk. I saw them meet.
+I was hid. I saw that Clint would kill Greevy, and I
+fired. I was off my head&mdash;I&#8217;d never cared for any
+woman before, and Greevy was her father. Clint was
+off his head too. He had called me names that day&mdash;a
+cardsharp, and a liar, and a thief, and a skunk, he called
+me, and I hated him just then. Greevy fired twice&mdash;wide.
+He didn&#8217;t know but what he killed Clint, but he
+didn&#8217;t. I did. So I tried to stop you, Buck&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>Life was going fast, and speech failed him; but he
+opened his eyes again and whispered: &#8220;I didn&#8217;t want to
+die, Buck. I am only thirty-five, and it&#8217;s too soon; but
+it had to be. Don&#8217;t look that way, Buck. You got
+the man that killed him&mdash;plumb. But Em&#8217;ly didn&#8217;t
+play fair with me&mdash;made a fool of me, the only time in
+my life I ever cared for a woman. You leave Greevy
+alone, Buck, and tell Em&#8217;ly for me I wouldn&#8217;t let you
+kill her father.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You&mdash;Sinnet&mdash;you, you done it! Why, he&#8217;d have
+fought for you. You&mdash;done it&mdash;to him&mdash;to Clint!&#8221;</p>
+<p>Now that the blood-feud had been satisfied, a great
+change came over the mountaineer. He had done his
+work, and the thirst for vengeance was gone. Greevy
+he had hated, but this man had been with him in many
+a winter&#8217;s hunt. His brain could hardly grasp the
+tragedy&mdash;it had all been too sudden.</p>
+<p>Suddenly he stooped down. &#8220;Sinnet,&#8221; he said, &#8220;ef
+there was a woman in it, that makes all the difference.
+Sinnet, ef&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>But Sinnet was gone upon a long trail that led into
+an illimitable wilderness. With a moan the old man
+ran to the ledge of rock. Greevy and his girl were below.</p>
+<p>&#8220;When there&#8217;s a woman in it&mdash;!&#8221; he said, in a voice
+of helplessness and misery, and watched her till she
+disappeared from view. Then he turned, and, lifting
+up in his arms the man he had killed, carried him into
+the deeper woods.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<a name='TOMORROW' id='TOMORROW'></a>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_72' name='page_72'></a>72</span>
+<h2>TO-MORROW</h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class='ce'>
+<p>I</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>&#8220;My, nothing&#8217;s the matter with the world to-day!
+It&#8217;s so good it almost hurts.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She raised her head from the white petticoat she was
+ironing, and gazed out of the doorway and down the
+valley with a warm light in her eyes and a glowing face.
+The snow-tipped mountains far above and away, the
+fir-covered, cedar-ranged foothills, and, lower down,
+the wonderful maple and ash woods, with their hundred
+autumn tints, all merging to one soft, red tone, the roar
+of the stream tumbling down the ravine from the
+heights, the air that braced the nerves like wine&mdash;it all
+seemed to be part of her, the passion of life corresponding
+to the passion of living in her.</p>
+<p>After watching the scene dreamily for a moment, she
+turned and laid the iron she had been using upon the
+hot stove near. Taking up another, she touched it with
+a moistened finger to test the heat, and, leaning above
+the table again, passed it over the linen for a few moments,
+smiling at something that was in her mind.
+Presently she held the petticoat up, turned it round,
+then hung it in front of her, eying it with critical
+pleasure.</p>
+<p>&#8220;<i>To-morrow!</i>&#8221; she said, nodding at it. &#8220;You won&#8217;t
+be seen, I suppose, but <i>I&#8217;ll</i> know you&#8217;re nice enough
+for a queen&mdash;and that&#8217;s enough to know.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_73' name='page_73'></a>73</span>
+She blushed a little, as though some one had heard
+her words and was looking at her, then she carefully
+laid the petticoat over the back of a chair. &#8220;No
+queen&#8217;s got one whiter, if I do say it,&#8221; she continued,
+tossing her head.</p>
+<p>In that, at any rate, she was right, for the water of
+the mountain springs was pure, the air was clear, and
+the sun was clarifying; and little ornamented or frilled
+as it was, the petticoat was exquisitely soft and delicate.
+It would have appealed to more eyes than a woman&#8217;s.</p>
+<p>&#8220;To-morrow!&#8221; She nodded at it again and turned
+again to the bright world outside. With arms raised
+and hands resting against the timbers of the doorway,
+she stood dreaming. A flock of pigeons passed with
+a whir not far away, and skirted the woods making
+down the valley. She watched their flight abstractedly,
+yet with a subconscious sense of pleasure. Life&mdash;they
+were Life, eager, buoyant, belonging to this wild region,
+where still the heart could feel so much at home, where
+the great world was missed so little.</p>
+<p>Suddenly, as she gazed, a shot rang out down the
+valley, and two of the pigeons came tumbling to the
+ground, a stray feather floating after. With a startled
+exclamation she took a step forward. Her brain became
+confused and disturbed. She had looked out on
+Eden, and it had been ravaged before her eyes. She
+had been thinking of to-morrow, and this vast prospect
+of beauty and serenity had been part of the pageant in
+which it moved. Not the valley alone had been marauded,
+but that &#8220;To-morrow,&#8221; and all it meant to her.</p>
+<p>Instantly the valley had become clouded over for
+her, its glory and its grace despoiled. She turned back
+to the room where the white petticoat lay upon the
+chair, but stopped with a little cry of alarm.</p>
+<p>A man was standing in the centre of the room. He
+had entered stealthily by the back door, and had waited
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_74' name='page_74'></a>74</span>
+for her to turn round. He was haggard and travel-stained,
+and there was a feverish light in his eyes. His
+fingers trembled as they adjusted his belt, which seemed
+too large for him. Mechanically he buckled it tighter.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;re Jenny Long, ain&#8217;t you?&#8221; he asked. &#8220;I beg
+pardon for sneakin&#8217; in like this, but they&#8217;re after me,
+some ranchers and a constable&mdash;one o&#8217; the Riders of
+the Plains. I&#8217;ve been tryin&#8217; to make this house all day.
+You&#8217;re Jenny Long, ain&#8217;t you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>She had plenty of courage, and, after the first instant
+of shock, she had herself in hand. She had quickly
+observed his condition, had marked the candor of the
+eye and the decision and character of the face, and
+doubt of him found no place in her mind. She had the
+keen observation of the dweller in lonely places, where
+every traveller has the potentialities of a foe, while the
+door of hospitality is opened to him after the custom of
+the wilds. Year in, year out, since she was a little girl
+and came to live here with her Uncle Sanger when her
+father died&mdash;her mother had gone before she could
+speak&mdash;travellers had halted at this door, going North
+or coming South, had had bite and sup, and bed, maybe,
+and had passed on, most of them never to be seen again.
+More than that, too, there had been moments of peril,
+such as when, alone, she had faced two wood-thieves
+with a revolver, as they were taking her mountain-pony
+with them, and herself had made them &#8220;hands-up,&#8221;
+and had marched them into a prospector&#8217;s camp
+five miles away.</p>
+<p>She had no doubt about the man before her. Whatever
+he had done, it was nothing dirty or mean&mdash;of that
+she was sure.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, I&#8217;m Jenny Long,&#8221; she answered. &#8220;What have
+you done? What are they after you for?&#8221;</p>
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<a name='linki_6' id='linki_6'></a>
+<img src='images/p074.jpg' alt='' title='' style='width: 371px; height: 579px;' /><br />
+<p class='caption' style='margin: 0 auto; text-align:center;width: 371px;'>
+&#8220;THEY SHOT ME AN&#8217; HURT ME&#8221;<br />
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_75' name='page_75'></a>75</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;Oh! to-morrow,&#8221; he answered&mdash;&#8220;to-morrow I got
+to git to Bindon. It&#8217;s life or death. I come from prospecting
+two hundred miles up North. I done it in two
+days and a half. My horse dropped dead&mdash;I&#8217;m near
+dead myself. I tried to borrow another horse up at
+Clancey&#8217;s, and at Scotton&#8217;s Drive, but they didn&#8217;t know
+me, and they bounced me. So I borrowed a horse off
+Weigall&#8217;s paddock, to make for here&mdash;to you. I didn&#8217;t
+mean to keep that horse. Hell, I&#8217;m no horse-stealer!
+But I couldn&#8217;t explain to them, except that I had to git
+to Bindon to save a man&#8217;s life. If people laugh in your
+face, it&#8217;s no use explainin&#8217;. I took a roan from Weigall&#8217;s,
+and they got after me. &#8217;Bout six miles up they shot at
+me an&#8217; hurt me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She saw that one arm hung limp at his side and that
+his wrist was wound with a red bandana.</p>
+<p>She started forward. &#8220;Are you hurt bad? Can I
+bind it up or wash it for you? I&#8217;ve got plenty of hot
+water here, and it&#8217;s bad letting a wound get stale.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He shook his head. &#8220;I washed the hole clean in the
+creek below. I doubled on them. I had to go down
+past your place here, and then work back to be rid of
+them. But there&#8217;s no telling when they&#8217;ll drop onto
+the game, and come back for me. My only chance was
+to git to you. Even if I had a horse, I couldn&#8217;t make
+Bindon in time. It&#8217;s two days round the gorge by
+trail. A horse is no use now&mdash;I lost too much time since
+last night. I can&#8217;t git to Bindon to-morrow in time, if
+I ride the trail.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;The river?&#8221; she asked, abruptly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s the only way. It cuts off fifty mile. That&#8217;s
+why I come to you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She frowned a little, her face became troubled, and
+her glance fell on his arm nervously. &#8220;What&#8217;ve I got
+to do with it?&#8221; she asked, almost sharply.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Even if this was all right&#8221;&mdash;he touched the wounded
+arm&mdash;&#8220;I couldn&#8217;t take the rapids in a canoe. I don&#8217;t
+know them, an&#8217; it would be sure death. That&#8217;s not the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_76' name='page_76'></a>76</span>
+worst, for there&#8217;s a man at Bindon would lose his life&mdash;p&#8217;r&#8217;aps
+twenty men&mdash;I dunno; but one man sure. To-morrow,
+it&#8217;s go or stay with him. He was good&mdash;Lord,
+but he was good!&mdash;to my little gal years back. She&#8217;d
+only been married to me a year when he saved her,
+riskin&#8217; his own life. No one else had the pluck. My
+little gal, only twenty she was, an&#8217; pretty as a picture,
+an&#8217; me fifty miles away when the fire broke out in the
+hotel where she was. He&#8217;d have gone down to hell for
+a friend, an&#8217; he saved my little gal. I had her for five
+years after that. That&#8217;s why I got to git to Bindon
+to-morrow. If I don&#8217;t, I don&#8217;t want to see to-morrow.
+I got to go down the river to-night.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She knew what he was going to ask her. She knew
+he was thinking what all the North knew, that she was
+the first person to take the Dog Nose Rapids in a canoe,
+down the great river scarce a stone&#8217;s-throw from her
+door; and that she had done it in safety many times.
+Not in all the West and North were there a half dozen
+people who could take a canoe to Bindon, and they
+were not here. She knew that he meant to ask her
+to paddle him down the swift stream, with its murderous
+rocks, to Bindon. She glanced at the white petticoat
+on the chair, and her lips tightened. To-morrow&mdash;to-morrow
+was as much to her here as it would be to
+this man before her, or the man he would save at
+Bindon.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What do you want?&#8221; she asked, hardening her
+heart.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Can&#8217;t you see? I want you to hide me here till
+to-night. There&#8217;s a full moon, an&#8217; it would be as plain
+goin&#8217; as by day. They told me about you up North,
+and I said to myself, &#8216;If I git to Jenny Long, an&#8217; tell
+her about my friend at Bindon, an&#8217; my little gal, she&#8217;ll
+take me down to Bindon in time.&#8217; My little gal would
+have paid her own debt if she&#8217;d ever had the chance.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_77' name='page_77'></a>77</span>
+She didn&#8217;t&mdash;she&#8217;s lying up on Mazy Mountain. But
+one woman&#8217;ll do a lot for the sake of another woman.
+Say, you&#8217;ll do it, won&#8217;t you? If I don&#8217;t git there by
+to-morrow noon, it&#8217;s no good.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She would not answer. He was asking more than
+he knew. Why should she be sacrificed? Was it her
+duty to pay the &#8220;little gal&#8217;s debt,&#8221; to save the man at
+Bindon? To-morrow was to be the great day in her
+own life. The one man in all the world was coming to
+marry her to-morrow. After four years&#8217; waiting, after
+a bitter quarrel in which both had been to blame, he
+was coming from the mining town of Selby to marry
+her to-morrow.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What will happen? Why will your friend lose his
+life if you don&#8217;t get to Bindon?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;By noon to-morrow, by twelve o&#8217;clock noon; that&#8217;s
+the plot; that&#8217;s what they&#8217;ve schemed. Three days
+ago, I heard. I got a man free from trouble North&mdash;he
+was no good, but I thought he ought to have another
+chance, and I got him free. He told me of what was
+to be done at Bindon. There&#8217;d been a strike in the
+mine, an&#8217; my friend had took it in hand with knuckle-dusters
+on. He isn&#8217;t the kind to fell a tree with a jack-knife.
+Then three of the strikers that had been turned
+away&mdash;they was the ringleaders&mdash;they laid a plan that&#8217;d
+make the devil sick. They&#8217;ve put a machine in the
+mine, an&#8217; timed it, an&#8217; it&#8217;ll go off when my friend comes
+out of the mine at noon to-morrow.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Her face was pale now, and her eyes had a look of
+pain and horror. Her man&mdash;him that she was to marry&mdash;was
+the head of a mine also at Selby, forty miles
+beyond Bindon, and the horrible plot came home to
+her with piercing significance.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Without a second&#8217;s warning,&#8221; he urged, &#8220;to go like
+that, the man that was so good to my little gal, an&#8217; me
+with a chance to save him, an&#8217; others too, p&#8217;r&#8217;aps.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_78' name='page_78'></a>78</span>
+You won&#8217;t let it be. Say, I&#8217;m pinnin&#8217; my faith to you.
+I&#8217;m&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>Suddenly he swayed. She caught him, held him, and
+lowered him gently in a chair. Presently he opened
+his eyes. &#8220;It&#8217;s want o&#8217; food, I suppose,&#8221; he said. &#8220;If
+you&#8217;ve got a bit of bread and meat&mdash;I must keep up.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She went to a cupboard, but suddenly turned toward
+him again. Her ears had caught a sound outside in the
+underbrush. He had heard also, and he half staggered
+to his feet.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Quick&mdash;in here!&#8221; she said, and, opening a door,
+pushed him inside. &#8220;Lie down on my bed, and I&#8217;ll
+bring you vittles as quick as I can,&#8221; she added. Then
+she shut the door, turned to the ironing-board, and took
+up the iron, as the figure of a man darkened the doorway.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Hello, Jinny, fixin&#8217; up for to-morrow?&#8221; the man
+said, stepping inside, with a rifle under his arm and
+some pigeons in his hand.</p>
+<p>She nodded and gave him an impatient, scrutinizing
+glance. His face had a fatuous kind of smile.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Been celebrating the pigeons?&#8221; she asked, dryly,
+jerking her head toward the two birds, which she had
+seen drop from her Eden skies a short time before.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I only had one swig of whiskey, honest Injun!&#8221; he
+answered. &#8220;I s&#8217;pose I might have waited till to-morrow,
+but I was dead-beat. I got a bear over by the Ten-mile
+Reach, and I was tired. I ain&#8217;t so young as I used
+to be, and, anyhow, what&#8217;s the good? What&#8217;s ahead of
+me? You&#8217;re going to git married to-morrow after all
+these years we bin together, and you&#8217;re going down to
+Selby from the mountains, where I won&#8217;t see you, not
+once in a blue moon. Only that old trollop, Mother
+Massy, to look after me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Come down to Selby and live there. You&#8217;ll be
+welcome by Jake and me.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_79' name='page_79'></a>79</span></p>
+<p>He stood his gun in the corner and, swinging the
+pigeons in his hand, said: &#8220;Me live out of the mountains!
+Don&#8217;t you know better than that? I couldn&#8217;t
+breathe, and I wouldn&#8217;t want to breathe. I&#8217;ve got
+my shack here, I got my fur business, and they&#8217;re still
+fond of whiskey up North!&#8221; He chuckled to himself,
+as he thought of the illicit still farther up the mountain
+behind them. &#8220;I make enough to live on, and I&#8217;ve put
+a few dollars by, though I won&#8217;t have so many after
+to-morrow, after I&#8217;ve given you a little pile, Jinny.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;P&#8217;r&#8217;aps there won&#8217;t be any <i>to-morrow</i>, as you expect,&#8221;
+she said, slowly.</p>
+<p>The old man started. &#8220;What! you and Jake ain&#8217;t
+quarrelled again? You ain&#8217;t broke it off at the last
+moment, same as before? You ain&#8217;t had a letter from
+Jake?&#8221; He looked at the white petticoat on the chair-back,
+and shook his head in bewilderment.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve had no letter,&#8221; she answered. &#8220;I&#8217;ve had no
+letter from Selby for a month. It was all settled then,
+and there was no good writing, when he was coming
+to-morrow with the minister and the license. Who do
+you think&#8217;d be postman from Selby here? It must
+have cost him ten dollars to send the last letter.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then what&#8217;s the matter? I don&#8217;t understand,&#8221; the
+old man urged, querulously. He did not want her to
+marry and leave him, but he wanted no more troubles;
+he did not relish being asked awkward questions by
+every mountaineer he met as to why Jenny Long didn&#8217;t
+marry Jake Lawson.</p>
+<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s only one way that I can be married to-morrow,&#8221;
+she said, at last, &#8220;and that&#8217;s by you taking
+a man down the Dog Nose Rapids to Bindon to-night.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He dropped the pigeons on the floor, dumfounded.
+&#8220;What in&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>He stopped short, in sheer incapacity to go further.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_80' name='page_80'></a>80</span>
+Jenny had not always been easy to understand, but she
+was wholly incomprehensible now.</p>
+<p>She picked up the pigeons and was about to speak,
+but she glanced at the bedroom door, where her exhausted
+visitor had stretched himself on her bed, and
+beckoned her uncle to another room.</p>
+<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s a plate of vittles ready for you in there,&#8221;
+she said. &#8220;I&#8217;ll tell you as you eat.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He followed her into the little living-room adorned
+by the trophies of his earlier achievements with gun and
+rifle, and sat down at the table, where some food lay
+covered by a clean white cloth.</p>
+<p>&#8220;No one&#8217;ll ever look after me as you&#8217;ve done, Jinny,&#8221;
+he said, as he lifted the cloth and saw the palatable
+dish ready for him. Then he remembered again about
+to-morrow and the Dog Nose Rapids.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What&#8217;s it all about, Jinny? What&#8217;s that about my
+canoeing a man down to Bindon?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Eat, uncle,&#8221; she said, more softly than she had yet
+spoken, for his words about her care of him had brought
+a moisture to her eyes. &#8220;I&#8217;ll be back in a minute and
+tell you all about it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, it&#8217;s about took away my appetite,&#8221; he said.
+&#8220;I feel a kind of sinking.&#8221; He took from his pocket
+a bottle, poured some of its contents into a tin cup, and
+drank it off.</p>
+<p>&#8220;No, I suppose you couldn&#8217;t take a man down to
+Bindon,&#8221; she said, as she saw his hand trembling on
+the cup. Then she turned and entered the other room
+again. Going to the cupboard, she hastily heaped a
+plate with food, and, taking a dipper of water from a
+pail near by, she entered her bedroom hastily and
+placed what she had brought on a small table, as her
+visitor rose slowly from the bed.</p>
+<p>He was about to speak, but she made a protesting
+gesture.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_81' name='page_81'></a>81</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;I can&#8217;t tell you anything yet,&#8221; she said.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Who was it come?&#8221; he asked.</p>
+<p>&#8220;My uncle&mdash;I&#8217;m going to tell him.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;The men after me may git here any minute,&#8221; he
+urged, anxiously.</p>
+<p>&#8220;They&#8217;d not be coming into my room,&#8221; she answered,
+flushing slightly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Can&#8217;t you hide me down by the river till we start?&#8221;
+he asked, his eyes eagerly searching her face. He was
+assuming that she would take him down the river; but
+she gave no sign.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve got to see if he&#8217;ll take you first?&#8221; she answered.</p>
+<p>&#8220;He&mdash;your uncle, Tom Sanger? He drinks, I&#8217;ve
+heard. He&#8217;d never git to Bindon.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She did not reply directly to his words. &#8220;I&#8217;ll come
+back and tell you. There&#8217;s a place you could hide by
+the river where no one could ever find you,&#8221; she said,
+and left the room.</p>
+<p>As she stepped out, she saw the old man standing in
+the doorway of the other room. His face was petrified
+with amazement.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Who you got in that room, Jinny? What man you
+got in that room? I heard a man&#8217;s voice. Is it because
+o&#8217; him that you bin talkin&#8217; about no weddin&#8217;
+to-morrow? Is it one o&#8217; the others come back, puttin&#8217;
+you off Jake again?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Her eyes flashed fire at his first words, and her breast
+heaved with anger, but suddenly she became composed
+again and motioned him to a chair.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You eat, and I&#8217;ll tell you all about it, Uncle Tom,&#8221;
+she said, and, seating herself at the table also, she told
+him the story of the man who must go to Bindon.</p>
+<p>When she had finished, the old man blinked at her
+for a minute without speaking, then he said, slowly: &#8220;I
+heard something &#8217;bout trouble down at Bindon yisterday
+from a Hudson&#8217;s Bay man goin&#8217; North, but I didn&#8217;t
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_82' name='page_82'></a>82</span>
+take it in. You&#8217;ve got a lot o&#8217; sense, Jinny, an&#8217; if you
+think he&#8217;s tellin&#8217; the truth, why, it goes; but it&#8217;s as big
+a mixup as a lariat in a steer&#8217;s horns. You&#8217;ve got to
+hide him sure, whoever he is, for I wouldn&#8217;t hand an
+Eskimo over, if I&#8217;d taken him in my home once; we&#8217;re
+mountain people. A man ought to be hung for horse-stealin&#8217;,
+but this was different. He was doing it to
+save a man&#8217;s life, an&#8217; that man at Bindon was good to
+his little gal, an&#8217; she&#8217;s dead.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He moved his head from side to side with the air of
+a sentimental philosopher. He had all the vanity of a
+man who had been a success in a small, shrewd, culpable
+way&mdash;had he not evaded the law for thirty years with
+his whiskey-still?</p>
+<p>&#8220;I know how he felt,&#8221; he continued. &#8220;When Betsy
+died&mdash;we was only four years married&mdash;I could have
+crawled into a knot-hole an&#8217; died there. You got to
+save him, Jinny, but&#8221;&mdash;he came suddenly to his feet&mdash;&#8220;he
+ain&#8217;t safe here. They might come any minute, if
+they&#8217;ve got back on his trail. I&#8217;ll take him up the
+gorge. You know where.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You sit still, Uncle Tom,&#8221; she rejoined. &#8220;Leave
+him where he is a minute. There&#8217;s things must be
+settled first. They ain&#8217;t going to look for him in my
+bedroom, be they?&#8221;</p>
+<p>The old man chuckled. &#8220;I&#8217;d like to see &#8217;em at it.
+You got a temper, Jinny; and you got a pistol, too,
+eh?&#8221; He chuckled again. &#8220;As good a shot as any in
+the mountains. I can see you darin&#8217; &#8217;em to come on.
+But what if Jake come, and he found a man in your
+bedroom&#8221;&mdash;he wiped the tears of laughter from his
+eyes&mdash;&#8220;why, Jinny&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>He stopped short, for there was anger in her face.
+&#8220;I don&#8217;t want to hear any more of that. I do what
+I want to do,&#8221; she snapped out.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, well, you always done what you wanted; but
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_83' name='page_83'></a>83</span>
+we got to git him up the hills, till it&#8217;s sure they&#8217;re out o&#8217;
+the mountains and gone back. It&#8217;ll be days, mebbe.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Uncle Tom, you&#8217;ve took too much to drink,&#8221; she
+answered. &#8220;You don&#8217;t remember he&#8217;s got to be at
+Bindon by to-morrow noon. He&#8217;s got to save his friend
+by then.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Pshaw! Who&#8217;s going to take him down the river
+to-night? You&#8217;re goin&#8217; to be married to-morrow. If
+you like, you can give him the canoe. It&#8217;ll never come
+back, nor him neither!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;ve been down with me,&#8221; she responded, suggestively.
+&#8220;And you went down once by yourself.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He shook his head. &#8220;I ain&#8217;t been so well this summer.
+My sight ain&#8217;t what it was. I can&#8217;t stand the
+racket as I once could. &#8217;Pears to me I&#8217;m gettin&#8217; old.
+No, I couldn&#8217;t take them rapids, Jinny, not for one
+frozen minute.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She looked at him with trouble in her eyes, and her
+face lost some of its color. She was fighting back the
+inevitable, even as its shadow fell upon her. &#8220;You
+wouldn&#8217;t want a man to die, if you could save him,
+Uncle Tom&mdash;blown up, sent to Kingdom Come without
+any warning at all; and perhaps he&#8217;s got them
+that love him&mdash;and the world so beautiful.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, it ain&#8217;t nice dyin&#8217; in the summer, when it&#8217;s
+all sun, and there&#8217;s plenty everywhere; but there&#8217;s
+no one to go down the river with him. What&#8217;s his
+name?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Her struggle was over. She had urged him, but in
+very truth she was urging herself all the time, bringing
+herself to the axe of sacrifice.</p>
+<p>&#8220;His name&#8217;s Dingley. I&#8217;m going down the river
+with him&mdash;down to Bindon.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The old man&#8217;s mouth opened in blank amazement.
+His eyes blinked helplessly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What you talkin&#8217; about, Jinny? Jake&#8217;s comin&#8217; up
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_84' name='page_84'></a>84</span>
+with the minister, an&#8217; you&#8217;re goin&#8217; to be married at noon
+to-morrow.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m takin&#8217; him&#8221;&mdash;she jerked her head toward the
+room where Dingley was&mdash;&#8220;down Dog Nose Rapids
+to-night. He&#8217;s risked his life for his friend, thinkin&#8217; of
+her that&#8217;s dead an&#8217; gone, and a man&#8217;s life is a man&#8217;s life.
+If it was Jake&#8217;s life in danger, what &#8217;d I think of a
+woman that could save him, and didn&#8217;t?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Onct you broke off with Jake Lawson&mdash;the day before
+you was to be married; an&#8217; it&#8217;s took years to make
+up an&#8217; agree again to be spliced. If Jake comes here
+to-morrow, and you ain&#8217;t here, what do you think he&#8217;ll
+do? The neighbors are comin&#8217; for fifty miles round,
+two is comin&#8217; up a hundred miles, and you can&#8217;t&mdash;Jinny,
+you can&#8217;t do it. I bin sick of answerin&#8217; questions all
+these years &#8217;bout you and Jake, an&#8217; I ain&#8217;t goin&#8217; through
+it again. I&#8217;ve told more lies than there&#8217;s straws in a
+tick.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She flamed out. &#8220;Then take him down the river
+yourself&mdash;a man to do a man&#8217;s work. Are you afeard
+to take the risk?&#8221;</p>
+<p>He held out his hands slowly and looked at them.
+They shook a little. &#8220;Yes, Jinny,&#8221; he said, sadly, &#8220;I&#8217;m
+afeard. I ain&#8217;t what I was. I made a mistake, Jinny.
+I&#8217;ve took too much whiskey. I&#8217;m older than I ought to
+be. I oughtn&#8217;t never to have had a whiskey-still, an&#8217; I
+wouldn&#8217;t have drunk so much. I got money&mdash;money
+for you, Jinny, for you an&#8217; Jake, but I&#8217;ve lost what I&#8217;ll
+never git back. I&#8217;m afeard to go down the river with
+him. I&#8217;d go smash in the Dog Nose Rapids. I got no
+nerve. I can&#8217;t hunt the grizzly any more, nor the
+puma, Jinny. I got to keep to common shootin&#8217;, now
+and henceforth, amen! No, I&#8217;d go smash in Dog Nose
+Rapids.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She caught his hands impulsively. &#8220;Don&#8217;t you fret,
+Uncle Tom. You&#8217;ve bin a good uncle to me, and
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_85' name='page_85'></a>85</span>
+you&#8217;ve bin a good friend, and you ain&#8217;t the first that&#8217;s
+found whiskey too much for him. You ain&#8217;t got an
+enemy in the mountains. Why, I&#8217;ve got two or three&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Shucks! Women&mdash;only women whose beaux left
+&#8217;em to follow after you. That&#8217;s nothing, an&#8217; they&#8217;ll
+be your friends fast enough after you&#8217;re married to-morrow.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I ain&#8217;t going to be married to-morrow. I&#8217;m going
+down to Bindon to-night. If Jake&#8217;s mad, then it&#8217;s all
+over, and there&#8217;ll be more trouble among the women up
+here.&#8221;</p>
+<p>By this time they had entered the other room. The
+old man saw the white petticoat on the chair. &#8220;No
+woman in the mountains ever had a petticoat like that,
+Jinny. It&#8217;d make a dress, it&#8217;s that pretty an&#8217; neat.
+Golly! I&#8217;d like to see it on you, with the blue skirt over,
+and just hitched up a little.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, shut up&mdash;shut up!&#8221; she said, in sudden anger,
+and caught up the petticoat as though she would put
+it away; but presently she laid it down again and
+smoothed it with quick, nervous fingers. &#8220;Can&#8217;t you
+talk sense and leave my clothes alone? If Jake comes,
+and I&#8217;m not here, and he wants to make a fuss, and
+spoil everything, and won&#8217;t wait, you give him this
+petticoat. You put it in his arms. I bet you&#8217;ll have
+the laugh on him. He&#8217;s got a temper.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;So&#8217;ve you, Jinny, dear, so&#8217;ve you,&#8221; said the old
+man, laughing. &#8220;You&#8217;re goin&#8217; to have your own way,
+same as ever&mdash;same as ever.&#8221;</p>
+<div class='ce'>
+<p>II</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>A moon of exquisite whiteness silvering the world,
+making shadows on the water as though it were sunlight
+and the daytime, giving a spectral look to the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_86' name='page_86'></a>86</span>
+endless array of poplar trees on the banks, glittering on
+the foam of the rapids. The spangling stars made the
+arch of the sky like some gorgeous chancel in a cathedral
+as vast as life and time. Like the day which was
+ended, in which the mountain-girl had found a taste of
+Eden, it seemed too sacred for mortal strife. Now and
+again there came the note of a night-bird, the croak of
+a frog from the shore; but the serene stillness and
+beauty of the primeval North was over all.</p>
+<p>For two hours after sunset it had all been silent and
+brooding, and then two figures appeared on the bank
+of the great river. A canoe was softly and hastily
+pushed out from its hidden shelter under the overhanging
+bank, and was noiselessly paddled out to mid-stream,
+dropping down the current meanwhile.</p>
+<p>It was Jenny Long and the man who must get to
+Bindon. They had waited till nine o&#8217;clock, when the
+moon was high and full, to venture forth. Then Dingley
+had dropped from her bedroom window, had joined
+her under the trees, and they had sped away, while the
+man&#8217;s hunters, who had come suddenly, and before
+Jenny could get him away into the woods, were carousing
+inside. These had tracked their man back to Tom
+Sanger&#8217;s house, and at first they were incredulous that
+Jenny and her uncle had not seen him. They had prepared
+to search the house, and one had laid his finger
+on the latch of her bedroom door; but she had flared
+out with such anger that, mindful of the supper she had
+already begun to prepare for them, they had desisted,
+and the whiskey-jug which the old man brought out distracted
+their attention.</p>
+<p>One of their number, known as the Man from Clancey&#8217;s
+had, however, been outside when Dingley had dropped
+from the window, and had seen him from a distance.
+He had not given the alarm, but had followed, to make
+the capture by himself. But Jenny had heard the stir
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_87' name='page_87'></a>87</span>
+of life behind them, and had made a sharp détour, so
+that they had reached the shore and were out in mid-stream
+before their tracker got to the river. Then he
+called to them to return, but Jenny only bent a little
+lower and paddled on, guiding the canoe toward the safe-channel
+through the first small rapids leading to the
+great Dog Nose Rapids.</p>
+<p>A rifle-shot rang out, and a bullet &#8220;pinged&#8221; over the
+water and splintered the side of the canoe where Dingley
+sat. He looked calmly back, and saw the rifle raised
+again, but did not stir, in spite of Jenny&#8217;s warning to
+lie down.</p>
+<p>&#8220;He&#8217;ll not fire on you so long as he can draw a bead
+on me,&#8221; he said, quietly.</p>
+<p>Again a shot rang out, and the bullet sang past his
+head.</p>
+<p>&#8220;If he hits me, you go straight on to Bindon,&#8221; he
+continued. &#8220;Never mind about me. Go to the Snowdrop
+Mine. Get there by twelve o&#8217;clock, and warn
+them. Don&#8217;t stop a second for me&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>Suddenly three shots rang out in succession&mdash;Tom
+Sanger&#8217;s house had emptied itself on the bank of the
+river&mdash;and Dingley gave a sharp exclamation.</p>
+<p>&#8220;They&#8217;ve hit me, but it&#8217;s the same arm as before,&#8221;
+he growled. &#8220;They got no right to fire at me. It&#8217;s not
+the law. Don&#8217;t stop,&#8221; he added, quickly, as he saw her
+half turn round.</p>
+<p>Now there were loud voices on the shore. Old Tom
+Sanger was threatening to shoot the first man that
+fired again, and he would have kept his word.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Who you firin&#8217; at?&#8221; he shouted. &#8220;That&#8217;s my
+niece, Jinny Long, an&#8217; you let that boat alone. This
+ain&#8217;t the land o&#8217; lynch law. Dingley ain&#8217;t escaped from
+gaol. You got no right to fire at him.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No one ever went down Dog Nose Rapids at night,&#8221;
+said the Man from Clancey&#8217;s, whose shot had got Dingley&#8217;s
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_88' name='page_88'></a>88</span>
+arm. &#8220;There ain&#8217;t a chance of them doing it. No
+one&#8217;s ever done it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The two were in the roaring rapids now, and the
+canoe was jumping through the foam like a race-horse.
+The keen eyes on the bank watched the canoe till it
+was lost in the half-gloom below the first rapids, and
+then they went slowly back to Tom Sanger&#8217;s house.</p>
+<p>&#8220;So there&#8217;ll be no wedding to-morrow,&#8221; said the Man
+from Clancey&#8217;s.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Funerals, more likely,&#8221; drawled another.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Jinny Long&#8217;s in that canoe, an&#8217; she ginerally does
+what she wants to,&#8221; said Tom Sanger, sagely.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, we done our best, and now I hope they&#8217;ll get
+to Bindon,&#8221; said another.</p>
+<p>Sanger passed the jug to him freely. Then they sat
+down and talked of the people who had been drowned
+in Dog Nose Rapids, and of the last wedding in the
+mountains.</p>
+<div class='ce'>
+<p>III</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>It was as the Man from Clancey&#8217;s had said, no one had
+ever gone down Dog Nose Rapids in the night-time,
+and probably no one but Jenny Long would have ventured
+it. Dingley had had no idea what a perilous task
+had been set his rescuer. It was only when the angry
+roar of the great rapids floated up-stream to them, increasing
+in volume till they could see the terror of
+tumbling waters just below, and the canoe shot forward
+like a snake through the swift, smooth current which
+would sweep them into the vast caldron, that he realized
+the terrible hazard of the enterprise.</p>
+<p>The moon was directly overhead when they drew
+upon the race of rocks and fighting water and foam.
+On either side only the shadowed shore, forsaken by
+the races which had hunted and roamed and ravaged
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_89' name='page_89'></a>89</span>
+here&mdash;not a light, nor any sign of life, or the friendliness
+of human presence to make their isolation less complete,
+their danger, as it were, shared by fellow-mortals.
+Bright as the moon was, it was not bright enough for
+perfect pilotage. Never in the history of white men
+had these rapids been ridden at night-time. As they
+sped down the flume of the deep, irresistible current,
+and were launched into the trouble of rocks and water,
+Jenny realized how great their peril was, and how different
+the track of the waters looked at night-time from
+daytime. Outlines seemed merged, rocks did not look
+the same, whirlpools had a different vortex, islands of
+stone had a new configuration. As they sped on, lurching,
+jumping, piercing a broken wall of wave and spray
+like a torpedo, shooting an almost sheer fall, she came
+to rely on a sense of intuition rather than memory, for
+night had transformed the waters.</p>
+<p>Not a sound escaped either. The man kept his eyes
+fixed on the woman; the woman scanned the dreadful
+pathway with eyes deep-set and burning, resolute,
+vigilant, and yet defiant, too, as though she had been
+trapped into this track of danger, and was fighting without
+great hope, but with the temerity and nonchalance
+of despair. Her arms were bare to the shoulder almost,
+and her face was again and again drenched, but second
+succeeded second, minute followed minute in a struggle
+which might well turn a man&#8217;s hair gray, and now, at
+last&mdash;how many hours was it since they had been cast
+into this den of roaring waters?&mdash;at last, suddenly, over
+a large fall, and here smooth waters again, smooth and
+untroubled, and strong and deep. Then, and only then,
+did a word escape either; but the man had passed
+through torture and unavailing regret, for he realized
+that he had had no right to bring this girl into such a
+fight. It was not <i>her</i> friend who was in danger at Bindon.
+Her life had been risked without due warrant.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_90' name='page_90'></a>90</span>
+&#8220;I didn&#8217;t know, or I wouldn&#8217;t have asked it,&#8221; he said,
+in a low voice. &#8220;Lord, but you are a wonder&mdash;to take
+that hurdle for no one that belonged to you, and to do
+it as you&#8217;ve done it. This country will rise to you.&#8221;
+He looked back on the raging rapids far behind, and
+he shuddered. &#8220;It was a close call, and no mistake.
+We must have been within a foot of down-you-go fifty
+times. But it&#8217;s all right now, if we can last it out and
+git there.&#8221; Again he glanced back, then turned to the
+girl. &#8220;It makes me pretty sick to look at it,&#8221; he continued.
+&#8220;I bin through a lot, but that&#8217;s as sharp practice
+as I want.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Come here and let me bind up your arm,&#8221; she answered.
+&#8220;They hit you&mdash;the sneaks! Are you bleeding
+much?&#8221;</p>
+<p>He came near her carefully, as she got the big canoe
+out of the current into quieter water. She whipped the
+scarf from about her neck, and with his knife ripped up
+the seam of his sleeve. Her face was alive with the
+joy of conflict and elated with triumph. Her eyes were
+shining. She bathed the wound&mdash;the bullet had passed
+clean through the fleshy part of the arm&mdash;and then carefully
+tied the scarf round it over her handkerchief.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I guess it&#8217;s as good as a man could do it,&#8221; she said,
+at last.</p>
+<p>&#8220;As good as any doctor,&#8221; he rejoined.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I wasn&#8217;t talking of your arm,&#8221; she said.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Course not. Excuse me. You was talkin&#8217; of them
+rapids, and I&#8217;ve got to say there ain&#8217;t a man that could
+have done it and come through like you. I guess the
+man that marries you&#8217;ll get more than his share of
+luck.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I want none of that,&#8221; she said, sharply, and picked
+up her paddle again, her eyes flashing anger.</p>
+<p>He took a pistol from his pocket and offered it to
+her. &#8220;I didn&#8217;t mean any harm by what I said. Take
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_91' name='page_91'></a>91</span>
+this if you think I won&#8217;t know how to behave myself,&#8221;
+he urged.</p>
+<p>She flung up her head a little. &#8220;I knew what I was
+doing before I started,&#8221; she said. &#8220;Put it away. How
+far is it, and can we do it in time?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;If you can hold out, we can do it; but it means
+going all night and all morning; and it ain&#8217;t dawn yet,
+by a long shot.&#8221;</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+
+<p>Dawn came at last, and the mist of early morning,
+and the imperious and dispelling sun; and with mouthfuls
+of food as they drifted on, the two fixed their eyes
+on the horizon beyond which lay Bindon. And now
+it seemed to the girl as though this race to save a life,
+or many lives, was the one thing in existence. <i>To-morrow</i>
+was to-day, and the white petticoat was lying
+in the little house in the mountains, and her wedding
+was an interminable distance off, so had this adventure
+drawn her into its risks and toils and haggard exhaustion.</p>
+<p>Eight, nine, ten, eleven o&#8217;clock came, and then they
+saw signs of settlement. Houses appeared here and
+there upon the banks, and now and then a horseman
+watched them from the shore, but they could not pause.
+Bindon&mdash;Bindon&mdash;Bindon&mdash;the Snowdrop Mine at Bindon,
+and a death-dealing machine timed to do its deadly
+work, were before the eyes of the two <i>voyageurs</i>.</p>
+<p>Half-past eleven, and the town of Bindon was just
+beyond them. A quarter to twelve, and they had run
+their canoe into the bank beyond which were the smokestacks
+and chimneys of the mine. Bindon was peacefully
+pursuing its way, though here and there were little
+groups of strikers who had not resumed work.</p>
+<p>Dingley and the girl scrambled up the bank. Trembling
+with fatigue, they hastened on. The man drew
+ahead of her, for she had paddled for fifteen hours,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_92' name='page_92'></a>92</span>
+practically without ceasing, and the ground seemed to
+rise up at her. But she would not let him stop.</p>
+<p>He hurried on, reached the mine, and entered, shouting
+the name of his friend. It was seven minutes to
+twelve.</p>
+<p>A moment later, a half-dozen men came rushing from
+that portion of the mine where Dingley had been told
+the machine was placed, and at their head was Lawson,
+the man he had come to save.</p>
+<p>The girl hastened on to meet them, but she grew faint
+and leaned against a tree, scarce conscious. She was
+roused by voices.</p>
+<p>&#8220;No, it wasn&#8217;t me, it wasn&#8217;t me that done it; it was
+a girl. Here she is&mdash;Jenny Long! You got to thank
+her, Jake.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Jake! Jake! The girl awakened to full understanding
+now. Jake&mdash;what Jake? She looked, then stumbled
+forward with a cry.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Jake&mdash;it was my Jake!&#8221; she faltered.</p>
+<p>The mine-boss caught her in his arms.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You, Jenny! It&#8217;s you that&#8217;s saved me!&#8221;</p>
+<p>Suddenly there was a rumble as of thunder, and a
+cloud of dust and stone rose from the Snowdrop Mine.</p>
+<p>The mine-boss tightened his arm round the girl&#8217;s
+waist. &#8220;That&#8217;s what I missed, through him and you,
+Jenny,&#8221; he said.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What was you doing here, and not at Selby, Jake?&#8221;
+she asked.</p>
+<p>&#8220;They sent for me&mdash;to stop the trouble here.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But what about our wedding to-day?&#8221; she asked, with a frown.</p>
+<p>&#8220;A man went from here with a letter to you three
+days ago,&#8221; he said, &#8220;asking you to come down here
+and be married. I suppose he got drunk, or had an
+accident, and didn&#8217;t reach you. It had to be. I was
+needed here&mdash;couldn&#8217;t tell what would happen.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_93' name='page_93'></a>93</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;It has happened out all right,&#8221; said Dingley, &#8220;and
+this&#8217;ll be the end of it. You got them miners solid
+now. The strikers&#8217;ll eat humble pie after to-day.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;We&#8217;ll be married to-day, just the same,&#8221; the mine-boss
+said, as he gave some brandy to the girl.</p>
+<p>But the girl shook her head. She was thinking of
+a white petticoat in a little house in the mountains.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m not going to be married to-day,&#8221; she said,
+decisively.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, to-morrow,&#8221; said the mine-boss.</p>
+<p>But the girl shook her head again. &#8220;To-day is to-morrow,&#8221;
+she answered. &#8220;You can wait, Jake. I&#8217;m
+going back home to be married.&#8221;</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<a name='QU_APPELLE' id='QU_APPELLE'></a>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_94' name='page_94'></a>94</span>
+<h2>QU&#8217;APPELLE </h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class='ce'>
+<p>(<i>Who calls?</i>)</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>&#8220;But I&#8217;m white; I&#8217;m not an Indian. My father was
+a white man. I&#8217;ve been brought up as a white girl.
+I&#8217;ve had a white girl&#8217;s schooling.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Her eyes flashed as she sprang to her feet and walked
+up and down the room for a moment, then stood still,
+facing her mother&mdash;a dark-faced, pock-marked woman,
+with heavy, somnolent eyes&mdash;and waited for her to
+speak. The reply came slowly and sullenly:</p>
+<p>&#8220;I am a Blackfoot woman. I lived on the Muskwat
+River among the braves for thirty years. I have killed
+buffalo. I have seen battles. Men, too, I have killed
+when they came to steal our horses and crept in on
+our lodges in the night&mdash;the Crees! I am a Blackfoot.
+You are the daughter of a Blackfoot woman. No
+medicine can cure that. Sit down. You have no sense.
+You are not white. They will not have you. Sit
+down.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The girl&#8217;s handsome face flushed; she threw up her
+hands in an agony of protest. A dreadful anger was
+in her panting breast, but she could not speak. She
+seemed to choke with excess of feeling. For an instant
+she stood still, trembling with agitation, then she sat
+down suddenly on a great couch covered with soft deer-skins
+and buffalo robes. There was deep in her the
+habit of obedience to this sombre but striking woman.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_95' name='page_95'></a>95</span>
+She had been ruled firmly, almost oppressively, and
+she had not yet revolted. Seated on the couch, she
+gazed out of the window at the flying snow, her brain
+too much on fire for thought, passion beating like a
+pulse in all her lithe and graceful young body, which
+had known the storms of life and time for only twenty
+years.</p>
+<p>The wind shrieked and the snow swept past in clouds
+of blinding drift, completely hiding from sight the town
+below them, whose civilization had built itself many
+habitations and was making roads and streets on the
+green-brown plain, where herds of buffalo had stamped
+and streamed and thundered not long ago. The town
+was a mile and a half away, and these two were alone
+in a great circle of storm, one of them battling against
+a tempest which might yet overtake her, against which
+she had set her face ever since she could remember;
+though it had only come to violence since her father
+died two years before&mdash;a careless, strong, wilful white
+man, who had lived the Indian life for many years, but
+had been swallowed at last by the great wave of civilization
+streaming westward and northward, wiping out
+the game and the Indian, and overwhelming the rough,
+fighting, hunting, pioneer life. Joel Renton had made
+money, by good luck chiefly, having held land here and
+there which he had got for nothing, and had then almost
+forgotten about it, and, when reminded of it, still held
+on to it with that defiant stubbornness which often
+possesses improvident and careless natures. He had
+never had any real business instinct, and to swagger a
+little over the land he held and to treat offers of purchase
+with contempt was the loud assertion of a capacity
+he did not possess. So it was that stubborn vanity,
+beneath which was his angry protest against the prejudice
+felt by the new people of the West for the white
+pioneer who married an Indian and lived the Indian
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_96' name='page_96'></a>96</span>
+life&mdash;so it was that this gave him competence and a
+comfortable home after the old trader had been driven
+out by the railway and the shopkeeper. With the first
+land he sold he sent his daughter away to school in a
+town farther east and south, where she had been brought
+in touch with a life that at once cramped and attracted
+her; where, too, she had felt the first chill of racial
+ostracism, and had proudly fought it to the end, her
+weapons being talent, industry, and a hot, defiant ambition.</p>
+<p>There had been three years of bitter, almost half-sullen,
+struggle, lightened by one sweet friendship with
+a girl whose face she had since drawn in a hundred different
+poses on stray pieces of paper, on the walls of
+the big, well-lighted attic to which she retreated for
+hours every day, when she was not abroad on the prairies,
+riding the Indian pony that her uncle the Piegan Chief,
+Ice Breaker, had given her years before. Three years
+of struggle, and then her father had died, and the refuge
+for her vexed, defiant heart was gone. While he
+lived she could affirm the rights of a white man&#8217;s daughter,
+the rights of the daughter of a pioneer who had
+helped to make the West; and her pride in him had
+given a glow to her cheek and a spring to her step which
+drew every eye. In the chief street of Portage la
+Drôme men would stop their trafficking and women
+nudge one another when she passed, and wherever she
+went she stirred interest, excited admiration, or aroused
+prejudice&mdash;but the prejudice did not matter so long as
+her father, Joel Renton, lived. Whatever his faults,
+and they were many&mdash;sometimes he drank too much,
+and swore a great deal, and bullied and stormed&mdash;she
+blinked at them all, for he was of the conquering
+race, a white man who had slept in white sheets and
+eaten off white tablecloths, and used a knife and fork,
+since he was born; and the women of his people had had
+soft petticoats and fine stockings, and silk gowns for
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_97' name='page_97'></a>97</span>
+festal days, and feathered hats of velvet, and shoes of
+polished leather, always and always, back through many
+generations. She had held her head high, for she was
+of his women, of the women of his people, with all their
+rights and all their claims. She had held it high till
+that stormy day&mdash;just such a day as this, with the surf
+of snow breaking against the house&mdash;when they carried
+him in out of the wild turmoil and snow, laying him on
+the couch where she now sat, and her head fell on his
+lifeless breast, and she cried out to him in vain to come
+back to her.</p>
+<p>Before the world her head was still held high, but in
+the attic-room, and out on the prairies far away, where
+only the coyote or the prairie hen saw, her head drooped,
+and her eyes grew heavy with pain and sombre protest.
+Once in an agony of loneliness, and cruelly hurt by a
+conspicuous slight put upon her at the Portage by the
+wife of the Reeve of the town, who had daughters twain
+of pure white blood got from behind the bar of a saloon
+in Winnipeg, she had thrown open her window at night,
+with the frost below zero, and stood in her thin nightdress,
+craving the death which she hoped the cold would
+give her soon. It had not availed, however, and once
+again she had ridden out in a blizzard to die, but had
+come upon a man lost in the snow, and her own misery
+had passed from her, and her heart, full of the blood of
+plainsmen, had done for another what it would not do
+for itself. The Indian in her had, with strange, sure
+instinct, found its way to Portage la Drôme, the man,
+with both hands and one foot frozen, on her pony, she
+walking at his side, only conscious that she had saved
+one, not two lives that day.</p>
+<p>Here was another such day, here again was the storm
+in her heart which had driven her into the plains that
+other time, and here again was that tempest of white
+death outside.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_98' name='page_98'></a>98</span></p>
+<p><i>&#8220;You have no sense. You are not white. They will
+not have you. Sit down</i>&mdash;&#8221; The words had fallen on
+her ears with a cold, deadly smother. There came a
+chill upon her which stilled the wild pulses in her,
+which suddenly robbed the eyes of their brightness and
+gave a drawn look to the face.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You are not white. They will not have you, Pauline.&#8221;
+The Indian mother repeated the words after a
+moment, her eyes grown still more gloomy; for in her,
+too, there was a dark tide of passion moving. In all
+the outlived years this girl had ever turned to the white
+father rather than to her, and she had been left more
+and more alone. Her man had been kind to her, and
+she had been a faithful wife, but she had resented the
+natural instinct of her half-breed child, almost white
+herself and with the feelings and ways of the whites, to
+turn always to her father, as though to a superior guide,
+to a higher influence and authority. Was not she herself
+the descendant of Blackfoot and Piegan chiefs
+through generations of rulers and warriors? Was there
+not Piegan and Blackfoot blood in the girl&#8217;s veins?
+Must only the white man&#8217;s blood be reckoned when
+they made up their daily account and balanced the
+books of their lives, credit and debtor&mdash;misunderstanding
+and kind act, neglect and tenderness, reproof and
+praise, gentleness and impulse, anger and caress&mdash;to be
+set down in the everlasting record? Why must the
+Indian always give way&mdash;Indian habits, Indian desires,
+the Indian way of doing things, the Indian point of
+view, Indian food, Indian medicine? Was it all bad,
+and only that which belonged to white life good?</p>
+<p>&#8220;Look at your face in the glass, Pauline,&#8221; she added,
+at last. &#8220;You are good-looking, but it isn&#8217;t the good
+looks of the whites. The lodge of a chieftainess is the
+place for you. There you would have praise and honor;
+among the whites you are only a half-breed. What is
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_99' name='page_99'></a>99</span>
+the good? Let us go back to the life out there beyond
+the Muskwat River&mdash;up beyond. There is hunting still,
+a little, and the world is quiet, and nothing troubles.
+Only the wild dog barks at night, or the wolf sniffs at
+the door, and all day there is singing. Somewhere out
+beyond the Muskwat the feasts go on, and the old men
+build the great fires, and tell tales, and call the wind
+out of the north, and make the thunder speak; and the
+young men ride to the hunt or go out to battle, and
+build lodges for the daughters of the tribe; and each
+man has his woman, and each woman has in her breast
+the honor of the tribe, and the little ones fill the lodge
+with laughter. Like a pocket of deerskin is every house,
+warm and small and full of good things. <i>Hai-yai</i>, what
+is this life to that! There you will be head and chief of
+all, for there is money enough for a thousand horses;
+and your father was a white man, and these are the
+days when the white man rules. Like clouds before the
+sun are the races of men, and one race rises and another
+falls. Here you are not first, but last; and the child
+of the white father and mother, though they be as the
+dirt that flies from a horse&#8217;s heels, it is before you.
+Your mother is a Blackfoot.&#8221;</p>
+<p>As the woman spoke slowly and with many pauses,
+the girl&#8217;s mood changed, and there came into her eyes
+a strange, dark look deeper than anger. She listened
+with a sudden patience which stilled the agitation in
+her breast and gave a little touch of rigidity to her
+figure. Her eyes withdrew from the wild storm without
+and gravely settled on her mother&#8217;s face, and with the
+Indian woman&#8217;s last words understanding pierced, but
+did not dispel, the sombre and ominous look in her
+eyes.</p>
+<p>There was silence for a moment, and then she spoke
+almost as evenly as her mother had done.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I will tell you everything. You are my mother, and
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_100' name='page_100'></a>100</span>
+I love you; but you will not see the truth. When my
+father took you from the lodges and brought you here,
+it was the end of the Indian life. It was for you to go on
+with him, but you would not go. I was young, but I
+saw, and I said that in all things I would go with him.
+I did not know that it would be hard, but at school,
+at the very first, I began to understand. There was
+only one, a French girl&mdash;I loved her&mdash;a girl who said
+to me, &#8216;You are as white as I am, as any one, and your
+heart is the same, and you are beautiful.&#8217; Yes, Manette
+said I was beautiful.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She paused a moment, a misty, far-away look came
+into her eyes, her fingers clasped and unclasped, and
+she added:</p>
+<p>&#8220;And her brother, Julien&mdash;he was older&mdash;when he
+came to visit Manette he spoke to me as though I was
+all white, and was good to me. I have never forgotten,
+never. It was five years ago, but I remember him.
+He was tall and strong, and as good as Manette&mdash;as
+good as Manette. I loved Manette, but she suffered
+for me, for I was not like the others, and my ways
+were different&mdash;then. I had lived up there on the
+Warais among the lodges, and I had not seen things&mdash;only
+from my father, and he did so much in an Indian
+way. So I was sick at heart, and sometimes I wanted
+to die; and once&mdash;But there was Manette, and she
+would laugh and sing, and we would play together, and
+I would speak French and she would speak English, and
+I learned from her to forget the Indian ways. What
+were they to me? I had loved them when I was of
+them, but I came on to a better life. The Indian life
+is to the white life as the parfleche pouch to&mdash;to this.&#8221;
+She laid her hand upon a purse of delicate silver mesh
+hanging at her waist. &#8220;When your eyes are opened
+you must go on, you cannot stop. There is no going
+back. When you have read of all there is in the white
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_101' name='page_101'></a>101</span>
+man&#8217;s world, when you have seen, then there is no
+returning. You may end it all, if you wish, in the
+snow, in the river, but there is no returning. The
+lodge of a chief&mdash;ah, if my father had heard you say
+that&mdash;!&#8221;</p>
+<p>The Indian woman shifted heavily in her chair, then
+shrank away from the look fixed on her. Once or twice
+she made as if she would speak, but sank down in the
+great chair, helpless and dismayed.</p>
+<p>&#8220;The lodge of a chief!&#8221; the girl continued, in a low,
+bitter voice. &#8220;What is the lodge of a chief? A smoky
+fire, a pot, a bed of skins&mdash;<i>aih-yi</i>! If the lodges of the
+Indians were millions, and I could be head of all, and
+rule the land, yet would I rather be a white girl in the
+hut of her white man, struggling for daily bread among
+the people who sweep the buffalo out, but open up the
+land with the plough, and make a thousand live where
+one lived before. It is peace you want, my mother,
+peace and solitude, in which the soul goes to sleep.
+Your days of hope are over, and you want to drowse by
+the fire. I want to see the white man&#8217;s cities grow, and
+the armies coming over the hill with the ploughs and
+the reapers and the mowers, and the wheels and the
+belts and engines of the great factories, and the white
+woman&#8217;s life spreading everywhere; for I am a white
+man&#8217;s daughter. I can&#8217;t be both Indian and white. I
+will not be like the sun when the shadow cuts across it
+and the land grows dark. I will not be half-breed. I
+will be white or I will be Indian; and I will be white,
+white only. My heart is white, my tongue is white, I
+think, I feel, as white people think and feel. What they
+wish, I wish; as they live, I live; as white women dress,
+I dress.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She involuntarily drew up the dark-red skirt she wore,
+showing a white petticoat and a pair of fine stockings
+on an ankle as shapely as she had ever seen among all
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_102' name='page_102'></a>102</span>
+the white women she knew. She drew herself up with
+pride, and her body had a grace and ease which the
+white woman&#8217;s convention had not cramped.</p>
+<p>Yet, with all her protests, no one would have thought
+her English. She might have been Spanish, or Italian,
+or Roumanian, or Slav, though nothing of her Indian
+blood showed in purely Indian characteristics, and something
+sparkled in her, gave a radiance to her face and
+figure which the storm and struggle in her did not
+smother. The white women of Portage la Drôme were
+too blind, too prejudiced, to see all that she really was,
+and admiring white men could do little, for Pauline
+would have nothing to do with them till the women
+met her absolutely as an equal; and from the other
+half-breeds, who intermarried with one another and were
+content to take a lower place than the pure whites, she
+held aloof, save when any of them was ill or in trouble.
+Then she recognized the claim of race, and came to their
+doors with pity and soft impulses to help them. French
+and Scotch and English half-breeds, as they were, they
+understood how she was making a fight for all who were
+half-Indian, half-white, and watched her with a furtive
+devotion, acknowledging her superior place, and proud
+of it.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I will not stay here,&#8221; said the Indian mother, with
+sullen stubbornness. &#8220;I will go back beyond the
+Warais. My life is my own life, and I will do what I
+like with it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The girl started, but became composed again on the
+instant. &#8220;Is your life all your own, mother?&#8221; she
+asked. &#8220;I did not come into the world of my own will.
+If I had I would have come all white or all Indian. I
+am your daughter, and I am here, good or bad&mdash;is your
+life all your own?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You can marry and stay here, when I go. You are
+twenty. I had my man, your father, when I was
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_103' name='page_103'></a>103</span>
+seventeen. You can marry. There are men. You
+have money. They will marry you&mdash;and forget the
+rest.&#8221;</p>
+<p>With a cry of rage and misery the girl sprang to her
+feet and started forward, but stopped suddenly at sound
+of a hasty knocking and a voice asking admittance.
+An instant later, a huge, bearded, broad-shouldered man
+stepped inside, shaking himself free of the snow, laughing
+half-sheepishly as he did so, and laying his fur cap
+and gloves with exaggerated care on the wide window-sill.</p>
+<p>&#8220;John Alloway,&#8221; said the Indian woman, in a voice
+of welcome and with a brightening eye, for it would
+seem as though he came in answer to her words of a few
+moments before. With a mother&#8217;s instinct she had
+divined at once the reason for the visit, though no
+warning thought crossed the mind of the girl, who
+placed a chair for their visitor with a heartiness which
+was real&mdash;was not this the white man she had saved
+from death in the snow a year ago? Her heart was
+soft toward the life she had kept in the world. She
+smiled at him, all the anger gone from her eyes, and
+there was almost a touch of tender anxiety in her voice
+as she said:</p>
+<p>&#8220;What brought you out in this blizzard? It wasn&#8217;t
+safe. It doesn&#8217;t seem possible you got here from the
+Portage.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The huge ranchman and auctioneer laughed cheerily.
+&#8220;Once lost, twice get there,&#8221; he exclaimed, with a quizzical
+toss of the head, thinking he had said a good thing.
+&#8220;It&#8217;s a year ago to the very day that I was lost out
+back&#8221;&mdash;he jerked a thumb over his shoulder&mdash;&#8220;and you
+picked me up and brought me in; and what was I to
+do but come out on the anniversary and say thank you?
+I&#8217;d fixed up all year to come to you, and I wasn&#8217;t to be
+stopped, &#8217;cause it was like the day we first met, old
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_104' name='page_104'></a>104</span>
+Coldmaker hitting the world with his whips of frost,
+and shaking his ragged blankets of snow over the wild
+West.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Just such a day,&#8221; said the Indian woman, after a
+pause. Pauline remained silent, placing a little bottle
+of cordial before their visitor, with which he presently
+regaled himself, raising his glass with an air.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Many happy returns to us both!&#8221; he said, and threw
+the liqueur down his throat, smacked his lips, and drew
+his hand down his great mustache and beard, like some
+vast animal washing its face with its paw. Smiling,
+and yet not at ease, he looked at the two women and
+nodded his head encouragingly, but whether the encouragement
+was for himself or for them he could not
+have told.</p>
+<p>His last words, however, had altered the situation.
+The girl had caught at a suggestion in them which
+startled her. This rough, white plainsman was come to
+make love to her, and to say&mdash;what? He was at once
+awkward and confident, afraid of her, of her refinement,
+grace, beauty, and education, and yet confident in the
+advantage of his position, a white man bending to a
+half-breed girl. He was not conscious of the condescension
+and majesty of his demeanor, but it was there, and
+his untutored words and ways must make it all too
+apparent to the girl. The revelation of the moment
+made her at once triumphant and humiliated. This
+white man had come to make love to her, that was
+apparent; but that he, ungrammatical, crude, and
+rough, should think he had but to put out his hand, and
+she in whom every subtle emotion and influence had delicate
+response, whose words and ways were as far removed
+from his as day from night, would fly to him,
+brought the flush of indignation to her cheek. She responded
+to his toast with a pleasant nod, however, and
+said:
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_105' name='page_105'></a>105</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;But if you will keep coming in such wild storms,
+there will not be many anniversaries.&#8221; Laughing, she
+poured out another glass of liqueur for him.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, now, p&#8217;r&#8217;aps you&#8217;re right, and so the only
+thing to do is not to keep coming, but to stay&mdash;stay
+right where <i>you</i> are.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The Indian woman could not see her daughter&#8217;s face,
+which was turned to the fire, but she herself smiled at
+John Alloway, and nodded her head approvingly. Here
+was the cure for her own trouble and loneliness. Pauline
+and she, who lived in different worlds, and yet were tied
+to each other by circumstances they could not control,
+would each work out her own destiny after her own
+nature, since John Alloway had come a-wooing. She
+would go back on the Warais, and Pauline would remain
+at the Portage, a white woman with her white man.
+She would go back to the smoky fires in the huddled
+lodges; to the venison stew and the snake dance; to
+the feasts of the medicine-men, and the long sleeps in
+the summer days, and the winter&#8217;s tales, and be at
+rest among her own people; and Pauline would have
+revenge of the wife of the prancing Reeve, and
+perhaps the people would forget who her mother
+was.</p>
+<p>With these thoughts flying through her sluggish
+mind, she rose and moved heavily from the room, with
+a parting look of encouragement at Alloway, as though
+to say, a man that is bold is surest.</p>
+<p>With her back to the man, Pauline watched her
+mother leave the room, saw the look she gave Alloway.
+When the door was closed she turned and looked Alloway
+in the eyes.</p>
+<p>&#8220;How old are you?&#8221; she asked, suddenly.</p>
+<p>He stirred in his seat nervously. &#8220;Why, fifty, about,&#8221;
+he answered, with confusion.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then you&#8217;ll be wise not to go looking for anniversaries
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_106' name='page_106'></a>106</span>
+in blizzards, when they&#8217;re few at the best,&#8221; she
+said, with a gentle and dangerous smile.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Fifty&mdash;why, I&#8217;m as young as most men of thirty,&#8221;
+he responded, with an uncertain laugh. &#8220;I&#8217;d have come
+here to-day if it had been snowing pitchforks and chain-lightning.
+I made up my mind I would. You saved
+my life, that&#8217;s dead sure; and I&#8217;d be down among the
+moles if it wasn&#8217;t for you and that Piegan pony of yours.
+Piegan ponies are wonders in a storm&mdash;seem to know
+their way by instinct. You, too&mdash;why, I bin on the
+plains all my life, and was no better than a baby that
+day; but you&mdash;why, you had Piegan in you&mdash;why, yes&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>He stopped short for a moment, checked by the look
+in her face, then went blindly on: &#8220;And you&#8217;ve got
+Blackfoot in you, too; and you just felt your way
+through the tornado and over the blind prairie like a
+bird reaching for the hills. It was as easy to you as
+picking out a maverick in a bunch of steers to me.
+But I never could make out what you was doing on the
+prairie that terrible day. I&#8217;ve thought of it a hundred
+times. What was you doing, if it ain&#8217;t cheek to ask?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I was trying to lose a life,&#8221; she answered, quietly,
+her eyes dwelling on his face, yet not seeing him; for
+it all came back on her, the agony which had driven her
+out into the tempest to be lost evermore.</p>
+<p>He laughed. &#8220;Well now, that&#8217;s good,&#8221; he said;
+&#8220;that&#8217;s what they call speaking sarcastic. You was
+out to save, and not to lose, a life; that was proved to
+the satisfaction of the court.&#8221; He paused and chuckled
+to himself, thinking he had been witty, and continued:
+&#8220;And I was that court, and my judgment was that the
+debt of that life you saved had to be paid to you within
+one calendar year, with interest at the usual per cent.
+for mortgages on good security. That was my judgment,
+and there&#8217;s no appeal from it. I am the great
+Justinian in this case!&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_107' name='page_107'></a>107</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;Did you ever save anybody&#8217;s life?&#8221; she asked, putting
+the bottle of cordial away, as he filled his glass for
+the third time.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Twice certain, and once divided the honors,&#8221; he
+answered, pleased at the question.</p>
+<p>&#8220;And did you expect to get any pay, with or without
+interest?&#8221; she added.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Me! I never thought of it again. But yes&mdash;by gol,
+I did! One case was funny, as funny can be. It was
+Ricky Wharton over on the Muskwat River. I saved
+his life right enough, and he came to me a year after and
+said, &#8216;You saved my life, now what are you going to do
+with it? I&#8217;m stony broke. I owe a hundred dollars,
+and I wouldn&#8217;t be owing it if you hadn&#8217;t saved my life.
+When you saved it I was five hundred to the good, and
+I&#8217;d have left that much behind me. Now I&#8217;m on the
+rocks, because you insisted on saving my life; and you
+just got to take care of me.&#8217; I &#8216;insisted&#8217;! Well, that
+knocked me silly, and I took him on&mdash;blame me, if I
+didn&#8217;t keep Ricky a whole year, till he went north looking
+for gold. Get pay?&mdash;why, I <i>paid</i>! Saving life has
+its responsibilities, little gal.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You can&#8217;t save life without running some risk yourself,
+not as a rule, can you?&#8221; she said, shrinking from
+his familiarity.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Not as a rule,&#8221; he replied. &#8220;You took on a bit of
+risk with me, you and your Piegan pony.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, I was young,&#8221; she responded, leaning over the
+table and drawing faces on a piece of paper before her.
+&#8220;I could take more risks, I was only nineteen!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t catch on,&#8221; he rejoined. &#8220;If it&#8217;s sixteen
+or&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Or fifty,&#8221; she interposed.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What difference does it make? If you&#8217;re done for,
+it&#8217;s the same at nineteen as fifty, and <i>vicey-versey</i>.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No, it&#8217;s not the same,&#8221; she answered. &#8220;You leave
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_108' name='page_108'></a>108</span>
+so much more that you want to keep, when you go at
+fifty.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, I dunno. I never thought of that.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s all that has belonged to you. You&#8217;ve been
+married, and have children, haven&#8217;t you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>He started, frowned, then straightened himself. &#8220;I got
+one girl&mdash;she&#8217;s East with her grandmother,&#8221; he said, jerkily.</p>
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s what I said; there&#8217;s more to leave behind at
+fifty,&#8221; she replied, a red spot on each cheek. She was
+not looking at him, but at the face of a man on the
+paper before her&mdash;a young man with abundant hair, a
+strong chin, and big, eloquent eyes; and all around his
+face she had drawn the face of a girl many times, and
+beneath the faces of both she was writing <i>Manette and
+Julien</i>.</p>
+<p>The water was getting too deep for John Alloway.
+He floundered toward the shore. &#8220;I&#8217;m no good at
+words,&#8221; he said&mdash;&#8220;no good at argyment; but I&#8217;ve got
+a gift for stories&mdash;round the fire of a night, with a pipe
+and tin basin of tea; so I&#8217;m not going to try and match
+you. You&#8217;ve had a good education down at Winnipeg.
+Took every prize, they say, and led the school, though
+there was plenty of fuss because they let you do it, and
+let you stay there, being half-Indian. You never heard
+what was going on outside, I s&#8217;pose. It didn&#8217;t matter,
+for you won out. Blamed foolishness, trying to draw
+the line between red and white that way. Of course,
+it&#8217;s the women always, always the women, striking out
+for all-white or nothing. Down there at Portage they&#8217;ve
+treated you mean, mean as dirt. The Reeve&#8217;s wife&mdash;well,
+we&#8217;ll fix that up all right. I guess John Alloway
+ain&#8217;t to be bluffed. He knows too much, and they all
+know he knows enough. When John Alloway, 32 Main
+Street, with a ranch on the Katanay, says, &#8216;We&#8217;re coming,
+Mr. and Mrs. John Alloway is coming,&#8217; they&#8217;ll get
+out their cards <i>visite</i>, I guess.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_109' name='page_109'></a>109</span></p>
+<p>Pauline&#8217;s head bent lower, and she seemed laboriously
+etching lines into the faces before her&mdash;Manette and
+Julien, Julien and Manette; and there came into her
+eyes the youth and light and gayety of the days when
+Julien came of an afternoon and the riverside rang
+with laughter&mdash;the dearest, lightest days she had ever
+spent.</p>
+<p>The man of fifty went on, seeing nothing but a girl
+over whom he was presently going to throw the lasso
+of his affection and take her home with him, yielding
+and glad, a white man and his half-breed girl&mdash;but such
+a half-breed!</p>
+<p>&#8220;I seen enough of the way some of them women
+treated you,&#8221; he continued, &#8220;and I sez to myself, Her
+turn next. There&#8217;s a way out, I sez, and John Alloway
+pays his debts. When the anniversary comes round
+I&#8217;ll put things right, I sez to myself. She saved my
+life, and she shall have the rest of it, if she&#8217;ll take it,
+and will give a receipt in full, and open a new account
+in the name of John and Pauline Alloway. Catch it?
+See&mdash;Pauline?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Slowly she got to her feet. There was a look in her
+eyes such as had been in her mother&#8217;s a little while
+before, but a hundred times intensified, a look that
+belonged to the flood and flow of generations of Indian
+life, yet controlled in her by the order and understanding
+of centuries of white men&#8217;s lives, the pervasive,
+dominating power of race.</p>
+<p>For an instant she kept her eyes toward the window.
+The storm had suddenly ceased, and a glimmer of sunset
+light was breaking over the distant wastes of snow.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You want to pay a debt you think you owe,&#8221; she
+said, in a strange, lustreless voice, turning to him at
+last. &#8220;Well, you have paid it. You have given me a
+book to read which I will keep always. And I give
+you a receipt in full for your debt.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_110' name='page_110'></a>110</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t know about any book,&#8221; he answered, dazedly.
+&#8220;I want to marry you right away.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I am sorry, but it is not necessary,&#8221; she replied,
+suggestively. Her face was very pale now.</p>
+<p>&#8220;But I want to. It ain&#8217;t a debt. That was only a
+way of putting it. I want to make you my wife. I
+got some position, and I can make the West sit up and
+look at you and be glad.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Suddenly her anger flared out, low and vivid and
+fierce, but her words were slow and measured. &#8220;There
+is no reason why I should marry you&mdash;not one. You
+offer me marriage as a prince might give a penny to a
+beggar. If my mother were not an Indian woman, you
+would not have taken it all as a matter of course. But
+my father was a white man, and I am a white man&#8217;s
+daughter, and I would rather marry an Indian, who
+would think me the best thing there was in the light of
+the sun, than marry you. Had I been pure white you
+would not have been so sure; you would have asked,
+not offered. I am not obliged to you. You ought to
+go to no woman as you came to me. See, the storm has
+stopped. You will be quite safe going back now. The
+snow will be deep, perhaps, but it is not far.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She went to the window, got his cap and gloves, and
+handed them to him. He took them, dumbfounded and
+overcome.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Say, I ain&#8217;t done it right, mebbe, but I meant well,
+and I&#8217;d be good to you and proud of you, and I&#8217;d love
+you better than anything I ever saw,&#8221; he said, shamefacedly,
+but eagerly and honestly, too.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ah, you should have said those last words first,&#8221;
+she answered.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I say them now.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;They come too late; but they would have been too
+late in any case,&#8221; she added. &#8220;Still, I am glad you
+said them.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_111' name='page_111'></a>111</span></p>
+<p>She opened the door for him.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I made a mistake,&#8221; he urged, humbly. &#8220;I understand
+better now. I never had any schoolin&#8217;.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, it isn&#8217;t that,&#8221; she answered, gently. &#8220;Good-bye.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Suddenly he turned. &#8220;You&#8217;re right&mdash;it couldn&#8217;t ever
+be,&#8221; he said. &#8220;You&#8217;re&mdash;you&#8217;re great. And I owe you
+my life still!&#8221;</p>
+<p>He stepped out into the biting air.</p>
+<p>For a moment Pauline stood motionless in the middle
+of the room, her gaze fixed upon the door which had
+just closed; then, with a wild gesture of misery and
+despair, she threw herself upon the couch in a passionate
+outburst of weeping. Sobs shook her from head to
+foot, and her hands, clenched above her head, twitched
+convulsively.</p>
+<p>Presently the door opened and her mother looked in
+eagerly. At what she saw her face darkened and hardened
+for an instant, but then the girl&#8217;s utter abandonment
+of grief and agony convinced and conquered her.
+Some glimmer of the true understanding of the problem
+which Pauline represented got into her heart and drove
+the sullen selfishness from her face and eyes and mind.
+She came over heavily and, sinking upon her knees,
+swept an arm around the girl&#8217;s shoulder. She realized
+what had happened, and probably this was the first
+time in her life that she had ever come by instinct to
+a revelation of her daughter&#8217;s mind or of the faithful
+meaning of incidents of their lives.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You said no to John Alloway,&#8221; she murmured.</p>
+<p>Defiance and protest spoke in the swift gesture of the
+girl&#8217;s hands. &#8220;You think because he was white that
+I&#8217;d drop into his arms! No&mdash;no&mdash;no!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You did right, little one.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The sobs suddenly stopped, and the girl seemed to
+listen with all her body. There was something in her
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_112' name='page_112'></a>112</span>
+Indian mother&#8217;s voice she had never heard before&mdash;at
+least, not since she was a little child and swung in a
+deerskin hammock in a tamarac-tree by Renton&#8217;s
+Lodge, where the chiefs met and the West paused to
+rest on its onward march. Something of the accents
+of the voice that crooned to her then was in the woman&#8217;s
+tones now.</p>
+<p>&#8220;He offered it like a lump of sugar to a bird&mdash;I know.
+He didn&#8217;t know that you have great blood&mdash;yes, but it
+is true. My man&#8217;s grandfather, he was of the blood
+of the kings of England. My man had the proof. And
+for a thousand years my people have been chiefs. There
+is no blood in all the West like yours. My heart was
+heavy, and dark thoughts came to me, because my man
+is gone, and the life is not my life, and I am only an
+Indian woman from the Warais, and my heart goes out
+there always now. But some great Medicine has been
+poured into my heart. As I stood at the door and saw
+you lying there, I called to the Sun. &#8216;O great Spirit,&#8217;
+I said, &#8216;help me to understand, for this girl is bone of
+my bone and flesh of my flesh, and Evil has come
+between us!&#8217; And the Sun Spirit poured the Medicine
+into my spirit, and there is no cloud between us now.
+It has passed away, and I see. Little white one, the
+white life is the only life, and I will live it with you till
+a white man comes and gives you a white man&#8217;s home.
+But not John Alloway. Shall the crow nest with the
+oriole?&#8221;</p>
+<p>As the woman spoke with slow, measured voice full
+of the cadences of a heart revealing itself, the girl&#8217;s
+breath at first seemed to stop, so still she lay; then, as
+the true understanding of the words came to her, she
+panted with excitement, her breast heaved, and the
+blood flushed her face. When the slow voice ceased,
+and the room became still, she lay quiet for a moment,
+letting the new thing find secure lodgment in her
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_113' name='page_113'></a>113</span>
+thought; then, suddenly, she raised herself and threw
+her arms round her mother in a passion of affection.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Lalika! O mother Lalika!&#8221; she said, tenderly, and
+kissed her again and again. Not since she was a little
+girl, long before they left the Warais, had she called her
+mother by her Indian name, which her father had humorously
+taught her to do in those far-off happy days
+by the beautiful, singing river and the exquisite woods,
+when, with a bow and arrow, she had ranged, a young
+Diana who slew only with love.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Lalika, mother Lalika, it is like the old, old times,&#8221;
+she added, softly. &#8220;Ah, it does not matter now, for
+you understand!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I do not understand altogether,&#8221; murmured the Indian
+woman, gently. &#8220;I am not white, and there is a
+different way of thinking; but I will hold your hand,
+and we will live the white life together.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Cheek to cheek they saw the darkness come, and
+afterwards the silver moon steal up over a frozen world,
+in which the air bit like steel and braced the heart like
+wine. Then, at last, before it was nine o&#8217;clock, after
+her custom, the Indian woman went to bed, leaving her
+daughter brooding peacefully by the fire.</p>
+<p>For a long time Pauline sat with hands clasped in
+her lap, her gaze on the tossing flames, in her heart and
+mind a new feeling of strength and purpose. The way
+before her was not clear, she saw no further than this
+day, and all that it had brought; yet she was as one
+that has crossed a direful flood and finds herself on a
+strange shore in an unknown country, with the twilight
+about her, yet with so much of danger passed that there
+was only the thought of the moment&#8217;s safety round her,
+the camp-fire to be lit, and the bed to be made under
+the friendly trees and stars.</p>
+<p>For a half-hour she sat so, and then, suddenly, she
+raised her head listening, leaning toward the window,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_114' name='page_114'></a>114</span>
+through which the moonlight streamed. She heard her
+name called without, distinct and strange&mdash;&#8220;<i>Pauline!
+Pauline!</i>&#8221;</p>
+<p>Starting up, she ran to the door and opened it. All
+was silent and cruelly cold. Nothing but the wide plain
+of snow and the steely air. But as she stood intently
+listening, the red glow from the fire behind her, again
+came the cry&mdash;&#8220;Pauline!&#8221;&mdash;not far away. Her heart
+beat hard, and she raised her head and called&mdash;why was
+it she should call out in a language not her own?&mdash;&#8220;<i>Qu&#8217;appelle?
+Qu&#8217;appelle?</i>&#8221;</p>
+<p>And once again on the still night air came the trembling
+appeal, &#8220;Pauline!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;<i>Qu&#8217;appelle? Qu&#8217;appelle</i>?&#8221; she cried; then, with a
+gasping murmur of understanding and recognition she
+ran forward in the frozen night toward the sound of
+the voice. The same intuitive sense which had made
+her call out in French, without thought or reason, had
+revealed to her who it was that called; or was it that
+even in the one word uttered there was the note of a
+voice always remembered since those days with Manette
+at Winnipeg?</p>
+<p>Not far away from the house, on the way to Portage
+la Drôme, but a little distance from the road, was a
+crevasse, and toward this she sped, for once before an
+accident had happened there. Again the voice called
+as she sped&mdash;&#8220;Pauline!&#8221;&mdash;and she cried out that she
+was coming. Presently she stood above the declivity,
+and peered over. Almost immediately below her, a few
+feet down, was a man lying in the snow. He had strayed
+from the obliterated road, and had fallen down the
+crevasse, twisting his foot cruelly. Unable to walk, he
+had crawled several hundred yards in the snow, but
+his strength had given out, and then he had called to
+the house, on whose dark windows flickered the flames
+of the fire, the name of the girl he had come so far to see.</p>
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<a name='linki_7' id='linki_7'></a>
+<img src='images/p114.jpg' alt='' title='' style='width: 382px; height: 495px;' /><br />
+<p class='caption' style='margin: 0 auto; text-align:center;width: 382px;'>
+&#8220;PAULINE,&#8221; HE SAID, FEEBLY, AND FAINTED IN HER ARMS<br />
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_115' name='page_115'></a>115</span></div>
+<p>With a cry of joy and pain at once she recognized
+him now. It was as her heart had said&mdash;it was Julien,
+Manette&#8217;s brother. In a moment she was beside him,
+her arm around his shoulder.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Pauline!&#8221; he said, feebly, and fainted in her arms.
+An instant later she was speeding to the house, and,
+rousing her mother and two of the stablemen, she
+snatched a flask of brandy from a cupboard and hastened
+back.</p>
+<p>An hour later Julien Labrosse lay in the great sitting-room
+beside the fire, his foot and ankle bandaged, and
+at ease, his face alight with all that had brought him
+there. And once again the Indian mother with a sure
+instinct knew why he had come, and saw that now her
+girl would have a white man&#8217;s home, and, for her man,
+one of the race like her father&#8217;s race, white and conquering.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m sorry to give trouble,&#8221; Julien said, laughing&mdash;he
+had a trick of laughing lightly; &#8220;but I&#8217;ll be able to get
+back to the Portage to-morrow.&#8221;</p>
+<p>To this the Indian mother said, however: &#8220;To please
+yourself is a great thing, but to please others is better;
+and so you will stay here till you can walk back to the
+Portage, M&#8217;sieu&#8217; Julien.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, I&#8217;ve never been so comfortable,&#8221; he said&mdash;&#8220;never
+so happy. If you don&#8217;t mind the trouble!&#8221;</p>
+<p>The Indian woman nodded pleasantly, and found an
+excuse to leave the room. But before she went she
+contrived to place near his elbow one of the scraps of
+paper on which Pauline had drawn his face, with that
+of Manette. It brought a light of hope and happiness
+into his eyes, and he thrust the paper under the fur
+robes of the couch.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What are you doing with your life?&#8221; Pauline asked
+him, as his eyes sought hers a few moments later.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, I have a big piece of work before me,&#8221; he answered
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_116' name='page_116'></a>116</span>
+eagerly, &#8220;a great chance&mdash;to build a bridge over
+the St. Lawrence, and I&#8217;m only thirty! I&#8217;ve got my
+start. Then, I&#8217;ve made over the old Seigneury my
+father left me, and I&#8217;m going to live in it. It will be a
+fine place, when I&#8217;ve done with it, comfortable and big,
+with old oak timbers and walls, and deep fireplaces,
+and carvings done in the time of Louis Quinze, and
+dark-red velvet curtains for the drawing-room, and
+skins and furs. Yes, I must have skins and furs like
+these here.&#8221; He smoothed the skins with his hand.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Manette, she will live with you?&#8221; Pauline asked.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh no, her husband wouldn&#8217;t like that. You see,
+Manette is to be married. She told me to tell you all
+about it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He told her all that was to tell of Manette&#8217;s courtship,
+and added that the wedding would take place in
+the spring.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Manette wanted it when the leaves first flourish
+and the birds come back,&#8221; he said, gayly; &#8220;and so she&#8217;s
+not going to live with me at the Seigneury, you see.
+No, there it is, as fine a house, good enough for a prince,
+and I shall be there alone, unless&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>His eyes met hers, and he caught the light that was
+in them before the eyelids drooped over them and she
+turned her head to the fire. &#8220;But the spring is two
+months off yet,&#8221; he added.</p>
+<p>&#8220;The spring?&#8221; she asked, puzzled, yet half afraid to
+speak.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, I&#8217;m going into my new house when Manette
+goes into her new house&mdash;in the spring. And I won&#8217;t
+go alone if&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>He caught her eyes again, but she rose hurriedly and
+said: &#8220;You must sleep now. Good-night.&#8221; She held
+out her hand.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, I&#8217;ll tell you the rest to-morrow&mdash;to-morrow
+night, when it&#8217;s quiet like this, and the stars shine,&#8221; he
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_117' name='page_117'></a>117</span>
+answered. &#8220;I&#8217;m going to have a home of my own like
+this&mdash;ah, <i>bien sûr</i>, Pauline.&#8221;</p>
+<p>That night the old Indian mother prayed to the Sun.
+&#8220;O great Spirit,&#8221; she said, &#8220;I give thanks for the
+Medicine poured into my heart. Be good to my white
+child when she goes with her man to the white man&#8217;s
+home far away. O great Spirit, when I return to the
+lodges of my people, be kind to me, for I shall be lonely;
+I shall not have my child; I shall not hear my white
+man&#8217;s voice. Give me good Medicine, O Sun and great
+Father, till my dream tells me that my man comes from
+over the hills for me once more.&#8221;</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<a name='THE_STAKE_AND_THE_PLUMBLINE' id='THE_STAKE_AND_THE_PLUMBLINE'></a>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_118' name='page_118'></a>118</span>
+<h2>THE STAKE AND THE PLUMB-LINE</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>She went against all good judgment in marrying
+him; she cut herself off from her own people, from
+the life in which she had been an alluring and beautiful
+figure. Washington had never had two such seasons
+as those in which she moved; for the diplomatic circle
+who had had &#8220;the run of the world&#8221; knew her value,
+and were not content without her. She might have
+made a brilliant match with one ambassador thirty
+years older than herself&mdash;she was but twenty-two; and
+there were at least six attachés and secretaries of legation
+who entered upon a tournament for her heart and
+hand; but she was not for them. All her fine faculties
+of tact and fairness, of harmless strategy, and her gifts
+of wit and unexpected humor were needed to keep her
+cavaliers constant and hopeful to the last; but she
+never faltered, and she did not fail. The faces of old
+men brightened when they saw her, and one or two
+ancient figures who, for years, had been seldom seen at
+social functions now came when they knew she was to
+be present. There were, of course, a few women who
+said she would coquette with any male from nine to
+ninety; but no man ever said so; and there was none,
+from first to last, but smiled with pleasure at even the
+mention of her name, so had her vivacity, intelligence,
+and fine sympathy conquered them. She was a social
+artist by instinct. In their hearts they all recognized
+how fair and impartial she was; and she drew out of
+every man the best that was in him. The few women
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_119' name='page_119'></a>119</span>
+who did not like her said that she chattered; but the
+truth was she made other people talk by swift suggestion
+or delicate interrogation.</p>
+<p>After the blow fell, Freddy Hartzman put the matter
+succinctly, and told the truth faithfully, when he said:
+&#8220;The first time I met her, I told her all I&#8217;d ever done
+that could be told, and all I wanted to do; including a
+resolve to carry her off to some desert place and set up
+a Kingdom of Two. I don&#8217;t know how she did it. I
+was like a tap, and poured myself out; and when it was
+all over I thought she was the best talker I&#8217;d ever heard.
+But yet she&#8217;d done nothing except look at me and listen,
+and put in a question here and there, that was like
+a baby asking to see your watch. Oh, she was a lily-flower,
+was Sally Seabrook, and I&#8217;ve never been sorry
+I told her all my little story! It did me good. Poor
+darling&mdash;it makes me sick sometimes when I think of it.
+Yet she&#8217;ll win out all right&mdash;a hundred to one she&#8217;ll win
+out. She was a star.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Freddy Hartzman was in an embassy of repute; he
+knew the chancelleries and salons of many nations, and
+was looked upon as one of the ablest and shrewdest men
+in the diplomatic service. He had written one of the
+best books on international law in existence, he talked
+English like a native, he had published a volume of
+delightful verse, and had omitted to publish several
+others, including a tiny volume which Sally Seabrook&#8217;s
+charms had inspired him to write. His view of her was
+shared by most men who knew the world, and especially
+by the elderly men who had a real knowledge of human
+nature, among whom was a certain important member
+of the United States executive called John Appleton.
+When the end of all things at Washington came for
+Sally, these two men united to bear her up, that her
+feet should not stumble upon the stony path of the hard
+journey she had undertaken.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_120' name='page_120'></a>120</span>
+Appleton was not a man of much speech; but his words
+had weight; for he was not only a minister; he
+came of an old family which had ruled the social destinies
+of a state, and had alternately controlled and disturbed
+its politics. On the day of the sensation, in the
+fiery cloud of which Sally disappeared, Appleton delivered
+himself of his mind in the matter at a reception
+given by the President.</p>
+<p>&#8220;She will come back&mdash;and we will all take her back,
+be glad to have her back,&#8221; he said. &#8220;She has the grip
+of a lever which can lift the eternal hills with the right
+pressure. Leave her alone&mdash;leave her alone. This is
+a democratic country, and she&#8217;ll prove democracy a
+success before she&#8217;s done.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The world knew that John Appleton had offered her
+marriage, and he had never hidden the fact. What
+they did not know was that she had told him what she
+meant to do before she did it. He had spoken to her
+plainly, bluntly, then with a voice that was blurred and
+a little broken, urging her against the course toward
+which she was set; but it had not availed; and, realizing
+that he had come upon a powerful will underneath the
+sunny and so human surface, he had ceased to protest,
+to bear down upon her mind with his own iron force.
+When he realized that all his reasoning was wasted, that
+all worldly argument was vain, he made one last attempt,
+a forlorn hope, as though to put upon record
+what he believed to be the truth.</p>
+<p>&#8220;There is no position you cannot occupy,&#8221; he said.
+&#8220;You have the perfect gift in private life, and you have
+a public gift. You have a genius for ruling. Say, my
+dear, don&#8217;t wreck it all. I know you are not for me,
+but there are better men in the country than I am.
+Hartzman will be a great man one day&mdash;he wants you.
+Young Tilden wants you; he has millions, and he will
+never disgrace them or you, the power which they can
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_121' name='page_121'></a>121</span>
+command, and the power which you have. And there
+are others. Your people have told you they will turn
+you off; the world will say things&mdash;will rend you.
+There is nothing so popular for the moment as the fall
+of a favorite. But that&#8217;s nothing&mdash;it&#8217;s nothing at all
+compared with the danger to yourself. I didn&#8217;t sleep
+last night thinking of it. Yet I&#8217;m glad you wrote me;
+it gave me time to think, and I can tell you the truth
+as I see it. Haven&#8217;t you thought that he will drag you
+down, down, down, wear out your soul, break and sicken
+your life, destroy your beauty&mdash;you are beautiful, my
+dear, beyond what the world sees, even. Give it up&mdash;ah,
+give it up, and don&#8217;t break our hearts! There are
+too many people loving you for you to sacrifice them&mdash;and
+yourself, too.... You&#8217;ve had such a good time!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s been like a dream,&#8221; she interrupted, in a far-away
+voice&mdash;&#8220;like a dream, these two years.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And it&#8217;s been such a good dream,&#8221; he urged; &#8220;and
+you will only go to a bad one, from which you will never
+wake. The thing has fastened on him; he will never
+give it up. And penniless, too&mdash;his father has cast him
+off. My girl, it&#8217;s impossible. Listen to me. There&#8217;s no
+one on earth that would do more for you than I would&mdash;no one.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Dear, dear friend!&#8221; she cried, with a sudden impulse,
+and caught his hand in hers and kissed it before he
+could draw it back. &#8220;You are so true, and you think
+you are right. But, but&#8221;&mdash;her eyes took on a deep,
+steady, far-away look&mdash;&#8220;but I will save him; and we
+shall not be penniless in the end. Meanwhile I have
+seven hundred dollars a year of my own. No one can
+touch that. Nothing can change me now&mdash;and I have
+promised.&#8221;</p>
+<p>When he saw her fixed determination, he made no
+further protest, but asked that he might help her, be
+with her the next day, when she was to take a step
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_122' name='page_122'></a>122</span>
+which the wise world would say must lead to sorrow and
+a miserable end.</p>
+<p>The step she took was to marry Jim Templeton, the
+drunken, cast-off son of a millionaire senator from Kentucky,
+who controlled railways and owned a bank, and
+had so resented his son&#8217;s inebriate habits that for five
+years he had never permitted Jim&#8217;s name to be mentioned
+in his presence. Jim had had twenty thousand
+dollars left him by his mother, and a small income of
+three hundred dollars from an investment which had
+been made for him when a little boy. And this had
+carried him on; for, drunken as he was, he had sense
+enough to eke out the money, limiting himself to three
+thousand dollars a year. He had four thousand dollars
+left, and his tiny income of three hundred, when he went
+to Sally Seabrook, after having been sober for a month,
+and begged her to marry him.</p>
+<p>Before dissipation had made him look ten years older
+than he was, there had been no handsomer man in all
+America. Even yet he had a remarkable face: long,
+delicate, with dark-brown eyes, as fair a forehead as
+man could wish, and black, waving hair, streaked with
+gray&mdash;gray, though he was but twenty-nine years of age.</p>
+<p>When Sally was fifteen and he twenty-two, he had
+fallen in love with her and she with him; and nothing
+had broken the early romance. He had captured her
+young imagination, and had fastened his image on her
+heart. Her people, seeing the drift of things, had sent
+her to a school on the Hudson, and the two did not
+meet for some time. Then came a stolen interview,
+and a fastening of the rivets of attraction&mdash;for Jim had
+gifts of a wonderful kind. He knew his Horace and
+Anacreon and Heine and Lamartine and Dante in the
+originals, and a hundred others; he was a speaker of
+power and grace; and he had a clear, strong head for
+business. He was also a lawyer, and was junior attorney
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_123' name='page_123'></a>123</span>
+to his father&#8217;s great business. It was because he had
+the real business gift, not because he had a brilliant and
+scholarly mind, that his father had taken him into his
+concerns, and was the more unforgiving when he gave
+way to temptation. Otherwise, he would have pensioned
+Jim off, and dismissed him from his mind as a useless,
+insignificant person; for Horace, Anacreon, and philosophy
+and history were to him the recreations of the feeble-minded.
+He had set his heart on Jim, and what Jim
+could do and would do by-and-by in the vast financial
+concerns he controlled, when he was ready to slip out
+and down; but Jim had disappointed him beyond calculation.</p>
+<p>In the early days of their association Jim had left
+his post and taken to drink at critical moments in their
+operations. At first, high words had been spoken, then
+there came the strife of two dissimilar natures, and both
+were headstrong, and each proud and unrelenting in his
+own way. Then, at last, had come the separation, irrevocable
+and painful; and Jim had flung out into the world,
+a drunkard, who, sober for a fortnight, or a month, or
+three months, would afterward go off on a spree, in
+which he quoted Sappho and Horace in taverns, and
+sang bacchanalian songs with a voice meant for the
+stage&mdash;a heritage from an ancestor who had sung upon
+the English stage a hundred years before. Even in his
+cups, even after his darling vice had submerged him,
+Jim Templeton was a man marked out from his fellows,
+distinguished and very handsome. Society, however,
+had ceased to recognize him for a long time, and he did
+not seek it. For two or three years he practised law
+now and then. He took cases, preferably criminal
+cases, for which very often he got no pay; but that,
+too, ceased at last. Now, in his quiet, sober intervals
+he read omnivorously, and worked out problems in
+physics for which he had a taste, until the old appetite
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_124' name='page_124'></a>124</span>
+surged over him again. Then his spirits rose, and he
+was the old brilliant talker, the joyous galliard until,
+in due time, he became silently and lethargically
+drunk.</p>
+<p>In one of his sober intervals he had met Sally Seabrook
+in the street. It was the first time in four years,
+for he had avoided her, and though she had written to
+him once or twice, he had never answered her&mdash;shame
+was in his heart. Yet all the time the old song was in
+Sally&#8217;s ears. Jim Templeton had touched her in some
+distant and intimate corner of her nature where none
+other had reached; and in all her gay life, when men
+had told their tale of admiration in their own way, her
+mind had gone back to Jim, and what he had said under
+the magnolia-trees; and his voice had drowned all
+others. She was not blind to what he had become, but
+a deep belief possessed her that she, of all the world,
+could save him. She knew how futile it would look to
+the world, how wild a dream it looked even to her own
+heart, how perilous it was; but, play upon the surface
+of things as she had done so much and so often in her
+brief career, she was seized of convictions having origin,
+as it might seem, in something beyond herself.</p>
+<p>So when she and Jim met in the street, the old, true
+thing rushed upon them both, and for a moment they
+stood still and looked at each other. As they might
+look who say farewell forever, so did each dwell upon
+the other&#8217;s face. That was the beginning of the new
+epoch. A few days more, and Jim came to her and
+said that she alone could save him; and she meant
+him to say it, had led him to the saying, for the same
+conviction was burned deep in her own soul. She knew
+the awful risk she was taking, that the step must mean
+social ostracism, and that her own people would be no
+kinder to her than society; but she gasped a prayer,
+smiled at Jim as though all were well, laid her plans,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_125' name='page_125'></a>125</span>
+made him promise her one thing on his knees, and took
+the plunge.</p>
+<p>Her people did as she expected. She was threatened
+with banishment from heart and home&mdash;with disinheritance;
+but she pursued her course; and the only
+person who stood with her and Jim at the altar was
+John Appleton, who would not be denied, and who had
+such a half-hour with Jim before the ceremony as neither
+of them forgot in the years that the locust ate thereafter.
+And, standing at the altar, Jim&#8217;s eyes were still
+wet, with new resolves in his heart and a being at his
+side meant for the best man in the world. As he knelt
+beside her, awaiting the benediction, a sudden sense of
+the enormity of this act came upon him, and for her
+sake he would have drawn back then, had it not been
+too late. He realized that it was a crime to put this
+young, beautiful life in peril; that his own life was a
+poor, contemptible thing, and that he had been possessed
+of the egotism of the selfish and the young.</p>
+<p>But the thing was done, and a new life was begun.
+Before they were launched upon it, however, before
+society had fully grasped the sensation, or they had
+left upon their journey to northern Canada, where Sally
+intended they should work out their problem and make
+their home, far and free from all old associations, a
+curious thing happened. Jim&#8217;s father sent an urgent
+message to Sally to come to him. When she came, he
+told her she was mad, and asked her why she had
+thrown her life away.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why have you done it?&#8221; he said. &#8220;You&mdash;you
+knew all about him; you might have married the best
+man in the country. You could rule a kingdom; you
+have beauty and power, and make people do what you
+want; and you&#8217;ve got a sot.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He is your son,&#8221; she answered, quietly.</p>
+<p>She looked so beautiful and so fine as she stood there,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_126' name='page_126'></a>126</span>
+fearless and challenging before him, that he was moved.
+But he would not show it.</p>
+<p>&#8220;He was my son&mdash;when he was a man,&#8221; he retorted
+grimly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;He is the son of the woman you once loved,&#8221; she
+answered.</p>
+<p>The old man turned his head away.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What would she have said to what you did to Jim?&#8221;</p>
+<p>He drew himself around sharply. Her dagger had
+gone home, but he would not let her know it.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Leave her out of the question&mdash;she was a saint,&#8221; he
+said, roughly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;She cannot be left out; nor can you. He got his
+temperament naturally; he inherited his weakness.
+From your grandfather, from her father. Do you think
+you are in no way responsible?&#8221;</p>
+<p>He was silent for a moment, but then said, stubbornly:
+&#8220;Why&mdash;why have you done it? What&#8217;s between him
+and me can&#8217;t be helped; we are father and son; but
+you&mdash;you had no call, no responsibility.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I love Jim. I always loved him, ever since I can
+remember, as you did. I see my way ahead. I will
+not desert him. No one cares what happens to him,
+no one but me. Your love wouldn&#8217;t stand the test;
+mine will.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Your folks have disinherited you&mdash;you have almost
+nothing, and I will not change my mind. What do you
+see ahead of you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Jim&mdash;only Jim&mdash;and God.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Her eyes were shining, her hands were clasped together
+at her side in the tenseness of her feeling, her
+indomitable spirit spoke in her face.</p>
+<p>Suddenly the old man brought his fist down on the
+table with a bang. &#8220;It&#8217;s a crime&mdash;oh, it&#8217;s a crime, to
+risk your life so! You ought to have been locked up.
+I&#8217;d have done it.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_127' name='page_127'></a>127</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;Listen to me,&#8221; she rejoined, quietly. &#8220;I know the
+risk. But do you think that I could have lived my life
+out, feeling that I might have saved Jim and didn&#8217;t try?
+You talk of beauty and power and ruling&mdash;you say
+what others have said to me. Which is the greater thing,
+to get what pleases one, or to work for something which
+is more to one than all else in the world? To save one
+life, one intellect, one great man&mdash;oh, he has the making
+of a great man in him!&mdash;to save a soul, would not life
+be well lost, would not love be well spent, in doing it?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Love&#8217;s labor lost,&#8221; said the old man, slowly, cynically,
+but not without emotion.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I have ambition,&#8221; she continued. &#8220;No girl was ever
+more ambitious, but my ambition is to make the most
+and best of myself. Place?&mdash;Jim and I will hold it yet.
+Power?&mdash;it shall be as it must be; but Jim and I will
+work for it to fulfil ourselves. For me&mdash;ah, if I can save
+him&mdash;and I mean to do so!&mdash;do you think that I would
+not then have my heaven on earth? You want money&mdash;money&mdash;money,
+power, and to rule; and these are to
+you the best things in the world. I make my choice
+differently, though I would have these other things if I
+could; and I hope I shall. But Jim first&mdash;Jim first,
+your son, Jim&mdash;my husband, Jim!&#8221;</p>
+<p>The old man got to his feet slowly. She had him at
+bay. &#8220;But you are great,&#8221; he said, &#8220;great! It is an
+awful stake&mdash;awful! Yet, if you win, you&#8217;ll have what
+money can&#8217;t buy. And listen to me. We&#8217;ll make the
+stake bigger. It will give it point, too, in another way.
+If you keep Jim sober for four years from the day of
+your marriage, on the last day of that four years I&#8217;ll put
+in your hands for you and him, or for your child&mdash;if you
+have one&mdash;five millions of dollars. I am a man of my
+word. While Jim drinks I won&#8217;t take him back; he&#8217;s
+disinherited. I&#8217;ll give him nothing now or hereafter.
+Save him for four years&mdash;if he can do that he will do
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_128' name='page_128'></a>128</span>
+all&mdash;and there&#8217;s five millions as sure as the sun&#8217;s in
+heaven. Amen and amen.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He opened the door. There was a strange, soft light
+in her eyes as she came to go.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Aren&#8217;t you going to kiss me?&#8221; she said, looking at
+him whimsically.</p>
+<p>He was disconcerted. She did not wait, but reached
+up and kissed him on the cheek. &#8220;Good-bye,&#8221; she said,
+with a smile. &#8220;We&#8217;ll win the stake. Good-bye.&#8221;</p>
+<p>An instant and she was gone. He shut the door, then
+turned and looked in a mirror on the wall. Abstractedly
+he touched the cheek she had kissed. Suddenly a
+change passed over his face. He dropped in a chair,
+and his fist struck the table as he said: &#8220;By God, she
+may do it, she may do it! But it&#8217;s life and death&mdash;it&#8217;s
+life and death.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Society had its sensation, and then the veil dropped.
+For a long time none looked behind it except Jim&#8217;s
+father. He had too much at stake not to have his
+telescope upon them. A detective followed them to
+keep Jim&#8217;s record. But this they did not know.</p>
+<p>II</p>
+<p>From the day they left Washington Jim put his life
+and his fate in his wife&#8217;s hands. He meant to follow
+her judgment, and, self-willed and strong in intellect as
+he was, he said that she should have a fair chance of
+fulfilling her purpose. There had been many <i>pour
+parlers</i> as to what Jim should do. There was farming.
+She set that aside, because it meant capital, and it
+also meant monotony and loneliness; and capital was
+limited, and monotony and loneliness were bad for Jim,
+deadening an active brain which must not be deprived
+of stimulants&mdash;stimulants of a different sort, however,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_129' name='page_129'></a>129</span>
+from those which had heretofore mastered it. There
+was the law. But Jim would have to become a citizen
+of Canada, change his flag, and where they meant to go&mdash;to
+the outskirts&mdash;there would be few opportunities
+for the law; and with not enough to <i>do</i> there would be
+danger. Railway construction? That seemed good in
+many ways, but Jim had not the professional knowledge
+necessary; his railway experience with his father had
+only been financial. Above all else he must have responsibility,
+discipline, and strict order in his life.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Something that will be good for my natural vanity,
+and knock the nonsense out of me,&#8221; Jim agreed, as they
+drew farther and farther away from Washington and
+the past, and nearer and nearer to the Far North and
+their future. Never did two more honest souls put
+their hands in each other&#8217;s, and set forth upon the
+thorniest path to a goal which was their heart&#8217;s desire.
+Since they had become one, there had come into Sally&#8217;s
+face that illumination which belongs only to souls possessed
+of an idea greater than themselves, outside themselves&mdash;saints,
+patriots; faces which have been washed
+in the salt tears dropped for others&#8217; sorrows and lighted
+by the fire of self-sacrifice. Sally Seabrook, the high-spirited,
+the radiant, the sweetly wilful, the provoking,
+to concentrate herself upon this narrow theme&mdash;to reconquer
+the lost paradise of one vexed mortal soul!</p>
+<p>What did Jim&#8217;s life mean? It was only one in the
+millions coming and going, and every man must work
+out his own salvation. Why should she cramp her soul
+to this one issue, when the same soul could spend itself
+upon the greater motives and in the larger circle? A
+wide world of influence had opened up before her;
+position, power, adulation, could all have been hers, as
+John Appleton and Jim&#8217;s father had said. She might
+have moved in well-trodden ways, through gardens of
+pleasure, lived a life where all would be made easy, where
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_130' name='page_130'></a>130</span>
+she would be shielded at every turn, and her beauty
+would be flattered by luxury into a constant glow. She
+was not so primitive, so unintellectual, as not to have
+thought of this, else her decision would have had less
+importance; she would have been no more than an
+infatuated, emotional woman with a touch of second-class
+drama in her nature. She had thought of it all,
+and she had made her choice. The easier course was the
+course for meaner souls, and she had not one vein of thin
+blood nor a small idea in her whole nature. She had a
+heart and mind for great issues. She believed that Jim
+had a great brain, and would and could accomplish great
+things. She knew that he had in him the strain of
+hereditary instinct&mdash;his mother&#8217;s father had ended a
+brief life in a drunken duel on the Mississippi, and Jim&#8217;s
+boyhood had never had discipline or direction, or any
+strenuous order. He might never acquire order, and
+the power that order and habit and the daily iteration
+of necessary thoughts and acts bring; but the prospect
+did not appal her. She had taken the risk with her
+eyes wide open; had set her own life and happiness in
+the hazard. But Jim must be saved, must be what his
+talents, his genius, entitled him to be. And the long
+game must have the long thought.</p>
+<p>So, as they drew into the great Saskatchewan Valley,
+her hand in his, and hope in his eyes, and such a look
+of confidence and pride in her as brought back his old,
+strong beauty of face and smoothed the careworn lines
+of self-indulgence, she gave him his course: as a private
+he must join the North-West Mounted Police, the red-coated
+riders of the plains, and work his way up through
+every stage of responsibility, beginning at the foot of
+the ladder of humbleness and self-control. She believed
+that he would agree with her proposal; but her hands
+clasped his a little more firmly and solicitously&mdash;there
+was a faint, womanly fear at her heart&mdash;as she asked
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_131' name='page_131'></a>131</span>
+him if he would do it. The life meant more than occasional
+separation; it meant that there would be periods
+when she would not be with him; and there was great
+danger in that; but she knew that the risks must be
+taken, and he must not be wholly reliant on her presence
+for his moral strength.</p>
+<p>His face fell for a moment when she made the suggestion,
+but it cleared presently, and he said, with a
+dry laugh: &#8220;Well, I guess they must make me a sergeant
+pretty quick. I&#8217;m a colonel in the Kentucky
+Carbineers!&#8221;</p>
+<p>She laughed, too; then a moment afterward, womanlike,
+wondered if she was right, and was a little frightened.
+But that was only because she was not self-opinionated,
+and was anxious, more anxious than any woman in all
+the North.</p>
+<p>It happened as Jim said; he was made a sergeant at
+once&mdash;Sally managed that; for, when it came to the
+point, she saw the conditions in which the privates
+lived, and realized that Jim must be one of them, and
+clean out the stables, and groom his horse and the
+officers&#8217; horses, and fetch and carry, her heart failed
+her, and she thought that she was making her remedy
+needlessly heroical. So, she went to see the commissioner,
+who was on a tour of scrutiny on their arrival
+at the post, and, as better men than he had done in
+more knowing circles, he fell under her spell. If she
+had asked for a lieutenancy, he would probably have
+corrupted some member of Parliament into securing it
+for Jim.</p>
+<p>But Jim was made a sergeant, and the commissioner
+and the captain of the troop kept their eyes on him. So
+did other members of the troop who did not quite know
+their man, and attempted, figuratively, to pinch him
+here and there. They found that his actions were
+greater than his words, and both were in perfect harmony
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_132' name='page_132'></a>132</span>
+in the end, though his words often seemed pointless
+to their minds, until they understood that they had
+conveyed truths through a medium more like a heliograph
+than a telephone. By-and-by they began to
+understand his heliographing, and, when they did that,
+they began to swear by him, not at him.</p>
+<p>In time it was found that the troop never had a better
+disciplinarian than Jim. He knew when to shut his
+eyes, and when to keep them open. To non-essentials
+he kept his eyes shut; to essentials he kept them very
+wide open. There were some men of good birth from
+England and elsewhere among them, and these mostly
+understood him first. But they all understood Sally
+from the beginning, and after a little they were glad
+enough to be permitted to come, on occasion, to the
+five-roomed little house near the barracks, and hear
+her talk, then answer her questions, and, as men had
+done at Washington, open out their hearts to her. They
+noticed, however, that while she made them barley-water,
+and all kinds of soft drinks from citric acid,
+sarsaparilla, and the like, and had one special drink of
+her own invention, which she called cream-nectar, no
+spirits were to be had. They also noticed that Jim
+never drank a drop of liquor, and by-and-by, one way
+or another, they got a glimmer of the real truth, before
+it became known who he really was or anything of his
+story. And the interest in the two, and in Jim&#8217;s reformation,
+spread through the country, while Jim gained
+reputation as the smartest man in the force.</p>
+<p>They were on the outskirts of civilization&mdash;as Jim
+used to say, &#8220;One step ahead of the procession.&#8221; Jim&#8217;s
+duty was to guard the columns of settlement and progress,
+and to see that every man got his own rights and
+not more than his rights; that justice should be the
+plumb-line of march and settlement. His principle was
+embodied in certain words which he quoted once to
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_133' name='page_133'></a>133</span>
+Sally from the prophet Amos&mdash;&#8220;<i>And the Lord said
+unto me, Amos, what seest thou? And I said, A plumb-line</i>.&#8221;</p>
+<p>On the day that Jim became a lieutenant his family
+increased by one. It was a girl, and they called her
+Nancy, after Jim&#8217;s mother. It was the anniversary of
+their marriage, and, so far, Jim had won, with what
+fightings and strugglings and wrestlings of the spirit only
+Sally and himself knew. And she knew as well as he,
+and always saw the storm coming before it broke&mdash;a
+restlessness, then a moodiness, then a hungry, eager,
+helpless look, and afterward an agony of longing, a
+feverish desire to break away and get the thrilling thing
+which would still the demon within him.</p>
+<p>There had been moments when his doom seemed
+certain&mdash;he knew and she knew that if he once got
+drunk again he would fall never to rise. On one occasion,
+after a hard, long, hungry ride, he was half-mad
+with desire, but even as he seized the flask that was
+offered to him by his only enemy, the captain of B
+Troop, at the next station eastward, there came a sudden
+call to duty, two hundred Indians having gone upon
+the war-path. It saved him, it broke the spell. He
+had to mount and away, with the antidote and stimulant
+of responsibility driving him on.</p>
+<p>Another occasion was equally perilous to his safety.
+They had been idle for days in a hot week in summer,
+waiting for orders to return from the rail-head where
+they had gone to quell a riot, and where drink and
+hilarity were common. Suddenly&mdash;more suddenly than
+it had ever come, the demon of his thirst had Jim by
+the throat. Sergeant Sewell, of the gray-stubble head,
+who loved him more than his sour heart had loved
+anybody in all his life, was holding himself ready for
+the physical assault he must make upon his superior
+officer if he raised a glass to his lips, when salvation
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_134' name='page_134'></a>134</span>
+came once again. An accident had occurred far down
+on the railway line, and the operator of the telegraph-office
+had that very day been stricken down with
+pleurisy and pneumonia. In despair the manager had
+sent to Jim, eagerly hoping that he might help them,
+for the Riders of the Plains were a sort of court of
+appeal for every trouble in the Far North.</p>
+<p>Instantly Jim was in the saddle with his troop. Out
+of curiosity he had learned telegraphy when a boy, as
+he had learned many things, and, arrived at the scene
+of the accident, he sent messages and received them&mdash;by
+sound, not on paper as did the official operator, to
+the amazement and pride of the troop. Then, between
+caring for the injured in the accident, against the coming
+of the relief train, and nursing the sick operator through
+the dark moments of his dangerous illness, he passed a
+crisis of his own disease triumphantly; but not the last
+crisis.</p>
+<p>So the first and so the second and third years passed
+in safety.</p>
+<div class='ce'>
+<p>III</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>&#8220;Please, I want to go, too, Jim.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Jim swung round and caught the child up in his arms.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Say, how dare you call your father <i>Jim</i>&mdash;eh, tell
+me that?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s what mummy calls you&mdash;it&#8217;s pretty.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t call her &#8216;mummy&#8217; because you do, and you
+mustn&#8217;t call me <i>Jim</i> because she does&mdash;do you hear?&#8221;</p>
+<p>The whimsical face lowered a little, then the rare and
+beautiful dark blue eyes raised slowly, shaded by the
+long lashes, and the voice said, demurely, &#8220;Yes&mdash;Jim.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Nancy&mdash;Nancy,&#8221; said a voice from the corner in
+reproof, mingled with suppressed laughter. &#8220;Nancy,
+you mustn&#8217;t be saucy. You must say &#8216;father&#8217; to&mdash;&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_135' name='page_135'></a>135</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, mummy. I&#8217;ll say father to&mdash;Jim.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You imp&mdash;you imp of delight,&#8221; said Jim, as he
+strained the dainty little lass to his breast, while she
+appeared interested in a wave of his black hair, which
+she curled around her finger.</p>
+<p>Sally came forward with the little parcel of sandwiches
+she had been preparing, and put them in the saddlebags
+lying on a chair at the door, in readiness for the
+journey Jim was about to make. Her eyes were glistening,
+and her face had a heightened color. The three
+years which had passed since she married had touched
+her not at all to her disadvantage, rather to her profit.
+She looked not an hour older; motherhood had only
+added to her charm, lending it a delightful gravity.
+The prairie life had given a shining quality to her handsomeness,
+an air of depth and firmness, an exquisite
+health and clearness to the color in her cheeks. Her
+step was as light as Nancy&#8217;s, elastic and buoyant&mdash;a
+gliding motion which gave a sinuous grace to the movements
+of her body. There had also come into her eyes
+a vigilance such as deaf people possess, a sensitive observation
+imparting a deeper intelligence to the face.</p>
+<p>Here was the only chance by which you could guess
+the story of her life. Her eyes were like the ears of an
+anxious mother who can never sleep till every child is
+abed; whose sense is quick to hear the faintest footstep
+without or within; and who, as years go on, and her
+children grow older and older, must still lie awake
+hearkening for the late footstep on the stair. In Sally&#8217;s
+eyes was the story of the past three years: of love and
+temptation and struggle, of watchfulness and yearning
+and anxiety, of determination and an inviolable hope.
+Her eyes had a deeper look than that in Jim&#8217;s. Now,
+as she gazed at him, the maternal spirit rose up from
+the great well of protectiveness in her and engulfed
+both husband and child. There was always something
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_136' name='page_136'></a>136</span>
+of the maternal in her eyes when she looked at Jim.
+He did not see it&mdash;he saw only the wonderful blue, and
+the humor which had helped him over such difficult
+places these past three years. In steadying and strengthening
+Jim&#8217;s will, in developing him from his Southern
+indolence into Northern industry and sense of responsibility,
+John Appleton&#8217;s warnings had rung in Sally&#8217;s
+ears, and Freddy Hartzman&#8217;s forceful and high-minded
+personality had passed before her eyes with an appeal
+powerful and stimulating; but always she came to the
+same upland of serene faith and white-hearted resolve;
+and Jim became dearer and dearer.</p>
+<p>The baby had done much to brace her faith in the
+future and comfort her anxious present. The child had
+intelligence of a rare order. She would lie by the half-hour
+on the floor, turning over the leaves of a book without
+pictures, and, before she could speak, would read
+from the pages in a language all her own. She made a
+fairy world for herself, peopled by characters to whom
+she gave names, to whom she assigned curious attributes
+and qualities. They were as real to her as though flesh
+and blood, and she was never lonely, and never cried;
+and she had buried herself in her father&#8217;s heart. She
+had drawn to her the roughest men in the troop, and
+for old Sewell, the grim sergeant, she had a specially
+warm place.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You can love me if you like,&#8221; she had said to him
+at the very start, with the egotism of childhood; but
+made haste to add, &#8220;because I love you, Gri-Gri.&#8221; She
+called him Gri-Gri from the first, but they knew only
+long afterward that &#8220;gri-gri&#8221; meant &#8220;gray-gray,&#8221; to
+signify that she called him after his grizzled hairs.</p>
+<p>What she had been in the life-history of Sally and
+Jim they both knew. Jim regarded her with an almost
+superstitious feeling. Sally was his strength, his support,
+his inspiration, his bulwark of defence; Nancy
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_137' name='page_137'></a>137</span>
+was the charm he wore about his neck&mdash;his mascot, he
+called her. Once, when she was ill, he had suffered as
+he had never done before in his life. He could not
+sleep nor eat, and went about his duties like one in a
+dream. When his struggles against his enemy were
+fiercest, he kept saying over her name to himself, as
+though she could help him. Yet always it was Sally&#8217;s
+hand he held in the darkest hours, in his brutal moments;
+for in this fight between appetite and will there
+are moments when only the animal seems to exist, and
+the soul disappears in the glare and gloom of the primal
+emotions. Nancy he called his &#8220;lucky sixpence,&#8221; but
+he called Sally his &#8220;guinea-girl.&#8221;</p>
+<p>From first to last his whimsicality never deserted him.
+In his worst hours, some innate optimism and humor
+held him steady in his fight. It was not depression that
+possessed him at the worst, but the violence of an
+appetite most like a raging pain which men may endure
+with a smile upon their lips. He carried in his face the
+story of a conflict, the aftermath of bitter experience;
+and through all there pulsed the glow of experience.
+He had grown handsomer, and the graceful decision of
+his figure, the deliberate certainty of every action,
+heightened the force of a singular personality. As in
+the eyes of Sally, in his eyes was a long, reflective look
+which told of things overcome, and yet of dangers
+present. His lips smiled often, but the eyes said: &#8220;I
+have lived, I have seen, I have suffered, and I must
+suffer more. I have loved, I have been loved under
+the shadow of the sword. Happiness I have had, and
+golden hours, but not peace&mdash;never peace. My soul
+has need of peace.&#8221;</p>
+<p>In the greater, deeper experience of their lives, the
+more material side of existence had grown less and less
+to them. Their home was a model of simple comfort
+and some luxury, though Jim had insisted that Sally&#8217;s
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_138' name='page_138'></a>138</span>
+income should not be spent, except upon the child, and
+should be saved for the child, their home being kept on
+his pay and on the tiny income left by his mother.
+With the help of an Indian girl, and a half-breed for
+out-door work and fires and gardening, Sally had cared
+for the house herself. Ingenious and tasteful, with a
+gift for cooking and an educated hand, she had made
+her little home as pretty as their few possessions would
+permit. Refinement covered all, and three or four
+score books were like so many friends to comfort her
+when Jim was away; like kind and genial neighbors
+when he was at home. From Browning she had written
+down in her long, sliding handwriting, and hung up beneath
+Jim&#8217;s looking-glass, the heartening and inspiring
+words:</p>
+<table summary='poetry' style='margin:0 auto'><tr><td>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>&#8220;One who never turned his back, but marched breast</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.735835172921266em;'>forward,</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 1.47167034584253em;'>Never doubted clouds would break,</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.735835172921266em;'>triumph,</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.735835172921266em;'>Sleep to wake.&#8221;</p>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>They had lived above the sordid, and there was
+something in the nature of Jim&#8217;s life to help them to it.
+He belonged to a small handful of men who had control
+over an empire, with an individual responsibility
+and influence not contained in the scope of their commissions.
+It was a matter of moral force and character,
+and of uniform, symbolical only of the great power behind;
+of the long arm of the State; of the insistence of
+the law, which did not rely upon force alone, but on
+the certainty of its administration. In such conditions
+the smallest brain was bound to expand, to take on
+qualities of judgment and temperateness which would
+never be developed in ordinary circumstances. In the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_139' name='page_139'></a>139</span>
+case of Jim Templeton, who needed no stimulant to his
+intellect, but rather a steadying quality, a sense of proportion,
+the daily routine, the command of men, the
+diverse nature of his duties, half civil, half military, the
+personal appeals made on all sides by the people of the
+country for advice, for help, for settlement of disputes,
+for information which his well-instructed mind could
+give&mdash;all these modified the romantic brilliance of his
+intellect, made it and himself more human.</p>
+<p>It had not come to him all at once. His intellect at
+first stood in his way. His love of paradox, his deep
+observation, his insight&mdash;all made him inherently satirical,
+though not cruelly so; but satire had become pure
+whimsicality at last; and he came to see that, on the
+whole, the world was imperfect, but also, on the whole,
+was moving toward perfection rather than imperfection.
+He grew to realize that what seemed so often weakness
+in men was tendency and idiosyncrasy rather than evil.
+And in the end he thought better of himself as he came
+to think better of all others. For he had thought less
+of all the world because he had thought so little of himself.
+He had overestimated his own faults, had made
+them into crimes in his own eyes, and, observing things
+in others of similar import, had become almost a cynic
+in intellect, while in heart he had remained a boy.</p>
+<p>In all that he had changed a great deal. His heart
+was still the heart of a boy, but his intellect had sobered,
+softened, ripened&mdash;even in this secluded and seemingly
+unimportant life; as Sally had said and hoped it would.
+Sally&#8217;s conviction had been right. But the triumph was
+not yet achieved. She knew it. On occasion the tones
+of his voice told her, the look that came into his eyes
+proclaimed it to her, his feverishness and restlessness
+made it certain. How many a night had she thrown
+her arm over his shoulder, and sought his hand and held
+it while in the dark silence, wide-eyed, dry-lipped, and
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_140' name='page_140'></a>140</span>
+with a throat like fire he had held himself back from
+falling. There was liquor in the house&mdash;the fight would
+not have been a fight without it. She had determined
+that he should see his enemy and meet him in the plains
+and face him down; and he was never many feet away
+from his possible disaster. Yet for long over three years
+all had gone well. There was another year. Would he
+last out the course?</p>
+<p>At first the thought of the great stake for which she
+was playing in terms of currency, with the head of Jim&#8217;s
+father on every note, was much with her. The amazing
+nature of the offer of five millions of dollars stimulated
+her imagination, roused her; gold coins are counters in
+the game of success, signs and tokens. Money alone
+could not have lured her; but rather what it represented&mdash;power,
+width of action, freedom to help when the
+heart prompted, machinery for carrying out large plans,
+ability to surround with advantage those whom we love.
+So, at first, while yet the memories of Washington were
+much with her, the appeal of the millions was strong.
+The gallant nature of the contest and the great stake
+braced her; she felt the blood quicken in her pulse.</p>
+<p>But, all through, the other thing really mastered her:
+the fixed idea that Jim must be saved. As it deepened,
+the other life that she had lived became like the sports
+in which we shared when children, full of vivacious
+memory, shining with impulse and the stir of life, but
+not to be repeated&mdash;days and deeds outgrown. So the
+light of one idea shone in her face. Yet she was intensely
+human too; and if her eyes had not been set
+on the greater glory, the other thought might have
+vulgarized her mind, made her end and goal sordid&mdash;the
+descent of a nature rather than its ascension.</p>
+<p>When Nancy came, the lesser idea, the stake, took on
+a new importance, for now it seemed to her that it was
+her duty to secure for the child its rightful heritage.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_141' name='page_141'></a>141</span>
+Then Jim, too, appeared in a new light, as one who
+could never fulfil himself unless working through the
+natural channels of his birth, inheritance, and upbringing.
+Jim, drunken and unreliable, with broken will
+and fighting to find himself&mdash;the waste places were for
+him, until he was the master of his will and emotions.
+Once, however, secure in ability to control himself, with
+cleansed brain and purpose defined, the widest field
+would be still be too narrow for his talents&mdash;and the
+five, yes, the fifty millions of his father must be his.</p>
+<p>She had never repented having married Jim; but
+twice in those three years she had broken down and
+wept as though her heart would break. There were
+times when Jim&#8217;s nerves were shaken in his struggle
+against the unseen foe, and he had spoken to her querulously,
+almost sharply. Yet in her tears there was no
+reproach for him, rather for herself&mdash;the fear that she
+might lose her influence over him, that she could not
+keep him close to her heart, that he might drift away
+from her in the commonplaces and monotony of work
+and domestic life. Everything so depended on her
+being to him not only the one woman for whom he
+cared, but the woman without whom he could care for
+nothing else.</p>
+<p>&#8220;O, my God, give me his love,&#8221; she had prayed.
+&#8220;Let me keep it yet a little while. For his sake, not
+for my own, let me have the power to hold his love.
+Make my mind always quiet, and let me blow neither
+hot nor cold. Help me to keep my temper sweet and
+cheerful, so that he will find the room empty where I
+am not, and his footsteps will quicken when he comes
+to the door. Not for my sake, dear God, but for his,
+or my heart will break&mdash;it will break unless Thou dost
+help me to hold him. O Lord, keep me from tears;
+make my face happy that I may be goodly to his eyes,
+and forgive the selfishness of a poor woman who has
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_142' name='page_142'></a>142</span>
+little, and would keep her little and cherish it, for Christ&#8217;s
+sake.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Twice had she poured out her heart so, in the agony
+of her fear that she should lose favor in Jim&#8217;s sight&mdash;she
+did not know how alluring she was, in spite of the
+constant proofs offered her. She had had her will with
+all who came her way, from Governor to Indian brave.
+Once, in a journey they had made far north, soon after
+they came, she had stayed at a Hudson Bay Company&#8217;s
+post for some days, while there came news of
+restlessness among the Indians, because of lack of food,
+and Jim had gone farther north to steady the tribes,
+leaving her with the factor and his wife and a half-breed
+servant.</p>
+<p>While she and the factor&#8217;s wife were alone in the
+yard of the post one day, an Indian chief, Arrowhead,
+in war-paint and feathers, entered suddenly, brandishing
+a long knife. He had been drinking, and there was
+danger in his black eyes. With a sudden inspiration
+she came forward quickly, nodded and smiled to him,
+and then pointed to a grindstone standing in the corner
+of the yard. As she did so, she saw Indians crowding
+into the gate armed with knives, guns, bows, and
+arrows. She beckoned to Arrowhead, and he followed
+her to the grindstone. She poured some water on the
+wheel and began to turn it, nodding at the now impassive
+Indian to begin. Presently he nodded also,
+and put his knife on the stone. She kept turning
+steadily, singing to herself the while, as with anxiety
+she saw the Indians drawing closer and closer in from
+the gate. Faster and faster she turned, and at last the
+Indian lifted his knife from the stone. She reached
+out her hand with simulated interest, felt the edge with
+her thumb, the Indian looking darkly at her the while.
+Presently, after feeling the edge himself, he bent over
+the stone again, and she went on turning the wheel,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_143' name='page_143'></a>143</span>
+still singing softly. At last he stopped again and felt
+the edge. With a smile which showed her fine, white
+teeth, she said, &#8220;Is that for me?&#8221; making a significant
+sign across her throat at the same time.</p>
+<p>The old Indian looked at her grimly, then slowly
+shook his head in negation.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I go hunt Yellow Hawk to-night,&#8221; he said. &#8220;I go
+fight; I like marry you when I come back. <i>How</i>!&#8221; he
+said, and turned away toward the gate.</p>
+<p>Some of his braves held back, the blackness of death
+in their looks. He saw. &#8220;My knife is sharp,&#8221; he said.
+&#8220;The woman is brave. She shall live&mdash;go and fight
+Yellow Hawk, or starve and die.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Divining their misery, their hunger, and the savage
+thought that had come to them, Sally had whispered to
+the factor&#8217;s wife to bring food, and the woman now came
+running out with two baskets full, and returned for
+more. Sally ran forward among the Indians and put
+the food into their hands. With grunts of satisfaction
+they seized what she gave, and thrust it into their
+mouths, squatting on the ground. Arrowhead looked
+on stern and immobile, but when at last she and the
+factor&#8217;s wife sat down before the braves with confidence
+and an air of friendliness, he sat down also; yet, famished
+as he was, he would not touch the food. At last Sally,
+realizing his proud defiance of hunger, offered him a
+little lump of pemmican and a biscuit, and with a grunt
+he took it from her hands and ate it. Then, at his
+command, a fire was lit, the pipe of peace was brought
+out, and Sally and the factor&#8217;s wife touched their lips
+to it, and passed it on.</p>
+<p>So was a new treaty of peace and loyalty made with
+Arrowhead and his tribe by a woman without fear,
+whose life had seemed not worth a minute&#8217;s purchase;
+and, as the sun went down, Arrowhead and his men
+went forth to make war upon Yellow Hawk beside the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_144' name='page_144'></a>144</span>
+Nettigon River. In this wise had her influence spread
+in the land.</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+
+<p>Standing now with the child in his arms and his wife
+looking at him with a shining moisture of the eyes, Jim
+laughed outright. There came upon him a sudden
+sense of power, of aggressive force&mdash;the will to do.
+Sally understood, and came and laughingly grasped his
+arm.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, Jim,&#8221; she said, playfully, &#8220;you are getting
+muscles like steel. You hadn&#8217;t these when you were
+colonel of the Kentucky Carbineers!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I guess I need them now,&#8221; he said, smiling, and
+with the child still in his arms drew her to a window
+looking northward. As far as the eye could see, nothing
+but snow, like a blanket spread over the land.
+Here and there in the wide expanse a tree silhouetted
+against the sky, a tracery of eccentric beauty, and off in
+the far distance a solitary horseman riding toward the
+post&mdash;riding hard.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It was root, hog, or die with me, Sally,&#8221; he continued,
+&#8220;and I rooted.... I wonder&mdash;that fellow on the
+horse&mdash;I have a feeling about him. See, he&#8217;s been riding
+hard and long&mdash;you can tell by the way the horse drops
+his legs. He sags a bit himself.... But isn&#8217;t it beautiful,
+all that out there&mdash;the real quintessence of life.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The air was full of delicate particles of frost on which
+the sun sparkled, and though there was neither bird nor
+insect, nor animal, nor stir of leaf, nor swaying branch
+or waving grass, life palpitated in the air, energy sang
+its song in the footstep that crunched the frosty ground,
+that broke the crusted snow; it was in the delicate
+wind that stirred the flag by the barracks away to the
+left; hope smiled in the wide prospect over which the
+thrilling, bracing air trembled. Sally had chosen right.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You had a big thought when you brought me here,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_145' name='page_145'></a>145</span>
+guinea-girl,&#8221; he added, presently. &#8220;We are going to
+win out here&#8221;&mdash;he set the child down&mdash;&#8220;you and I and
+this lucky sixpence.&#8221; He took up his short fur coat.
+&#8220;Yes, we&#8217;ll win, honey.&#8221; Then, with a brooding look
+in his face, he added:</p>
+<table summary='poetry' style='margin:0 auto'><tr><td>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>&#8220;&#8216;The end comes as came the beginning,</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.735835172921266em;'>And shadows fail into the past;</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>And the goal, is it not worth the winning,</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.735835172921266em;'>If it brings us but home at the last?</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>While far through the pain of waste places</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.735835172921266em;'>We tread, &#8217;tis a blossoming rod</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>That drives us to grace from disgraces,</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.735835172921266em;'>From the fens to the gardens of God!&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>He paused reflectively. &#8220;It&#8217;s strange that this life
+up here makes you feel that you must live a bigger life
+still, that this is only the wide porch to the great labor-house&mdash;it
+makes you want to do things. Well, we&#8217;ve
+got to win the stake first,&#8221; he added, with a laugh.</p>
+<p>&#8220;The stake is a big one, Jim&mdash;bigger than you think.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You and her and me&mdash;me that was in the gutter.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What is the gutter, dadsie?&#8221; asked Nancy.</p>
+<p>&#8220;The gutter&mdash;the gutter is where the dish-water goes,
+midget,&#8221; he answered, with a dry laugh.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, I don&#8217;t think you&#8217;d like to be in the gutter,&#8221;
+Nancy said, solemnly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You have to get used to it first, miss,&#8221; answered
+Jim. Suddenly Sally laid both hands on Jim&#8217;s shoulders
+and looked him in the eyes. &#8220;You must win the stake,
+Jim. Think&mdash;now!&#8221;</p>
+<p>She laid a hand on the head of the child. He did
+not know that he was playing for a certain five millions,
+perhaps fifty millions, of dollars. She had never told
+him of his father&#8217;s offer. He was fighting only for
+salvation, for those he loved, for freedom. As they
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_146' name='page_146'></a>146</span>
+stood there, the conviction had come upon her that
+they had come to the last battle-field, that this journey
+which Jim now must take would decide all, would give
+them perfect peace or lifelong pain. The shadow of
+battle was over them, but he had no foreboding, no
+premonition; he had never been so full of spirits and life.</p>
+<p>To her adjuration Jim replied by burying his face in
+her golden hair, and he whispered: &#8220;Say, I&#8217;ve done
+near four years, my girl. I think I&#8217;m all right now&mdash;I
+think. This last six months, it&#8217;s been easy&mdash;pretty
+fairly easy.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Four months more, only four months more&mdash;God be
+good to us!&#8221; she said, with a little gasp.</p>
+<p>If he held out for four months more, the first great
+stage in their life-journey would be passed, the stake won.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I saw a woman get an awful fall once,&#8221; Jim said,
+suddenly. &#8220;Her bones were broken in twelve places,
+and there wasn&#8217;t a spot on her body without injury.
+They set and fixed up every broken bone except one. It
+was split down. They didn&#8217;t dare perform the operation;
+she couldn&#8217;t stand it. There was a limit to pain,
+and she had reached the boundary. Two years went
+by, and she got better every way, but inside her leg
+those broken pieces of bone were rubbing against each
+other. She tried to avoid the inevitable operation, but
+Nature said, &#8216;You must do it, or die in the end.&#8217; She
+yielded. Then came the long preparations for the operation.
+Her heart shrank, her mind got tortured. She&#8217;d
+suffered too much. She pulled herself together, and
+said, &#8216;I must conquer this shrinking body of mine by
+my will. How shall I do it?&#8217; Something within her
+said, &#8216;Think and do for others. Forget yourself.&#8217; And
+so, as they got her ready for her torture, she visited
+hospitals, agonized cripple as she was, and smiled and
+talked to the sick and broken, telling them of her own
+miseries endured and dangers faced, of the boundary
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_147' name='page_147'></a>147</span>
+of human suffering almost passed; and so she got her
+courage for her own trial. And she came out all right
+in the end. Well, that&#8217;s the way I&#8217;ve felt sometimes.
+But I&#8217;m ready for my operation now whenever it comes,
+and it&#8217;s coming, I know. Let it come when it must.&#8221;
+He smiled.</p>
+<p>There came a knock at the door, and presently Sewell
+entered. &#8220;The Commissioner wishes you to come over,
+sir,&#8221; he said.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I was just coming, Sewell. Is all ready for the start?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Everything&#8217;s ready, sir, but there&#8217;s to be a change of
+orders. Something&#8217;s happened&mdash;a bad job up in the
+Cree country, I think.&#8221;</p>
+<p>A few minutes later Jim was in the Commissioner&#8217;s
+office. The murder of a Hudson&#8217;s Bay Company&#8217;s man
+had been committed in the Cree country. The stranger
+whom Jim and Sally had seen riding across the plains
+had brought the news for thirty miles, word of the
+murder having been carried from point to point. The
+Commissioner was uncertain what to do, as the Crees
+were restless through want of food and the absence of
+game, and a force sent to capture Arrowhead, the chief
+who had committed the murder, might precipitate
+trouble. Jim solved the problem by offering to go
+alone and bring the chief into the post. It was two
+hundred miles to the Cree encampment, and the journey
+had its double dangers.</p>
+<p>Another officer was sent on the expedition for which
+Jim had been preparing, and he made ready to go upon
+his lonely duty. His wife did not know till three days
+after he had gone what the nature of his mission was.</p>
+<div class='ce'>
+<p>IV</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Jim made his journey in good weather with his
+faithful dogs alone, and came into the camp of the Crees
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_148' name='page_148'></a>148</span>
+armed with only a revolver. If he had gone with ten
+men, there would have been an instant mêlée, in which
+he would have lost his life. This is what the chief had
+expected, had prepared for; but Jim was more formidable
+alone, with power far behind him which could come
+with force and destroy the tribe, if resistance was offered,
+than with fifty men. His tongue had a gift of terse
+and picturesque speech, powerful with a people who had
+the gift of imagination. With five hundred men ready
+to turn him loose in the plains without dogs or food, he
+carried himself with a watchful coolness and complacent
+determination which got home to their minds with
+great force.</p>
+<p>For hours the struggle for the murderer went on, a
+struggle of mind over inferior mind and matter.</p>
+<p>Arrowhead was a chief whose will had never been
+crossed by his own people, and to master that will by a
+superior will, to hold back the destructive force which,
+to the ignorant minds of the braves, was only a natural
+force of defence, meant a task needing more than authority
+behind it. For the very fear of that authority
+put in motion was an incentive to present resistance&mdash;to
+stave off the day of trouble. The faces that surrounded
+Jim were thin with hunger, and the murder that
+had been committed by the chief had, as its origin, the
+foolish replies of the Hudson&#8217;s Bay Company&#8217;s man to
+their demand for supplies. Arrowhead had killed him
+with his own hand.</p>
+<p>But Jim Templeton was of a different calibre. Although
+he had not been told it, he realized that, indirectly,
+hunger was the cause of the crime and might
+easily become the cause of another; for their tempers
+were sharper even than their appetites. Upon this he
+played; upon this he made an exhortation to the chief.
+He assumed that Arrowhead had become violent because
+of his people&#8217;s straits, that Arrowhead&#8217;s heart
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_149' name='page_149'></a>149</span>
+yearned for his people and would make sacrifice for
+them. Now, if Arrowhead came quietly, he would see
+that supplies of food were sent at once, and that arrangements
+were made to meet the misery of their situation.
+Therefore, if Arrowhead came freely, he would have so
+much in his favor before his judges; if he would not
+come quietly, then he must be brought by force; and
+if they raised a hand to prevent it, then destruction
+would fall upon all&mdash;all save the women and children.
+The law must be obeyed. They might try to resist the
+law through him, but, if violence was shown, he would
+first kill Arrowhead, and then destruction would descend
+like a wind out of the north, darkness would swallow
+them, and their bones would cover the plains.</p>
+<p>As he ended his words a young brave sprang forward
+with hatchet raised. Jim&#8217;s revolver slipped down into
+his palm from his sleeve, and a bullet caught the brave
+in the lifted arm. The hatchet dropped to the ground.</p>
+<p>Then Jim&#8217;s eyes blazed, and he turned a look of
+anger on the chief, his face pale and hard, as he said:
+&#8220;The stream rises above the banks; come with me,
+chief, or all will drown. I am master, and I speak. Ye
+are hungry because ye are idle. Ye call the world
+yours, yet ye will not stoop to gather from the earth
+the fruits of the earth. Ye sit idle in the summer, and
+women and children die round you when winter comes.
+Because the game is gone, ye say. Must the world
+stand still because a handful of Crees need a hunting-ground?
+Must the makers of cities and the wonders
+of the earth, who fill the land with plenty&mdash;must they
+stand far off, because the Crees and their chief would
+wander over a million acres, for each man a million,
+when by a hundred&mdash;ay, by ten&mdash;each white man would
+live in plenty and make the land rejoice? See! Here
+is the truth. When the Great Spirit draws the game
+away so that the hunting is poor, ye sit down and fill
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_150' name='page_150'></a>150</span>
+your hearts with murder, and in the blackness of your
+thoughts kill my brother. Idle and shiftless and evil
+ye are, while the earth cries out to give you of its plenty,
+a great harvest from a little seed, if ye will but dig
+and plant, and plough and sow and reap, and lend
+your backs to toil. Now hear and heed. The end is
+come. For this once ye shall be fed&mdash;by the blood of
+my heart, ye shall be fed! And another year ye shall
+labor, and get the fruits of your labor, and not stand
+waiting, as it were, till a fish shall pass the spear or a
+stag water at your door, that ye may slay and eat.
+The end is come, ye idle men. O chief, hearken! One
+of your braves would have slain me, even as you slew
+my brother&mdash;he one, and you a thousand. Speak to
+your people as I have spoken, and then come and answer
+for the deed done by your hand. And this I say
+that right shall be done between men and men. Speak.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Jim had made his great effort, and not without avail.
+Arrowhead rose slowly, the cloud gone out of his face,
+and spoke to his people, bidding them wait in peace
+until food came, and appointing his son chief in his
+stead until his return.</p>
+<p>&#8220;The white man speaks truth, and I will go,&#8221; he
+said. &#8220;I shall return,&#8221; he continued, &#8220;if it be written
+so upon the leaves of the Tree of Life; and if it be not
+so written, I shall fade like a mist, and the tepees will
+know me not again. The days of my youth are spent,
+and my step no longer springs from the ground. I
+shuffle among the grass and the fallen leaves, and my
+eyes scarce know the stag from the doe. The white
+man is master&mdash;if he wills it we shall die; if he wills it
+we shall live. And this was ever so. It is in the tale
+of our people. One tribe ruled, and the others were
+their slaves. If it is written on the leaves of the Tree
+of Life that the white man rule us forever, then it shall
+be so, I have spoken. Now, behold, I go.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_151' name='page_151'></a>151</span></p>
+<p>Jim had conquered, and together they sped away
+with the dogs through the sweet-smelling spruce woods
+where every branch carried a cloth of white, and the
+only sound heard was the swish of a blanket of snow
+as it fell to the ground from the wide webs of green, or
+a twig snapped under the load it bore. Peace brooded
+in the silent and comforting forest, and Jim and Arrowhead,
+the Indian ever ahead, swung along, mile after
+mile, on their snow-shoes, emerging at last upon the
+wide, white prairie.</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+
+<p>A hundred miles of sun and fair weather, sleeping at
+night in the open in a trench dug in the snow, no fear
+in the thoughts of Jim, nor evil in the heart of the
+heathen man. There had been moments of watchfulness,
+of uncertainty, on Jim&#8217;s part, the first few hours of
+the first night after they left the Cree reservation; but
+the conviction speedily came to Jim that all was well;
+for the chief slept soundly from the moment he lay
+down in his blankets between the dogs. Then Jim
+went to sleep as in his own bed, and, waking, found
+Arrowhead lighting a fire from a little load of sticks
+from the sledges. And between murderer and captor
+there sprang up the companionship of the open road
+which brings all men to a certain land of faith and
+understanding, unless they are perverted and vile.
+There was no vileness in Arrowhead. There were no
+handcuffs on his hands, no sign of captivity; they two
+ate out of the same dish, drank from the same basin,
+broke from the same bread. The crime of Arrowhead,
+the gallows waiting for him, seemed very far away.
+They were only two silent travellers, sharing the same
+hardship, helping to give material comfort to each
+other&mdash;in the inevitable democracy of those far places,
+where small things are not great nor great things small;
+where into men&#8217;s hearts comes the knowledge of the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_152' name='page_152'></a>152</span>
+things that matter; where, from the wide, starry sky,
+from the august loneliness, and the soul of the life
+which has brooded there for untold generations, God
+teaches the values of this world and the next.</p>
+<p>One hundred miles of sun and fair weather, and then
+fifty miles of bitter, aching cold, with nights of peril
+from the increasing chill, so that Jim dared not sleep
+lest he should never wake again, but die benumbed and
+exhausted! Yet Arrowhead slept through all. Day
+after day so, and then ten miles of storm such as come
+only to the vast barrens of the northlands; and woe to
+the traveller upon whom the icy wind and the blinding
+snow descended! Woe came upon Jim Templeton and
+Arrowhead, the heathen.</p>
+<p>In the awful struggle between man and nature that
+followed, the captive became the leader. The craft of
+the plains, the inherent instinct, the feeling which was
+more than eyesight became the only hope. One whole
+day to cover ten miles&mdash;an endless path of agony, in
+which Jim went down again and again, but came up
+blinded by snow and drift, and cut as with lashes by
+the angry wind. At the end of the ten miles was a
+Hudson Bay Company&#8217;s post and safety; and through
+ten hours had the two struggled toward it, going off at
+tangents, circling on their own tracks; but the Indian,
+by an instinct as sure as the needle to the pole, getting
+the direction to the post again, in the moments of
+direst peril and uncertainty. To Jim the world became
+a sea of maddening forces which buffeted him; a whirlpool
+of fire in which his brain was tortured, his mind
+was shrivelled up; a vast army rending itself, each man
+against the other. It was a purgatory of music, broken
+by discords; and then at last&mdash;how sweet it all was,
+after the eternity of misery!&mdash;&#8220;Church bells and voices
+low,&#8221; and Sally singing to him, Nancy&#8217;s voice calling!
+Then, nothing but sleep&mdash;sleep, a sinking down millions
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_153' name='page_153'></a>153</span>
+of miles in an ether of drowsiness which thrilled him;
+and after&mdash;no more.</p>
+<p>None who has suffered up to the limit of what the
+human body and soul may bear can remember the
+history of those distracted moments when the struggle
+became one between the forces in nature and the forces
+in man, between agonized body and smothered mind,
+yet with the divine intelligence of the created being
+directing, even though subconsciously, the fight.</p>
+<p>How Arrowhead found the post in the mad storm he
+could never have told. Yet he found it, with Jim unconscious
+on the sledge and with limbs frozen, all the
+dogs gone but two, the leathers over the Indian&#8217;s shoulders
+as he fell against the gate of the post with a shrill
+cry that roused the factor and his people within, together
+with Sergeant Sewell, who had been sent out
+from headquarters to await Jim&#8217;s arrival there. It was
+Sewell&#8217;s hand which first felt Jim&#8217;s heart and pulse,
+and found that there was still life left, even before it
+could be done by the doctor from headquarters, who
+had come to visit a sick man at the post.</p>
+<p>For hours they worked with snow upon the frozen
+limbs to bring back life and consciousness. Consciousness
+came at last with half delirium, half understanding;
+as, emerging from the passing sleep of anæsthetics, the
+eye sees things and dimly registers them before the
+brain has set them in any relation to life or comprehension.</p>
+<p>But Jim was roused at last, and the doctor presently
+held to his lips a glass of brandy. Then from infinite distance
+Jim&#8217;s understanding returned; the mind emerged,
+but not wholly, from the chaos in which it was travelling.
+His eyes stood out in eagerness.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Brandy! brandy!&#8221; he said, hungrily.</p>
+<p>With an oath Sewell snatched the glass from the
+doctor&#8217;s hand, put it on the table, then stooped to Jim&#8217;s
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_154' name='page_154'></a>154</span>
+ear and said, hoarsely: &#8220;Remember&mdash;Nancy. For God&#8217;s
+sake, sir, don&#8217;t drink!&#8221;</p>
+<p>Jim&#8217;s head fell back, the fierce light went out of his
+eyes, the face became grayer and sharper. &#8220;Sally&mdash;Nancy&mdash;Nancy,&#8221;
+he whispered, and his fingers clutched
+vaguely at the quilt.</p>
+<p>&#8220;He must have brandy or he will die. The system
+is pumped out. He must be revived,&#8221; said the doctor.
+He reached again for the glass of spirits.</p>
+<p>Jim understood now. He was on the borderland
+between life and death, his feet were at the brink.
+&#8220;No&mdash;not&mdash;brandy, no!&#8221; he moaned. &#8220;Sally&mdash;Sally,
+kiss me,&#8221; he said, faintly, from the middle world in
+which he was.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Quick, the broth!&#8221; said Sewell to the factor, who
+had been preparing it. &#8220;Quick, while there&#8217;s a chance.&#8221;
+He stooped and called into Jim&#8217;s ear: &#8220;For the love of
+God, wake up, sir. They&#8217;re coming&mdash;they&#8217;re both coming&mdash;Nancy&#8217;s
+coming. They&#8217;ll soon be here.&#8221; What
+matter that he lied?&mdash;a life was at stake.</p>
+<p>Jim&#8217;s eyes opened again. The doctor was standing
+with the brandy in his hand. Half madly Jim reached
+out. &#8220;I must live until they come,&#8221; he cried; &#8220;the
+brandy&mdash;ah, give it! Give it&mdash;ah, no, no, I must not,&#8221;
+he added, gasping, his lips trembling, his hands shaking.</p>
+<p>Sewell held the broth to his lips. He drank a little,
+yet his face became grayer and grayer; a bluish tinge
+spread about his mouth.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Have you nothing else, sir?&#8221; asked Sewell, in despair.</p>
+<p>The doctor put down the brandy, went quickly to
+his medicine-case, dropped into a glass some liquid from
+a phial, came over again, and poured a little between
+the lips; then a little more, as Jim&#8217;s eyes opened again;
+and at last every drop in the glass trickled down the
+sinewy throat.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_155' name='page_155'></a>155</span></p>
+<p>Presently as they watched him the doctor said: &#8220;It
+will not do. He must have brandy. It has life&mdash;food&mdash;in
+it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Jim understood the words. He knew that if he
+drank the brandy the chances against his future were
+terrible. He had made his vow, and he must keep it.
+Yet the thirst was on him; his enemy had him by the
+throat again, was dragging him down. Though his
+body was so cold, his throat was on fire. But in the
+extremity of his strength his mind fought on&mdash;fought
+on, growing weaker every moment. He was having his
+last fight. They watched him with an aching anxiety,
+and there was anger in the doctor&#8217;s face. He had no
+patience with these forces arrayed against him.</p>
+<p>At last the doctor whispered to Sewell, &#8220;It&#8217;s no use;
+he must have the brandy, or he can&#8217;t live an hour.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Sewell weakened; the tears fell down his rough, hard
+cheeks. &#8220;It&#8217;ll ruin him&mdash;it&#8217;s ruin or death.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Trust a little more in God and in the man&#8217;s strength.
+Let us give him the chance. Force it down his throat&mdash;he&#8217;s
+not responsible,&#8221; said the physician, to whom saving
+life was more than all else.</p>
+<p>Suddenly there appeared at the bedside Arrowhead,
+gaunt and weak, his face swollen, the skin of it broken
+by the whips of storm.</p>
+<p>&#8220;He is my brother,&#8221; he said, and, stooping, laid both
+hands, which he had held before the fire for a long
+time, on Jim&#8217;s heart. &#8220;Take his feet, his hands, his
+legs, and his head in your hands,&#8221; he said to them all.
+&#8220;Life is in us; we will give him life.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He knelt down and kept both hands on Jim&#8217;s heart,
+while the others, even the doctor, awed by his act, did as
+they were bidden. &#8220;Shut your eyes. Let your life go
+into him. Think of him, and him alone. Now!&#8221; said
+Arrowhead, in a strange voice.</p>
+<p>He murmured, and continued murmuring, his body
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_156' name='page_156'></a>156</span>
+drawing closer and closer to Jim&#8217;s body, while in the
+deep silence, broken only by the chanting of his low,
+monotonous voice, the others pressed Jim&#8217;s hands and
+head and feet and legs&mdash;six men under the command
+of a heathen murderer.</p>
+<p>The minutes passed. The color came back to Jim&#8217;s
+face, the skin of his hands filled up, they ceased twitching,
+his pulse got stronger, his eyes opened with a new
+light in them.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m living, anyhow,&#8221; he said, at last, with a faint
+smile. &#8220;I&#8217;m hungry&mdash;broth, please.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The fight was won, and Arrowhead, the pagan murderer,
+drew over to the fire and crouched down beside
+it, his back to the bed, impassive and still. They
+brought him a bowl of broth and bread, which he drank
+slowly, and placed the empty bowl between his knees.
+He sat there through the night, though they tried to
+make him lie down.</p>
+<p>As the light came in at the windows, Sewell touched
+him on the shoulder and said, &#8220;He is sleeping now.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I hear my brother breathe,&#8221; answered Arrowhead.
+&#8220;He will live.&#8221;</p>
+<p>All night he had listened, and had heard Jim&#8217;s breath
+as only a man who has lived in waste places can hear.
+&#8220;He will live. What I take with one hand I give with
+the other.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He had taken the life of the factor; he had given Jim
+his life. And when he was tried three months later for
+murder, some one else said this for him, and the hearts
+of all, judge and jury, were so moved they knew not
+what to do.</p>
+<p>But Arrowhead was never sentenced, for, at the end
+of the first day&#8217;s trial, he lay down to sleep and never
+waked again. He was found the next morning still and
+cold, and there was clasped in his hands a little doll
+which Nancy had given him on one of her many visits
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_157' name='page_157'></a>157</span>
+to the prison during her father&#8217;s long illness. They
+found a piece of paper in his belt with these words in
+the Cree language: &#8220;With my hands on his heart at
+the post I gave him the life that was in me, saving but
+a little until now. Arrowhead, the chief, goes to find
+life again by the well at the root of the tree. <i>How!</i>&#8221;</p>
+<div class='ce'>
+<p>V</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>On the evening of the day that Arrowhead made his
+journey to &#8220;the well at the root of the tree&#8221; a stranger
+knocked at the door of Captain Templeton&#8217;s cottage;
+then, without awaiting admittance, entered.</p>
+<p>Jim was sitting with Nancy on his knee, her head
+against his shoulder, Sally at his side, her face alight
+with some inner joy. Before the knock came to the door
+Jim had just said, &#8220;Why do your eyes shine so, Sally?
+What&#8217;s in your mind?&#8221; She had been about to answer,
+to say to him what had been swelling her heart with
+pride, though she had not meant to tell him what he
+had forgotten&mdash;not till midnight. But the figure that
+entered the room, a big man with deep-set eyes, a man
+of power who had carried everything before him in the
+battle of life, answered for her.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You have won the stake, Jim,&#8221; he said, in a hoarse
+voice. &#8220;You and she have won the stake, and I&#8217;ve
+brought it&mdash;brought it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Before they could speak he placed in Sally&#8217;s hands
+bonds for five million dollars.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Jim&mdash;Jim, my son!&#8221; he burst out. Then, suddenly,
+he sank into a chair and, putting his head in his hands,
+sobbed aloud.</p>
+<p>&#8220;My God, but I&#8217;m proud of you&mdash;speak to me, Jim.
+You&#8217;ve broken me up.&#8221; He was ashamed of his tears,
+but he could not wipe them away.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_158' name='page_158'></a>158</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;Father, dear old man!&#8221; said Jim, and put his hands
+on the broad shoulders.</p>
+<p>Sally knelt down beside him, took both the great
+hands from the tear-stained face, and laid them against
+her cheek. But presently she put Nancy on his knees.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t like you to cry,&#8221; the child said, softly; &#8220;but
+to-day I cried too, &#8217;cause my Indian man is dead.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The old man could not speak, but he put his cheek
+down to hers. After a minute, &#8220;Oh, but she&#8217;s worth
+ten times that!&#8221; he said, as Sally came close to him
+with the bundle he had thrust into her hands.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What is it?&#8221; said Jim.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s five million dollars&mdash;for Nancy,&#8221; she said.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Five&mdash;million&mdash;what&mdash;?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;The stake, Jim,&#8221; said Sally. &#8220;If you did not drink
+for four years&mdash;never touched a drop&mdash;we were to have
+five million dollars.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You never told him, then&mdash;you never told him
+that?&#8221; asked the old man.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I wanted him to win without it,&#8221; she said. &#8220;If
+he won, he would be the stronger; if he lost, it would
+not be so hard for him to bear.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The old man drew her down and kissed her cheek.
+He chuckled, though the tears were still in his eyes.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You are a wonder&mdash;the tenth wonder of the world!&#8221;
+he blurted.</p>
+<p>Jim stood staring at the bundle in Nancy&#8217;s hands.
+&#8220;Five millions&mdash;five million dollars!&#8221; he kept saying to
+himself.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I said Nancy&#8217;s worth ten times that, Jim.&#8221; The old
+man caught his hand and pressed it. &#8220;But it was a
+damned near thing, I tell you,&#8221; he added. &#8220;They tried
+to break me and my railways and my bank. I had to
+fight the combination, and there was one day when I
+hadn&#8217;t that five million dollars there, nor five. Jim,
+they tried to break the old man! And if they&#8217;d broken
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_159' name='page_159'></a>159</span>
+me, they&#8217;d have made me out a scoundrel to her&mdash;to
+this wife of yours who risked everything for both of us&mdash;for
+both of us, Jim; for she&#8217;d given up the world to save
+you, and she was playing like a soul in hell for heaven.
+If they&#8217;d broken me, I&#8217;d never have lifted my head
+again. When things were at their worst I played to
+save that five millions&mdash;her stake and mine; I played
+for that. I fought for it as a man fights his way out
+of a burning house. And I won&mdash;I won. And it was
+by fighting for that five millions I saved fifty&mdash;fifty
+millions, son. They didn&#8217;t break the old man, Jim.
+They didn&#8217;t break him&mdash;not much.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;There are giants in the world still,&#8221; said Jim, his
+own eyes full. He knew now his father and himself,
+and he knew the meaning of all the bitter and misspent
+life of the old days. He and his father were
+on a level of understanding at last.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Are you a giant?&#8221; asked Nancy, peering up into her
+grandfather&#8217;s eyes.</p>
+<p>The old man laughed, then sighed. &#8220;Perhaps I was
+once, more or less, my dear,&#8221; saying to her what he
+meant for the other two&mdash;&#8220;perhaps I was; but I&#8217;ve
+finished. I&#8217;m through. I&#8217;ve had my last fight.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He looked at his son. &#8220;I pass the game on to you,
+Jim. You can do it. I knew you could do it as the
+reports came in this year. I&#8217;ve had a detective up here
+for four years. I had to do it. It was the devil in
+me. You&#8217;ve got to carry on the game, Jim; I&#8217;m done.
+I&#8217;ll stay home and potter about. I want to go back to
+Kentucky, and build up the old place, and take care of
+it a bit&mdash;your mother always loved it. I&#8217;d like to have
+it as it was when she was there long ago. But I&#8217;ll be
+ready to help you when I&#8217;m wanted, understand.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You want me to run things&mdash;your colossal schemes?
+You think&mdash;?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t think. I&#8217;m old enough to know,&#8221;</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<a name='WHEN_THE_SWALLOWS_HOMEWARD_FLY' id='WHEN_THE_SWALLOWS_HOMEWARD_FLY'></a>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_160' name='page_160'></a>160</span>
+<h2>WHEN THE SWALLOWS HOMEWARD FLY</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>The arrogant Sun had stalked away into the evening,
+trailing behind him banners of gold and crimson,
+and a swift twilight was streaming over the land.
+As the sun passed, the eyes of two men on a high hill
+followed it, and the look of one was like a light in a
+window to a lost traveller. It had in it the sense of
+home and the tale of a journey done. Such a journey
+this man had made as few have ever attempted and
+fewer accomplished. To the farthermost regions of
+snow and ice, where the shoulder of a continent juts
+out into the northwestern arctic seas, he had travelled
+on foot and alone, save for his dogs, and for Indian
+guides who now and then shepherded him from point
+to point. The vast ice-hummocks had been his housing;
+pemmican, the raw flesh of fish, and even the fat and
+oil of seals had been his food. Ever and ever through
+long months the everlasting white glitter of the snow
+and ice, ever and ever the cold stars, the cloudless sky,
+the moon at full, or swung like a white sickle in the sky
+to warn him that his life must be mown like grass. At
+night to sleep in a bag of fur and wool, by day the
+steely wind, or the air shaking with a filmy powder of
+frost; while the illimitably distant sun made the tiny
+flakes sparkle like silver&mdash;a <i>poudre</i> day, when the face
+and hands are most like to be frozen, and all so still and
+white and passionless, yet aching with energy. Hundreds
+upon hundreds of miles that endless trail went
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_161' name='page_161'></a>161</span>
+winding to the farthest Northwest. No human being
+had ever trod its lengths before, though Indians or a
+stray Hudson&#8217;s Bay Company man had made journeys
+over part of it during the years that have passed since
+Prince Rupert sent his adventurers to dot that northern
+land with posts and forts and trace fine arteries of civilization
+through the wastes.</p>
+<p>Where this man had gone none other had been of white
+men from the western lands, though from across the
+wide Pacific, from the Eastern world, adventurers and
+exiles had once visited what is now known as the Yukon
+Valley. So this man, browsing in the library of his
+grandfather, an Eastern scholar, had come to know;
+and for love of adventure, and because of the tale of a
+valley of gold and treasure to be had, and because he
+had been ruined by bad investments, he had made a
+journey like none ever essayed before. And on his
+way up to those regions, where the veil before the face
+of God is very thin and fine, and men&#8217;s hearts glow
+within them, where there was no oasis save the unguessed
+deposit of a great human dream that his soul
+could feel, the face of a girl had haunted him. Her
+voice&mdash;so sweet a voice that it rang like muffled silver
+in his ears, till, in the everlasting theatre of the pole,
+the stars seemed to repeat it through millions of echoing
+hills, growing softer and softer as the frost hushed it
+to his ears&mdash;had said to him late and early, &#8220;You must
+come back with the swallows.&#8221; Then she had sung a
+song which had been like a fire in his heart, not alone
+because of the words of it, but because of the soul in her
+voice, and it had lain like a coverlet on his heart to
+keep it warm:</p>
+<table summary='poetry' style='margin:0 auto'><tr><td>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>&#8220;Adieu! The sun goes awearily down,</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>The mist creeps up o&#8217;er the sleepy town,</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>The white sail bends to the shuddering mere,</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>And the reapers have reaped and the night is here.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_162' name='page_162'></a>162</span></div>
+<br />
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>&#8220;Adieu! And the years are a broken song,</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>The right grows weak in the strife with wrong,</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>The lilies of love have a crimson stain,</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>And the old days never will come again.</p>
+<br />
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>&#8220;Adieu! Where the mountains afar are dim</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>&#8217;Neath the tremulous tread of the seraphim,</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>Shall not our querulous hearts prevail,</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>That have prayed for the peace of the Holy Grail?</p>
+<br />
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>&#8220;Adieu! Sometime shall the veil between</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>The things that are and that might have been</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>Be folded back for our eyes to see,</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>And the meaning of all shall be clear to me.&#8221;</p>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>It had been but an acquaintance of five days while
+he fitted out for his expedition, but in this brief time
+it had sunk deep into his mind that life was now a thing
+to cherish, and that he must indeed come back; though
+he had left England caring little if, in the peril and
+danger of his quest, he ever returned. He had been
+indifferent to his fate till he came to the Valley of the
+Saskatchewan, to the town lying at the foot of the
+maple hill beside the great northern stream, and saw
+the girl whose life was knit with the far North, whose
+mother&#8217;s heart was buried in the great wastes where
+Sir John Franklin&#8217;s expedition was lost; for her husband
+had been one of the ill-fated if not unhappy band
+of lovers of that civilization for which they had risked
+all and lost all save immortality. Hither the two had
+come after he had been cast away on the icy plains, and,
+as the settlement had crept north, had gone north with
+it, always on the outer edge of house and field, ever
+stepping northward. Here, with small income but
+high hearts and quiet souls, they had lived and labored.</p>
+<p>And when this newcomer from the old land set his
+face northward to an unknown destination, the two
+women had prayed as the mother did in the old days
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_163' name='page_163'></a>163</span>
+when the daughter was but a babe at her knee, and it
+was not yet certain that Franklin and his men had been
+cast away forever. Something in him&mdash;his great height,
+his strength of body, his clear, meditative eyes, his brave
+laugh&mdash;reminded her of him, her husband, who, like
+Sir Humphrey Gilbert, had said that it mattered little
+where men did their duty, since God was always near
+to take or leave as it was His will. When Bickersteth
+went, it was as though one they had known all their
+lives had passed; and the woman knew also that a new
+thought had been sown in her daughter&#8217;s mind, a new
+door opened in her heart.</p>
+<p>And he had returned. He was now looking down
+into the valley where the village lay. Far, far over,
+two days&#8217; march away, he could see the cluster of
+houses, and the glow of the sun on the tin spire of
+the little mission church where he had heard the girl
+and her mother sing, till the hearts of all were swept
+by feeling and ravished by the desire for &#8220;the peace
+of the Holy Grail.&#8221; The village was, in truth, but a
+day&#8217;s march away from him, but he was not alone,
+and the journey could not be hastened. Beside him,
+his eyes also upon the sunset and the village, was a
+man in a costume half-trapper, half-Indian, with bushy
+gray beard and massive frame, and a distant, sorrowful
+look, like that of one whose soul was tuned to past
+suffering. As he sat, his head sunk on his breast, his
+elbow resting on a stump of pine&mdash;the token of a progressive
+civilization&mdash;his chin upon his hand, he looked
+like the figure of Moses made immortal by Michael
+Angelo. But his strength was not like that of the man
+beside him, who was thirty years younger. When he
+walked, it was as one who had no destination, who had
+no haven toward which to travel, who journeyed as one
+to whom the world is a wilderness, and one tent or one
+hut is the same as another, and none is home.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_164' name='page_164'></a>164</span></p>
+<p>Like two ships meeting hull to hull on the wide seas,
+where a few miles of water will hide them from each
+other, whose ports are thousands of miles apart, whose
+courses are not the same, they two had met, the elder
+man, sick and worn and near to death, in the poor
+hospitality of an Indian&#8217;s tepee. John Bickersteth had
+nursed the old man back to strength, and had brought
+him southward with him&mdash;a silent companion, who
+spoke in monosyllables, who had no conversation at all
+of the past and little of the present, but who was a
+woodsman and an arctic traveller of the most expert
+kind, who knew by instinct where the best places for
+shelter and for sleeping might be found, who never complained,
+and was wonderful with the dogs. Close as
+their association was, Bickersteth had felt concerning
+the other that his real self was in some other sphere or
+place toward which his mind was always turning, as
+though to bring it back.</p>
+<p>Again and again had Bickersteth tried to get the
+old man to speak about the past, but he had been met
+by a dumb sort of look, a straining to understand.
+Once or twice the old man had taken his hands in both
+of his own and gazed with painful eagerness into his
+face, as though trying to remember or to comprehend
+something that eluded him. Upon these occasions the
+old man&#8217;s eyes dropped tears in an apathetic quiet,
+which tortured Bickersteth beyond bearing. Just such
+a look he had seen in the eyes of a favorite dog when he
+had performed an operation on it to save its life&mdash;a
+reproachful, non-comprehending, loving gaze.</p>
+<p>Bickersteth understood a little of the Chinook language,
+which is familiar to most Indian tribes, and he
+had learned that the Indians knew nothing exact concerning
+the old man; but rumors had passed from tribe
+to tribe that this white man had lived forever in the
+farthest North among the arctic tribes, and that he
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_165' name='page_165'></a>165</span>
+passed from people to people, disappearing into the
+untenanted wilderness, but reappearing again among
+stranger tribes, never resting, and as one always seeking
+what he could not find.</p>
+<p>One thing had helped this old man in all his travels
+and sojourning. He had, as it seemed to the native
+people, a gift of the hands; for when they were sick
+a few moments&#8217; manipulation of his huge, quiet fingers
+vanquished pain. A few herbs he gave in tincture, and
+these also were praised; but it was a legend that when
+he was persuaded to lay on his hands and close his
+eyes, and with his fingers to &#8220;search for the pain and
+find it, and kill it,&#8221; he always prevailed. They believed
+that, though his body was on earth, his soul was with
+Manitou, and that it was his soul which came into him
+again, and gave the Great Spirit&#8217;s healing to the fingers.
+This had been the man&#8217;s safety through how many
+years&mdash;or how many generations&mdash;they did not know;
+for legends regarding the pilgrim had grown and were
+fostered by the medicine-men, who, by giving him great
+age and supernatural power, could, with more self-respect,
+apologize for their own incapacity.</p>
+<p>So the years&mdash;how many it was impossible to tell,
+since he did not know or would not say&mdash;had gone
+on; and now, after ceaseless wandering, his face was
+turned toward that civilization out of which he had
+come so long ago&mdash;or was it so long ago?&mdash;one generation,
+or two, or ten? It seemed to Bickersteth at times
+as though it were ten, so strange, so unworldly was his
+companion. At first he thought that the man remembered
+more than he would appear to acknowledge, but
+he found that after a day or two everything that happened
+as they journeyed was also forgotten.</p>
+<p>It was only visible things, or sounds, that appeared
+to open the doors of memory of the most recent happenings.
+These happenings, if not varied, were of
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_166' name='page_166'></a>166</span>
+critical moment, since, passing down from the land of
+unchanging ice and snow, they had come into March
+and April storms and the perils of the rapids and the
+swollen floods of May. Now, in June, two years and a
+month since Bickersteth had gone into the wilds, they
+looked down upon the goal of one at least&mdash;of the younger
+man who had triumphed in his quest up in these wilds
+abandoned centuries ago.</p>
+<p>With the joyous thought in his heart that he had discovered
+anew one of the greatest gold-fields of the world,
+that a journey unparalleled had been accomplished, he
+turned toward his ancient companion, and a feeling of
+pity and human love enlarged within him. He, John
+Bickersteth, was going into a world again where&mdash;as he
+believed&mdash;a happy fate awaited him; but what of this
+old man? He had brought him out of the wilds, out
+of the unknown&mdash;was he only taking him into the unknown
+again? Were there friends, any friends anywhere
+in the world, waiting for him? He called himself by no
+name, he said he had no name. Whence came he? Of
+whom? Whither was he wending now? Bickersteth had
+thought of the problem often, and he had no answer for
+it save that he must be taken care of, if not by others,
+then by himself; for the old man had saved him from
+drowning; had also saved him from an awful death on
+a March day when he fell into a great hole and was
+knocked insensible in the drifting snow; had saved him
+from brooding on himself&mdash;the beginning of madness&mdash;by
+compelling him to think for another. And sometimes,
+as he looked at the old man, his imagination
+had caught the spirit of the legend of the Indians, and
+he had cried out, &#8220;O soul, come back and give him
+memory&mdash;give him back his memory, Manitou the
+mighty!&#8221;</p>
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<a name='linki_8' id='linki_8'></a>
+<img src='images/p166.jpg' alt='' title='' style='width: 391px; height: 535px;' /><br />
+<p class='caption' style='margin: 0 auto; text-align:center;width: 391px;'>
+THE OLD MAN SHOOK HIS HEAD. THOUGH NOT WITH UNDERSTANDING<br />
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_167' name='page_167'></a>167</span></div>
+<p>Looking on the old man now, an impulse seized him.
+&#8220;Dear old man,&#8221; he said, speaking as one speaks to a
+child that cannot understand, &#8220;you shall never want
+while I have a penny, or have head or hands to work.
+But is there no one that you care for or that cares for
+you, that you remember, or that remembers you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>The old man shook his head, though not with understanding,
+and he laid a hand on the young man&#8217;s shoulder,
+and whispered:</p>
+<p>&#8220;Once it was always snow, but now it is green, the
+land. I have seen it&mdash;I have seen it once.&#8221; His shaggy
+eyebrows gathered over, his eyes searched, searched the
+face of John Bickersteth. &#8220;Once, so long ago&mdash;I cannot
+think,&#8221; he added, helplessly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Dear old man,&#8221; Bickersteth said, gently, knowing
+he would not wholly comprehend, &#8220;I am going to ask her&mdash;Alice&mdash;to
+marry me, and if she does, she will help
+look after you, too. Neither of us would have been
+here without the other, dear old man, and we shall not
+be separated. Whoever you are, you are a gentleman,
+and you might have been my father or hers&mdash;or hers.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He stopped suddenly. A thought had flashed through
+his mind, a thought which stunned him, which passed
+like some powerful current through his veins, shocked
+him, then gave him a palpitating life. It was a wild
+thought, but yet why not?&mdash;why not? There was the
+chance, the faint, far-off chance. He caught the old
+man by the shoulders and looked him in the eyes,
+scanned his features, pushed back the hair from the
+rugged forehead.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Dear old man,&#8221; he said, his voice shaking, &#8220;do you
+know what I&#8217;m thinking? I&#8217;m thinking that you may
+be of those who went out to the Arctic Sea with Sir John
+Franklin&mdash;with Sir John Franklin, you understand.
+Did you know Sir John Franklin?&mdash;is it true, dear old
+boy?&mdash;is it true? Are you one that has lived to tell the
+tale? Did you know Sir John Franklin?&mdash;is it&mdash;tell me,
+is it true?&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_168' name='page_168'></a>168</span></p>
+<p>He let go the old man&#8217;s shoulders, for over the face
+of the other there had passed a change. It was strained
+and tense. The hands were outstretched, the eyes were
+staring straight into the west and the coming night.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It is&mdash;it is&mdash;that&#8217;s it!&#8221; cried Bickersteth. &#8220;That&#8217;s
+it&mdash;oh, love o&#8217; God, that&#8217;s it! Sir John Franklin&mdash;Sir
+John Franklin, and all the brave lads that died up there!
+You remember the ship&mdash;the Arctic Sea&mdash;the ice-fields,
+and Franklin&mdash;you remember him? Dear old man, say
+you remember Franklin?&#8221;</p>
+<p>The thing had seized him. Conviction was upon him,
+and he watched the other&#8217;s anguished face with anguish
+and excitement in his own. But&mdash;but it might be, it
+might be her father&mdash;the eyes, the forehead are like
+hers; the hands, the long hands, the pointed fingers.
+&#8220;Dear old man, did you have a wife and child, and
+were they both called Alice&mdash;do you remember? Franklin!&mdash;Alice!
+Do you remember?&#8221;</p>
+<p>The old man got slowly to his feet, his arms outstretched,
+the look in his face changing, understanding,
+struggling for its place, memory fighting for its own,
+the soul contending for its mastery.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Franklin&mdash;Alice&mdash;the snow,&#8221; he said, confusedly,
+and sank down.</p>
+<p>&#8220;God have mercy!&#8221; cried Bickersteth, as he caught
+the swaying body and laid it upon the ground. &#8220;He
+was there&mdash;almost.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He settled the old man against the great pine stump
+and chafed his hands. &#8220;Man, dear man, if you belong
+to her&mdash;if you do, can&#8217;t you see what it will mean to
+me? She can&#8217;t say no to me then. But if it&#8217;s true,
+you&#8217;ll belong to England and to all the world, too, and
+you&#8217;ll have fame everlasting. I&#8217;ll have gold for her and
+for you, and for your Alice, too, dear old man. Wake
+up now and remember if you are Dyke Allingham, who
+went with Franklin to the silent seas of the Pole. If it&#8217;s
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_169' name='page_169'></a>169</span>
+you, really you, what wonder you lost your memory!
+You saw them all die, Franklin and all, die there in the
+snow, with all the white world round them. If you were
+there, what a travel you have had, what strange things
+you have seen! Where the world is loneliest, God lives
+most. If you get close to the heart of things, it&#8217;s no
+marvel you forgot what you were, or where you came
+from; because it didn&#8217;t matter; you knew that you were
+only one of thousands of millions who have come and
+gone, that make up the soul of things, that make the
+pulses of the universe beat. That&#8217;s it, dear old man.
+The universe would die, if it weren&#8217;t for the souls that
+leave this world and fill it with life. Wake up! Wake
+up, Allingham, and tell us where you&#8217;ve been, and what
+you&#8217;ve seen.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He did not labor in vain. Slowly consciousness came
+back, and the gray eyes opened wide, the lips smiled
+faintly under the bushy beard; but Bickersteth saw that
+the look in the face was much the same as it had been
+before. The struggle had been too great, the fight for
+the other lost self had exhausted him, mind and body,
+and only a deep obliquity and a great weariness filled
+the countenance. He had come back to the verge, he
+had almost again discovered himself; but the opening
+door had shut fast suddenly, and he was back again in
+the night, the incompanionable night of forgetfulness.</p>
+<p>Bickersteth saw that the travail and strife had drained
+life and energy, and that he must not press the mind
+and vitality of this exile of time and the unknown too
+far. He felt that when the next test came the old man
+would either break completely, and sink down into another
+and everlasting forgetfulness, or tear away forever
+the veil between himself and his past, and emerge into
+a long-lost life. His strength must be shepherded, and
+he must be kept quiet and undisturbed until they came
+to the town yonder in the valley, over which the night
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_170' name='page_170'></a>170</span>
+was slowly settling down. There two women waited,
+the two Alices, from both of whom had gone lovers into
+the North. The daughter was living over again in her
+young love the pangs of suspense through which her
+mother had passed. Two years since Bickersteth had
+gone, and not a sign!</p>
+<p>Yet, if the girl had looked from her bedroom window,
+this Friday night, she would have seen on the far hill a
+sign; for there burned a fire beside which sat two travellers
+who had come from the uttermost limits of snow.
+But as the fire burned&mdash;a beacon to her heart if she had
+but known it&mdash;she went to her bed, the words of a song
+she had sung at choir-practice with tears in her voice
+and in her heart ringing in her ears. A concert was to be
+held after the service on the coming Sunday night, at
+which there was to be a collection for funds to build
+another mission-house a hundred miles farther north,
+and she had been practising music she was to sing. Her
+mother had been an amateur singer of great power, and
+she was renewing her mother&#8217;s gift in a voice behind
+which lay a hidden sorrow. As she cried herself to sleep
+the words of the song which had moved her kept ringing
+in her ears and echoing in her heart:</p>
+<table summary='poetry' style='margin:0 auto'><tr><td>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>&#8220;When the swallows homeward fly,</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>And the roses&#8217; bloom is o&#8217;er&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>But her mother, looking out into the night, saw on
+the far hill the fire, burning like a star, where she had
+never seen a fire set before, and a hope shot into her
+heart for her daughter&mdash;a hope that had flamed up and
+died down so often during the past year. Yet she had
+fanned with heartening words every such glimmer of
+hope when it came, and now she went to bed saying,
+&#8220;Perhaps he will come to-morrow.&#8221; In her mind, too,
+rang the words of the song which had ravished her ears
+that night, the song she had sung the night before her
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_171' name='page_171'></a>171</span>
+own husband, Dyke Allingham, had gone with Franklin
+to the Polar seas:</p>
+<table summary='poetry' style='margin:0 auto'><tr><td>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>&#8220;When the swallows homeward fly&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>As she and her daughter entered the little church on
+the Sunday evening, two men came over the prairie
+slowly toward the town, and both raised their heads to
+the sound of the church-bell calling to prayer. In the
+eyes of the younger man there was a look which has
+come to many in this world returning from hard enterprise
+and great dangers, to the familiar streets, the
+friendly faces of men of their kin and clan&mdash;to the lights
+of home.</p>
+<p>The face of the older man, however, had another look.
+It was such a look as is seldom seen in the faces of men,
+for it showed the struggle of a soul to regain its identity.
+The words which the old man had uttered in response
+to Bickersteth&#8217;s appeal before he fainted away&mdash;&#8220;Franklin&mdash;Alice&mdash;the
+snow&#8221;&mdash;had showed that he was on the
+verge; the bells of the church pealing in the summer
+air brought him near it once again. How many years
+had gone since he had heard church-bells? Bickersteth,
+gazing at him in eager scrutiny, wondered if, after all,
+he might be mistaken about him. But no, this man
+had never been born and bred in the Far North. His was
+a type which belonged to the civilization from which he
+himself had come. There would soon be the test of it
+all. Yet he shuddered, too, to think what might happen
+if it was all true, and discovery or reunion should
+shake to the centre the very life of the two long-parted
+ones.</p>
+<p>He saw the look of perplexed pain and joy at once in
+the face of the old man, but he said nothing, and he was
+almost glad when the bell stopped. The old man turned
+to him.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_172' name='page_172'></a>172</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;What is it?&#8221; he said. &#8220;I remember&mdash;&#8221; but he
+stopped suddenly, shaking his head.</p>
+<p>An hour later, cleared of the dust of travel, the two
+walked slowly toward the church from the little tavern
+where they were lodged. The service was now over,
+but the concert had begun. The church was full, and
+there were people in the porch; but these made way for
+the two strangers; and, as Bickersteth was recognized
+by two or three present, place was found for them.
+Inside, the old man stared round him in a confused and
+troubled way, but his motions were quiet and abstracted,
+and he looked like some old viking, his workaday life
+done, come to pray ere he went hence forever. They
+had entered in a pause in the concert, but now two
+ladies came forward to the chancel steps, and one with
+her hands clasped before her, began to sing:</p>
+<table summary='poetry' style='margin:0 auto'><tr><td>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>&#8220;When the swallows homeward fly,</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.735835172921266em;'>And the roses&#8217; bloom is o&#8217;er,</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>And the nightingale&#8217;s sweet song</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.735835172921266em;'>In the woods is heard no more&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>It was Alice&mdash;Alice the daughter&mdash;and presently the
+mother, the other Alice, joined in the refrain. At sight
+of them Bickersteth&#8217;s eyes had filled, not with tears, but
+with a cloud of feeling, so that he went blind. There
+she was, the girl he loved. Her voice was ringing in his
+ears. In his own joy for one instant he had forgotten
+the old man beside him and the great test that was now
+upon him. He turned quickly, however, as the old man
+got to his feet. For an instant the lost exile of the
+North stood as though transfixed. The blood slowly
+drained from his face, and in his eyes was an agony of
+struggle and desire. For a moment an awful confusion
+had the mastery, and then suddenly a clear light broke
+into his eyes, his face flushed healthily and shone, his
+arms went up, and there rang in his ears the words:
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_173' name='page_173'></a>173</span></p>
+<table summary='poetry' style='margin:0 auto'><tr><td>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>&#8220;Then I think, with bitter pain,</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>Shall we ever meet again</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>When the swallows homeward fly?&#8221;</p>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>&#8220;Alice!&mdash;Alice!&#8221; he called, and tottered forward up
+the aisle, followed by John Bickersteth.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Alice, I have come back!&#8221; he cried again.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<a name='GEORGE_S_WIFE' id='GEORGE_S_WIFE'></a>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_174' name='page_174'></a>174</span>
+<h2>GEORGE&#8217;S WIFE</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>&#8220;She&#8217;s come, and she can go back. No one asked
+her, no one wants her, and she&#8217;s got no rights here.
+She thinks she&#8217;ll come it over me, but she&#8217;ll get nothing,
+and there&#8217;s no place for her here.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The old, gray-bearded man, gnarled and angular, with
+overhanging brows and a harsh face, made this little
+speech of malice and unfriendliness, looking out on the
+snow-covered prairie through the window. Far in the
+distance were a sleigh and horses like a spot in the
+snow, growing larger from minute to minute.</p>
+<p>It was a day of days. Overhead the sun was pouring
+out a flood of light and warmth, and, though it was bitterly
+cold, life was beating hard in the bosom of the West.
+Men walked lightly, breathed quickly, and their eyes
+were bright with the brightness of vitality and content.
+Even the old man at the window of this lonely house,
+in a great, lonely stretch of country, with the cedar hills
+behind it, had a living force which defied his seventy-odd
+years, though the light in his face was hard and his
+voice was harder still. Under the shelter of the foothills,
+cold as the day was, his cattle were feeding in the open,
+scratching away the thin layer of snow and browsing
+on the tender grass underneath. An arctic world in
+appearance, it had an abounding life which made it
+friendly and generous&mdash;the harshness belonged to the
+surface. So, perhaps, it was with the old man who
+watched the sleigh in the distance coming nearer, but
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_175' name='page_175'></a>175</span>
+that in his nature on which any one could feed was not
+so easily reached as the fresh young grass under the
+protecting snow.</p>
+<p>&#8220;She&#8217;ll get nothing out of me,&#8221; he repeated, as the
+others in the room behind him made no remark, and his
+eyes ranged gloatingly over the cattle under the foothills
+and the buildings which he had gathered together
+to proclaim his substantial greatness in the West. &#8220;Not
+a <i>sou markee</i>!&#8221; he added, clinking some coins in his
+pocket. &#8220;She&#8217;s got no rights.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Cassy&#8217;s got as much right here as any of us, Abel,
+and she&#8217;s coming to say it, I guess.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The voice which spoke was unlike a Western voice.
+It was deep and full and slow, with an organ-like quality.
+It was in good-keeping with the tall, spare body and
+large, fine, rugged face of the woman to whom it belonged.
+She sat in a rocking-chair, but did not rock,
+her fingers busy with the knitting-needles, her feet
+planted squarely on the home-made hassock at her feet.</p>
+<p>The old man waited for a minute in a painful silence,
+then he turned slowly round, and, with tight-pressed
+lips, looked at the woman in the rocking-chair. If it
+had been any one else who had &#8220;talked back&#8221; at him,
+he would have made quick work of them, for he was
+of that class of tyrant who pride themselves on being
+self-made, and have an undue respect for their own
+judgment and importance. But the woman who had
+ventured to challenge his cold-blooded remarks about
+his dead son&#8217;s wife, now hastening over the snow to the
+house her husband had left under a cloud eight years
+before, had no fear of him, and, maybe, no deep regard
+for him. He respected her, as did all who knew her&mdash;a
+very reticent, thoughtful, busy being, who had been
+like a well of comfort to so many that had drunk and
+passed on out of her life, out of time and time&#8217;s experiences.
+Seventy-nine years saw her still upstanding,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_176' name='page_176'></a>176</span>
+strong, full of work, and fuller of life&#8217;s knowledge. It
+was she who had sent the horses and sleigh for Cassy
+when the old man, having read the letter that Cassy
+had written him, said that she could &#8220;freeze at the
+station&#8221; for all of him. Aunt Kate had said nothing
+then, but, when the time came, by her orders the sleigh
+and horses were at the station; and the old man had
+made no direct protest, for she was the one person he
+had never dominated nor bullied. If she had only
+talked, he would have worn her down, for he was fond
+of talking, and it was said by those who were cynical
+and incredulous about him that he had gone to prayer-meetings,
+had been a local preacher, only to hear his
+own voice. Probably, if there had been any politics in
+the West in his day, he would have been a politician,
+though it would have been too costly for his taste, and
+religion was very cheap; it enabled him to refuse to
+join in many forms of expenditure, on the ground that
+he &#8220;did not hold by such things.&#8221;</p>
+<p>In Aunt Kate, the sister of his wife, dead so many
+years ago, he had found a spirit stronger than his own.
+He valued her; he had said more than once, to those
+who he thought would never repeat it to her, that she
+was a &#8220;great woman&#8221;; but self-interest was the mainspring
+of his appreciation. Since she had come again to
+his house&mdash;she had lived with him once before for two
+years when his wife was slowly dying&mdash;it had been a
+different place. Housekeeping had cost less than before,
+yet the cooking was better, the place was beautifully
+clean, and discipline without rigidity reigned everywhere.
+One by one the old woman&#8217;s boys and girls
+had died&mdash;four of them&mdash;and she was now alone, with
+not a single grandchild left to cheer her; and the life
+out here with Abel Baragar had been unrelieved by much
+that was heartening to a woman; for Black Andy, Abel&#8217;s
+son, was not an inspiring figure, though even his moroseness
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_177' name='page_177'></a>177</span>
+gave way under her influence. So it was that when
+Cassy&#8217;s letter came her breast seemed to grow warmer
+and swell with longing to see the wife of her nephew,
+who had such a bad reputation in Abel&#8217;s eyes, and to
+see George&#8217;s little boy, who was coming, too. After all,
+whatever Cassy was, she was the mother of Abel&#8217;s son&#8217;s
+son; and Aunt Kate was too old and wise to be frightened
+by tales told of Cassy or any one else. So, having had
+her own way so far regarding Cassy&#8217;s coming, she looked
+Abel calmly in the eyes, over the gold-rimmed spectacles
+which were her dearest possession&mdash;almost the only
+thing of value she had. She was not afraid of Abel&#8217;s
+anger, and he knew it; but his eldest son, Black Andy,
+was present, and he must make a show of being master
+of the situation.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Aunt Kate,&#8221; he said, &#8220;I didn&#8217;t make a fuss about
+you sending the horses and sleigh for her, because
+women do fool things sometimes. I suppose curiosity
+got the best of you. Anyhow, mebbe it&#8217;s right Cassy
+should find out, once for all, how things stand, and that
+they haven&#8217;t altered since she took George away, and
+ruined his life, and sent him to his grave. That&#8217;s why
+I didn&#8217;t order Mick back when I saw him going out with
+the team.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Cassy Mavor,&#8221; interjected a third voice from a
+corner behind the great stove&mdash;&#8220;Cassy Mavor, of the
+variety-dance-and-song, and a talk with the gallery
+between!&#8221;</p>
+<p>Aunt Kate looked over at Black Andy, and stopped
+knitting, for there was that in the tone of the sullen
+ranchman which stirred in her a sudden anger, and
+anger was a rare and uncomfortable sensation to her.
+A flush crept slowly over her face, then it died away,
+and she said quietly to Black Andy&mdash;for she had ever
+prayed to be master of the demon of temper down deep
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_178' name='page_178'></a>178</span>
+in her, and she was praying now&mdash;</p>
+<p>&#8220;She earnt her living by singing and dancing, and
+she&#8217;s brought up George&#8217;s boy by it, and singing and
+dancing isn&#8217;t a crime. David danced before the Lord.
+I danced myself when I was a young girl, and before I
+joined the church. &#8217;Twas about the only pleasure I
+ever had; &#8217;bout the only one I like to remember. There&#8217;s
+no difference to me &#8217;twixt making your feet handy and
+clever and full of music, and playing with your fingers
+on the piano or on a melodeon at a meeting. As for
+singing, it&#8217;s God&#8217;s gift; and many a time I wisht I had
+it. I&#8217;d have sung the blackness out of your face and
+heart, Andy.&#8221; She leaned back again and began to knit
+very fast. &#8220;I&#8217;d like to hear Cassy sing, and see her
+dance, too.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Black Andy chuckled coarsely. &#8220;I often heard her
+sing and saw her dance down at Lumley&#8217;s before she
+took George away East. You wouldn&#8217;t have guessed
+she had consumption. She knocked the boys over
+down to Lumley&#8217;s. The first night at Lumley&#8217;s done
+for George.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Black Andy&#8217;s face showed no lightening of its gloom
+as he spoke, but there was a firing-up of the black eyes,
+and the woman with the knitting felt that&mdash;for whatever
+reason&mdash;he was purposely irritating his father.</p>
+<p>&#8220;The devil was in her heels and in her tongue,&#8221; Andy
+continued. &#8220;With her big mouth, red hair, and little
+eyes she&#8217;d have made anybody laugh. I laughed.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You laughed!&#8221; snapped out his father, with a sneer.</p>
+<p>Black Andy&#8217;s eyes half closed with a morose look, then
+he went on: &#8220;Yes, I laughed at Cassy. While she was
+out here at Lumley&#8217;s getting cured, accordin&#8217; to the
+doctor&#8217;s orders, things seemed to get a move on in the
+West. But it didn&#8217;t suit professing Christians like you,
+dad.&#8221; He jerked his head toward the old man and drew
+the spittoon near with his feet.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_179' name='page_179'></a>179</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;The West hasn&#8217;t been any worse off since she left,&#8221;
+snarled the old man.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, she took George with her,&#8221; grimly retorted
+Black Andy.</p>
+<p>Abel Baragar&#8217;s heart had been warmer toward his
+dead son George than to any one else in the world.
+George had been as fair of face and hair as Andrew was
+dark, as cheerful and amusing as Andrew was gloomy
+and dispiriting, as agile and dexterous of mind and body
+as his brother was slow and angular, as emotional and
+warm-hearted as the other was phlegmatic and sour&mdash;or
+so it seemed to the father and to nearly all others.</p>
+<p>In those old days they had not been very well off.
+The railway was not completed, and the West had not
+begun &#8220;to move.&#8221; The old man had bought and sold
+land and cattle and horses, always living on a narrow
+margin of safety, but in the hope that one day the choice
+bits of land he was shepherding here and there would
+take a leap up in value; and his judgment had been right.
+His prosperity had all come since George went away
+with Cassy Mavor. His anger at George had been the
+more acute, because the thing happened at a time when
+his affairs were on the edge of a precipice. He had won
+through it, but only by the merest shave, and it had all
+left him with a bad spot in his heart, in spite of his
+&#8220;having religion.&#8221; Whenever he remembered George
+he instinctively thought of those black days when a
+Land and Cattle Syndicate was crowding him over the
+edge into the chasm of failure, and came so near doing
+it. A few thousand dollars less to put up here and
+there, and he would have been ruined; his blood became
+hotter whenever he thought of it. He had had to
+fight the worst of it through alone, for George, who had
+been useful as a kind of buyer and seller, who was ever
+all things to all men, and ready with quip and jest, and
+not a little uncertain as to truth&mdash;to which the old man
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_180' name='page_180'></a>180</span>
+shut his eyes when there was a &#8220;deal&#8221; on&mdash;had, in the
+end, been of no use at all, and had seemed to go to
+pieces just when he was most needed. His father had
+put it all down to Cassy Mavor, who had unsettled things
+since she had come to Lumley&#8217;s, and, being a man of very
+few ideas, he cherished those he had with an exaggerated
+care. Prosperity had not softened him; it had given
+him an arrogance unduly emphasized by a reputation
+for rigid virtue and honesty. The indirect attack which
+Andrew now made on George&#8217;s memory roused him to
+anger, as much because it seemed to challenge his own
+judgment as cast a slight on the name of the boy whom
+he had cast off, yet who had a firmer hold on his heart
+than any human being ever had. It had only been pride
+which had prevented him from making it up with George
+before it was too late; but, all the more, he was set
+against the woman who &#8220;kicked up her heels for a living&#8221;;
+and, all the more, he resented Black Andy, who,
+in his own grim way, had managed to remain a partner
+with him in their present prosperity, and had done so
+little for it.</p>
+<p>&#8220;George helped to make what you&#8217;ve got,&#8221; he said,
+darkly, now. &#8220;The West missed George. The West
+said, &#8216;There was a good man ruined by a woman.&#8217; The
+West&#8217;d never think anything or anybody missed you,
+&#8217;cept yourself. When you went North, it never missed
+you; when you come back, its jaw fell. You wasn&#8217;t fit
+to black George&#8217;s boots.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Black Andy&#8217;s mouth took on a bitter sort of smile,
+and his eyes drooped furtively as he struck the damper
+of the stove heavily with his foot; then he replied,
+slowly:</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, that&#8217;s all right; but if I wasn&#8217;t fit to black his
+boots, it ain&#8217;t my fault. I git my nature honest, as he
+did. We wasn&#8217;t any cross-breeds, I s&#8217;pose. We got
+the strain direct, and we was all right on her side.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_181' name='page_181'></a>181</span></p>
+<p>He jerked his head toward Aunt Kate, whose face was
+growing pale. She interposed now.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Can&#8217;t you leave the dead alone?&#8221; she asked, in a
+voice ringing a little. &#8220;Can&#8217;t you let them rest? Ain&#8217;t
+it enough to quarrel about the living? Cassy&#8217;ll be
+here soon,&#8221; she added, peering out of the window, &#8220;and
+if I was you I&#8217;d try and not make her sorry she ever
+married a Baragar. It ain&#8217;t a feeling that&#8217;d make a
+sick woman live long.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Aunt Kate did not strike often, but when she did she
+struck hard. Abel Baragar staggered a little under this
+blow, for, at the moment, it seemed to him that he saw
+his dead wife&#8217;s face looking at him from the chair where
+her sister now sat. Down in his ill-furnished heart,
+where there had been little which was companionable,
+there was a shadowed corner. Sophy Baragar had
+been such a true-hearted, brave-souled woman, and he
+had been so impatient and exacting with her, till the
+beautiful face, which had been reproduced in George,
+had lost its color and its fire, had become careworn and
+sweet with that sweetness which goes early out of the
+world. In all her days the vanished wife had never
+hinted at as much as Aunt Kate suggested now, and
+Abel Baragar shut his eyes against the thing which he
+was seeing. He was not all hard, after all.</p>
+<p>Aunt Kate turned to Black Andy now.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Mebbe Cassy ain&#8217;t for long,&#8221; she said. &#8220;Mebbe
+she&#8217;s come out for what she came out for before. It
+seems to me it&#8217;s that, or she wouldn&#8217;t have come; because
+she&#8217;s young yet, and she&#8217;s fond of her boy, and
+she&#8217;d not want to bury herself alive out here with us.
+Mebbe her lungs is bad again.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then she&#8217;s sure to get another husband out here,&#8221;
+said the old man, recovering himself. &#8220;She got one
+before easy, on the same ticket.&#8221; With something of
+malice he looked over at Black Andy.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_182' name='page_182'></a>182</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;If she can sing and dance as she done nine years
+ago, I shouldn&#8217;t wonder,&#8221; answered Black Andy,
+smoothly. These two men knew each other; they had
+said hard things to each other for many a year, yet they
+lived on together unshaken by each other&#8217;s moods and
+bitternesses.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m getting old&mdash;I&#8217;m seventy-nine&mdash;and I ain&#8217;t
+for long,&#8221; urged Aunt Kate, looking Abel in the eyes.
+&#8220;Some day soon I&#8217;ll be stepping out and away. Then
+things&#8217;ll go to sixes and sevens, as they did after Sophy
+died. Some one ought to be here that&#8217;s got a right to
+be here, not a hired woman.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Suddenly the old man raged out:</p>
+<p>&#8220;Her&mdash;off the stage to look after this! Her, that&#8217;s
+kicked up her heels for a living! It&#8217;s&mdash;no, she&#8217;s no
+good. She&#8217;s common. She&#8217;s come, and she can go.
+I ain&#8217;t having sweepings from the streets living here as
+if they had rights.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Aunt Kate set her lips.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Sweepings! You&#8217;ve got to take that back, Abel.
+It&#8217;s not Christian. You&#8217;ve got to take that back.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He&#8217;ll take it back all right before we&#8217;ve done, I
+guess,&#8221; remarked Black Andy. &#8220;He&#8217;ll take a lot
+back.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Truth&#8217;s truth, and I&#8217;ll stand by it, and&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>The old man stopped, for there came to them now,
+clearly, the sound of sleigh-bells. They all stood still
+for an instant, silent and attentive, then Aunt Kate
+moved toward the door.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Cassy&#8217;s come,&#8221; she said. &#8220;Cassy and George&#8217;s boy&#8217;ve
+come.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Another instant and the door was opened on the
+beautiful, white, sparkling world, and the low sleigh,
+with its great, warm, buffalo robes, in which the small
+figures of a woman and a child were almost lost, stopped
+at the door. Two whimsical but tired eyes looked over
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_183' name='page_183'></a>183</span>
+a rim of fur at the old woman in the doorway, then
+Cassy&#8217;s voice rang out:</p>
+<p>&#8220;Hello! that&#8217;s Aunt Kate, I know! Well, here we
+are, and here&#8217;s my boy. Jump, George!&#8221;</p>
+<p>A moment later and the gaunt old woman folded both
+mother and son in her arms and drew them into the
+room. The door was shut, and they all faced one another.</p>
+<p>The old man and Black Andy did not move, but
+stood staring at the trim figure in black, with the plain
+face, large mouth, and tousled red hair, and the dreamy-eyed,
+handsome little boy beside her.</p>
+<p>Black Andy stood behind the stove, looking over at
+the new-comers with quizzical, almost furtive eyes, and
+his father remained for a moment with mouth open,
+gazing at his dead son&#8217;s wife and child, as though not
+quite comprehending the scene. The sight of the
+boy had brought back, in some strange, embarrassing
+way, a vision of thirty years before, when George was
+a little boy in buckskin pants and jacket, and was
+beginning to ride the prairie with him. This boy was
+like George, yet not like him. The face was George&#8217;s,
+the sensuous, luxurious mouth; but the eyes were not
+those of a Baragar, nor yet those of Aunt Kate&#8217;s family;
+and they were not wholly like the mother&#8217;s. They
+were full and brimming, while hers were small and
+whimsical; yet they had her quick, humorous flashes
+and her quaintness.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Have I changed so much? Have you forgotten
+me?&#8221; Cassy asked, looking the old man in the eyes.
+&#8220;You look as strong as a bull.&#8221; She held out her hand
+to him and laughed.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Hope I see you well,&#8221; said Abel Baragar, mechanically,
+as he took the hand and shook it awkwardly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, I&#8217;m all right,&#8221; answered the nonchalant little
+woman, undoing her jacket. &#8220;Shake hands with your
+grandfather, George. That&#8217;s right&mdash;don&#8217;t talk too
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_184' name='page_184'></a>184</span>
+much,&#8221; she added, with a half-nervous little laugh, as
+the old man, with a kind of fixed smile, and the child
+shook hands in silence.</p>
+<p>Presently she saw Black Andy behind the stove.
+&#8220;Well, Andy, have you been here ever since?&#8221; she
+asked, and, as he came forward, she suddenly caught
+him by both arms, stood on tiptoe, and kissed him.
+&#8220;Last time I saw you, you were behind the stove at
+Lumley&#8217;s. Nothing&#8217;s ever too warm for you,&#8221; she added.
+&#8220;You&#8217;d be shivering on the equator. You were always
+hugging the stove at Lumley&#8217;s.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Things were pretty warm there, too, Cassy,&#8221; he
+said, with a sidelong look at his father.</p>
+<p>She saw the look, her face flushed with sudden temper,
+then her eyes fell on her boy, now lost in the arms of
+Aunt Kate, and she curbed herself.</p>
+<p>&#8220;There were plenty of things doing at Lumley&#8217;s in
+those days,&#8221; she said, brusquely. &#8220;We were all young
+and fresh then,&#8221; she added, and then something seemed
+to catch her voice, and she coughed a little&mdash;a hard,
+dry, feverish cough. &#8220;Are the Lumleys all right? Are
+they still there, at the Forks?&#8221; she asked, after the little
+paroxysm of coughing.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Cleaned out&mdash;all scattered. We own the Lumleys&#8217;
+place now,&#8221; replied Black Andy, with another sidelong
+glance at his father, who, as he put some more wood
+on the fire and opened the damper of the stove wider,
+grimly watched and listened.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Jim, and Lance, and Jerry, and Abner?&#8221; she asked,
+almost abstractedly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Jim&#8217;s dead&mdash;shot by a U. S. marshal by mistake
+for a smuggler,&#8221; answered Black Andy, suggestively.
+&#8220;Lance is up on the Yukon, busted; Jerry is one of
+our hands on the place; and Abner is in jail.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Abner&mdash;in jail!&#8221; she exclaimed, in a dazed way.
+&#8220;What did he do? Abner always seemed so straight.&#8221;</p>
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<a name='linki_9' id='linki_9'></a>
+<img src='images/p184.jpg' alt='' title='' style='width: 354px; height: 514px;' /><br />
+<p class='caption' style='margin: 0 auto; text-align:center;width: 354px;'>
+GEORGE&#8217;S WIFE<br />
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_185' name='page_185'></a>185</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, he sloped with a thousand dollars of the railway
+people&#8217;s money. They caught him, and he got seven
+years.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He was married, wasn&#8217;t he?&#8221; she asked, in a low
+voice.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, to Phenie Tyson. There&#8217;s no children, so she&#8217;s
+all right, and divorce is cheap over in the States, where
+she is now.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Phenie Tyson didn&#8217;t marry Abner because he was a
+saint, but because he was a man, I suppose,&#8221; she replied,
+gravely. &#8220;And the old folks?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Both dead. What Abner done sent the old man to
+his grave. But Abner&#8217;s mother died a year before.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What Abner done killed his father,&#8221; said Abel
+Baragar, with dry emphasis. &#8220;Phenie Tyson was extravagant&mdash;wanted
+this and that, and nothin&#8217; was too
+good for her. Abner spoilt his life gettin&#8217; her what she
+wanted; and it broke old Ezra Lumley&#8217;s heart.&#8221;</p>
+<p>George&#8217;s wife looked at him for a moment with her
+eyes screwed up, and then she laughed softly. &#8220;My,
+it&#8217;s curious how some folks go up and some go down!
+It must be lonely for Phenie waiting all these years for
+Abner to get free.... I had the happiest time in my life
+at Lumley&#8217;s. I was getting better of my&mdash;cold. While
+I was there I got lots of strength stored up, to last
+me many a year when I needed it; and, then, George
+and I were married at Lumley&#8217;s!&#8221;</p>
+<p>Aunt Kate came slowly over with the boy and laid
+a hand on Cassy&#8217;s shoulder, for there was an undercurrent
+to the conversation which boded no good.
+The very first words uttered had plunged Abel Baragar
+and his son&#8217;s wife into the midst of the difficulty which
+she had hoped might, after all, be avoided.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Come, and I&#8217;ll show you your room, Cassy,&#8221; she
+said. &#8220;It faces south, and you&#8217;ll get the sun all day.
+It&#8217;s like a sun-parlor. We&#8217;re going to have supper in
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_186' name='page_186'></a>186</span>
+a couple of hours, and you must rest some first. Is
+the house warm enough for you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>The little, garish woman did not reply directly, but
+shook back her red hair and caught her boy to her
+breast and kissed him; then she said, in that staccato
+manner which had given her words on the stage such
+point and emphasis: &#8220;Oh, this house is a&#8217;most too warm
+for me, Aunt Kate!&#8221;</p>
+<p>Then she moved toward the door with the grave,
+kindly old woman, her son&#8217;s hand in her own.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You can see the Lumleys&#8217; place from your window,
+Cassy,&#8221; said Black Andy, grimly. &#8220;We got a mortgage
+on it, and foreclosed it, and it&#8217;s ours now; and Jerry
+Lumley&#8217;s stock-riding for us. Anyhow, he&#8217;s better off
+than Abner, or Abner&#8217;s wife.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Cassy turned at the door and faced him. Instinctively
+she caught at some latent conflict with old Abel
+Baragar in what Black Andy had said, and her face
+softened, for it suddenly flashed into her mind that he
+was not against her.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m glad to be back West,&#8221; she said. &#8220;It meant a
+lot to me when I was at Lumley&#8217;s.&#8221; She coughed a
+little again, but turned to the door with a laugh.</p>
+<p>&#8220;How long have you come to stay here&mdash;out West?&#8221;
+asked the old man, furtively.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, there&#8217;s plenty of time to think of that!&#8221; she
+answered, brusquely, and she heard Black Andy laugh
+derisively as the door closed behind her.</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+
+<p>In a blaze of joy the sun swept down behind the
+southern hills, and the windows of Lumley&#8217;s house at
+the Forks, catching the oblique rays, glittered and
+shone like flaming silver. Nothing of life showed, save
+the cattle here and there, creeping away to the shelter
+of the foothills for the night. The white, placid snow
+made a coverlet as wide as the vision of the eye, save
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_187' name='page_187'></a>187</span>
+where spruce and cedar trees gave a touch of warmth
+and refuge here and there. A wonderful, buoyant
+peace seemed to rest upon the wide, silent expanse.
+The birds of song were gone South over the hills, and
+the living wild things of the prairies had stolen into
+winter-quarters. Yet, as Cassy Mavor looked out upon
+the exquisite beauty of the scene, upon the splendid
+outspanning of the sun along the hills, the deep plangent
+blue of the sky and the thrilling light, she saw a
+world in agony and she heard the moans of the afflicted.
+The sun shone bright on the windows of Lumley&#8217;s
+house, but she could hear the crying of Abner&#8217;s wife,
+and of old Ezra and Eliza Lumley, when their children
+were stricken or shamed; when Abel Baragar drew
+tighter and tighter the chains of the mortgage, which at
+last made them tenants in the house once their own.
+Only eight years ago, and all this had happened. And
+what had not happened to her, too, in those eight
+years!</p>
+<p>With George&mdash;reckless, useless, loving, lying George&mdash;she
+had left Lumley&#8217;s with her sickness cured, as it
+seemed, after a long year in the West, and had begun
+life again. What sort of life had it been? &#8220;Kicking
+up her heels on the stage,&#8221; as Abel Baragar had said;
+but, somehow, not as it was before she went West to
+give her perforated lung to the healing air of the plains,
+and to live out-doors with the men&mdash;a man&#8217;s life. Then
+she had never put a curb on her tongue, or greatly on
+her actions, except that, though a hundred men quarrelled
+openly, or in their own minds, about her, no one
+had ever had any <i>right</i> to quarrel about her. With a
+tongue which made men gasp with laughter, with as
+comic a gift as ever woman had, and as equally comic a
+face, she had been a good-natured little tyrant in her
+way. She had given a kiss here and there, and had taken
+one, but always there had been before her mind the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_188' name='page_188'></a>188</span>
+picture of a careworn woman who struggled to bring up
+her three children honestly, and without the help of
+charity, and, with a sigh of content and weariness, had
+died as Cassy made her first hit on the stage and her
+name became a household word. And Cassy, garish,
+gay, freckled, witty, and whimsical, had never forgotten
+those days when her mother prayed and worked her
+heart out to do her duty by her children. Cassy Mavor
+had made her following, had won her place, was the
+idol of &#8220;the gallery&#8221;; and yet she was &#8220;of the people,&#8221;
+as she had always been, until her first sickness came,
+and she had gone out to Lumley&#8217;s, out along the foothills
+of the Rockies.</p>
+<p>What had made her fall in love with George Baragar?
+She could not have told, if she had been asked. He
+was wayward, given to drink at times, given also to
+card-playing and racing; but he had a way with him
+which few women could resist and that made men his
+friends; and he had a sense of humor akin to her own.
+In any case, one day she let him catch her up in his
+arms, and there was the end of it. But no, not the end,
+after all. It was only the beginning of real life for her.
+All that had gone before seemed but playing on the
+threshold, though it had meant hard, bitter hard, work,
+and temptation, and patience, and endurance of many
+kinds. And now George was gone forever. But
+George&#8217;s little boy lay there on the bed in a soft sleep,
+with all his life before him.</p>
+<p>She turned from the warm window and the buoyant,
+inspiring scene to the bed. Stooping over, she kissed
+the sleeping boy with an abrupt eagerness, and made a
+little awkward, hungry gesture of love over him, and
+her face flushed hot with the passion of motherhood in
+her.</p>
+<p>&#8220;All I&#8217;ve got now,&#8221; she murmured. &#8220;Nothing else
+left&mdash;nothing else at all.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_189' name='page_189'></a>189</span></p>
+<p>She heard the door open behind her, and she turned
+round. Aunt Kate was entering with a bowl in her
+hands.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I heard you moving about, and I&#8217;ve brought you
+something hot to drink,&#8221; she said.</p>
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s real good of you, Aunt Kate,&#8221; was the cheerful
+reply. &#8220;But it&#8217;s near supper-time, and I don&#8217;t
+need it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s boneset tea&mdash;for your cold,&#8221; answered Aunt
+Kate, gently, and put it on the high dressing-table made
+of a wooden box and covered with muslin. &#8220;For your
+cold, Cassy,&#8221; she repeated.</p>
+<p>The little woman stood still a moment gazing at the
+steaming bowl, lines growing suddenly around her
+mouth, then she looked at Aunt Kate quizzically.
+&#8220;Is my cold bad&mdash;so bad that I need boneset?&#8221; she
+asked, in a queer, constrained voice.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s comforting, is boneset tea, even when there&#8217;s no
+cold, &#8217;specially when the whiskey&#8217;s good, and the boneset
+and camomile has steeped some days.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Have you been steeping them some days?&#8221; Cassy
+asked, softly, eagerly.</p>
+<p>Aunt Kate nodded, then tried to explain.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s always good to be prepared, and I didn&#8217;t know
+but what the cold you used to have might be come
+back,&#8221; she said. &#8220;But I&#8217;m glad if it ain&#8217;t&mdash;if that
+cough of yours is only one of the measly little hacks
+people get in the East, where it&#8217;s so damp.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Cassy was at the window again, looking out at the
+dying radiance of the sun. Her voice seemed hollow
+and strange and rather rough, as she said, in reply:</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s a real cold, deep down, the same as I had nine
+years ago, Aunt Kate; and it&#8217;s come to stay, I guess.
+That&#8217;s why I came back West. But I couldn&#8217;t have
+gone to Lumley&#8217;s again, even if they were at the Forks
+now, for I&#8217;m too poor. I&#8217;m a back-number now. I
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_190' name='page_190'></a>190</span>
+had to give up singing and dancing a year ago, after
+George died. So I don&#8217;t earn my living any more, and
+I had to come to George&#8217;s father, with George&#8217;s boy.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Aunt Kate had a shrewd mind, and was tactful,
+too. She did not understand why Cassy, who had
+earned so much money all these years, should be so
+poor now, unless it was that she hadn&#8217;t saved&mdash;that she
+and George hadn&#8217;t saved. But, looking at the face
+before her, and the child on the bed, she was convinced
+that the woman was a good woman; that, singer and
+dancer as she was, there was no reason why any home
+should be closed to her, or any heart should shut its
+doors before her. She guessed a reason for this poverty
+of Cassy Mavor, but it only made her lay a hand on the
+little woman&#8217;s shoulders and look into her eyes.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Cassy,&#8221; she said, gently, &#8220;you was right to come here.
+There&#8217;s trials before you, but for the boy&#8217;s sake you
+must bear them. Sophy, George&#8217;s mother, had to bear
+them, and Abel was fond of her, too, in his way. He&#8217;s
+stored up a lot of things to say, and he&#8217;ll say them; but
+you&#8217;ll keep the boy in your mind, and be patient, won&#8217;t
+you, Cassy? You got rights here, and it&#8217;s comfortable,
+and there&#8217;s plenty, and the air will cure your lung as it
+did before. It did all right before, didn&#8217;t it?&#8221; She
+handed the bowl of boneset tea. &#8220;Take it; it&#8217;ll do you
+good, Cassy,&#8221; she added.</p>
+<p>Cassy said nothing in reply. She looked at the bed
+where her boy lay, she looked at the angular face of the
+woman, with its brooding motherliness, at the soft, gray
+hair, and, with a little gasp of feeling, she raised the
+bowl to her lips and drank freely. Then, putting it
+down, she said:</p>
+<p>&#8220;He doesn&#8217;t mean to have us, Aunt Kate, but I&#8217;ll try
+and keep my temper down. Did he ever laugh in his
+life?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He laughs sometimes&mdash;kind o&#8217; laughs.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_191' name='page_191'></a>191</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll make him laugh real, if I can,&#8221; Cassy rejoined.
+&#8220;I&#8217;ve made a lot of people laugh in my time.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The old woman leaned suddenly over, and drew the
+red, ridiculous head to her shoulder with a gasp of
+affection, and her eyes were full of tears.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Cassy,&#8221; she exclaimed, &#8220;Cassy, you make me cry!&#8221;
+and then she turned and hurried from the room.</p>
+<p>Three hours later the problem was solved in the big
+sitting-room where Cassy had first been received with
+her boy. Aunt Kate sat with her feet on a hassock,
+rocking gently and watching and listening. Black
+Andy was behind the great stove with his chair tilted
+back, carving the bowl of a pipe; the old man sat rigid
+by the table, looking straight before him and smacking
+his lips now and then as he was wont to do at meeting;
+while Cassy, with her chin in her hands and elbows on
+her knees, gazed into the fire and waited for the storm to
+break.</p>
+<p>Her little flashes of humor at dinner had not brightened
+things, and she had had an insane desire to turn cartwheels
+round the room, so implacable and highly
+strained was the attitude of the master of the house,
+so unctuous was the grace and the thanksgiving before
+and after the meal. Abel Baragar had stored up his anger
+and his righteous antipathy for years, and this was
+the first chance he had had of visiting his displeasure
+on the woman who had &#8220;ruined&#8221; George, and who
+had now come to get &#8220;rights,&#8221; which he was determined
+she should not have. He had steeled himself against
+seeing any good in her whatever. Self-will, self-pride,
+and self-righteousness were big in him, and so the
+supper had ended in silence, and with a little attack
+of coughing on the part of Cassy, which made her angry
+at herself. Then the boy had been put to bed, and
+she had come back to await the expected outburst.
+She could feel it in the air, and while her blood tingled
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_192' name='page_192'></a>192</span>
+in a desire to fight this tyrant to the bitter end, she
+thought of her boy and his future, and she calmed the
+tumult in her veins.</p>
+<p>She did not have to wait very long. The querulous
+voice of the old man broke the silence.</p>
+<p>&#8220;When be you goin&#8217; back East? What time did you
+fix for goin&#8217;?&#8221; he asked.</p>
+<p>She raised her head and looked at him squarely.
+&#8220;I didn&#8217;t fix any time for going East again,&#8221; she replied.
+&#8220;I came out West this time to stay.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I thought you was on the stage,&#8221; was the rejoinder.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve left the stage. My voice went when I got
+a bad cold again, and I couldn&#8217;t stand the draughts
+of the theatre, and so I couldn&#8217;t dance, either. I&#8217;m
+finished with the stage. I&#8217;ve come out here for good
+and all.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Where did you think of livin&#8217; out here?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;d like to have gone to Lumley&#8217;s, but that&#8217;s not
+possible, is it? Anyway, I couldn&#8217;t afford it now.
+So I thought I&#8217;d stay here, if there was room for me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You want to board here?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I didn&#8217;t put it to myself that way. I thought
+perhaps you&#8217;d be glad to have me. I&#8217;m handy. I
+can cook, I can sew, and I&#8217;m quite cheerful and kind.
+Then there&#8217;s George&mdash;little George. I thought you&#8217;d
+like to have your grandson here with you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve lived without him&mdash;or his father&mdash;for eight
+years, an&#8217; I could bear it awhile yet, mebbe.&#8221;</p>
+<p>There was a half-choking sound from the old woman
+in the rocking-chair, but she did not speak, though her
+knitting dropped into her lap.</p>
+<p>&#8220;But if you knew us better, perhaps you&#8217;d like us
+better,&#8221; rejoined Cassy, gently. &#8220;We&#8217;re both pretty
+easy to get on with, and we see the bright side of things.
+He has a wonderful disposition, has George.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I ain&#8217;t goin&#8217; to like you any better,&#8221; said the old
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_193' name='page_193'></a>193</span>
+man, getting to his feet. &#8220;I ain&#8217;t goin&#8217; to give you
+any rights here. I&#8217;ve thought it out, and my mind&#8217;s
+made up. You can&#8217;t come it over me. You ruined
+my boy&#8217;s life and sent him to his grave. He&#8217;d have
+lived to be an old man out here; but you spoiled him.
+You trapped him into marrying you, with your kicking
+and your comic songs, and your tricks of the stage, and
+you parted us&mdash;parted him and me forever.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;That was your fault. George wanted to make it up.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;With you!&#8221; The old man&#8217;s voice rose shrilly, the
+bitterness and passion of years was shooting high in
+the narrow confines of his mind. The geyser of his
+prejudice and antipathy was furiously alive. &#8220;To
+come back with you that ruined him and broke up
+my family, and made my life like bitter aloes! No!
+And if I wouldn&#8217;t have him with you, do you think
+I&#8217;ll have you without him? By the God of Israel,
+no!&#8221;</p>
+<p>Black Andy was now standing up behind the stove
+intently watching, his face grim and sombre; Aunt
+Kate sat with both hands gripping the arms of the
+rocker.</p>
+<p>Cassy got slowly to her feet. &#8220;I&#8217;ve been as straight a
+woman as your mother or your wife ever was,&#8221; she said,
+&#8220;and all the world knows it. I&#8217;m poor&mdash;and I might
+have been rich. I was true to myself before I married
+George, and I was true to George after, and all I earned
+he shared; and I&#8217;ve got little left. The mining stock
+I bought with what I saved went smash, and I&#8217;m poor
+as I was when I started to work for myself. I can
+work awhile yet; but I wanted to see if I could fit in out
+here and get well again, and have my boy fixed in the
+house of his grandfather. That&#8217;s the way I&#8217;m placed,
+and that&#8217;s how I came. But give a dog a bad name&mdash;ah,
+you shame your dead boy in thinking bad of me!
+I didn&#8217;t ruin him. I didn&#8217;t kill him. He never came
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_194' name='page_194'></a>194</span>
+to any bad through me. I helped him; he was happy.
+Why, I&mdash;&#8221; She stopped suddenly, putting a hand to her
+mouth. &#8220;Go on, say what you want to say, and let&#8217;s understand
+once for all,&#8221; she added, with a sudden sharpness.</p>
+<p>Abel Baragar drew himself up. &#8220;Well, I say this.
+I&#8217;ll give you three thousand dollars, and you can go
+somewhere else to live. I&#8217;ll keep the boy here. That&#8217;s
+what I&#8217;ve fixed in my mind to do. You can go, and
+the boy stays. I ain&#8217;t goin&#8217; to live with you that spoiled
+George&#8217;s life.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The eyes of the woman dilated, she trembled with a
+sudden rush of anger, then stood still, staring in front
+of her without a word. Black Andy stepped from behind
+the stove.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You are going to stay here, Cassy,&#8221; he said, &#8220;here
+where you have rights as good as any, and better than
+any, if it comes to that.&#8221; He turned to his father.
+&#8220;You thought a lot of George,&#8221; he added. &#8220;He was
+the apple of your eye. He had a soft tongue, and
+most people liked him; but George was foolish&mdash;I&#8217;ve
+known it all these years. George was pretty foolish.
+He gambled, he bet at races, he speculated&mdash;wild. You
+didn&#8217;t know it. He took ten thousand dollars of your
+money, got from the Wonegosh farm he sold for you.
+He&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>Cassy Mavor started forward with a cry, but Black
+Andy waved her down.</p>
+<p>&#8220;No, I&#8217;m going to tell it. George lost your ten
+thousand dollars, dad, gambling, racing, speculating.
+He told her&mdash;Cassy&mdash;two days after they was married,
+and she took the money she earned on the stage and
+give it to him to pay you back on the quiet through
+the bank. You never knew, but that&#8217;s the kind of boy
+your son George was, and that&#8217;s the kind of wife he
+had. George told me all about it when I went East
+six years ago.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_195' name='page_195'></a>195</span></p>
+<p>He came over to Cassy and stood beside her. &#8220;I&#8217;m
+standing by George&#8217;s wife,&#8221; he said, taking her hand,
+while she shut her eyes in her misery&mdash;had she not
+hid her husband&#8217;s wrong-doing all these years?&mdash;&#8220;I&#8217;m
+standing by her. If it hadn&#8217;t been for that ten thousand
+dollars she paid back for George, you&#8217;d have been
+swamped, when the Syndicate got after you, and we
+wouldn&#8217;t have had Lumley&#8217;s place, nor this, nor anything.
+I guess she&#8217;s got rights here, dad, as good as any.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The old man sank slowly into a chair. &#8220;George&mdash;George
+stole from me&mdash;stole money from me!&#8221; he
+whispered. His face was white. His pride and vainglory
+were broken. He was a haggard, shaken figure.
+His self-righteousness was levelled in the dust.</p>
+<p>With sudden impulse Cassy stole over to him and
+took his hand and held it tight.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t! Don&#8217;t feel so bad!&#8221; she said. &#8220;He was
+weak and wild then. But he was all right afterward.
+He was happy with me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve owed Cassy this for a good many years, dad,&#8221;
+said Black Andy, &#8220;and it had to be paid. She&#8217;s got
+better stuff in her than any Baragar.&#8221;</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+
+<p>An hour later the old man said to Cassy at the door
+of her room: &#8220;You got to stay here and git well. It&#8217;s
+yours, the same as the rest of us&mdash;what&#8217;s here.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Then he went down-stairs and sat with Aunt Kate by
+the fire.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I guess she&#8217;s a good woman,&#8221; he said, at last. &#8220;I
+didn&#8217;t use her right.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;ve been lucky with your women-folk,&#8221; Aunt
+Kate answered, quietly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, I&#8217;ve been lucky,&#8221; he answered. &#8220;I dunno if
+I deserve it. Mebbe not. Do you think she&#8217;ll git well?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s a healing air out here,&#8221; Aunt Kate answered, and
+listened to the wood of the house snapping in the sharp frost.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<a name='MARCILE' id='MARCILE'></a>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_196' name='page_196'></a>196</span>
+<h2>MARCILE</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>That the day was beautiful, that the harvest of the
+West had been a great one, that the salmon-fishing
+had been larger than ever before, that gold had been
+found in the Yukon, made no difference to Jacques
+Grassette, for he was in the condemned cell of Bindon
+Jail, living out those days which pass so swiftly between
+the verdict of the jury and the last slow walk with the
+Sheriff.</p>
+<p>He sat with his back to the stone wall, his hands on
+his knees, looking straight before him. All that met
+his physical gaze was another stone wall, but with his
+mind&#8217;s eye he was looking beyond it into spaces far
+away. His mind was seeing a little house with dormer-windows,
+and a steep roof on which the snow could not
+lodge in winter-time; with a narrow stoop in front
+where one could rest of an evening, the day&#8217;s work
+done; the stone-and-earth oven near by in the open,
+where the bread for a family of twenty was baked; the
+wooden plough tipped against the fence, to wait the
+&#8220;fall&#8221; cultivation; the big iron cooler in which the sap
+from the maple-trees was boiled, in the days when the
+snow thawed and spring opened the heart of the wood;
+the flash of the sickle and the scythe hard by; the fields
+of the little, narrow farm running back from the St.
+Lawrence like a riband; and, out on the wide stream,
+the great rafts with their riverine population floating
+down to Michelin&#8217;s mill-yards.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_197' name='page_197'></a>197</span></p>
+<p>For hours he had sat like this, unmoving, his gnarled
+red hands clamping each leg as though to hold him
+steady while he gazed; and he saw himself as a little
+lad, barefooted, doing chores, running after the shaggy,
+troublesome pony which would let him catch it when no
+one else could, and, with only a halter on, galloping
+wildly back to the farm-yard, to be hitched up in the
+cariole which had once belonged to the old Seigneur.
+He saw himself as a young man back from &#8220;the States,&#8221;
+where he had been working in the mills, regarded
+austerely by little Father Roche, who had given him
+his first Communion&mdash;for, down in Massachusetts he
+had learned to wear his curly hair plastered down on
+his forehead, smoke bad cigars, and drink &#8220;old Bourbon,&#8221;
+to bet and to gamble, and be a figure at horse-races.</p>
+<p>Then he saw himself, his money all gone, but the luck
+still with him, at Mass on the Sunday before going to
+the backwoods lumber-camp for the winter, as boss of a
+hundred men. He had a way with him, and he had
+brains, had Jacques Grassette, and he could manage
+men, as Michelin the lumber-king himself had found in
+a great river-row and strike, when bloodshed seemed
+certain. Even now the ghost of a smile played at his
+lips as he recalled the surprise of the old <i>habitants</i> and
+of Father Roche when he was chosen for this responsible
+post; for to run a great lumber-camp well, hundreds of
+miles from civilisation, where there is no visible law,
+no restraints of ordinary organized life, and where men,
+for seven months together, never saw a woman or
+a child, and ate pork and beans, and drank white
+whiskey, was a task of administration as difficult as
+managing a small republic new-created out of violent
+elements of society. But Michelin was right, and the
+old Seigneur, Sir Henri Robitaille, who was a judge of
+men, knew he was right, as did also Hennepin the
+school-master, whose despair Jacques had been, for he
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_198' name='page_198'></a>198</span>
+never worked at his lessons as a boy, and yet he absorbed
+Latin and mathematics by some sure but unexplainable
+process. &#8220;Ah, if you would but work, Jacques, you
+<i>vaurien</i>, I would make a great man of you,&#8221; Hennepin
+had said to him more than once; but this had made
+no impression on Jacques. It was more to the point
+that the ground-hogs and black squirrels and pigeons
+were plentiful in Casanac Woods.</p>
+<p>And so he thought as he stood at the door of the
+Church of St. Francis on that day before going &#8220;out
+back&#8221; to the lumber-camp. He had reached the summit
+of greatness&mdash;to command men. That was more than
+wealth or learning, and as he spoke to the old Seigneur
+going in to Mass, he still thought so, for the Seigneur&#8217;s
+big house and the servants and the great gardens had no
+charm for him. The horses&mdash;that was another thing;
+but there would be plenty of horses in the lumber-camp;
+and, on the whole, he felt himself rather superior to the
+old Seigneur, who now was Lieutenant-Governor of the
+province in which lay Bindon Jail.</p>
+<p>At the door of the Church of St. Francis he had
+stretched himself up with good-natured pride, for he
+was by nature gregarious and friendly, but with a
+temper quick and strong, and even savage when roused;
+though Michelin the lumber-king did not know that when
+he engaged him as boss, having seen him only at the
+one critical time when his superior brain and will saw
+its chance to command and had no personal interest in
+the strife. He had been a miracle of coolness then, and
+his six-foot-two of pride and muscle was taking natural
+tribute at the door of the Church of St. Francis, where
+he waited till nearly every one had entered, and Father
+Roche&#8217;s voice could be heard in the Mass.</p>
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<a name='linki_10' id='linki_10'></a>
+<img src='images/p198.jpg' alt='' title='' style='width: 409px; height: 557px;' /><br />
+<p class='caption' style='margin: 0 auto; text-align:center;width: 409px;'>
+THEN HAD HAPPENED THE REAL EVENT OF HIS LIFE<br />
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_199' name='page_199'></a>199</span></div>
+<p>Then had happened the real event of his life: a black-eyed,
+rose-cheeked girl went by with her mother, hurrying
+in to Mass. As she passed him their eyes met, and
+his blood leaped in his veins. He had never seen her
+before, and, in a sense, he had never seen any woman
+before. He had danced with many a one, and kissed a
+few in the old days among the flax-beaters, at the
+harvesting, in the gayeties of a wedding, and also down
+in Massachusetts. That, however, was a different thing,
+which he forgot an hour after; but this was the beginning
+of the world for him; for he knew now, of a sudden,
+what life was, what home meant, why &#8220;old folks&#8221; slaved
+for their children, and mothers wept when girls married
+or sons went away from home to bigger things; why in
+there, in at Mass, so many were praying for all the
+people and thinking only of one. All in a moment it
+came&mdash;and stayed; and he spoke to her, to Marcile, that
+very night, and he spoke also to her father, Valloir the
+farrier, the next morning by lamplight, before he started
+for the woods. He would not be gainsaid, nor take no
+for an answer, nor accept, as a reason for refusal, that
+she was only sixteen, and that he did not know her, for
+she had been away with a childless aunt since she was
+three. That she had fourteen brothers and sisters who
+had to be fed and cared for did not seem to weigh with
+the farrier. That was an affair of <i>le bon Dieu</i>, and enough
+would be provided for them all as heretofore&mdash;one could
+make little difference; and though Jacques was a very
+good match, considering his prospects and his favor with
+the lumber-king, Valloir had a kind of fear of him, and
+could not easily promise his beloved Marcile, the flower
+of his flock, to a man of whom the priest so strongly
+disapproved. But it was a new sort of Jacques Grassette
+who, that morning, spoke to him with the simplicity and
+eagerness of a child; and the suddenly conceived gift of
+a pony stallion, which every man in the parish envied
+Jacques, won Valloir over; and Jacques went &#8220;away
+back&#8221; with the first timid kiss of Marcile Valloir burning
+on his cheek.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_200' name='page_200'></a>200</span>
+&#8220;Well, bagosh, you are a wonder!&#8221; said Jacques&#8217;
+father, when he told him the news, and saw Jacques
+jump into the cariole and drive away.</p>
+<p>Here in prison, this, too, Jacques saw&mdash;this scene; and
+then the wedding in the spring, and the tour through the
+parishes for days together, lads and lasses journeying
+with them; and afterward the new home with a bigger
+stoop than any other in the village, with some old,
+gnarled crab-apple-trees and lilac bushes, and four years
+of happiness, and a little child that died; and all the
+time Jacques rising in the esteem of Michelin the lumber-king,
+and sent on inspections, and to organize camps;
+for weeks, sometimes for months, away from the house
+behind the lilac bushes&mdash;and then the end of it all, sudden
+and crushing and unredeemable.</p>
+<p>Jacques came back one night and found the house
+empty. Marcile had gone to try her luck with another
+man.</p>
+<p>That was the end of the upward career of Jacques
+Grassette. He went out upon a savage hunt which
+brought him no quarry, for the man and the woman had
+disappeared as completely as though they had been
+swallowed by the sea. And here, at last, he was waiting
+for the day when he must settle a bill for a human life
+taken in passion and rage.</p>
+<p>His big frame seemed out of place in the small cell,
+and the watcher sitting near him, to whom he had not
+addressed a word nor replied to a question since the
+watching began, seemed an insignificant factor in the
+scene. Never had a prisoner been more self-contained,
+or rejected more completely all those ministrations of
+humanity which relieve the horrible isolation of the
+condemned cell. Grassette&#8217;s isolation was complete.
+He lived in a dream, did what little there was to do in
+a dark abstraction, and sat hour after hour, as he was
+sitting now, piercing, with a brain at once benumbed
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_201' name='page_201'></a>201</span>
+to all outer things and afire with inward things, those
+realms of memory which are infinite in a life of forty
+years.</p>
+<p>&#8220;<i>Sacré!</i>&#8221; he muttered at last, and a shiver seemed
+to pass through him from head to foot; then an ugly and
+evil oath fell from his lips, which made his watcher
+shrink back appalled, for he also was a Catholic, and
+had been chosen of purpose, in the hope that he might
+have an influence on this revolted soul. It had, however,
+been of no use, and Grassette had refused the
+advances and ministrations of the little good priest,
+Father Laflamme, who had come from the coast of
+purpose to give him the offices of the Church. Silent,
+obdurate, sullen, he had looked the priest straight in
+the face, and had said, in broken English, &#8220;<i>Non</i>, I pay
+my bill. <i>Nom de diable!</i> I will say my own Mass, light
+my own candle, go my own way. I have too much.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Now, as he sat glooming, after his outbreak of oaths,
+there came a rattling noise at the door, the grinding
+of a key in the lock, the shooting of bolts, and a face
+appeared at the little wicket in the door. Then the door
+opened, and the Sheriff stepped inside, accompanied
+by a white-haired, stately old man. At sight of this
+second figure&mdash;the Sheriff had come often before, and
+would come for one more doleful walk with him&mdash;Grassette
+started. His face, which had never whitened
+in all the dismal and terrorizing doings of the capture
+and the trial and sentence, though it had flushed with
+rage more than once, now turned a little pale, for it
+seemed as if this old man had stepped out of the visions
+which had just passed before his eyes.</p>
+<p>&#8220;His Honor, the Lieutenant-Governor, Sir Henri
+Robitaille, has come to speak with you.... Stand up!&#8221;
+the Sheriff added, sharply, as Grassette kept his seat.</p>
+<p>Grassette&#8217;s face flushed with anger, for the prison had
+not broken his spirit; then he got up slowly. &#8220;I not
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_202' name='page_202'></a>202</span>
+stand up for you,&#8221; he growled at the Sheriff; &#8220;I stand
+up for him.&#8221; He jerked his head toward Sir Henri
+Robitaille. This grand Seigneur, with Michelin had believed
+in him in those far-off days which he had just
+been seeing over again, and all his boyhood and young
+manhood was rushing back on him. But now it was
+the Governor who turned pale, seeing who the criminal
+was.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Jacques Grassette!&#8221; he cried, in consternation and
+emotion, for under another name the murderer had been
+tried and sentenced, nor had his identity been established&mdash;the
+case was so clear, the defence had been
+perfunctory, and Quebec was very far away!</p>
+<p>&#8220;M&#8217;sieu&#8217;!&#8221; was the respectful response, and Grassette&#8217;s
+fingers twitched.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It was my sister&#8217;s son you killed, Grassette,&#8221; said
+the Governor, in a low, strained voice.</p>
+<p>&#8220;<i>Nom de Dieu</i>!&#8221; said Grassette, hoarsely.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I did not know, Grassette,&#8221; the Governor went on&mdash;&#8220;I
+did not know it was you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why did you come, m&#8217;sieu&#8217;?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Call him &#8216;your Honor,&#8217;&#8221; said the Sheriff, sharply.</p>
+<p>Grassette&#8217;s face hardened, and his look, turned upon
+the Sheriff, was savage and forbidding. &#8220;I will speak
+as it please me. Who are you? What do I care? To
+hang me&mdash;that is your business; but, for the rest, you
+spik to me differen&#8217;! Who are you? Your father kep&#8217;
+a tavern for thieves, <i>vous savez bien</i>!&#8221; It was true
+that the Sheriff&#8217;s father had had no savory reputation
+in the West.</p>
+<p>The Governor turned his head away in pain and
+trouble, for the man&#8217;s rage was not a thing to see&mdash;and
+they both came from the little parish of St. Francis, and
+had passed many an hour together.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Never mind, Grassette,&#8221; he said, gently. &#8220;Call me
+what you will. You&#8217;ve got no feeling against me; and
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_203' name='page_203'></a>203</span>
+I can say with truth that I don&#8217;t want your life for the
+life you took.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Grassette&#8217;s breast heaved. &#8220;He put me out of my
+work, the man I kill. He pass the word against me, he
+hunt me out of the mountains, he call&mdash;<i>tête de diable</i>!
+he call me a name so bad. Everything swim in my
+head, and I kill him.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The Governor made a protesting gesture. &#8220;I understand.
+I am glad his mother was dead. But do you
+not think how sudden it was? Now here, in the thick
+of life, then, out there, beyond this world in the dark&mdash;in
+purgatory.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The brave old man had accomplished what every one
+else, priest, lawyer, Sheriff, and watcher, had failed to
+do: he had shaken Grassette out of his blank isolation
+and obdurate unrepentance, had touched some chord of
+recognizable humanity.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It is done&mdash;<i>bien</i>, I pay for it,&#8221; responded Grassette,
+setting his jaw. &#8220;It is two deaths for me. Waiting
+and remembering, and then with the Sheriff there the
+other&mdash;so quick, and all.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The Governor looked at him for some moments
+without speaking. The Sheriff intervened again officiously.</p>
+<p>&#8220;His Honor has come to say something important
+to you,&#8221; he remarked, oracularly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Hold you&mdash;does he need a Sheriff to tell him when
+to spik?&#8221; was Grassette&#8217;s surly comment. Then he
+turned to the Governor. &#8220;Let us speak in French,&#8221; he
+said, in <i>patois</i>. &#8220;This rope-twister will not understan&#8217;.
+He is no good&mdash;I spit at him!&#8221;</p>
+<p>The Governor nodded, and, despite the Sheriff&#8217;s
+protest, they spoke in French, Grassette with his eyes
+intently fixed on the other, eagerly listening.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I have come,&#8221; said the Governor, &#8220;to say to you,
+Grassette, that you still have a chance of life.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_204' name='page_204'></a>204</span></p>
+<p>He paused, and Grassette&#8217;s face took on a look of
+bewilderment and vague anxiety. A chance of life&mdash;what
+did it mean?</p>
+<p>&#8220;Reprieve?&#8221; he asked, in a hoarse voice.</p>
+<p>The Governor shook his head. &#8220;Not yet; but there
+is a chance. Something has happened. A man&#8217;s life
+is in danger, or it may be he is dead; but more likely
+he is alive. You took a life; perhaps you can save
+one now. Keeley&#8217;s Gulch, the mine there!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;They have found it&mdash;gold?&#8221; asked Grassette, his
+eyes staring. He was forgetting for a moment where
+and what he was.</p>
+<p>&#8220;He went to find it, the man whose life is in danger.
+He had heard from a trapper who had been a miner
+once. While he was there a landslip came, and the
+opening to the mine was closed up.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;There were two ways in. Which one did he take?&#8221;
+cried Grassette.</p>
+<p>&#8220;The only one he could take, the only one he or
+any one else knew. You know the other way in&mdash;you
+only, they say.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I found it&mdash;the easier, quick way in; a year ago I
+found it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Was it near the other entrance?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Grassette shook his head. &#8220;A mile away.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;If the man is alive&mdash;and we think he is&mdash;you are the
+only person that can save him. I have telegraphed the
+Government. They do not promise, but they will reprieve,
+and save your life if you find the man.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Alive or dead?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Alive or dead, for the act would be the same. I
+have an order to take you to the Gulch, if you will go;
+and I am sure that you will have your life if you do it.
+I will promise&mdash;ah, yes, Grassette, but it shall be so!
+Public opinion will demand it. You will do it?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;To go free&mdash;<i>altogether</i>?&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_205' name='page_205'></a>205</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, but if your life is saved, Grassette?&#8221;</p>
+<p>The dark face flushed, then grew almost repulsive
+again in its sullenness.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Life&mdash;and this, in prison, shut in year after year!
+To do always what some one else wills, to be a slave to
+a warder! To have men like that over me that have
+been a boss of men&mdash;wasn&#8217;t it that drove me to kill?&mdash;to
+be treated like dirt! And to go on with this, while
+outside there is free life, and to go where you will at
+your own price&mdash;no! What do I care for life? What
+is it to me! To live like this&mdash;ah, I would break my
+head against these stone walls, I would choke myself
+with my own hands! If I stayed here, I would kill
+again&mdash;I would kill&mdash;kill!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then to go free altogether&mdash;that would be the wish
+of all the world, if you save this man&#8217;s life, if it can be
+saved. Will you not take the chance? We all have to
+die some time or other, Grassette, some sooner, some
+later; and when you go, will you not want to take to
+God in your hands a life saved for a life taken? Have
+you forgotten God, Grassette? We used to remember
+Him in the Church of St. Francis down there at home.&#8221;</p>
+<p>There was a moment&#8217;s silence, in which Grassette&#8217;s
+head was thrust forward, his eyes staring into space.
+The old Seigneur had touched a vulnerable corner in
+his nature.</p>
+<p>Presently he said in a low voice: &#8220;To be free altogether!...
+What is his name? Who is he?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;His name is Bignold,&#8221; the Governor answered. He
+turned to the Sheriff inquiringly. &#8220;That is it, is it
+not?&#8221; he asked, in English, again.</p>
+<p>&#8220;James Tarran Bignold,&#8221; answered the Sheriff.</p>
+<p>The effect of these words upon Grassette was remarkable.
+His body appeared to stiffen, his face became
+rigid, he stared at the Governor blankly, appalled; the
+color left his face, and his mouth opened with a curious
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_206' name='page_206'></a>206</span>
+and revolting grimace. The others drew back, startled,
+and watched him.</p>
+<p>&#8220;<i>Sang de Dieu</i>!&#8221; he murmured at last, with a sudden
+gesture of misery and rage.</p>
+<p>Then the Governor understood: he remembered that
+the name just given by the Sheriff and himself was the
+name of the Englishman who had carried off Grassette&#8217;s
+wife years ago. He stepped forward and was about
+to speak, but changed his mind. He would leave it all
+to Grassette; he would not let the Sheriff know the
+truth, unless Grassette himself disclosed the situation.
+He looked at Grassette with a look of poignant pity and
+interest combined. In his own placid life he had never
+had any tragic happening, his blood had run coolly, his
+days had been blessed by an urbane fate; such scenes
+as this were but a spectacle to him; there was no answering
+chord of human suffering in his own breast to
+make him realize what Grassette was undergoing
+now; but he had read widely, he had been an acute
+observer of the world and its happenings, and he had
+a natural human sympathy which had made many a
+man and woman eternally grateful to him.</p>
+<p>What would Grassette do? It was a problem which
+had no precedent, and the solution would be a revelation
+of the human mind and heart. What would the man do?</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, what is all this, Grassette?&#8221; asked the Sheriff,
+brusquely. His official and officious intervention, behind
+which was the tyranny of the little man, given a
+power which he was incapable of wielding wisely, would
+have roused Grassette to a savage reply a half-hour
+before, but now it was met by a contemptuous wave of
+the hand, and Grassette kept his eyes fixed on the
+Governor.</p>
+<p>&#8220;James Tarran Bignold!&#8221; Grassette said, harshly,
+with eyes that searched the Governor&#8217;s face; but they
+found no answering look there. The Governor, then,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_207' name='page_207'></a>207</span>
+did not remember that tragedy of his home and hearth,
+and the man who had made of him an Ishmael. Still,
+Bignold had been almost a stranger in the parish, and
+it was not curious if the Governor had forgotten.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Bignold!&#8221; he repeated, but the Governor gave no
+response.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, Bignold is his name, Grassette,&#8221; said the
+Sheriff. &#8220;You took a life, and now, if you save one,
+that&#8217;ll balance things. As the Governor says, there&#8217;ll
+be a reprieve anyhow. It&#8217;s pretty near <i>the day</i>, and this
+isn&#8217;t a bad world to kick in, so long as you kick with
+one leg on the ground, and&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>The Governor hastily intervened upon the Sheriff&#8217;s
+brutal remarks. &#8220;There is no time to be lost, Grassette.
+He has been ten days in the mine.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Grassette&#8217;s was not a slow brain. For a man of such
+physical and bodily bulk, he had more talents than are
+generally given. If his brain had been slower, his hand
+also would have been slower to strike. But his intelligence
+had been surcharged with hate these many years,
+and since the day he had been deserted it had ceased
+to control his actions&mdash;a passionate and reckless wilfulness
+had governed it. But now, after the first shock
+and stupefaction, it seemed to go back to where it was
+before Marcile went from him, gather up the force and
+intelligence it had then, and come forward again to this
+supreme moment, with all that life&#8217;s harsh experiences
+had done for it, with the education that misery and
+misdoing give. Revolutions are often the work of
+instants, not years, and the crucial test and problem by
+which Grassette was now faced had lifted him into a
+new atmosphere, with a new capacity alive in him. A
+moment ago his eyes had been bloodshot and swimming
+with hatred and passion; now they grew, almost suddenly,
+hard and lurking and quiet, with a strange,
+penetrating force and inquiry in them.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_208' name='page_208'></a>208</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;Bignold&mdash;where does he come from?&mdash;What is he?&#8221;
+he asked the Sheriff.</p>
+<p>&#8220;He is an Englishman; he&#8217;s only been out here
+a few months. He&#8217;s been shooting and prospecting;
+but he&#8217;s a better shooter than a prospector. He&#8217;s a
+stranger; that&#8217;s why all the folks out here want to save
+him if it&#8217;s possible. It&#8217;s pretty hard dying in a strange
+land far away from all that&#8217;s yours. Maybe he&#8217;s got
+a wife waiting for him over there.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;<i>Nom de Dieu</i>!&#8221; said Grassette, with suppressed
+malice, under his breath.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Maybe there&#8217;s a wife waiting for him, and there&#8217;s
+her to think of. The West&#8217;s hospitable, and this thing
+has taken hold of it; the West wants to save this stranger,
+and it&#8217;s waiting for you, Grassette, to do its work
+for it, you being the only man that can do it, the only
+one that knows the other secret way into Keeley&#8217;s
+Gulch. Speak right out, Grassette. It&#8217;s your chance
+for life. Speak out quick.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The last three words were uttered in the old slave-driving
+tone, though the earlier part of the speech had
+been delivered oracularly, and had brought again to
+Grassette&#8217;s eyes the reddish, sullen look which had made
+them, a little while before, like those of some wounded,
+angered animal at bay; but it vanished slowly, and
+there was silence for a moment. The Sheriff&#8217;s words
+had left no vestige of doubt in Grassette&#8217;s mind. This
+Bignold was the man who had taken Marcile away, first
+to the English province, then into the States, where he
+had lost track of them, then over to England. Marcile&mdash;where
+was Marcile now?</p>
+<p>In Keeley&#8217;s Gulch was the man who could tell him,
+the man who had ruined his home and his life. Dead
+or alive, he was in Keeley&#8217;s Gulch, the man who knew
+where Marcile was; and if he knew where Marcile was,
+and if she was alive, and he was outside these prison
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_209' name='page_209'></a>209</span>
+walls, what would he do to her? And if he was outside
+these prison walls, and in the Gulch, and the man
+was there alive before him, what would he do?</p>
+<p>Outside these prison walls&mdash;to be out there in the
+sun, where life would be easier to give up, if it had to be
+given up! An hour ago he had been drifting on a sea
+of apathy, and had had his fill of life. An hour ago he
+had had but one desire, and that was to die fighting,
+and he had even pictured to himself a struggle in this
+narrow cell where he would compel them to kill him,
+and so in any case let him escape the rope. Now he
+was suddenly brought face to face with the great central
+issue of his life, and the end, whatever that end might
+be, could not be the same in meaning, though it might
+be the same concretely. If he elected to let things
+be, then Bignold would die out there in the Gulch,
+starved, anguished, and alone. If he went, he could
+save his own life by saving Bignold, if Bignold was
+alive; or he could go&mdash;and not save Bignold&#8217;s life or
+his own! What would he do?</p>
+<p>The Governor watched him with a face controlled to
+quietness, but with an anxiety which made him pale in
+spite of himself.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What will you do, Grassette?&#8221; he said, at last, in a
+low voice and with a step forward to him. &#8220;Will you
+not help to clear your conscience by doing this thing?
+You don&#8217;t want to try and spite the world by not doing
+it. You can make a lot of your life yet, if you are set
+free. Give yourself and give the world a chance. You
+haven&#8217;t used it right. Try again.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Grassette imagined that the Governor did not remember
+who Bignold was, and that this was an appeal
+against his despair, and against revenging himself on
+the community which had applauded his sentence. If
+he went to the Gulch, no one would know or could suspect
+the true situation, every one would be unprepared
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_210' name='page_210'></a>210</span>
+for that moment when Bignold and he would face each
+other&mdash;and all that would happen then.</p>
+<p>Where was Marcile? Only Bignold knew. Alive or
+dead? Only Bignold knew.</p>
+<p>&#8220;<i>Bien</i>, I will do it, m&#8217;sieu&#8217;,&#8221; he said to the Governor.
+&#8220;I am to go alone&mdash;eh?&#8221;</p>
+<p>The Sheriff shook his head. &#8220;No; two warders will
+go with you&mdash;and myself.&#8221;</p>
+<p>A strange look passed over Grassette&#8217;s face. He
+seemed to hesitate for a moment, then he said again:
+&#8220;<i>Bon</i>, I will go.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then there is, of course, the doctor,&#8221; said the
+Sheriff.</p>
+<p>&#8220;<i>Bon</i>!&#8221; said Grassette. &#8220;What time is it?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Twelve o&#8217;clock,&#8221; answered the Sheriff, and made
+a motion to the warder to open the door of the cell.</p>
+<p>&#8220;By sundown!&#8221; Grassette said, and he turned with a
+determined gesture to leave the cell.</p>
+<p>At the gate of the prison a fresh, sweet air caught
+his face. Involuntarily he drew in a great draught of
+it, and his eyes seemed to gaze out, almost wonderingly,
+over the grass and the trees to the boundless
+horizon. Then he became aware of the shouts of the
+crowd&mdash;shouts of welcome. This same crowd had
+greeted him with shouts of execration when he had left
+the court-house after his sentence. He stood still for
+a moment and looked at them, as it were only half
+comprehending that they were cheering him now, and
+that voices were saying, &#8220;Bravo, Grassette! Save him,
+and we&#8217;ll save you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Cheer upon cheer, but he took no notice. He walked
+like one in a dream&mdash;a long, strong step. He turned
+neither to left nor right, not even when the friendly
+voice of one who had worked with him bade him
+&#8220;Cheer up and do the trick.&#8221; He was busy working
+out a problem which no one but himself could solve.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_211' name='page_211'></a>211</span>
+He was only half conscious of his surroundings; he was
+moving in a kind of detached world of his own, where
+the warders and the Sheriff and those who followed were
+almost abstract and unreal figures. He was living with
+a past which had been everlastingly distant, and had now
+become a vivid and buffeting present. He returned no
+answers to the questions addressed to him, and would
+not talk, save when for a little while they dismounted
+from their horses and sat under the shade of a great
+ash-tree for a few moments and snatched a mouthful of
+luncheon. Then he spoke a little and asked some
+questions, but lapsed into a moody silence afterward.
+His life and nature were being passed through a fiery
+crucible. In all the years that had gone he had had an
+ungovernable desire to kill both Bignold and Marcile if
+he ever met them&mdash;a primitive, savage desire to blot
+them out of life and being. His fingers had ached for
+Marcile&#8217;s neck, that neck in which he had lain his face
+so often in the transient, unforgettable days of their
+happiness. If she was alive now!&mdash;if she was still alive!</p>
+<p>Her story was hidden there in Keeley&#8217;s Gulch with
+Bignold, and he was galloping hard to reach his foe. As
+he went, by some strange alchemy of human experience,
+by that new birth of his brain, the world seemed different
+from what it had ever been before, at least
+since the day when he had found an empty home and a
+shamed hearthstone. He got a new feeling toward it,
+and life appealed to him as a thing that might have
+been so well worth living! But since that was not to
+be, then he would see what he could do to get compensation
+for all that he had lost, to take toll for the
+thing that had spoiled him, and given him a savage nature
+and a raging temper, which had driven him at last to kill
+a man who, in no real sense, had injured him.</p>
+<p>Mile after mile they journeyed, a troop of interested
+people coming after; the sun and the clear, sweet air, the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_212' name='page_212'></a>212</span>
+waving grass, the occasional clearings where settlers had
+driven in the tent-pegs of home; the forest now and then
+swallowing them, the mountains rising above them like
+a blank wall, and then suddenly opening out before
+them; and the rustle and scamper of squirrels and
+coyotes; and over their heads the whistle of birds, the
+slow beat of wings of great wild-fowl. The tender sap
+of youth was in this glowing and alert new world, and,
+by sudden contrast with the prison walls which he had
+just left behind, the earth seemed recreated, unfamiliar,
+compelling, and companionable. Strange that in all
+the years that had been since he had gone back to his
+abandoned home to find Marcile gone, the world had
+had no beauty, no lure for him. In the splendor of it
+all he had only raged and stormed, hating his fellow-man,
+waiting, however hopelessly, for the day when he
+should see Marcile and the man who had taken her
+from him. And yet now, under the degradation of his
+crime and its penalty, and the unmanning influence of
+being the helpless victim of the iron power of the law,
+rigid, ugly, and demoralizing&mdash;now with the solution of
+his life&#8217;s great problem here before him in the hills, with
+the man for whom he had waited so long caverned in
+the earth but a hand-reach away, as it were, his wrongs
+had taken a new manifestation in him, and the thing
+that kept crying out in him every moment was, Where
+is Marcile?</p>
+<p>It was four o&#8217;clock when they reached the pass which
+only Grassette knew, the secret way into the Gulch.
+There was two hours&#8217; walking through the thick,
+primeval woods, where few had ever been, except the
+ancient tribes which had once lorded it here; then came
+a sudden drop into the earth, a short travel through
+a dim cave, and afterward a sheer wall of stone enclosing
+a ravine where the rocks on either side nearly
+met overhead.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_213' name='page_213'></a>213</span></p>
+<p>Here Grassette gave the signal to shout aloud, and
+the voice of the Sheriff called out: &#8220;Hello, Bignold!
+Hello! Hello, Bignold! Are you there?&mdash;Hello!&#8221; His
+voice rang out clear and piercing, and then came a
+silence&mdash;a long, anxious silence. Again the voice rang
+out: &#8220;Hello! Hello-o-o! Bignold! Bigno-o-ld!&#8221;</p>
+<p>They strained their ears. Grassette was flat on the
+ground, his ear to the earth. Suddenly he got to his
+feet, his face set, his eyes glittering.</p>
+<p>&#8220;He is there beyon&#8217;&mdash;I hear him,&#8221; he said, pointing
+farther down the Gulch. &#8220;Water&mdash;he is near it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;We heard nothing,&#8221; said the Sheriff&mdash;&#8220;not a sound.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I hear ver&#8217; good. He is alive. I hear him&mdash;so,&#8221;
+responded Grassette; and his face had a strange, fixed
+look which the others interpreted to be agitation at the
+thought that he had saved his own life by finding
+Bignold&mdash;and alive; which would put his own salvation
+beyond doubt.</p>
+<p>He broke away from them and hurried down the
+Gulch. The others followed hard after, the Sheriff and
+the warders close behind; but he outstripped them.</p>
+<p>Suddenly he stopped and stood still, looking at
+something on the ground. They saw him lean forward
+and his hands stretched out with a fierce gesture. It was
+the attitude of a wild animal ready to spring.</p>
+<p>They were beside him in an instant, and saw at his
+feet Bignold worn to a skeleton, with eyes starting from
+his head and fixed on Grassette in agony and stark fear.</p>
+<p>The Sheriff stooped to lift Bignold up, but Grassette
+waved them back with a fierce gesture, standing over
+the dying man.</p>
+<p>&#8220;He spoil my home. He break me&mdash;I have my bill
+to settle here,&#8221; he said, in a voice hoarse and harsh. &#8220;It
+is so? It is so&mdash;eh? Spik!&#8221; he said to Bignold.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; came feebly from the shrivelled lips. &#8220;Water!
+Water!&#8221; the wretched man gasped. &#8220;I&#8217;m dying!&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_214' name='page_214'></a>214</span></p>
+<p>A sudden change came over Grassette. &#8220;Water&mdash;queeck!&#8221;
+he said.</p>
+<p>The Sheriff stooped and held a hatful of water to
+Bignold&#8217;s lips, while another poured brandy from a flask
+into the water.</p>
+<p>Grassette watched them eagerly. When the dying
+man had swallowed a little of the spirit and water,
+Grassette leaned over him again, and the others drew
+away. They realized that these two men had an account
+to settle, and there was no need for Grassette to take
+revenge, for Bignold was going fast.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You stan&#8217; far back,&#8221; said Grassette, and they fell away.</p>
+<p>Then he stooped down to the sunken, ashen face,
+over which death was fast drawing its veil.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Marcile&mdash;where is Marcile?&#8221; he asked.</p>
+<p>The dying man&#8217;s lips opened. &#8220;God forgive me&mdash;God
+save my soul!&#8221; he whispered. He was not concerned
+for Grassette now.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Queeck&mdash;queeck, where is Marcile?&#8221; Grassette said,
+sharply. &#8220;Come back, Bignold. Listen&mdash;where is Marcile?&#8221;</p>
+<p>He strained to hear the answer. Bignold was going,
+but his eyes opened again, however, for this call seemed
+to pierce to his soul as it struggled to be free.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ten years&mdash;since&mdash;I saw her,&#8221; he whispered. &#8220;Good
+girl&mdash;Marcile. She loves you, but she&mdash;is afraid.&#8221; He
+tried to say something more, but his tongue refused
+its office.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Where is she?&mdash;spik!&#8221; commanded Grassette, in a
+tone of pleading and agony now.</p>
+<p>Once more the flying spirit came back. A hand
+made a motion toward his pocket, then lay still.</p>
+<p>Grassette felt hastily in the dead man&#8217;s pocket, drew
+forth a letter, and with half-blinded eyes read the few
+lines it contained. It was dated from a hospital in
+New York, and was signed, &#8220;Nurse Marcile.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_215' name='page_215'></a>215</span></p>
+<p>With a groan of relief Grassette stood staring at the
+dead man. When the others came to him again, his
+lips were moving, but they did not hear what he was
+saying. They took up the body and moved away with
+it up the ravine.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s all right, Grassette. You&#8217;ll be a free man,&#8221; said
+the Sheriff.</p>
+<p>Grassette did not answer. He was thinking how
+long it would take him to get to Marcile, when he was
+free.</p>
+<p>He had a true vision of beginning life again with
+Marcile.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<a name='A_MAN_A_FAMINE_AND_A_HEATHEN_BOY' id='A_MAN_A_FAMINE_AND_A_HEATHEN_BOY'></a>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_216' name='page_216'></a>216</span>
+<h2>A MAN, A FAMINE, AND A HEATHEN BOY</h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class='ce'>
+<p>I</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Athabasca in the Far North is the scene of this
+story&mdash;Athabasca, one of the most beautiful countries
+in the world in summer, but a cold, bare land in winter.
+Yet even in winter it is not so bleak and bitter as the
+districts southwest of it, for the Chinook winds steal
+through from the Pacific and temper the fierceness of the
+frozen Rockies. Yet forty and fifty degrees below zero
+is cold, after all, and July strawberries in this wild Northland
+are hardly compensation for seven months of ice
+and snow, no matter how clear and blue the sky, how
+sweet the sun during its short journey in the day. Some
+days, too, the sun may not be seen even when there is no
+storm, because of the fine, white, powdered frost in the
+air.</p>
+<p>A day like this is called a <i>poudre</i> day; and woe to
+the man who tempts it unthinkingly, because the light
+makes the delicate mist of frost shine like silver. For
+that powder bites the skin white in short order, and
+sometimes reckless men lose ears or noses or hands
+under its sharp caress. But when it really storms in
+that Far North, then neither man nor beast should be
+abroad&mdash;not even the Eskimo dogs; though times and
+seasons can scarcely be chosen when travelling in
+Athabasca, for a storm comes unawares. Upon the
+plains you will see a cloud arising, not in the sky, but
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_217' name='page_217'></a>217</span>
+from the ground&mdash;a billowy surf of drifting snow; then
+another white billow from the sky will sweep down and
+meet it, and you are caught between.</p>
+<p>He who went to Athabasca to live a generation ago
+had to ask himself if the long winter, spent chiefly
+indoors, with, maybe, a little trading with the Indians,
+meagre sport, and scant sun, savages and half-breeds the
+only companions, and out of all touch with the outside
+world, letters coming but once a year; with frozen fish
+and meat, always the same, as the staple items in a
+primitive fare; with danger from starvation and marauding
+tribes; with endless monotony, in which men sometimes
+go mad&mdash;he had to ask himself if these were to be
+cheerfully endured because, in the short summer, the
+air is heavenly, the rivers and lakes are full of fish, the
+flotilla of canoes of the fur-hunters is pouring down,
+and all is gayety and pleasant turmoil; because there
+is good shooting in the autumn, and the smell of the land
+is like a garden, and hardy fruits and flowers are at hand.</p>
+<p>That is a question which was asked William Rufus
+Holly once upon a time.</p>
+<p>William Rufus Holly, often called &#8220;Averdoopoy,&#8221;
+sometimes &#8220;Sleeping Beauty,&#8221; always Billy Rufus, had
+had a good education. He had been to high-school and
+to college, and he had taken one or two prizes <i>en route</i>
+to graduation; but no fame travelled with him, save
+that he was the laziest man of any college year for a
+decade. He loved his little porringer, which is to say
+that he ate a good deal; and he loved to read books,
+which is not to say that he loved study; he hated getting
+out of bed, and he was constantly gated for morning
+chapel. More than once he had sweetly gone to sleep
+over his examination papers. This is not to say that
+he failed at his examinations&mdash;on the contrary, he
+always succeeded; but he only did enough to pass and
+no more; and he did not wish to do more than pass.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_218' name='page_218'></a>218</span>
+His going to sleep at examinations was evidence that
+he was either indifferent or self-indulgent, and it certainly
+showed that he was without nervousness. He
+invariably roused himself, or his professor roused him, a
+half-hour before the papers should be handed in, and, as
+it were, by a mathematical calculation he had always
+done just enough to prevent him being plucked.</p>
+<p>He slept at lectures, he slept in hall, he slept as he
+waited his turn to go to the wicket in a cricket match,
+and he invariably went to sleep afterward. He even
+did so on the day he had made the biggest score in the
+biggest game ever played between his college and the
+pick of the country; but he first gorged himself with
+cake and tea. The day he took his degree he had to be
+dragged from a huge grandfather&#8217;s chair and forced along
+in his ragged gown&mdash;&#8220;ten holes and twelve tatters&#8221;&mdash;to
+the function in the convocation-hall. He looked
+so fat and shiny, so balmy and sleepy, when he took his
+degree and was handed his prize for a poem on Sir John
+Franklin, that the public laughed, and the college men
+in the gallery began singing&mdash;</p>
+<table summary='poetry' style='margin:0 auto'><tr><td>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>&#8220;Bye O, my baby,</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>Father will come to you soo-oon!&#8221;</p>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>He seemed not to care, but yawned in his hand as he
+put his prize book under his arm through one of the
+holes in his gown, and in two minutes was back in his
+room, and in another five was fast asleep.</p>
+<p>It was the general opinion that William Rufus Holly,
+fat, yellow-haired, and twenty-four years old, was doomed
+to failure in life, in spite of the fact that he had a little
+income of a thousand dollars a year and had made
+a century in an important game of cricket. Great,
+therefore, was the surprise of the college, and afterward
+of the Province, when, at the farewell dinner of the
+graduates, Sleeping Beauty announced, between his
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_219' name='page_219'></a>219</span>
+little open-eyed naps, that he was going Far North as
+a missionary.</p>
+<p>At first it was thought he was joking, but when at
+last, in his calm and dreamy look, they saw he meant
+what he said, they arose and carried him round the room
+on a chair, making impromptu songs as they travelled.
+They toasted Billy Rufus again and again, some of
+them laughing till they cried at the thought of Averdoopoy
+going to the Arctic regions. But an uneasy seriousness
+fell upon these &#8220;beautiful, bountiful, brilliant
+boys,&#8221; as Holly called them later, when in a simple,
+honest, but indolent speech he said he had applied for
+ordination.</p>
+<p>Six months later William Rufus Holly, a deacon in
+holy orders, journeyed to Athabasca in the Far North.</p>
+<p>On his long journey there was plenty of time to
+think. He was embarked on a career which must
+forever keep him in the wilds; for very seldom indeed
+does a missionary of the North ever return to the
+crowded cities or take a permanent part in civilized life.</p>
+<p>What the loneliness of it would be he began to feel,
+as for hours and hours he saw no human being on the
+plains; in the thrilling stillness of the night; in fierce
+storms in the woods, when his half-breed guides bent
+their heads to meet the wind and rain, and did not
+speak for hours; in the long, adventurous journey on
+the river by the day, in the cry of the plaintive loon at
+night; in the scant food for every meal. Yet what the
+pleasure would be he felt in the joyous air, the exquisite
+sunshine, the flocks of wild-fowl flying north, <i>honking</i> on
+their course; in the song of the half-breeds as they ran
+the rapids. Of course, he did not think these things
+quite as they are written here&mdash;all at once and all
+together; but in little pieces from time to time, feeling
+them rather than saying them to himself.</p>
+<p>At least he did understand how serious a thing it was,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_220' name='page_220'></a>220</span>
+his going as a missionary into the Far North. Why did
+he do it? Was it a whim, or the excited imagination
+of youth, or that prompting which the young often have
+to make the world better? Or was it a fine spirit of
+adventure with a good heart behind it? Perhaps it was
+a little of all these; but there was also something more,
+and it was to his credit.</p>
+<p>Lazy as William Rufus Holly had been at school and
+college, he had still thought a good deal, even when he
+seemed only sleeping; perhaps he thought more because
+he slept so much, because he studied little and read a
+great deal. He always knew what everybody thought&mdash;that
+he would never do anything but play cricket till
+he got too heavy to run, and then would sink into a
+slothful, fat, and useless middle and old age; that his
+life would be a failure. And he knew that they were
+right; that if he stayed where he could live an easy life,
+a fat and easy life he would lead; that in a few years he
+would be good for nothing except to eat and sleep&mdash;no
+more. One day, waking suddenly from a bad dream of
+himself so fat as to be drawn about on a dray by monstrous
+fat oxen with rings through their noses, led
+by monkeys, he began to wonder what he should do&mdash;the
+hardest thing to do; for only the hardest life could
+possibly save him from failure, and, in spite of all, he
+really did want to make something of his life. He had
+been reading the story of Sir John Franklin&#8217;s Arctic
+expedition, and all at once it came home to him that
+the only thing for him to do was to go to the Far North
+and stay there, coming back about once every ten years
+to tell the people in the cities what was being done in
+the wilds. Then there came the inspiration to write his
+poem on Sir John Franklin, and he had done so, winning
+the college prize for poetry. But no one had seen any
+change in him in those months; and, indeed, there had
+been little or no change, for he had an equable and
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_221' name='page_221'></a>221</span>
+practical, though imaginative, disposition, despite his
+avoirdupois, and his new purpose did not stir him yet
+from his comfortable sloth.</p>
+<p>And in all the journey west and north he had not
+been stirred greatly from his ease of body, for the
+journey was not much harder than playing cricket
+every day, and there were only the thrill of the beautiful
+air, the new people, and the new scenes to rouse him.
+As yet there was no great responsibility. He scarcely
+realized what his life must be until one particular day.</p>
+<p>Then Sleeping Beauty waked wide up, and from that
+day lost the name. Till then he had looked and borne
+himself like any other traveller, unrecognized as a
+parson or &#8220;mikonaree.&#8221; He had not had prayers in
+camp <i>en route</i>, he had not preached, he had held no
+meetings. He was as yet William Rufus Holly, the
+cricketer, the laziest dreamer of a college decade. His
+religion was simple and practical; he had never had
+any morbid ideas; he had lived a healthy, natural, and
+honorable life, until he went for a mikonaree, and, if he
+had no cant, he had not a clear idea of how many-sided,
+how responsible, his life must be&mdash;until that one particular
+day.</p>
+<p>This is what happened then.</p>
+<p>From Fort O&#8217;Call, an abandoned post of the Hudson&#8217;s
+Bay Company on the Peace River, nearly the whole
+tribe of the Athabasca Indians in possession of the
+post now had come up the river, with their chief, Knife-in-the-Wind,
+to meet the mikonaree. Factors of the
+Hudson&#8217;s Bay Company, <i>coureurs de bois</i>, and <i>voyageurs</i>
+had come among them at times, and once the renowned
+Father Lacombe, the Jesuit priest, had stayed with them
+three months; but never to this day had they seen a
+Protestant mikonaree, though once a factor, noted for
+his furious temper, his powers of running, and his
+generosity, had preached to them. These men, however,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_222' name='page_222'></a>222</span>
+were both over fifty years old. The Athabascas
+did not hunger for the Christian religion, but a courier
+from Edmonton had brought them word that a mikonaree
+was coming to their country to stay, and they put
+off their stoical manner and allowed themselves the luxury
+of curiosity. That was why even the squaws and
+papooses came up the river with the braves, all wondering
+if the stranger had brought gifts with him, all eager
+for their shares; for it had been said by the courier of
+the tribe that &#8220;Oshondonto,&#8221; their name for the newcomer,
+was bringing mysterious loads of well-wrapped
+bales and skins. Upon a point below the first rapids
+of the Little Manitou they waited with their camp-fires
+burning and their pipe of peace.</p>
+<p>When the canoes bearing Oshondonto and his <i>voyageurs</i>
+shot the rapids to the song of the river,</p>
+<table summary='poetry' style='margin:0 auto'><tr><td>
+<p  style=' font-style:italic;margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>&#8220;En roulant, ma boule roulant, </p>
+<p  style=' font-style:italic;margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>En roulant, ma boule!&#8221; </p>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>with the shrill voices of the boatmen rising to meet the
+cry of the startled water-fowl, the Athabascas crowded
+to the high banks. They grunted &#8220;How!&#8221; in greeting,
+as the foremost canoe made for the shore.</p>
+<p>But if surprise could have changed the countenances
+of Indians, these Athabascas would not have known
+one another when the missionary stepped out upon the
+shore. They had looked to see a gray-bearded man
+like the chief factor who quarrelled and prayed; but
+they found instead a round-faced, clean-shaven youth,
+with big, good-natured eyes, yellow hair, and a roundness
+of body like that of a month-old bear&#8217;s cub. They
+expected to find a man who, like the factor, could speak
+their language, and they found a cherub sort of youth
+who talked only English, French, and Chinook&mdash;that
+common language of the North&mdash;and a few words of
+their own language which he had learned on the way.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_223' name='page_223'></a>223</span></p>
+<p>Besides, Oshondonto was so absent-minded at the
+moment, so absorbed in admiration of the garish scene
+before him, that he addressed the chief in French, of
+which Knife-in-the-Wind knew but one word, <i>câche</i>,
+which all the North knows.</p>
+<p>But presently William Rufus Holly recovered himself,
+and in stumbling Chinook made himself understood.
+Opening a bale, he brought out beads and tobacco and
+some bright red flannel, and two hundred Indians sat
+round him and grunted &#8220;How!&#8221; and received his gifts
+with little comment. Then the pipe of peace went
+round, and Oshondonto smoked it becomingly.</p>
+<p>But he saw that the Indians despised him for his
+youth, his fatness, his yellow hair as soft as a girl&#8217;s, his
+cherub face, browned though it was by the sun and
+weather.</p>
+<p>As he handed the pipe to Knife-in-the-Wind, an
+Indian called Silver Tassel, with a cruel face, said, grimly:</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why does Oshondonto travel to us?&#8221;</p>
+<p>William Rufus Holly&#8217;s eyes steadied on those of the
+Indian as he replied in Chinook: &#8220;To teach the way
+to Manitou the Mighty, to tell the Athabascas of the
+Great Chief who died to save the world.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;The story is told in many ways; which is right?
+There was the factor, Word of Thunder. There is the
+song they sing at Edmonton&mdash;I have heard.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;The Great Chief is the same Chief,&#8221; answered the
+missionary. &#8220;If you tell of Fort O&#8217;Call, and Knife-in-the-Wind
+tells of Fort O&#8217;Call, he and you will speak
+different words, and one will put in one thing and one
+will leave out another; men&#8217;s tongues are different.
+But Fort O&#8217;Call is the same, and the Great Chief is the
+same.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It was a long time ago,&#8221; said Knife-in-the-Wind,
+sourly, &#8220;many thousand moon, as the pebbles in the
+river, the years.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_224' name='page_224'></a>224</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;It is the same world, and it is the same Chief, and
+it was to save us,&#8221; answered William Rufus Holly,
+smiling, yet with a fluttering heart, for the first test of
+his life had come.</p>
+<p>In anger Knife-in-the-Wind thrust an arrow into the
+ground and said:</p>
+<p>&#8220;How can the white man who died thousands of
+moons ago in a far country save the red man of to-day?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;A strong man should bear so weak a tale,&#8221; broke
+in Silver Tassel, ruthlessly. &#8220;Are we children, that the
+Great Chief sends a child as messenger?&#8221;</p>
+<p>For a moment Billy Rufus did not know how to
+reply, and in the pause Knife-in-the-Wind broke in two
+pieces the arrow he had thrust in the ground in token of
+displeasure.</p>
+<p>Suddenly, as Oshondonto was about to speak, Silver
+Tassel sprang to his feet, seized in his arms a lad of
+twelve who was standing near, and, running to the bank,
+dropped him into the swift current.</p>
+<p>&#8220;If Oshondonto be not a child, let him save the
+lad,&#8221; said Silver Tassel, standing on the brink.</p>
+<p>Instantly William Rufus Holly was on his feet. His
+coat was off before Silver Tassel&#8217;s words were out of
+his mouth, and, crying, &#8220;In the name of the Great
+White Chief!&#8221; he jumped into the rushing current.
+&#8220;In the name of your Manitou, come on, Silver Tassel!&#8221;
+he called up from the water, and struck out for the lad.</p>
+<p>Not pausing an instant, Silver Tassel sprang into the
+flood, into the whirling eddies and dangerous current
+below the first rapids and above the second.</p>
+<div class='ce'>
+<p>II</p>
+</div>
+
+<p>Then came the struggle for Wingo of the Cree tribe,
+a waif among the Athabascas, whose father had been
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_225' name='page_225'></a>225</span>
+slain as they travelled, by a wandering tribe of Blackfeet.
+Never was there a braver rivalry, although the odds were
+with the Indian&mdash;in lightness, in brutal strength. With
+the mikonaree, however, were skill, and that sort of
+strength which the world calls &#8220;moral,&#8221; the strength of a
+good and desperate purpose. Oshondonto knew that on
+the issue of this shameless business&mdash;this cruel sport of
+Silver Tassel&mdash;would depend his future on the Peace
+River. As he shot forward with strong strokes in the
+whirling torrent after the helpless lad, who, only able
+to keep himself afloat, was being swept down toward
+the rapids below, he glanced up to the bank along which
+the Athabascas were running. He saw the garish
+colors of their dresses; he saw the ignorant medicine-man,
+with his mysterious bag, making incantations,
+he saw the <i>tepee</i> of the chief, with its barbarous pennant
+above; he saw the idle, naked children tearing at the
+entrails of a calf; and he realized that this was a deadly
+tournament between civilization and barbarism.</p>
+<p>Silver Tassel was gaining on him; they were both
+overhauling the boy; it was now to see which should
+reach Wingo first, which should take him to shore.
+That is, if both were not carried under before they
+reached him; that is, if, having reached him, they and
+he would ever get to shore; for, lower down, before it
+reached the rapids, the current ran horribly smooth and
+strong, and here and there were jagged rocks just
+beneath the surface.</p>
+<p>Still Silver Tassel gained on him, as they both gained
+on the boy. Oshondonto swam strong and hard, but
+he swam with his eyes on the struggle for the shore also;
+he was not putting forth his utmost strength, for he
+knew it would be bitterly needed, perhaps to save his
+own life by a last effort.</p>
+<p>Silver Tassel passed him when they were about fifty
+feet from the boy. Shooting by on his side, with a
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_226' name='page_226'></a>226</span>
+long stroke and a plunge of his body like a projectile,
+the dark face with the long, black hair plastering it
+turned toward his own, in fierce triumph Silver Tassel
+cried &#8220;How!&#8221; in derision.</p>
+<p>Billy Rufus set his teeth and lay down to his work
+like a sportsman. His face had lost its roses, and it
+was set and determined, but there was no look of fear
+upon it, nor did his heart sink when a cry of triumph
+went up from the crowd on the banks. The white man
+knew by old experience in the cricket-field and in many
+a boat-race that it is well not to halloo till you are out
+of the woods. His mettle was up, he was not the
+Reverend William Rufus Holly, missionary, but Billy
+Rufus, the champion cricketer, the sportsman playing
+a long game.</p>
+<p>Silver Tassel reached the boy, who was bruised and
+bleeding and at his last gasp, and, throwing an arm
+round him, struck out for the shore. The current was
+very strong, and he battled fiercely as Billy Rufus, not
+far above, moved down toward them at an angle. For
+a few yards Silver Tassel was going strong, then his
+pace slackened, he seemed to sink lower in the water,
+and his stroke became splashing and irregular. Suddenly
+he struck a rock, which bruised him badly, and,
+swerving from his course, he lost his stroke and let go
+the boy.</p>
+<p>By this time the mikonaree had swept beyond them,
+and he caught the boy by his long hair as he was being
+swept below. Striking out for the shore, he swam with
+bold, strong strokes, his judgment guiding him well past
+rocks beneath the surface. Ten feet from shore he
+heard a cry of alarm from above. It concerned Silver
+Tassel, he knew, but he could not look round yet.</p>
+<p>In another moment the boy was dragged up the bank
+by strong hands, and Billy Rufus swung round in the
+water toward Silver Tassel, who, in his confused energy,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_227' name='page_227'></a>227</span>
+had struck another rock, and, exhausted now, was being
+swept toward the rapids. Silver Tassel&#8217;s shoulder
+scarcely showed&mdash;his strength was gone. In a flash
+Billy Rufus saw there was but one thing to do. He
+must run the rapids with Silver Tassel&mdash;there was no
+other way. It would be a fight through the jaws of
+death; but no Indian&#8217;s eyes had a better sense for river-life
+than William Rufus Holly&#8217;s.</p>
+<p>How he reached Silver Tassel, and drew the Indian&#8217;s
+arm over his own shoulder; how they drove down into
+the boiling flood; how Billy Rufus&#8217; fat body was battered
+and torn and ran red with blood from twenty
+flesh wounds; but how by luck beyond the telling he
+brought Silver Tassel through safely into the quiet
+water a quarter of a mile below the rapids, and was
+hauled out, both more dead than alive, is a tale still
+told by the Athabascas around their camp-fire. The
+rapids are known to-day as the Mikonaree Rapids.</p>
+<p>The end of this beginning of the young man&#8217;s career
+was that Silver Tassel gave him the word of eternal
+friendship, Knife-in-the-Wind took him into the tribe, and
+the boy Wingo became his very own, to share his home
+and his travels, no longer a waif among the Athabascas.</p>
+<p>After three days&#8217; feasting, at the end of which the
+missionary held his first service and preached his first
+sermon, to the accompaniment of grunts of satisfaction
+from the whole tribe of Athabascas, William Rufus
+Holly began his work in the Far North.</p>
+<p>The journey to Fort O&#8217;Call was a procession of
+triumph, for, as it was summer, there was plenty of
+food, the missionary had been a success, and he had
+distributed many gifts of beads and flannel.</p>
+<p>All went well for many moons, although converts
+were uncertain and baptisms few, and the work was
+hard and the loneliness at times terrible. But at last
+came dark days.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_228' name='page_228'></a>228</span></p>
+<p>One summer and autumn there had been poor fishing
+and shooting, the <i>câches</i> of meat were fewer on the
+plains, and almost nothing had come up to Fort O&#8217;Call
+from Edmonton, far below. The yearly supplies for
+the missionary, paid for out of his private income&mdash;the
+bacon, beans, tea, coffee, and flour&mdash;had been raided by
+a band of hostile Indians, and he viewed with deep
+concern the progress of the severe winter. Although
+three years of hard, frugal life had made his muscles
+like iron, they had only mellowed his temper, increased
+his flesh, and rounded his face; nor did he look an hour
+older than on the day when he had won Wingo for his
+willing slave and devoted friend.</p>
+<p>He never resented the frequent ingratitude of the
+Indians; he said little when they quarrelled over the
+small comforts his little income brought them yearly
+from the South. He had been doctor, lawyer, judge
+among them, although he interfered little in the larger
+disputes, and was forced to shut his eyes to intertribal
+enmities. He had no deep faith that he could quite
+civilize them; he knew that their conversion was only
+on the surface, and he fell back on his personal influence
+with them. By this he could check even the excesses
+of the worst man in the tribe, his old enemy, Silver
+Tassel of the bad heart, who yet was ready always to
+give a tooth for a tooth, and accepted the fact that he
+owed Oshondonto his life.</p>
+<p>When famine crawled across the plains to the doors
+of the settlement and housed itself at Fort O&#8217;Call, Silver
+Tassel acted badly, however, and sowed fault-finding
+among the thoughtless of the tribe.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What manner of Great Spirit is it who lets the food
+of his chief Oshondonto fall into the hands of the Blackfeet?&#8221;
+he said. &#8220;Oshondonto says the Great Spirit
+hears. What has the Great Spirit to say? Let Oshondonto
+ask.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_229' name='page_229'></a>229</span></p>
+<p>Again, when they were all hungrier, he went among
+them with complaining words. &#8220;If the white man&#8217;s
+Great Spirit can do all things, let him give Oshondonto
+and the Athabascas food.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The missionary did not know of Silver Tassel&#8217;s foolish
+words, but he saw the downcast face of Knife-in-the-Wind,
+the sullen looks of the people; and he unpacked
+the box he had reserved jealously for the darkest days
+that might come. For meal after meal he divided these
+delicacies among them&mdash;morsels of biscuit, and tinned
+meats, and dried fruits. But his eyes meanwhile were
+turned again and again to the storm raging without, as
+it had raged for this the longest week he had ever spent.
+If it would but slacken, a boat could go out to the nets
+set in the lake near by some days before, when the sun
+of spring had melted the ice. From the hour the nets
+had been set the storm had raged. On the day when
+the last morsel of meat and biscuit had been given away
+the storm had not abated, and he saw with misgiving
+the gloomy, stolid faces of the Indians round him.
+One man, two children, and three women had died in
+a fortnight. He dreaded to think what might happen,
+his heart ached at the looks of gaunt suffering in the
+faces of all; he saw, for the first time, how black and
+bitter Knife-in-the-Wind looked as Silver Tassel whispered
+to him.</p>
+<p>With the color all gone from his cheeks, he left the
+post and made his way to the edge of the lake where
+his canoe was kept. Making it ready for the launch, he
+came back to the fort. Assembling the Indians, who
+had watched his movements closely, he told them that
+he was going through the storm to the nets on the lake,
+and asked for a volunteer to go with him.</p>
+<p>No one replied. He pleaded&mdash;for the sake of the
+women and children.</p>
+<p>Then Knife-in-the-Wind spoke. &#8220;Oshondonto will die
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_230' name='page_230'></a>230</span>
+if he goes. It is a fool&#8217;s journey&mdash;does the wolverine
+walk into an empty trap?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Billy Rufus spoke passionately now. His genial spirit
+fled; he reproached them.</p>
+<p>Silver Tassel spoke up loudly: &#8220;Let Oshondonto&#8217;s
+Great Spirit carry him to the nets alone, and back again
+with fish for the heathen the Great Chief died to save.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You have a wicked heart, Silver Tassel. You know
+well that one man can&#8217;t handle the boat and the nets
+also. Is there no one of you&mdash;?&#8221;</p>
+<p>A figure shot forward from a corner. &#8220;I will go with
+Oshondonto,&#8221; came the voice of Wingo, the waif of the
+Crees.</p>
+<p>The eye of the mikonaree flashed round in contempt
+on the tribe. Then suddenly it softened, and he said
+to the lad, &#8220;We will go together, Wingo.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Taking the boy by the hand, he ran with him through
+the rough wind to the shore, launched the canoe on the
+tossing lake, and paddled away through the tempest.</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+
+<p>The bitter winds of an angry spring, the sleet and
+wet snow of a belated winter, the floating blocks of ice
+crushing against the side of the boat, the black water
+swishing over man and boy, the harsh, inclement world
+near and far.... The passage made at last to the nets;
+the brave Wingo steadying the canoe&mdash;a skilful hand
+sufficing where the strength of a Samson would not have
+availed; the nets half full, and the breaking cry of joy
+from the lips of the waif&mdash;a cry that pierced the storm
+and brought back an answering cry from the crowd of
+Indians on the far shore.... The quarter-hour of danger
+in the tossing canoe; the nets too heavy to be dragged,
+and fastened to the thwarts instead; the canoe going
+shoreward jerkily, a cork on the waves with an anchor
+behind; heavier seas and winds roaring down on them
+as they slowly near the shore; and at last, in one awful
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_231' name='page_231'></a>231</span>
+moment, the canoe upset, and the man and the boy in
+the water.... Then both clinging to the upturned
+canoe as it is driven near and nearer shore.... The
+boy washed off once, twice, and the man with his arm
+round clinging&mdash;clinging, as the shrieking storm answers
+to the calling of the Athabascas on the shore, and
+drives craft and fish and man and boy down upon the
+banks; no savage bold enough to plunge in to their
+rescue.... At last a rope thrown, a drowning man&#8217;s
+wrists wound round it, his teeth set in it&mdash;and now, at
+last, a man and a heathen boy, both insensible, being
+carried to the mikonaree&#8217;s hut and laid upon two beds,
+one on either side of the small room, as the red sun
+goes slowly down.... The two still bodies on bearskins
+in the hut, and a hundred superstitious Indians
+flying from the face of death.... The two alone in the
+light of the flickering fire; the many gone to feast on
+fish, the price of lives.</p>
+<p>But the price was not yet paid, for the man waked
+from insensibility&mdash;waked to see himself with the body
+of the boy beside him in the red light of the fires.</p>
+<p>For a moment his heart stopped beating, he turned
+sick and faint. Deserted by those for whom he risked
+his life!... How long had he lain there? What time
+was it? When was it that he had fought his way to
+the nets and back again&mdash;hours, maybe? And the
+dead boy there, Wingo, who had risked his life, also
+dead&mdash;how long? His heart leaped&mdash;ah, not hours,
+only minutes, maybe. It was sundown as unconsciousness
+came on him&mdash;Indians would not stay with the
+dead after sundown. Maybe it was only ten minutes&mdash;five
+minutes&mdash;one minute ago since they left him!...</p>
+<p>His watch! Shaking fingers drew it out, wild eyes
+scanned it. It was not stopped. Then it could have
+only been minutes ago. Trembling to his feet, he
+staggered over to Wingo, he felt the body, he held a
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_232' name='page_232'></a>232</span>
+mirror to the lips. Yes, surely there was light moisture
+on the glass.</p>
+<p>Then began another fight with death&mdash;William Rufus
+Holly struggling to bring to life again Wingo, the waif of
+of the Crees.</p>
+<p>The blood came back to his own heart with a rush as
+the mad desire to save this life came on him. He
+talked to the dumb face, he prayed in a kind of delirium,
+as he moved the arms up and down, as he tilted the
+body, as he rubbed, chafed, and strove. He forgot he
+was a missionary, he almost cursed himself. &#8220;For
+them&mdash;for cowards, I risked his life, the brave lad
+with no home! Oh, God! give him back to me!&#8221; he
+sobbed. &#8220;What right had I to risk his life for theirs?
+I should have shot the first man that refused to go....
+Wingo, speak! Wake up! Come back!&#8221;</p>
+<p>The sweat poured from him in his desperation and
+weakness. He said to himself that he had put this
+young life into the hazard without cause. Had he, then,
+saved the lad from the rapids and Silver Tassel&#8217;s brutality
+only to have him drag fish out of the jaws of death
+for Silver Tassel&#8217;s meal?</p>
+<p>It seemed to him that he had been working for hours,
+though it was in fact only a short time, when the eyes
+of the lad slowly opened and closed again, and he
+began to breathe spasmodically. A cry of joy came
+from the lips of the missionary, and he worked harder
+still. At last the eyes opened wide, stayed open, saw
+the figure bent over him, and the lips whispered, &#8220;Oshondonto&mdash;my
+master!&#8221; as a cup of brandy was held to his
+lips.</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+
+<p>Billy Rufus the cricketer had won the game, and
+somehow the Reverend William Rufus Holly the
+missionary never repented the strong language he
+used against the Athabascas as he was bringing Wingo
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_233' name='page_233'></a>233</span>
+back to life, though it was not what is called &#8220;strictly
+canonical.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He had conquered the Athabascas forever. Even
+Silver Tassel acknowledged his power, and he as industriously
+spread abroad the report that the mikonaree
+had raised Wingo from the dead, as he had sown dissension
+during the famine. But the result was that
+the missionary had power in the land, and the belief
+in him was so great that, when Knife-in-the-Wind died,
+the tribe came to him to raise their chief from the
+dead. They never quite believed that he could not&mdash;not
+even Silver Tassel, who now rules the Athabascas
+and is ruled in turn by William Rufus Holly: which
+is a very good thing for the Athabascas.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<a name='THE_HEALING_SPRINGS_AND_THE_PIONEERS' id='THE_HEALING_SPRINGS_AND_THE_PIONEERS'></a>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_234' name='page_234'></a>234</span>
+<h2>THE HEALING SPRINGS AND THE PIONEERS</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>He came out of the mysterious South one summer
+day, driving before him a few sheep, a cow, and a long-eared
+mule which carried his tent and other necessaries,
+and camped outside the town on a knoll, at the base
+of which was a thicket of close shrub. During the
+first day no one in Jansen thought anything of it, for it
+was a land of pilgrimage, and hundreds came and went on
+their journeys in search of free homesteads and good
+water and pasturage. But when, after three days, he
+was still there, Nicolle Terasse, who had little to do and
+an insatiable curiosity, went out to see him. He found
+a new sensation for Jansen. This is what he said when
+he came back:</p>
+<p>&#8220;You want know &#8217;bout him, <i>bagosh</i>! Dat is somet&#8217;ing
+to see, dat man&mdash;Ingles is his name. Sooch hair&mdash;mooch
+long an&#8217; brown, and a leetla beard not so
+brown, an&#8217; a leather sole onto his feet, and a gray coat
+to his ankles&mdash;<i>oui</i>, so like dat. An&#8217; his voice&mdash;<i>voilà</i>,
+it is like water in a cave. He is a great man&mdash;I dunno
+not; but he spik at me like dis, &#8216;Is dere sick, and cripple,
+and stay-in-bed people here dat can&#8217;t get up?&#8217; he say.
+An&#8217; I say, &#8216;Not plenty, but some&mdash;<i>bagosh</i>! Dere is dat
+Miss Greet, an&#8217; ole Ma&#8217;am Drouchy, an&#8217; dat young
+Pete Hayes&mdash;an&#8217; so on.&#8217; &#8216;Well, if they have faith I
+will heal them,&#8217; he spik at me. &#8216;From de Healing
+Springs dey shall rise to walk,&#8217; he say. <i>Bagosh</i>, you not
+t&#8217;ink dat true? Den you go see.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_235' name='page_235'></a>235</span></p>
+<p>So Jansen turned out to see, and besides the man
+they found a curious thing. At the foot of the knoll, in
+a space which he had cleared, was a hot spring that
+bubbled and rose and sank, and drained away into the
+thirsty ground. Luck had been with Ingles the Faith
+Healer. Whether he knew of the existence of this
+spring, or whether he chanced upon it, he did not say;
+but while he held Jansen in the palm of his hand, in
+the feverish days that followed, there were many who
+attached mysterious significance to it, who claimed for it
+supernatural origin. In any case, the one man who had
+known of the existence of this spring was far away from
+Jansen, and he did not return till a day of reckoning
+came for the Faith Healer.</p>
+<p>Meanwhile, Jansen made pilgrimage to the Springs
+of Healing, and at unexpected times Ingles suddenly
+appeared in the town, and stood at street corners; and
+in his &#8220;Patmian voice,&#8221; as Flood Rawley the lawyer
+called it, warned the people to flee their sins, and, purifying
+their hearts, learn to cure all ills of mind and
+body, the weaknesses of the sinful flesh and the &#8220;ancient
+evil&#8221; in their souls, by faith that saves.</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;<i>Is not the life more than meat?</i>&#8217;&#8221; he asked them.
+&#8220;And if, peradventure, there be those among you who
+have true belief in hearts all purged of evil, and yet are
+maimed, or sick of body, come to me, and I will lay my
+hands upon you, and I will heal you.&#8221; Thus he cried.</p>
+<p>There were those so wrought upon by his strange
+eloquence and spiritual passion, so hypnotized by his
+physical and mental exaltation, that they rose up from
+the hand-laying and the prayer eased of their ailments.
+Others he called upon to lie in the hot spring at the foot
+of the hill for varying periods, before the laying-on of
+hands, and these also, crippled or rigid with troubles of
+the bone, announced that they were healed.</p>
+<p>People flocked from other towns, and though, to some
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_236' name='page_236'></a>236</span>
+who had been cured, their pains and sickness returned,
+there were a few who bore perfect evidence to his teaching
+and healing, and followed him, &#8220;converted and consecrated,&#8221;
+as though he were a new Messiah. In this
+corner of the West was such a revival as none could
+remember&mdash;not even those who had been to camp-meetings
+in the East in their youth, and had seen the
+Spirit descend upon hundreds and draw them to the
+anxious seat.</p>
+<p>Then came the great sensation&mdash;the Faith Healer
+converted Laura Sloly. Upon which Jansen drew its
+breath painfully; for, while it was willing to bend to the
+inspiration of the moment, and to be swept on a tide of
+excitement into that enchanted field called Imagination,
+it wanted to preserve its institutions&mdash;and Laura Sloly
+had come to be an institution. Jansen had always
+plumed itself, and smiled, when she passed; and even
+now the most sentimentally religious of them inwardly
+anticipated the time when the town would return to its
+normal condition; and that condition would not be
+normal if there were any change in Laura Sloly. It
+mattered little whether most people were changed or
+not, because one state of their minds could not be less
+or more interesting than another; but a change in Laura
+Sloly could not be for the better.</p>
+<p>Her father had come to the West in the early days,
+and had prospered by degrees until a town grew up
+beside his ranch; and though he did not acquire as
+much permanent wealth from this golden chance as
+might have been expected, and lost much he did make
+by speculation, still he had his rich ranch left, and it
+and he and Laura were part of the history of Jansen.
+Laura had been born at Jansen before even it had
+a name. Next to her father she was the oldest inhabitant,
+and she had a prestige which was given to no
+one else.</p>
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<a name='linki_11' id='linki_11'></a>
+<img src='images/p236.jpg' alt='' title='' style='width: 577px; height: 338px;' /><br />
+<p class='caption' style='margin: 0 auto; text-align:center;width: 577px;'>
+THE FAITH HEALER<br />
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_237' name='page_237'></a>237</span></div>
+<p>Everything had conspired to make her a figure of
+moment and interest. She was handsome in almost a
+mannish sort of way, being of such height and straightness,
+and her brown eyes had a depth and fire in which
+more than a few men had drowned themselves. Also,
+once she had saved a settlement by riding ahead of a
+marauding Indian band to warn their intended victims,
+and had averted another tragedy of pioneer life.
+Pioneers proudly told strangers to Jansen of the girl
+of thirteen who rode a hundred and twenty miles
+without food, and sank inside the palisade of the Hudson
+Bay Company&#8217;s fort, as the gates closed upon
+the settlers taking refuge, the victim of brain fever at
+last. <i>Cerebro-spinal meningitis</i>, the doctor from Winnipeg
+called it, and the memory of that time when men
+and women would not sleep till her crisis was past was
+still fresh on the tongues of all.</p>
+<p>Then she had married at seventeen, and, within a
+year, had lost both her husband and her baby, a child
+bereaved of her Playmates&mdash;for her husband had been
+but twenty years old and was younger far than she in
+everything. And since then, twelve years before, she
+had seen generations of lovers pass into the land they
+thought delectable; and their children flocked to her,
+hung about her, were carried off by her to the ranch,
+and kept for days, against the laughing protests of their
+parents. Flood Rawley called her the Pied Piper of
+Jansen, and, indeed, she had a voice that fluted and
+piped, and yet had so whimsical a note that the hardest
+faces softened at the sound of it; and she did not keep
+its best notes for the few. She was impartial, almost
+impersonal; no woman was her enemy, and every man
+was her friend&mdash;and nothing more. She had never
+had an accepted lover since the day her Playmates left
+her. Every man except one had given up hope that
+he might win her; and though he had been gone from
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_238' name='page_238'></a>238</span>
+Jansen for two years, and had loved her since the days
+before the Playmates came and went, he never gave
+up hope, and was now to return and say again what he
+had mutely said for years&mdash;what she understood, and
+he knew she understood.</p>
+<p>Tim Denton had been a wild sort in his brief day.
+He was a rough diamond, but he was a diamond, and
+was typical of the West&mdash;its heart, its courage, its
+freedom, and its force; capable of exquisite gentleness
+strenuous to exaggeration, with a very primitive religion,
+and the only religion Tim knew was that of human
+nature. Jansen did not think Tim good enough&mdash;not
+within a comet shot&mdash;for Laura Sloly; but they thought
+him better than any one else.</p>
+<p>But now Laura was a convert to the prophet of the
+Healing Springs, and those people who still retained
+their heads in the eddy of religious emotion were in
+despair. They dreaded to meet Laura; they kept away
+from the &#8220;protracted meetings,&#8221; but were eager to hear
+about her and what she said and did. What they heard
+allayed their worst fears. She still smiled, and seemed
+as cheerful as before, they heard, and she neither spoke
+nor prayed in public, but she led the singing always.
+Now the anxious and the sceptical and the reactionary
+ventured out to see and hear; and seeing and hearing
+gave them a satisfaction they hardly dared express.
+She was more handsome than ever, and if her eyes
+glistened with a light they had never seen before, and
+awed them, her lips still smiled, and the old laugh came
+when she spoke to them. Their awe increased. This
+was &#8220;getting religion&#8221; with a difference.</p>
+<p>But presently they received a shock. A whisper
+grew that Laura was in love with the Faith Healer.
+Some woman&#8217;s instinct drove straight to the centre of
+a disconcerting possibility, and in consternation she
+told her husband; and Jansen husbands had a freemasonry
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_239' name='page_239'></a>239</span>
+of gossip. An hour, and all Jansen knew, or
+thought they knew; and the &#8220;saved&#8221; rejoiced; and
+the rest of the population, represented by Nicolle
+Terasse at one end and Flood Rawley at the other,
+flew to arms. No vigilance committee was ever more
+determined and secret and organized than the unconverted
+civic patriots who were determined to restore
+Jansen to its old-time condition. They pointed out
+cold-bloodedly that the Faith Healer had failed three
+times where he had succeeded once; and that, admitting
+the successes, there was no proof that his religion
+was their cause. There were such things as hypnotism
+and magnetism and will-power, and abnormal mental
+stimulus on the part of the healed&mdash;to say nothing of
+the Healing Springs.</p>
+<p>Carefully laying their plans, they quietly spread the
+rumor that Ingles had promised to restore to health
+old Mary Jewell, who had been bedridden ten years,
+and had sent word and prayed to have him lay his
+hands upon her&mdash;Catholic though she was. The Faith
+Healer, face to face with this supreme and definite test,
+would have retreated from it but for Laura Sloly. She
+expected him to do it, believed that he could, said that
+he would, herself arranged the day and the hour, and
+sang so much exaltation into him that at last a spurious
+power seemed to possess him. He felt that there had
+entered into him something that could be depended on,
+not the mere flow of natural magnetism fed by an
+out-door life and a temperament of great emotional
+force and chance and suggestion&mdash;and other things.
+If, at first, he had influenced Laura, some ill-controlled,
+latent idealism in him, working on a latent poetry and
+spirituality in her, somehow bringing her into nearer
+touch with her lost Playmates than she had been in the
+long years that had passed; she, in turn, had made his
+unrationalized brain reel; had caught him up into a
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_240' name='page_240'></a>240</span>
+higher air, on no wings of his own; had added another
+lover to her company of lovers&mdash;and the first impostor
+she had ever had. She who had known only honest
+men as friends, in one blind moment lost her perspicuous
+sense; her instinct seemed asleep. She believed
+in the man and in his healing. Was there anything
+more than that?</p>
+<p>The day of the great test came, hot, brilliant, vivid.
+The air was of a delicate sharpness, and, as it came
+toward evening, the glamour of an August when the
+reapers reap was upon Jansen; and its people gathered
+round the house of Mary Jewell to await the miracle of
+faith. Apart from the emotional many who sang hymns
+and spiritual songs were a few determined men, bent on
+doing justice to Jansen though the heavens might fall.
+Whether or no Laura Sloly was in love with the Faith
+Healer, Jansen must look to its own honor&mdash;and hers.
+In any case, this peripatetic saint at Sloly&#8217;s Ranch&mdash;the
+idea was intolerable; women must be saved in spite
+of themselves.</p>
+<p>Laura was now in the house by the side of the bedridden
+Mary Jewell, waiting, confident, smiling, as she
+held the wasted hand on the coverlet. With her was a
+minister of the Baptist persuasion, who was swimming
+with the tide, and who approved of the Faith Healer&#8217;s
+immersions in the hot Healing Springs; also a medical
+student who had pretended belief in Ingles, and two
+women weeping with unnecessary remorse for human
+failings of no dire kind. The windows were open, and
+those outside could see. Presently, in a lull of the
+singing, there was a stir in the crowd, and then sudden
+loud greetings&mdash;</p>
+<p>&#8220;My, if it ain&#8217;t Tim Denton! Jerusalem! You
+back, Tim!&#8221;</p>
+<p>These and other phrases caught the ear of Laura
+Sloly in the sick-room. A strange look flashed
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_241' name='page_241'></a>241</span>
+across her face, and the depth of her eyes was troubled
+for a moment, as to the face of the old comes a tremor
+at the note of some long-forgotten song. Then she
+steadied herself and waited, catching bits of the loud
+talk which still floated toward her from without.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What&#8217;s up? Some one getting married&mdash;or a legacy,
+or a saw-off? Why, what a lot of Sunday-go-to-meeting
+folks <i>to</i> be sure!&#8221; Tim laughed loudly.</p>
+<p>After which the quick tongue of Nicolle Terasse:
+&#8220;You want know? <i>Tiens</i>, be quiet; here he come. He
+cure you body and soul, ver&#8217; queeck&mdash;yes.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The crowd swayed and parted, and slowly, bare head
+uplifted, face looking to neither right nor left, the Faith
+Healer made his way to the door of the little house.
+The crowd hushed. Some were awed, some were
+overpoweringly interested, some were cruelly patient.
+Nicolle Terasse and others were whispering loudly to Tim
+Denton. That was the only sound, until the Healer got to
+the door. Then, on the steps, he turned to the multitude.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Peace be to you all, and upon this house,&#8221; he said,
+and stepped through the doorway.</p>
+<p>Tim Denton, who had been staring at the face of
+the Healer, stood for an instant like one with all his
+senses arrested. Then he gasped and exclaimed, &#8220;Well,
+I&#8217;m eternally&mdash;!&#8221; and broke off with a low laugh, which
+was at first mirthful, and then became ominous and hard.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, magnificent!&mdash;magnificent!&mdash;jerickety!&#8221; he said
+into the sky above him.</p>
+<p>His friends who were not &#8220;saved&#8221; closed in on him
+to find the meaning of his words, but he pulled himself
+together, looked blankly at them, and asked them
+questions. They told him so much more than he cared
+to hear that his face flushed a deep red&mdash;the bronze of
+it most like the color of Laura Sloly&#8217;s hair; then he turned
+pale. Men saw that he was roused beyond any feeling
+in themselves.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_242' name='page_242'></a>242</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8217;Sh!&#8221; he said. &#8220;Let&#8217;s see what he can do.&#8221; With
+the many who were silently praying, as they had been
+bidden to do, the invincible ones leaned forward, watching
+the little room where healing&mdash;or tragedy&mdash;was
+afoot. As in a picture, framed by the window, they
+saw the kneeling figures, the Healer standing with outstretched
+arms. They heard his voice, sonorous and
+appealing, then commanding&mdash;and yet Mary Jewell did
+not rise from her bed and walk. Again, and yet again,
+the voice rang out, and still the woman lay motionless.
+Then he laid his hands upon her, and again he commanded
+her to rise.</p>
+<p>There was a faint movement, a desperate struggle to
+obey, but Nature and Time and Disease had their way.</p>
+<p>Yet again there was the call. An agony stirred the
+bed. Then another great Healer came between and
+mercifully dealt the sufferer a blow&mdash;Death has a gentle
+hand sometimes. Mary Jewell was bedridden still&mdash;and
+forever.</p>
+<p>Like a wind from the mountains the chill knowledge
+of death wailed through the window and over the heads
+of the crowd. All the figures were upright now in the
+little room. Then those outside saw Laura Sloly lean
+over and close the sightless eyes. This done, she came
+to the door and opened it, and motioned for the Healer
+to leave. He hesitated, hearing the harsh murmur from
+the outskirts of the crowd. Once again she motioned,
+and he came. With a face deadly pale she surveyed
+the people before her silently for a moment, her eyes all
+huge and staring. Presently she turned to Ingles and
+spoke to him quickly in a low voice; then, descending
+the steps, passed out through the lane made for her by
+the crowd, he following with shaking limbs and bowed
+head.</p>
+<p>Warning words had passed among the few invincible
+ones who waited where the Healer must pass into the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_243' name='page_243'></a>243</span>
+open, and there was absolute stillness as Laura advanced.
+Their work was to come&mdash;quiet and swift and sure;
+but not yet.</p>
+<p>Only one face Laura saw as she led the way to the
+moment&#8217;s safety&mdash;Tim Denton&#8217;s; and it was as stricken
+as her own. She passed, then turned and looked at him
+again. He understood; she wanted him.</p>
+<p>He waited till she sprang into her wagon, after the
+Healer had mounted his mule and ridden away with
+ever-quickening pace into the prairie. Then he turned
+to the set, fierce men beside him.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Leave him alone,&#8221; he said&mdash;&#8220;leave him to me. I
+know him. You hear? Ain&#8217;t I no rights? I tell you
+I knew him&mdash;South. You leave him to me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>They nodded, and he sprang into his saddle and rode
+away. They watched the figure of the Healer growing
+smaller in the dusty distance.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Tim&#8217;ll go to her,&#8221; one said, &#8220;and perhaps they&#8217;ll let
+the snake get off. Hadn&#8217;t we best make sure?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Perhaps you&#8217;d better let him vamoose,&#8221; said Flood
+Rawley, anxiously. &#8220;Jansen is a law-abiding place.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The reply was decisive. Jansen had its honor to keep.
+It was the home of the Pioneers&mdash;Laura Sloly was a
+Pioneer.</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+
+<p>Tim Denton was a Pioneer, with all the comradeship
+which lay in the word, and he was that sort of lover
+who has seen one woman and can never see another&mdash;not
+the product of the most modern civilization. Before
+Laura had had Playmates he had given all he had to
+give; he had waited and hoped ever since; and when
+the ruthless gossips had said to him before Mary Jewell&#8217;s
+house that she was in love with the Faith Healer,
+nothing changed in him. For the man&mdash;for Ingles&mdash;Tim
+belonged to a primitive breed, and love was not in his
+heart. As he rode out to Sloly&#8217;s Ranch, he ground
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_244' name='page_244'></a>244</span>
+his teeth in rage. But Laura had called him to her,
+and&mdash;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, what you say goes, Laura,&#8221; he muttered at
+the end of a long hour of human passion and its repression.
+&#8220;If he&#8217;s to go scot-free, then he&#8217;s got to go;
+but the boys yonder&#8217;ll drop on me if he gets away.
+Can&#8217;t you see what a swab he is, Laura?&#8221;</p>
+<p>The brown eyes of the girl looked at him gently.
+The struggle between them was over; she had had her
+way&mdash;to save the preacher, impostor though he was;
+and now she felt, as she had never felt before in the same
+fashion, that this man was a man of men.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Tim, you do not understand,&#8221; she urged. &#8220;You say
+he was a landsharp in the South, and that he had to
+leave&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He had to vamoose, or take tar and feathers.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But he had to leave. And he came here preaching
+and healing; and he is a hypocrite and a fraud&mdash;I
+know that now, my eyes are opened. He didn&#8217;t do
+what he said he could do, and it killed Mary Jewell&mdash;the
+shock; and there were other things he said he could
+do, and didn&#8217;t do them. Perhaps he is all bad, as you
+say&mdash;I don&#8217;t think so. But he did some good things,
+and through him I&#8217;ve felt as I&#8217;ve never felt before about
+God and life, and about Walt and the baby&mdash;as though
+I&#8217;ll see them again, sure. I&#8217;ve never felt that before.
+It was all as if they were lost in the hills, and no trail
+home, or out to where they are. Like as not God was
+working in him all the time, Tim; and he failed because
+he counted too much on the little he had, and made
+up for what he hadn&#8217;t by what he pretended.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He can pretend to himself, or God Almighty, or
+that lot down there&#8221;&mdash;he jerked a finger toward the
+town&mdash;&#8220;but to you, a girl, and a Pioneer&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>A flash of humor shot into her eyes at his last words,
+then they filled with tears, through which the smile
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_245' name='page_245'></a>245</span>
+shone. To pretend to &#8220;a Pioneer&#8221;&mdash;the splendid vanity
+and egotism of the West!</p>
+<p>&#8220;He didn&#8217;t pretend to me, Tim. People don&#8217;t usually
+have to <i>pretend</i> to like me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You know what I&#8217;m driving at.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh yes, I know. And whatever he is, you&#8217;ve said
+that you will save him. I&#8217;m straight, you know that.
+Somehow, what I felt from his preaching&mdash;well, everything
+got sort of mixed up with him, and he was&mdash;was
+different. It was like the long dream of Walt and
+the baby, and he a part of it. I don&#8217;t know what I
+felt, or what I might have felt for him. I&#8217;m a woman&mdash;I
+can&#8217;t understand. But I know what I feel now. I
+never want to see him again on earth&mdash;or in heaven.
+It needn&#8217;t be necessary even in heaven; but what
+happened between God and me through him stays,
+Tim; and so you must help him get away safe. It&#8217;s in
+your hands&mdash;you say they left it to you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t trust that too much.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Suddenly he pointed out of the window toward the
+town. &#8220;See, I&#8217;m right; there they are, a dozen of &#8217;em
+mounted. They&#8217;re off, to run him down.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Her face paled; she glanced toward the Hill of Healing.
+&#8220;He&#8217;s got an hour&#8217;s start,&#8221; she said; &#8220;he&#8217;ll get
+into the mountains and be safe.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;If they don&#8217;t catch him &#8217;fore that.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Or if you don&#8217;t get to him first,&#8221; she said, with
+nervous insistence.</p>
+<p>He turned to her with a hard look; then, as he met
+her soft, fearless, beautiful eyes, his own grew gentle.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It takes a lot of doing. Yet I&#8217;ll do it for you,
+Laura,&#8221; he said. &#8220;But it&#8217;s hard on the Pioneers.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Once more her humor flashed, and it seemed to him
+that &#8220;getting religion&#8221; was not so depressing after all&mdash;wouldn&#8217;t
+be, anyhow, when this nasty job was over.</p>
+<p>&#8220;The Pioneers will get over it, Tim,&#8221; she rejoined.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_246' name='page_246'></a>246</span>
+&#8220;They&#8217;ve swallowed a lot in their time. Heaven&#8217;s gate
+will have to be pretty wide to let in a real Pioneer,&#8221; she
+added. &#8220;He takes up so much room&mdash;ah, Timothy
+Denton!&#8221; she added, with an outburst of whimsical merriment.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It hasn&#8217;t spoiled you&mdash;being converted&mdash;has it?&#8221; he
+said, and gave a quick little laugh, which somehow did
+more for his ancient cause with her than all he had ever
+said or done. Then he stepped outside and swung into
+his saddle.</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+
+<p>It had been a hard and anxious ride, but Tim had
+won, and was keeping his promise. The night had
+fallen before he got to the mountains, which he and the
+Pioneers had seen the Faith Healer enter. They had
+had four miles&#8217; start of Tim, and had ridden fiercely,
+and they entered the gulch into which the refugee had
+disappeared still two miles ahead.</p>
+<p>The invincibles had seen Tim coming, but they had
+determined to make a sure thing of it, and would themselves
+do what was necessary with the impostor, and
+take no chances. So they pressed their horses, and he
+saw them swallowed by the trees as darkness gathered.
+Changing his course, he entered the familiar hills, which
+he knew better than any Pioneer of Jansen, and rode a
+diagonal course over the trail they would take. But
+night fell suddenly, and there was nothing to do but
+to wait till morning. There was comfort in this&mdash;the
+others must also wait, and the refugee could not go far.
+In any case, he must make for settlement or perish,
+since he had left behind his sheep and his cow.</p>
+<p>It fell out better than Tim hoped. The Pioneers were
+as good hunters as was he, their instinct was as sure,
+their scouts and trackers were many, and he was but
+one. They found the Faith Healer by a little stream,
+eating bread and honey, and, like an ancient woodlander,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_247' name='page_247'></a>247</span>
+drinking from a horn&mdash;relic of his rank imposture.
+He made no resistance. They tried him, formally if
+perfunctorily; he admitted his imposture, and begged
+for his life. Then they stripped him naked, tied a bit of
+canvas round his waist, fastened him to a tree, and were
+about to complete his punishment when Tim Denton
+burst upon them.</p>
+<p>Whether the rage Tim showed was all real or not;
+whether his accusations of bad faith came from so
+deeply wounded a spirit as he would have them believe,
+he was not likely to tell; but he claimed the prisoner
+as his own, and declined to say what he meant to do.
+When, however, they saw the abject terror of the Faith
+Healer as he begged not to be left alone with Tim&mdash;for
+they had not meant death, and Ingles thought he read
+death in Tim&#8217;s ferocious eyes&mdash;they laughed cynically,
+and left it to Tim to uphold the honor of Jansen and the
+Pioneers.</p>
+<p>As they disappeared, the last thing they saw was Tim
+with his back to them, his hands on his hips, and a knife
+clasped in his fingers.</p>
+<p>&#8220;He&#8217;ll lift his scalp and make a monk of him,&#8221;
+chuckled the oldest and hardest of them.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Dat Tim will cut his heart out, I t&#8217;ink&mdash;<i>bagosh</i>!&#8221;
+said Nicolle Terasse, and took a drink of white whiskey.</p>
+<p>For a long time Tim stood looking at the other, until
+no sound came from the woods whither the Pioneers
+had gone. Then at last, slowly and with no roughness,
+as the terror-stricken impostor shrank and withered, he
+cut the cords.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Dress yourself,&#8221; he said, shortly, and sat down beside
+the stream, and washed his face and hands as though to
+cleanse them from contamination. He appeared to take
+no notice of the other, though his ears keenly noted
+every movement.</p>
+<p>The impostor dressed nervously, yet slowly; he scarce
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_248' name='page_248'></a>248</span>
+comprehended anything, except that he was not in immediate
+danger. When he had finished, he stood looking
+at Tim, who was still seated on a log plunged in meditation.</p>
+<p>It seemed hours before Tim turned round, and now
+his face was quiet, if set and determined. He walked
+slowly over, and stood looking at his victim for some
+time without speaking. The other&#8217;s eyes dropped, and
+a grayness stole over his features. This steely calm
+was even more frightening than the ferocity which had
+previously been in his captor&#8217;s face. At length the tense
+silence was broken:</p>
+<p>&#8220;Wasn&#8217;t the old game good enough? Was it played
+out? Why did you take to this? Why did you do it,
+Scranton?&#8221;</p>
+<p>The voice quavered a little in reply: &#8220;I don&#8217;t know.
+Something sort of pushed me into it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;How did you come to start it?&#8221;</p>
+<p>There was a long silence, then the husky reply came:</p>
+<p>&#8220;I got a sickener last time&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, I remember, at Waywing.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I got into the desert, and had hard times&mdash;awful for
+a while. I hadn&#8217;t enough to eat, and I didn&#8217;t know
+whether I&#8217;d die by hunger or fever or Indians&mdash;or
+snakes.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, you were seeing snakes!&#8221; said Tim, grimly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Not the kind you mean; I hadn&#8217;t anything to
+drink&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No, you never did drink, I remember&mdash;just was
+crooked, and slopped over women. Well, about the
+snakes?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I caught them to eat, and they were poison-snakes
+often. And I wasn&#8217;t quick at first to get them safe by
+the neck&mdash;they&#8217;re quick, too.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Tim laughed inwardly. &#8220;Getting your food by the
+sweat of your brow&mdash;and a snake in it, same as Adam!
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_249' name='page_249'></a>249</span>
+Well, was it in the desert you got your taste for honey,
+too, same as John the Baptist&mdash;that was his name, if I
+recomember?&#8221; He looked at the tin of honey on the
+ground.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Not in the desert, but when I got to the grass-country.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;How long were you in the desert?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Close to a year.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Tim&#8217;s eyes opened wider. He saw that the man was
+speaking the truth.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Got to thinking in the desert, and sort of willing
+things to come to pass, and mooning along, you and
+the sky and the vultures and the hot hills and the
+snakes and the flowers&mdash;eh?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;There weren&#8217;t any flowers till I got to the grass-country.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, cuss me, if you ain&#8217;t simple for your kind! I
+know all about that. And when you got to the grass-country
+you just picked up the honey and the flowers,
+and a calf and a lamb and a mule here and there,
+&#8216;without money and without price,&#8217; and walked on&mdash;that
+it?&#8221;</p>
+<p>The other shrank before the steel in the voice, and
+nodded his head.</p>
+<p>&#8220;But you kept thinking in the grass-country of what
+you&#8217;d felt and said and done&mdash;and willed, in the desert,
+I suppose?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Again the other nodded.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It seemed to you in the desert as if you&#8217;d saved
+your own life a hundred times, as if you&#8217;d just willed
+food and drink and safety to come; as if Providence had
+been at your elbow?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It was like a dream, and it stayed with me. I had
+to think in the desert things I&#8217;d never thought before,&#8221;
+was the half-abstracted answer.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You <i>felt</i> good in the desert?&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_250' name='page_250'></a>250</span></p>
+<p>The other hung his head in shame.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Makes you seem pretty small, doesn&#8217;t it? You
+didn&#8217;t stay long enough, I guess, to get what you were
+feeling for; you started in on the new racket too soon.
+You never got really possessed that you was a sinner.
+I expect that&#8217;s it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The other made no reply.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, I don&#8217;t know much about such things. I was
+loose brought up; but I&#8217;ve a friend&#8221;&mdash;Laura was before
+his eyes&mdash;&#8220;that says religion&#8217;s all right, and long ago
+as I can remember my mother used to pray three times
+a day&mdash;with grace at meals, too. I know there&#8217;s a lot
+in it for them that need it; and there seems to be a lot
+of folks needing it, if I&#8217;m to judge by folks down there
+at Jansen, &#8217;specially when there&#8217;s the laying-on of hands
+and the Healing Springs. Oh, that was a pigsty game,
+Scranton, that about God giving you the Healing
+Springs, like Moses and the rock! Why, I discovered
+them springs myself two years ago, before I went South,
+and I guess God wasn&#8217;t helping me any&mdash;not after I&#8217;ve
+kept out of His way as I have. But, anyhow, religion&#8217;s
+real; that&#8217;s my sense of it; and you can get it, I bet,
+if you try. I&#8217;ve seen it got. A friend of mine got it&mdash;got
+it under your preaching; not from you; but you
+was the accident that brought it about, I expect. It&#8217;s
+funny&mdash;it&#8217;s merakilous, but it&#8217;s so. Kneel down!&#8221; he
+added, with peremptory suddenness. &#8220;Kneel, Scranton!&#8221;</p>
+<p>In fear the other knelt.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;re going to get religion now&mdash;here. You&#8217;re
+going to pray for what you didn&#8217;t get&mdash;and almost got&mdash;in
+the desert. You&#8217;re going to ask forgiveness for all
+your damn tricks, and pray like a fanning-mill for the
+Spirit to come down. You ain&#8217;t a scoundrel at heart&mdash;a
+friend of mine says so. You&#8217;re a weak vessel&mdash;cracked,
+perhaps. You&#8217;ve got to be saved, and start
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_251' name='page_251'></a>251</span>
+right over again&mdash;and &#8216;Praise God from whom all
+blessings flow!&#8217; Pray&mdash;pray, Scranton, and tell the
+whole truth, and get it&mdash;get religion. Pray like blazes.
+You go on, and pray out loud. Remember the desert,
+and Mary Jewell, and your mother&mdash;did you have a
+mother, Scranton?&mdash;say, did you have a mother, lad?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Tim&#8217;s voice suddenly lowered before the last word,
+for the Faith Healer had broken down in a torrent of
+tears.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, my mother&mdash;O God!&#8221; he groaned.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Say, that&#8217;s right&mdash;that&#8217;s right&mdash;go on,&#8221; said the
+other and drew back a little, and sat down on a log.</p>
+<p>The man on his knees was convulsed with misery.
+Denton, the world, disappeared. He prayed in agony.</p>
+<p>Presently Tim moved uneasily, then got up and
+walked about; and at last, with a strange, awed look,
+when an hour was past, he stole back into the shadow
+of the trees while still the wounded soul poured out its
+misery and repentance.</p>
+<p>Time moved on. A curious shyness possessed Tim
+now, a thing which he had never felt in his life. He
+moved about self-consciously, awkwardly, until at last
+there was a sudden silence over by the brook.</p>
+<p>Tim looked, and saw the face of the kneeling man
+cleared and quiet and shining. He hesitated, then
+stepped out, and came over.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Have you got it?&#8221; he asked, quietly. &#8220;It&#8217;s noon
+now.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;May God help me to redeem my past,&#8221; answered the
+other, in a new voice.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;ve got it&mdash;sure?&#8221; Tim&#8217;s voice was meditative.</p>
+<p>&#8220;God has spoken to me,&#8221; was the simple answer.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve got a friend&#8217;ll be glad to hear that,&#8221; he said;
+and once more, in imagination, he saw Laura Sloly
+standing at the door of her home, with a light in her eyes
+he had never seen before.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_252' name='page_252'></a>252</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;ll want some money for your journey?&#8221; Tim
+asked.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I want nothing but to go away&mdash;far away,&#8221; was the
+low reply.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, you&#8217;ve lived in the desert&mdash;I guess you can
+live in the grass-country,&#8221; came the dry response,
+&#8220;Good-bye&mdash;and good-luck, Scranton.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Tim turned to go, moved on a few steps, then looked
+back.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t be afraid&mdash;they&#8217;ll not follow,&#8221; he said. &#8220;I&#8217;ll
+fix it for you all right.&#8221;</p>
+<p>But the man appeared not to hear; he was still on
+his knees.</p>
+<p>Tim faced the woods once more.</p>
+<p>He was about to mount his horse when he heard a
+step behind him. He turned sharply&mdash;and faced Laura.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I couldn&#8217;t rest. I came out this morning. I&#8217;ve seen
+everything,&#8221; she said.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You didn&#8217;t trust me,&#8221; he said, heavily.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I never did anything else,&#8221; she answered.</p>
+<p>He gazed half-fearfully into her eyes. &#8220;Well?&#8221; he
+asked. &#8220;I&#8217;ve done my best, as I said I would.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Tim,&#8221; she said, and slipped a hand in his, &#8220;would
+you mind the religion&mdash;if you had me?&#8221;</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<a name='THE_LITTLE_WIDOW_OF_JANSEN' id='THE_LITTLE_WIDOW_OF_JANSEN'></a>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_253' name='page_253'></a>253</span>
+<h2>THE LITTLE WIDOW OF JANSEN</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>Her advent to Jansen was propitious. Smallpox in
+its most virulent form had broken out in the French-Canadian
+portion of the town, and, coming with some
+professional nurses from the East, herself an amateur,
+to attend the sufferers, she worked with such skill and
+devotion that the official thanks of the Corporation
+were offered her, together with a tiny gold watch, the
+gift of grateful citizens. But she still remained on at
+Jansen, saying always, however, that she was &#8220;going East
+in the spring.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Five years had passed, and still she had not gone East,
+but remained perched in the rooms she had first taken,
+over the Imperial Bank, while the town grew up swiftly
+round her. And even when the young bank manager
+married, and wished to take over the rooms, she sent
+him to the right-about from his own premises in her gay,
+masterful way. The young manager behaved well in
+the circumstances, because he had asked her to marry
+him, and she had dismissed him with a warning against
+challenging his own happiness&mdash;that was the way she
+had put it. Perhaps he was galled the less because
+others had striven for the same prize, and had been
+thrust back, with an almost tender misgiving as to their
+sense of self-preservation and sanity. Some of them
+were eligible enough, and all were of some position in the
+West. Yet she smiled them firmly away, to the wonder
+of Jansen, and to its satisfaction, for was it not a tribute
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_254' name='page_254'></a>254</span>
+to all that she would distinguish no particular unit by
+her permanent favor? But for one so sprightly and
+almost frivolous in manner at times, the self-denial
+seemed incongruous. She was unconventional enough
+to sit on the sidewalk with a half-dozen children round
+her blowing bubbles, or to romp in any garden, or in the
+street, playing Puss-in-the-ring; yet this only made her
+more popular. Jansen&#8217;s admiration was at its highest,
+however, when she rode in the annual steeplechase with
+the best horsemen of the province. She had the gift of
+doing as well as of being.</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8217;Tis the light heart she has, and slippin&#8217; in and out
+of things like a hummin&#8217;-bird, no easier to ketch and
+no longer to stay,&#8221; said Finden, the rich Irish landbroker,
+suggestively to Father Bourassa, the huge French-Canadian
+priest who had worked with her through all
+the dark weeks of the smallpox epidemic, and who
+knew what lay beneath the outer gayety. She had been
+buoyant of spirit beside the beds of the sick, and her
+words were full of raillery and humor, yet there was
+ever a gentle note behind all; and the priest had seen
+her eyes shining with tears as she bent over some stricken
+sufferer bound upon an interminable journey.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Bedad! as bright a little spark as ever struck off
+the steel,&#8221; added Finden to the priest, with a sidelong,
+inquisitive look, &#8220;but a heart no bigger than a marrowfat
+pea&mdash;selfishness, all self. Keepin&#8217; herself for herself
+when there&#8217;s many a good man needin&#8217; her. Mother
+o&#8217; Moses, how many! From Terry O&#8217;Ryan, brother
+of a peer, at Latouche, to Bernard Bapty, son of a
+millionaire, at Vancouver, there&#8217;s a string o&#8217; them.
+All pride and self; and as fair a lot they&#8217;ve been as
+ever entered for the Marriage Cup. Now isn&#8217;t that
+so, father?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Finden&#8217;s brogue did not come from a plebeian origin.
+It was part of his commercial equipment, an asset of
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_255' name='page_255'></a>255</span>
+his boyhood spent among the peasants on the family
+estate in Galway.</p>
+<p>Father Bourassa fanned himself with the black broadbrim
+hat he wore, and looked benignly but quizzically
+on the wiry, sharp-faced Irishman.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You t&#8217;ink her heart is leetla. But perhaps it is
+your mind is not so big enough to see&mdash;<i>hien</i>?&#8221; The
+priest laughed noiselessly, showing white teeth. &#8220;Was
+it so selfish in Madame to refuse the name of Finden&mdash;<i>n&#8217;est-ce
+pas</i>?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Finden flushed, then burst into a laugh. &#8220;I&#8217;d almost
+forgotten I was one of them&mdash;the first almost. Blessed
+be he that expects nothing, for he&#8217;ll get it sure. It
+was my duty, and I did it. Was she to feel that Jansen
+did not price her high? Bedad, father, I rose betimes
+and did it, before anny man should say he set me the
+lead. Before the carpet in the parlor was down, and
+with the bare boards soundin&#8217; to my words, I offered her
+the name of Finden.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And so&mdash;the first of the long line! <i>Bien</i>, it is an
+honor.&#8221; The priest paused a moment, looked at Finden
+with a curious reflective look, and then said, &#8220;And so
+you t&#8217;ink there is no one; that she will say yes not at
+all&mdash;no?&#8221;</p>
+<p>They were sitting on Father Bourassa&#8217;s verandah,
+on the outskirts of the town, above the great river,
+along which had travelled millions of bygone people,
+fighting, roaming, hunting, trapping; and they could
+hear it rushing past, see the swirling eddies, the impetuous
+currents, the occasional rafts moving majestically
+down the stream. They were facing the wild
+North, while civilization was hacking and hewing and
+ploughing its way to newer and newer cities, in an
+empire ever spreading to the Pole.</p>
+<p>Finden&#8217;s glance loitered on this scene before he replied.
+At length, screwing up one eye, and with a suggestive
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_256' name='page_256'></a>256</span>
+smile, he answered: &#8220;Sure, it&#8217;s all a matter of time,
+to the selfishest woman. &#8217;Tis not the same with women
+as with men; you see, they don&#8217;t get younger&mdash;that&#8217;s a
+point. But&#8221;&mdash;he gave a meaning glance at the priest&mdash;&#8220;but
+perhaps she&#8217;s not going to wait for that, after all.
+And there he rides, a fine figure of a man, too, if I have
+to say it!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;M&#8217;sieu&#8217; Varley?&#8221; the priest responded, and watched
+a galloping horseman to whom Finden had pointed till
+he rounded a corner of a little wood.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Varley, the great London surgeon, sure! Say, father,
+it&#8217;s a hundred to one she&#8217;d take him if&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>There was a curious look in Father Bourassa&#8217;s face,
+a cloud in his eyes. He sighed. &#8220;London, it is ver&#8217;
+far away,&#8221; he remarked, obliquely.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What&#8217;s to that? If she is with the right man, near
+or far is nothing.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;So far&mdash;from home,&#8221; said the priest, reflectively, but
+his eyes furtively watched the other&#8217;s face.</p>
+<p>&#8220;But home&#8217;s where man and wife are.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The priest now looked him straight in the eyes.
+&#8220;Then, as you say, she will not marry M&#8217;sieu&#8217; Varley&mdash;<i>hein</i>?&#8221;</p>
+<p>The humor died out of Finden&#8217;s face. His eyes met
+the priest&#8217;s eyes steadily. &#8220;Did I say that? Then my
+tongue wasn&#8217;t making a fool of me, after all. How did
+you guess I knew&mdash;everything, father?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;A priest knows many t&#8217;ings&mdash;so.&#8221;</p>
+<p>There was a moment of gloom, then the Irishman
+brightened. He came straight to the heart of the
+mystery around which they had been man&oelig;uvring.
+&#8220;Have you seen her husband&mdash;Meydon&mdash;this year?
+It isn&#8217;t his usual time to come yet.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Father Bourassa&#8217;s eyes drew those of his friend into
+the light of a new understanding and revelation. They
+understood and trusted each other.</p>
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<a name='linki_12' id='linki_12'></a>
+<img src='images/p256.jpg' alt='' title='' style='width: 341px; height: 530px;' /><br />
+<p class='caption' style='margin: 0 auto; text-align:center;width: 341px;'>
+&#8220;AS PURTY A WOMAN, TOO&mdash;AS PURTY AND AS STRAIGHT BEWHILES&#8221;<br />
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_257' name='page_257'></a>257</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;<i>Hélas!</i> He is there in the hospital,&#8221; he answered,
+and nodded toward a building not far away, which had
+been part of an old Hudson Bay Company&#8217;s fort. It
+had been hastily adapted as a hospital for the smallpox
+victims.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, it&#8217;s Meydon, is it, that bad case I heard of
+to-day?&#8221;</p>
+<p>The priest nodded again and pointed. &#8220;<i>Voilà</i>, Madame
+Meydon, she is coming. She has seen him&mdash;her
+hoosban&#8217;.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Finden&#8217;s eyes followed the gesture. The little widow
+of Jansen was coming from the hospital, walking slowly
+toward the river.</p>
+<p>&#8220;As purty a woman, too&mdash;as purty and as straight
+bewhiles. What is the matter with him&mdash;with Meydon?&#8221;
+Finden asked, after a moment.</p>
+<p>&#8220;An accident in the woods&mdash;so. He arrive, it is las&#8217;
+night, from Great Slave Lake.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Finden sighed. &#8220;Ten years ago he was a man to
+look at twice&mdash;before he did <i>It</i> and got away. Now
+his own mother wouldn&#8217;t know him&mdash;bad &#8217;cess to him!
+I knew him from the cradle almost. I spotted him
+here by a knife-cut I gave him in the hand when we
+were lads together. A divil of a timper always both
+of us had, but the good-nature was with me, and I
+didn&#8217;t drink and gamble and carry a pistol. It&#8217;s ten
+years since he did the killing, down in Quebec, and
+I don&#8217;t suppose the police will get him now. He&#8217;s
+been counted dead. I recognized him here the night
+after I asked her how she liked the name of Finden.
+She doesn&#8217;t know that I ever knew him. And he
+didn&#8217;t recognize me&mdash;twenty-five years since we met
+before! It would be better if he went under the sod.
+Is he pretty sick, father?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He will die unless the surgeon&#8217;s knife it cure him
+before twenty-four hours, and&mdash;&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_258' name='page_258'></a>258</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;And Doctor Brydon is sick, and Doctor Hadley
+away at Winnipeg, and this is two hundred miles from
+nowhere! It looks as if the police&#8217;ll never get him,
+eh?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You have not tell any one&mdash;never?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Finden laughed. &#8220;Though I&#8217;m not a priest, I can lock
+myself up as tight as anny. There&#8217;s no tongue that&#8217;s
+so tied, when tying&#8217;s needed, as the one that babbles
+most bewhiles. Babbling covers a lot of secrets.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;So you t&#8217;ink it better Meydon should die, as Hadley
+is away and Brydon is sick&mdash;<i>hein</i>?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, I think&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>Finden stopped short, for a horse&#8217;s hoofs sounded on
+the turf beside the house, and presently Varley, the
+great London surgeon, rounded the corner and stopped
+his horse in front of the veranda.</p>
+<p>He lifted his hat to the priest. &#8220;I hear there&#8217;s a bad
+case at the hospital,&#8221; he said.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It is ver&#8217; dangerous,&#8221; answered Father Bourassa;
+&#8220;but, <i>voilà</i>, come in! There is something cool to drink.
+Ah, yes, he is ver&#8217; bad, that man from the Great Slave
+Lake.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Inside the house, with the cooling drinks, Varley
+pressed his questions, and presently, much interested,
+told at some length of singular cases which had passed
+through his hands&mdash;one a man with his neck broken,
+who had lived for six months afterward.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Broken as a man&#8217;s neck is broken by hanging&mdash;dislocation,
+really&mdash;the disjointing of the <i>medulla oblongata</i>,
+if you don&#8217;t mind technicalities,&#8221; he said. &#8220;But I kept
+him living just the same. Time enough for him to repent
+in and get ready to go. A most interesting case.
+He was a criminal, too, and wanted to die; but you
+have to keep life going if you can, to the last inch of
+resistance.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The priest looked thoughtfully out of the window;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_259' name='page_259'></a>259</span>
+Finden&#8217;s eyes were screwed up in a questioning way,
+but neither made any response to Varley&#8217;s remarks.
+There was a long minute&#8217;s silence. They were all three
+roused by hearing a light footstep on the veranda.</p>
+<p>Father Bourassa put down his glass and hastened into
+the hallway. Finden caught a glimpse of a woman&#8217;s
+figure, and, without a word, passed abruptly from the
+dining-room, where they were, into the priest&#8217;s study,
+leaving Varley alone. Varley turned to look after him,
+stared, and shrugged his shoulders.</p>
+<p>&#8220;The manners of the West,&#8221; he said, good-humoredly,
+and turned again to the hallway, from whence came
+the sound of the priest&#8217;s voice. Presently there was
+another voice&mdash;a woman&#8217;s. He flushed slightly and involuntarily
+straightened himself.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Valerie,&#8221; he murmured.</p>
+<p>An instant afterward she entered the room with the
+priest. She was dressed in a severely simple suit of
+gray, which set off to advantage her slim, graceful figure.
+There seemed no reason why she should have been
+called the little widow of Jansen, for she was not small,
+but she was very finely and delicately made, and the
+name had been but an expression of Jansen&#8217;s paternal
+feeling for her. She had always had a good deal of
+fresh color, but to-day she seemed pale, though her
+eyes had a strange disturbing light. It was not that
+they brightened on seeing this man before her; they
+had been brighter, burningly bright, when she left the
+hospital, where, since it had been built, she had been
+the one visitor of authority&mdash;Jansen had given her that
+honor. She had a gift of smiling, and she smiled now,
+but it came from grace of mind rather than from humor.
+As Finden had said, &#8220;She was forever acting, and never
+doin&#8217; any harm by it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Certainly she was doing no harm by it now; nevertheless,
+it was acting. Could it be otherwise, with what
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_260' name='page_260'></a>260</span>
+was behind her life&mdash;a husband who had ruined her
+youth, had committed homicide, had escaped capture,
+but who had not subsequently died, as the world believed
+he had done, so circumstantial was the evidence. He
+was not man enough to make the accepted belief in
+his death a fact. What could she do but act, since the
+day she got a letter from the Far North, which took her
+out to Jansen, nominally to nurse those stricken with
+smallpox under Father Bourassa&#8217;s care, actually to be
+where her wretched husband could come to her once a
+year, as he had asked with an impossible selfishness?</p>
+<p>Each year she had seen him for an hour or less, giving
+him money, speaking to him over a gulf so wide that
+it seemed sometimes as though her voice could not be
+heard across it; each year opening a grave to look at
+the embalmed face of one who had long since died
+in shame, which only brought back the cruellest of all
+memories, that which one would give one&#8217;s best years
+to forget. With a fortitude beyond description she
+had faced it, gently, quietly, but firmly faced it&mdash;firmly,
+because she had to be firm in keeping him within
+those bounds the invasion of which would have killed
+her. And after the first struggle with his unchangeable
+brutality it had been easier: for into his degenerate
+brain there had come a faint understanding of the
+real situation and of her. He had kept his side of the
+gulf, but gloating on this touch between the old luxurious,
+indulgent life, with its refined vices, and this present
+coarse, hard life, where pleasures were few and gross.
+The free Northern life of toil and hardship had not
+refined him. He greedily hung over this treasure,
+which was not for his spending, yet was his own&mdash;as
+though in a bank he had hoards of money which he
+might not withdraw.</p>
+<p>So the years had gone on, with their recurrent dreaded
+anniversaries, carrying misery almost too great to be
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_261' name='page_261'></a>261</span>
+borne by this woman mated to the loathed phantom
+of a sad, dead life; and when this black day of each
+year was over, for a few days afterwards she went
+nowhere, was seen by none. Yet, when she did appear
+again, it was with her old laughing manner, her cheerful
+and teasing words, her quick response to the emotions
+of others.</p>
+<p>So it had gone till Varley had come to follow the
+open-air life for four months, after a heavy illness due
+to blood-poisoning got in his surgical work in London.
+She had been able to live her life without too great a
+struggle till he came. Other men had flattered her
+vanity, had given her a sense of power, had made her
+understand her possibilities, but nothing more&mdash;nothing
+of what Varley brought with him. And before three
+months had gone, she knew that no man had ever
+interested her as Varley had done. Ten years before,
+she would not have appreciated or understood him,
+this intellectual, clean-shaven, rigidly abstemious man,
+whose pleasures belonged to the fishing-rod and the
+gun and the horse, and who had come to be so great
+a friend of him who had been her best friend&mdash;Father
+Bourassa. Father Bourassa had come to know the
+truth&mdash;not from her, for she had ever been a Protestant,
+but from her husband, who, Catholic by birth and a
+renegade from all religion, had had a moment of spurious
+emotion, when he went and confessed to Father Bourassa
+and got absolution, pleading for the priest&#8217;s care of his
+wife. Afterward Father Bourassa made up his mind
+that the confession had a purpose behind it other than
+repentance, and he deeply resented the use to which he
+thought he was being put&mdash;a kind of spy upon the beautiful
+woman whom Jansen loved, and who, in spite of
+any outward flippancy, was above reproach.</p>
+<p>In vital things the instinct becomes abnormally acute,
+and, one day, when the priest looked at her commiseratingly,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_262' name='page_262'></a>262</span>
+she had divined what moved him. However it
+was, she drove him into a corner with a question to
+which he dare not answer yes, but to which he might
+not answer no, and did not; and she realized that he
+knew the truth, and she was the better for his knowing,
+though her secret was no longer a secret. She was
+not aware that Finden also knew. Then Varley came,
+bringing a new joy and interest in her life, and a new
+suffering also, for she realized that if she were free, and
+Varley asked her to marry him, she would consent.</p>
+<p>But when he did ask her, she said no with a pang
+that cut her heart in two. He had stayed his four
+months, and it was now six months, and he was going
+at last&mdash;to-morrow. He had stayed to give her time to
+learn to say yes, and to take her back with him to
+London; and she knew that he would speak again to-day,
+and that she must say no again; but she had kept him
+from saying the words till now. And the man who
+had ruined her life and had poisoned her true spirit
+was come back broken and battered. He was hanging
+between life and death; and now&mdash;for he was going to-morrow&mdash;Varley
+would speak again.</p>
+<p>The half-hour she had just spent in the hospital with
+Meydon had tried her cruelly. She had left the building
+in a vortex of conflicting emotions, with the call of duty
+and of honor ringing through a thousand other voices
+of temptation and desire, the inner pleadings for a little
+happiness while yet she was young. After she married
+Meydon, there had only been a few short weeks of joy
+before her black disillusion came, and she had realized
+how bitter must be her martyrdom.</p>
+<p>When she left the hospital, she seemed moving in a
+dream, as one intoxicated by some elixir might move
+unheeding among event and accident and vexing life
+and roaring multitudes. And all the while the river
+flowing through the endless prairies, high-banked, ennobled
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_263' name='page_263'></a>263</span>
+by living woods, lipped with green, kept surging
+in her ears, inviting her, alluring her&mdash;alluring her with
+a force too deep and powerful for weak human nature
+to bear for long. It would ease her pain, it said; it
+would still the tumult and the storm; it would solve her
+problem, it would give her peace. But as she moved
+along the river-bank among the trees, she met the little
+niece of the priest, who lived in his house, singing, as
+though she was born but to sing, a song which Finden
+had written and Father Bourassa had set to music.
+Did not the distant West know Father Bourassa&#8217;s gift,
+and did not Protestants attend Mass to hear him play
+the organ afterward? The fresh, clear voice of the
+child rang through the trees, stealing the stricken heart
+away from the lure of the river:</p>
+<table summary='poetry' style='margin:0 auto'><tr><td>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>&#8220;Will you come back home, where the young larks are singin&#8217;?</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>The door is open wide, and the bells of Lynn are ringin&#8217;;</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 2.2075055187638em;'>There&#8217;s a little lake I know,</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 2.2075055187638em;'>And a boat you used to row</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>To the shore beyond that&#8217;s quiet&mdash;will you come back home?</p>
+<br />
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>&#8220;Will you come back, darlin&#8217;? Never heed the pain and blightin&#8217;,</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>Never trouble that you&#8217;re wounded, that you bear the scars of fightin&#8217;;</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 2.2075055187638em;'>Here&#8217;s the luck o&#8217; Heaven to you,</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 2.2075055187638em;'>Here&#8217;s the hand of love will brew you</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>The cup of peace&mdash;ah, darlin&#8217;, will you come back home?&#8221;</p>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>She stood listening for a few moments, and, under
+the spell of the fresh, young voice, the homely, heart-searching
+words, and the intimate sweetness of the
+woods, the despairing apathy lifted slowly away. She
+started forward again with a new understanding, her
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_264' name='page_264'></a>264</span>
+footsteps quickened. She would go to Father Bourassa.
+He would understand. She would tell him all. He
+would help her to do what now she knew she must do,
+ask Leonard Varley to save her husband&#8217;s life&mdash;Leonard
+Varley to save her husband&#8217;s life!</p>
+<p>When she stepped upon the veranda of the priest&#8217;s
+house, she did not know that Varley was inside. She
+had no time to think. She was ushered into the room
+where he was, with the confusing fact of his presence
+fresh upon her. She had had but a word or two with
+the priest, but enough for him to know what she meant
+to do, and that it must be done at once.</p>
+<p>Varley advanced to meet her. She shuddered inwardly
+to think what a difference there was between
+the fallen creature she had left behind in the hospital
+and this tall, dark, self-contained man, whose name was
+familiar in the surgeries of Europe, who had climbed
+from being the son of a clockmaker to his present distinguished
+place.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Have you come for absolution, also?&#8221; he asked,
+with a smile; &#8220;or is it to get a bill of excommunication
+against your only enemy&mdash;there couldn&#8217;t be more
+than one?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Cheerful as his words were, he was shrewdly observing
+her, for her paleness and the strange light in her eyes
+gave him a sense of anxiety. He wondered what trouble
+was on her.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Excommunication?&#8221; he repeated.</p>
+<p>The unintended truth went home. She winced, even
+as she responded with that quaint note in her voice
+which gave humor to her speech. &#8220;Yes, excommunication,&#8221;
+she replied; &#8220;but why an enemy? Do we not
+need to excommunicate our friends sometimes?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;That is a hard saying,&#8221; he answered, soberly.</p>
+<p>Tears sprang to her eyes, but she mastered herself,
+and brought the crisis abruptly.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_265' name='page_265'></a>265</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;I want you to save a man&#8217;s life,&#8221; she said, with her
+eyes looking straight into his. &#8220;Will you do it?&#8221;</p>
+<p>His face grew grave and eager. &#8220;I want you to save
+a man&#8217;s happiness,&#8221; he answered. &#8220;Will you do it?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;That man yonder will die unless your skill saves
+him,&#8221; she urged.</p>
+<p>&#8220;This man here will go away unhappy and alone,
+unless your heart befriends him,&#8221; he replied, coming
+closer to her. &#8220;At sunrise to-morrow he goes.&#8221; He
+tried to take her hand.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, please, please,&#8221; she pleaded, with a quick, protesting
+gesture. &#8220;Sunrise is far off, but the man&#8217;s fate
+is near, and you must save him. You only can do so,
+for Doctor Hadley is away, and Doctor Brydon is sick,
+and in any case Doctor Brydon dare not attempt the
+operation alone. It is too critical and difficult, he says.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;So I have heard,&#8221; he answered, with a new note in
+his voice, his professional instinct roused in spite of himself.
+&#8220;Who is this man? What interests you in him?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;To how many unknown people have you given your
+skill for nothing&mdash;your skill and all your experience to
+utter strangers, no matter how low or poor! Is it not
+so? Well, I cannot give to strangers what you have
+given to so many, but I can help in my own way.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You want me to see the man at once?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;If you will.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What is his name? I know of his accident and the
+circumstances.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She hesitated for an instant, then said, &#8220;He is called
+Draper&mdash;a trapper and a woodsman.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But I was going away to-morrow at sunrise. All
+my arrangements are made,&#8221; he urged, his eyes holding
+hers, his passion swimming in his eyes again.</p>
+<p>&#8220;But you will not see a man die, if you can save him?&#8221;
+she pleaded, unable now to meet his look, its mastery
+and its depth.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_266' name='page_266'></a>266</span></p>
+<p>Her heart had almost leaped with joy at the suggestion
+that he could not stay; but as suddenly self-reproach
+and shame filled her mind, and she had challenged
+him so. But yet, what right had she to sacrifice
+this man she loved to the perverted criminal who had
+spoiled her youth and taken away from her every dear
+illusion of her life and heart? By every right of justice
+and humanity she was no more the wife of Henry
+Meydon than if she had never seen him. He had forfeited
+every claim upon her, dragged in the mire her
+unspotted life&mdash;unspotted, for in all temptation, in her
+defenceless position, she had kept the whole commandment;
+she had, while at the mercy of her own temperament,
+fought her way through all, with a weeping heart
+and laughing lips. Had she not longed for a little
+home with a great love, and a strong, true man? Ah,
+it had been lonely, bitterly lonely! Yet she had remained
+true to the scoundrel, from whom she could
+not free herself without putting him in the grasp of the
+law to atone for his crime. She was punished for his
+crimes; she was denied the exercise of her womanhood
+in order to shield him. Still she remembered that once
+she had loved him, those years ago, when he first won
+her heart from those so much better than he, who loved
+her so much more honestly; and this memory had
+helped her in a way. She had tried to be true to it,
+that dead, lost thing, of which this man who came once
+a year to see her, and now, lying with his life at stake
+in the hospital, was the repellent ghost.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ah, you will not see him die?&#8221; she urged.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It seems to move you greatly what happens to this
+man,&#8221; he said, his determined dark eyes searching hers,
+for she baffled him. If she could feel so much for a
+&#8220;casual,&#8221; why not a little more feeling for him? Suddenly,
+as he drew her eyes to him again, there came
+the conviction that they were full of feeling for him.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_267' name='page_267'></a>267</span>
+They were sending a message, an appealing, passionate
+message, which told him more than he had ever heard
+from her or seen in her face before. Yes, she was his!
+Without a word spoken she had told him so. What,
+then, held her back? But women were a race by themselves,
+and he knew that he must wait till she chose to
+have him know what she had unintentionally conveyed
+but now.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, I am moved,&#8221; she continued, slowly. &#8220;Who
+can tell what this man might do with his life if it is
+saved! Don&#8217;t you think of that? It isn&#8217;t the importance
+of a life that&#8217;s at stake; it&#8217;s the importance of
+living; and we do not live alone, do we?&#8221;</p>
+<p>His mind was made up. &#8220;I will not, cannot promise
+anything till I have seen him. But I will go and see
+him, and I&#8217;ll send you word later what I can do or not
+do. Will that satisfy you? If I cannot do it, I will
+come to say good-bye.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Her face was set with suppressed feeling. She held
+out her hand to him impulsively, and was about to
+speak, but suddenly caught the hand away again from
+his thrilling grasp and, turning hurriedly, left the room.
+In the hall she met Father Bourassa.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Go with him to the hospital,&#8221; she whispered, and
+disappeared through the doorway.</p>
+<p>Immediately after she had gone, a man came driving
+hard to bring Father Bourassa to visit a dying Catholic
+in the prairie, and it was Finden who accompanied
+Varley to the hospital, waited for him till his examination
+of the &#8220;casual&#8221; was concluded, and met him outside.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Can it be done?&#8221; he asked of Varley. &#8220;I&#8217;ll take
+word to Father Bourassa.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It can be done&mdash;it will be done,&#8221; answered Varley,
+absently. &#8220;I do not understand the man. He has
+been in a different sphere of life. He tried to hide it,
+but the speech&mdash;occasionally! I wonder.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_268' name='page_268'></a>268</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;You wonder if he&#8217;s worth saving?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Varley shrugged his shoulders impatiently. &#8220;No;
+that&#8217;s not what I meant.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Finden smiled to himself. &#8220;Is it a difficult case?&#8221;
+he asked.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Critical and delicate; but it has been my specialty.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;One of the local doctors couldn&#8217;t do it, I suppose?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;They would be foolish to try.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And you are going away at sunrise to-morrow?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Who told you that?&#8221; Varley&#8217;s voice was abrupt,
+impatient.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I heard you say so&mdash;everybody knows it.... That&#8217;s
+a bad man yonder, Varley.&#8221; He jerked his thumb
+toward the hospital. &#8220;A terrible bad man, he&#8217;s been.
+A gentleman once, and fell down&mdash;fell down hard. He&#8217;s
+done more harm than most men. He&#8217;s broken a woman&#8217;s
+heart and spoiled her life, and, if he lives, there&#8217;s
+no chance for her, none at all. He killed a man, and
+the law wants him; and she can&#8217;t free herself without
+ruining him; and she can&#8217;t marry the man she loves
+because of that villain yonder, crying for his life to be
+saved. By Josh and by Joan, but it&#8217;s a shame, a dirty
+shame, it is!&#8221;</p>
+<p>Suddenly Varley turned and gripped his arm with
+fingers of steel.</p>
+<p>&#8220;His name&mdash;his real name?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;His name&#8217;s Meydon&mdash;and a dirty shame it is,
+Varley.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Varley was white. He had been leading his horse
+and talking to Finden. He mounted quickly now, and
+was about to ride away, but stopped short again. &#8220;Who
+knows&mdash;who knows the truth?&#8221; he asked.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Father Bourassa and me&mdash;no others,&#8221; he answered.
+&#8220;I knew Meydon thirty years ago.&#8221;</p>
+<p>There was a moment&#8217;s hesitation, then Varley said,
+hoarsely, &#8220;Tell me&mdash;tell me all.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_269' name='page_269'></a>269</span></p>
+<p>When all was told, he turned his horse toward the
+wide waste of the prairie, and galloped away. Finden
+watched him till he was lost to view beyond the bluff.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Now, a man like that, you can&#8217;t guess what he&#8217;ll do,&#8221;
+he said, reflectively. &#8220;He&#8217;s a high-stepper, and there&#8217;s
+no telling what foolishness will get hold of him. It&#8217;d
+be safer if he got lost on the prairie for twenty-four
+hours. He said that Meydon&#8217;s only got twenty-four
+hours, if the trick isn&#8217;t done! Well&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>He took a penny from his pocket. &#8220;I&#8217;ll toss for it.
+Heads he does it, and tails he doesn&#8217;t.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He tossed. It came down heads. &#8220;Well, there&#8217;s
+one more fool in the world than I thought,&#8221; he said,
+philosophically, as though he had settled the question;
+as though the man riding away into the prairie with
+a dark problem to be solved had told the penny what
+he meant to do.</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+
+<p>Mrs. Meydon, Father Bourassa, and Finden stood in
+the little waiting-room of the hospital at Jansen, one
+at each window, and watched the wild thunderstorm
+which had broken over the prairie. The white heliographs
+of the elements flashed their warnings across the
+black sky, and the roaring artillery of the thunder came
+after, making the circle of prairie and tree and stream
+a theatre of anger and conflict. The streets of Jansen
+were washed with flood, and the green and gold things
+of garden and field and harvest crumbled beneath the
+sheets of rain.</p>
+<p>The faces at the window of the little room of the
+hospital, however, were but half-conscious of the storm;
+it seemed only an accompaniment of their thoughts, to
+typify the elements of tragedy surrounding them.</p>
+<p>For Varley there had been but one thing to do. A
+life might be saved, and it was his duty to save it. He
+had ridden back from the prairie as the sun was setting
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_270' name='page_270'></a>270</span>
+the night before, and had made all arrangements at the
+hospital, giving orders that Meydon should have no
+food whatever till the operation was performed the next
+afternoon, and nothing to drink except a little brandy-and-water.</p>
+<p>The operation was performed successfully, and Varley
+had issued from the operating-room with the look of a
+man who had gone through an ordeal which had taxed
+his nerve to the utmost, to find Valerie Meydon waiting,
+with a piteous, dazed look in her eyes. But this look
+passed when she heard him say, &#8220;All right!&#8221;</p>
+<p>The words brought a sense of relief, for if he had failed,
+it would have seemed almost unbearable in the circumstances&mdash;the
+cup of trembling must be drunk to the
+dregs.</p>
+<p>Few words had passed between them, and he had
+gone, while she remained behind with Father Bourassa,
+till the patient should wake from the sleep into which
+he had fallen when Varley left.</p>
+<p>But within two hours they sent for Varley again, for
+Meydon was in evident danger. Varley had come, and
+had now been with the patient for some time.</p>
+<p>At last the door opened and Varley came in quickly.
+He beckoned to Mrs. Meydon and to Father Bourassa.
+&#8220;He wishes to speak with you,&#8221; he said to her. &#8220;There
+is little time.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Her eyes scarcely saw him, as she left the room and
+passed to where Meydon lay nerveless, but with wide-open
+eyes, waiting for her. The eyes closed, however,
+before she reached the bed. Presently they opened
+again, but the lids remained fixed. He did not hear
+what she said.</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+
+<p>In the little waiting-room, Finden said to Varley,
+&#8220;What happened?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Food was absolutely forbidden, but he got it from
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_271' name='page_271'></a>271</span>
+another patient early this morning while the nurse was
+out for a moment. It has killed him.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8217;Twas the least he could do, but no credit&#8217;s due him.
+It was to be. I&#8217;m not envying Father Bourassa nor her
+there with him.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Varley made no reply. He was watching the receding
+storm with eyes which told nothing.</p>
+<p>Finden spoke once more, but Varley did not hear
+him. Presently the door opened and Father Bourassa
+entered. He made a gesture of the hand to signify that
+all was over.</p>
+<p>Outside, the sun was breaking through the clouds
+upon the Western prairie, and there floated through the
+evening air the sound of a child&#8217;s voice singing beneath
+the trees that fringed the river:</p>
+<table summary='poetry' style='margin:0 auto'><tr><td>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>&#8220;Will you come back, darlin&#8217;? Never heed the pain and blightin&#8217;,</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>Never trouble that you&#8217;re wounded, that you bear the scars of fightin&#8217;;</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 2.2075055187638em;'>Here&#8217;s the luck o&#8217; Heaven to you,</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 2.2075055187638em;'>Here&#8217;s the hand of love will brew you</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>The cup of peace&mdash;ah, darlin&#8217;, will you come back home?&#8221;</p>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<a name='WATCHING_THE_RISE_OF_ORION' id='WATCHING_THE_RISE_OF_ORION'></a>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_272' name='page_272'></a>272</span>
+<h2>WATCHING THE RISE OF ORION</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>&#8220;In all the wide border his steed was the best,&#8221; and
+the name and fame of Terence O&#8217;Ryan were known
+from Strathcona to Qu&#8217;appelle. He had ambition of
+several kinds, and he had the virtue of not caring who
+knew of it. He had no guile, and little money; but
+never a day&#8217;s work was too hard for him, and he took
+bad luck, when it came, with a jerk of the shoulder
+and a good-natured surprise on his clean-shaven face
+that suited well his wide gray eyes and large, luxurious
+mouth. He had an estate, half ranch, half farm, with
+a French-Canadian manager named Vigon, an old
+prospector who viewed every foot of land in the world
+with the eye of the discoverer. Gold, coal, iron, oil,
+he searched for them everywhere, making sure that
+sooner or later he would find them. Once Vigon had
+found coal. That was when he worked for a man called
+Constantine Jopp, and had given him great profit; but
+he, the discoverer, had been put off with a horse and a
+hundred dollars. He was now as devoted to Terence
+O&#8217;Ryan as he had been faithful to Constantine Jopp,
+whom he cursed waking and sleeping.</p>
+<p>In his time O&#8217;Ryan had speculated, and lost; he had
+floated a coal-mine, and &#8220;been had&#8221;; he had run for the
+local legislature, had been elected, and then unseated
+for bribery committed by an agent; he had run races
+at Regina, and won&mdash;he had won for three years in
+succession; and this had kept him going and restored
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_273' name='page_273'></a>273</span>
+his finances when they were at their worst. He was,
+in truth, the best rider in the country, and, so far,
+was the owner also of the best three-year-old that the
+West had produced. He achieved popularity without
+effort. The West laughed at his enterprises and loved
+him; he was at once a public moral and a hero. It
+was a legend of the West that his forebears had been
+kings in Ireland like Brian Boroihme. He did not
+contradict this; he never contradicted anything. His
+challenge to all fun and satire and misrepresentation
+was, &#8220;What&#8217;ll be the differ a hundred years from now!&#8221;</p>
+<p>He did not use this phrase, however, toward one
+experience&mdash;the advent of Miss Molly Mackinder, the
+heiress, and the challenge that reverberated through the
+West after her arrival. Philosophy deserted him then;
+he fell back on the primary emotions of mankind.</p>
+<p>A month after Miss Mackinder&#8217;s arrival at La Touche
+a dramatic performance was given at the old fort, in
+which the officers of the Mounted Police took part,
+together with many civilians who fancied themselves.
+By that time the district had realized that Terry O&#8217;Ryan
+had surrendered to what they called &#8220;the laying on of
+hands&#8221; by Molly Mackinder. It was not certain, however,
+that the surrender was complete, because O&#8217;Ryan
+had been wounded before, and yet had not been taken
+captive altogether. His complete surrender seemed
+now more certain to the public because the lady had a
+fortune of two hundred thousand dollars, and that
+amount of money would be useful to an ambitious man
+in the growing West. It would, as Gow Johnson said,
+&#8220;Let him sit back and view the landscape o&#8217;er before
+he puts his ploughshare in the mud.&#8221;</p>
+<p>There was an out-door scene in the play produced by
+the impetuous amateurs, and dialogue had been interpolated
+by three &#8220;imps of fame&#8221; at the suggestion of
+Constantine Jopp, one of the three, who bore malice
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_274' name='page_274'></a>274</span>
+toward O&#8217;Ryan, though this his colleagues did not
+know distinctly. The scene was a camp-fire&mdash;a starlit
+night, a colloquy between the three, upon which the
+hero of the drama, played by Terry O&#8217;Ryan, should
+break, after having, unknown to them, but in sight of
+the audience, overheard their kind intentions toward
+himself.</p>
+<p>The night came. When the curtain rose for the third
+act there was exposed a star-sown sky, in which the
+galaxy of Orion was shown with distinctness, each star
+sharply twinkling from the electric power behind&mdash;a
+pretty scene, evoking great applause. O&#8217;Ryan had
+never seen this back curtain&mdash;they had taken care
+that he should not&mdash;and, standing in the wings awaiting
+his cue, he was unprepared for the laughter of the
+audience, first low and uncertain, then growing, then
+insistent, and now a peal of ungovernable mirth, as one
+by one they understood the significance of the stars
+of Orion on the back curtain.</p>
+<p>O&#8217;Ryan got his cue, and came on to an outburst of applause
+which shook the walls. La Touche rose at him,
+among them Miss Molly Mackinder in the front row
+with the notables.</p>
+<p>He did not see the back curtain, or Orion blazing in
+the ultramarine blue. According to the stage directions,
+he was to steal along the trees at the wings, and listen
+to the talk of the men at the fire plotting against him,
+who were presently to pretend good comradeship to his
+face. It was a vigorous melodrama, with some touches
+of true Western feeling. After listening for a moment,
+O&#8217;Ryan was to creep up the stage again toward the back
+curtain, giving a cue for his appearance.</p>
+<p>When the hilarious applause at his entrance had
+somewhat subsided, the three took up their parable, but
+it was not the parable of the play. They used dialogue
+not in the original. It had a significance which the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_275' name='page_275'></a>275</span>
+audience were not slow to appreciate, and went far to
+turn <i>The Sunburst Trail</i> at this point into a comedy-farce.
+When this new dialogue began, O&#8217;Ryan could
+scarcely trust his ears or realize what was happening.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ah, look,&#8221; said Dicky Fergus at the fire, &#8220;as fine a
+night as I ever saw in the West! The sky&#8217;s a picture.
+You could almost hand the stars down, they&#8217;re so near.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What&#8217;s that clump together on the right&mdash;what
+are they called in astronomy?&#8221; asked Constantine Jopp,
+with a leer.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Orion is the name&mdash;a beauty, ain&#8217;t it?&#8221; answered
+Fergus.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve been watching Orion rise,&#8221; said the third&mdash;Holden
+was his name. &#8220;Many&#8217;s the time I&#8217;ve watched
+Orion rising. Orion&#8217;s the star for me. Say, he wipes
+&#8217;em all out&mdash;right out. Watch him rising now.&#8221;</p>
+<p>By a manipulation of the lights Orion moved up the
+back curtain slowly and blazed with light nearer the
+zenith. And La Touche had more than the worth of
+its money in this opening to the third act of the play.
+O&#8217;Ryan was a favorite, at whom La Touche loved to
+jeer, and the parable of the stars convulsed them.</p>
+<p>At the first words O&#8217;Ryan put a hand on himself and
+tried to grasp the meaning of it all, but his entrance and
+the subsequent applause had confused him. Presently,
+however, he turned to the back curtain, as Orion moved
+slowly up the heavens, and found the key to the situation.
+He gasped. Then he listened to the dialogue,
+which had nothing to do with &#8220;<i>The Sunburst Trail</i>.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What did Orion do, and why does he rise? Has
+he got to rise? Why was the gent called Orion in them
+far-off days?&#8221; asked Holden.</p>
+<p>&#8220;He did some hunting in his time&mdash;with a club,&#8221;
+Fergus replied. &#8220;He kept making hits, he did. Orion
+was a spoiler. When he took the field there was no
+room for the rest of the race. Why does he rise?
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_276' name='page_276'></a>276</span>
+Because it is a habit. They could always get a rise out
+of Orion. The Athens <i>Eirenicon</i> said that yeast might
+fail to rise, but touch the button and Orion would rise
+like a bird.&#8221;</p>
+<p>At that instant the galaxy jerked up the back curtain
+again, and, when the audience could control itself,
+Constantine Jopp, grinning meanly, asked:</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why does he wear the girdle?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It is not a girdle&mdash;it is a belt,&#8221; was Dicky Fergus&#8217;
+reply. &#8220;The gods gave it to him because he was a
+favorite. There was a lady called Artemis&mdash;she was the
+last of them. But he went visiting with Eos, another
+lady of previous acquaintance, down at a place called
+Ortygia, and Artemis shot him dead with a shaft Apollo
+had given her; but she didn&#8217;t marry Apollo neither.
+She laid Orion out on the sky, with his glittering belt
+around him. And Orion keeps on rising.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Will he ever stop rising?&#8221; asked Holden.</p>
+<p>Followed for the conspirators a disconcerting moment;
+for, when the laughter had subsided, a lazy voice came
+from the back of the hall, &#8220;He&#8217;ll stop long enough to
+play with Apollo a little, I guess.&#8221;</p>
+<p>It was Gow Johnson who had spoken, and no man
+knew Terry O&#8217;Ryan better, or could gauge more truly
+the course he would take. He had been in many an
+enterprise, many a brush with O&#8217;Ryan, and his friendship
+would bear any strain.</p>
+<p>O&#8217;Ryan recovered himself from the moment he saw
+the back curtain, and he did not find any fun in the
+thing. It took a hold on him out of all proportion
+to its importance. He realized that he had come to
+the parting of the ways in his life. It suddenly came
+upon him that something had been lacking in him
+in the past, and that his want of success in many things
+had not been wholly due to bad luck. He had been
+eager, enterprising, a genius almost at seeing good
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_277' name='page_277'></a>277</span>
+things; and yet others had reaped where he had sown.
+He had believed too much in his fellow-man. For the
+first time in his life he resented the friendly, almost
+affectionate satire of his many friends. It was amusing,
+it was delightful; but down beneath it all there was a
+little touch of ridicule. He had more brains than any
+of them, and he had known it in a way; he had led
+them sometimes, too, as on raids against cattle-stealers,
+and in a brush with half-breeds and Indians; as when
+he stood for the legislature; but he felt now for the first
+time that he had not made the most of himself, that there
+was something hurting to self-respect in this prank
+played upon him. When he came to that point his
+resentment went higher. He thought of Molly Mackinder,
+and he heard all too acutely the vague veiled
+references to her in their satire. By the time Gow
+Johnson spoke he had mastered himself, however, and
+had made up his mind. He stood still for a moment.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Now, please, my cue,&#8221; he said, quietly and satirically
+from the trees near the wings.</p>
+<p>He was smiling, but Gow Johnson&#8217;s prognostication
+was right; and ere long the audience realized that he
+was right. There was standing before them not the
+Terry O&#8217;Ryan they had known, but another. He threw
+himself fully into his part&mdash;a young rancher made deputy-sheriff,
+who by the occasional exercise of his duty had
+incurred the hatred of a small floating population that
+lived by fraud, violence, and cattle-stealing. The conspiracy
+was to raid his cattle, to lure him to pursuit,
+to ambush him, and kill him. Terry now played the
+part with a naturalness and force which soon lifted the
+play away from the farcical element introduced into it by
+those who had interpolated the gibes at himself. They
+had gone a step too far.</p>
+<p>&#8220;He&#8217;s going large,&#8221; said Gow Johnson, as the act drew
+near its close and the climax neared where O&#8217;Ryan was
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_278' name='page_278'></a>278</span>
+to enter upon a physical struggle with his assailants.
+&#8220;His blood&#8217;s up. There&#8217;ll be hell to pay.&#8221;</p>
+<p>To Gow Johnson the play had instantly become
+real, and O&#8217;Ryan an injured man at bay, the victim of
+the act&mdash;not of the fictitious characters of the play,
+but of the three men, Fergus, Holden, and Constantine
+Jopp, who had planned the discomfiture of O&#8217;Ryan;
+and he felt that the victim&#8217;s resentment would fall
+heaviest on Constantine Jopp, the bully, an old schoolmate
+of Terry&#8217;s.</p>
+<p>Jopp was older than O&#8217;Ryan by three years, which
+in men is little, but in boys, at a certain time of life,
+is much. It means, generally, weight and height, an
+advantage in a scrimmage. Constantine Jopp had been
+the plague and tyrant of O&#8217;Ryan&#8217;s boyhood. He was
+now a big, leering fellow, with much money of his own,
+got chiefly from the coal discovered on his place by
+Vigon, the half-breed French-Canadian. He had a
+sense of dark and malicious humor, a long, horse-like
+face, with little, beady eyes, and a huge frame.</p>
+<p>Again and again had Terry fought him as a boy
+at school, and often he had been badly whipped, but
+he had never refused the challenge of an insult when
+he was twelve and Jopp fifteen. The climax to their
+enmity at school had come one day when Terry was
+seized with a cramp while bathing, and after having
+gone down twice was rescued by Jopp, who dragged
+him out by the hair of the head. He had been restored
+to consciousness on the bank and carried to his home,
+where he lay ill for days. During the course of the
+slight fever which followed the accident his hair was
+cut close to his head. Impetuous always, his first
+thought was to go and thank Constantine Jopp for
+having saved his life. As soon as he was able he went
+forth to find his rescuer, and met him suddenly on
+turning a corner of the street. Before he could stammer
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_279' name='page_279'></a>279</span>
+out the gratitude that was in his heart, Jopp, eying him
+with a sneering smile, said, drawlingly:</p>
+<p>&#8220;If you&#8217;d had your hair cut like that I couldn&#8217;t have
+got you out, could I? Holy, what a sight! Next time
+I&#8217;ll take you by the scruff, putty face&mdash;bah!&#8221;</p>
+<p>That was enough for Terry. He had swallowed the
+insult, stuttered his thanks to the jeering laugh of the
+lank bully, and had gone home and cried in shame and
+rage.</p>
+<p>It was the one real shadow in his life. Ill-luck and
+good luck had been taken with an equable mind; but
+the fact that he must, while he lived, own the supreme
+debt of his life to a boy and afterward to a man whom
+he hated by instinct was a constant cloud on him. Jopp
+owned him. For some years they did not meet, and
+then at last they again were thrown together in the West,
+when Jopp settled at La Touche. It was gall and wormwood
+to Terry, but he steeled himself to be friendly,
+although the man was as great a bully as the boy, as
+offensive in mind and character; but withal acute and
+able in his way, and with a reputation for commercial
+sharpness which would be called by another name in a
+different civilization. They met constantly, and O&#8217;Ryan
+always put a hand on himself, and forced himself to be
+friendly. Once when Jopp became desperately ill there
+had been&mdash;though he fought it down, and condemned
+himself in every term of reproach&mdash;a sense of relief in
+the thought that perhaps his ancient debt would now be
+cancelled. It had gone on so long. And Constantine
+Jopp had never lost an opportunity of vexing him, of
+turturing him, of giving veiled thrusts, which he knew
+O&#8217;Ryan could not resent. It was the constant pin-prick
+of a mean soul, who had an advantage of which he could
+never be dispossessed&mdash;unless the ledger was balanced
+in some inscrutable way.</p>
+<p>Apparently bent on amusement only, and hiding his
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_280' name='page_280'></a>280</span>
+hatred from his colleagues, Jopp had been the instigator
+and begetter of the huge joke of the play; but it was
+the brains of Dick Fergus which had carried it out,
+written the dialogue, and planned the electric appliances
+of the back curtain&mdash;for he was an engineer and
+electrician. Neither he nor Holden had known the
+old antipathy of Terry and Constantine Jopp. There
+was only one man who knew the whole truth, and that
+was Gow Johnson, to whom Terry had once told all.
+At the last moment Fergus had interpolated certain
+points in the dialogue which were not even included at
+rehearsal. These referred to Apollo. He had a shrewd
+notion that Jopp had an idea of marrying Molly Mackinder
+if he could, cousins though they were; and he
+was also aware that Jopp, knowing Molly&#8217;s liking for
+Terry, had tried to poison her mind against him, through
+suggestive gossip about a little widow at Jansen, thirty
+miles away. He had in so far succeeded that, on the
+very day of the performance, Molly had declined to be
+driven home from the race-course by Terry, despite the
+fact that Terry had won the chief race and owned the
+only dog-cart in the West.</p>
+<p>As the day went on, Fergus realized, as had Gow
+Johnson, that Jopp had raised a demon. The air was
+electric. The play was drawing near to its climax&mdash;an
+attempt to capture the deputy-sheriff, tie him to a tree,
+and leave him bound and gagged alone in the waste.
+There was a glitter in Terry&#8217;s eyes, belying the lips
+which smiled in keeping with the character he presented.
+A look of harshness was stamped on his face, and the
+outlines of the temples were as sharp as the chin was set
+and the voice slow and penetrating.</p>
+<p>Molly Mackinder&#8217;s eyes were riveted on him. She
+sat very still, her hands clasped in her lap, watching his
+every move. Instinct told her that Terry was holding
+himself in; that some latent fierceness and iron force
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_281' name='page_281'></a>281</span>
+in him had emerged into life; and that he meant to
+have revenge on Constantine Jopp one way or another,
+and that soon; for she had heard the rumor flying
+through the hall that her cousin was the cause of the
+practical joke just played. From hints she had had
+from Constantine that very day she knew that the
+rumor was the truth; and she recalled now with shrinking
+dislike the grimace accompanying the suggestion.
+She had not resented it then, being herself angry with
+Terry because of the little widow at Jansen.</p>
+<p>Presently the silence in the hall became acute; the
+senses of the audience were strained to the utmost.
+The acting before them was more realistic than anything
+they had ever seen, or were ever likely to see
+again in La Touche. All three conspirators, Fergus,
+Holden, and Jopp, realized that O&#8217;Ryan&#8217;s acting had
+behind it an animal anger which transformed him.
+When he looked into their eyes it was with a steely
+directness harder and fiercer than was observed by the
+audience. Once there was an occasion for O&#8217;Ryan to
+catch Fergus by the arm, and Fergus winced from the
+grip. When standing in the wings with Terry he
+ventured to apologize playfully for the joke, but Terry
+made no answer; and once again he had whispered
+good-naturedly as they stood together on the stage;
+but the reply had been a low, scornful laugh. Fergus
+realized that a critical moment was at hand. The play
+provided for some dialogue between Jopp and Terry,
+and he observed with anxiety that Terry now interpolated
+certain phrases meant to warn Constantine, and
+to excite him to anger also.</p>
+<p>The moment came upon them sooner than the text
+of the play warranted. O&#8217;Ryan deliberately left out
+several sentences, and gave a later cue, and the struggle
+for his capture was precipitated. Terry meant to make
+the struggle real. So thrilling had been the scene that
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_282' name='page_282'></a>282</span>
+to an extent the audience was prepared for what followed;
+but they did not grasp the full reality&mdash;that
+the play was now only a vehicle for a personal issue
+of a desperate character. No one had ever seen O&#8217;Ryan
+angry; and now that the demon of rage was on him,
+directed by a will suddenly grown to its full height,
+they saw not only a powerful character in a powerful
+melodrama, but a man of wild force. When the three
+desperadoes closed in on O&#8217;Ryan, and, with a blow
+from the shoulder which was not a pretence, he sent
+Holden into a far corner gasping for breath and moaning
+with pain, the audience broke out into wild cheering.
+It was superb acting, they thought. As most of them
+had never seen the play, they were not surprised when
+Holden did not again join the attack on the deputy-sheriff.
+Those who did know the drama&mdash;among them
+Molly Mackinder&mdash;became dismayed, then anxious.</p>
+<p>Fergus and Jopp knew well from the blow O&#8217;Ryan
+had given that, unless they could drag him down, the
+end must be disaster to some one. They were struggling
+with him for personal safety now. The play was forgotten,
+though mechanically O&#8217;Ryan and Fergus repeated
+the exclamations and the few phrases belonging
+to the part. Jopp was silent, fighting with a malice
+which belongs to only half-breed, or half-bred, natures;
+and from far back in his own nature the distant Indian
+strain in him was working in savage hatred. The two
+were desperately hanging onto O&#8217;Ryan like pumas on
+a grizzly, when suddenly, with a twist he had learned
+from Ogami the Jap on the Smoky River, the slim
+Fergus was slung backward to the ground with the tendons
+of his arm strained and the arm itself useless for
+further work. There remained now Constantine Jopp,
+heavier and more powerful than O&#8217;Ryan.</p>
+<p>For O&#8217;Ryan the theatre, the people, disappeared.
+He was a boy again on the village-green, with the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_283' name='page_283'></a>283</span>
+bully before him who had tortured his young days.
+He forgot the old debt to the foe who saved his life;
+he forgot everything except that once again, as of old,
+Constantine Jopp was fighting him, with long, strong
+arms trying to bring him to the ground. Jopp&#8217;s superior
+height gave him an advantage in a close grip; the
+strength of his gorilla-like arms was difficult to withstand.
+Both were forgetful of the world, and the two
+other injured men, silent and awed, were watching the
+fight, in which one of them, at least, was powerless to
+take part.</p>
+<p>The audience was breathless. Most now saw the
+grim reality of the scene before them; and when at
+last O&#8217;Ryan&#8217;s powerful right hand got a grip upon the
+throat of Jopp, and they saw the grip tighten, tighten,
+and Jopp&#8217;s face go from red to purple, a hundred people
+gasped. Excited men made as though to move toward
+the stage; but the majority still believed that it all
+belonged to the play, and shouted, &#8220;Sit down!&#8221;</p>
+<p>Suddenly the voice of Gow Johnson was heard:
+&#8220;Don&#8217;t kill him&mdash;let go, boy!&#8221;</p>
+<p>The voice rang out with sharp anxiety, and pierced
+the fog of passion and rage in which O&#8217;Ryan was moving.
+He realized what he was doing, the real sense of it came
+upon him. Suddenly he let go the lank throat of his
+enemy, and, by a supreme effort, flung him across the
+stage, where Jopp lay resting on his hands, his bleared
+eyes looking at Terry with the fear and horror still
+in them which had come with that tightening grip on
+his throat.</p>
+<p>Silence fell suddenly on the theatre. The audience
+was standing. A woman sobbed somewhere in a far
+corner, but the rest were dismayed and speechless.
+A few steps before them all was Molly Mackinder,
+white and frightened, but in her eyes was a look of
+understanding as she gazed at Terry. Breathing hard,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_284' name='page_284'></a>284</span>
+Terry stood still in the middle of the stage, the red fog
+not yet gone out of his eyes, his hands clasped at his
+side, vaguely realizing the audience again. Behind him
+was the back curtain, in which the lights of Orion twinkled
+aggressively. The three men who had attacked him
+were still where he had thrown them.</p>
+<p>The silence was intense, the strain oppressive. But
+now a drawling voice came from the back of the hall.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Are you watching the rise of Orion?&#8221; it said. It
+was the voice of Gow Johnson.</p>
+<p>The strain was broken; the audience dissolved in
+laughter; but it was not hilarious; it was the nervous
+laughter of relief, touched off by a native humor always
+present in the dweller of the prairie.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I beg your pardon,&#8221; said Terry, quietly and abstractedly,
+to the audience.</p>
+<p>And the scene-shifter bethought himself and let down
+the curtain.</p>
+<p>The fourth act was not played that night. The people
+had had more than the worth of their money. In
+a few moments the stage was crowded with people from
+the audience, but both Jopp and O&#8217;Ryan had disappeared.</p>
+<p>Among the visitors to the stage was Molly Mackinder.
+There was a meaning smile upon her face as she said
+to Dicky Fergus:</p>
+<p>&#8220;It was quite wonderful, wasn&#8217;t it&mdash;like a scene out
+of the classics&mdash;the gladiators or something?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Fergus gave a wary smile as he answered: &#8220;Yes. I
+felt like saying &#8216;<i>Ave, Cæsar, ave!</i>&#8217; and I watched to see
+Artemis drop her handkerchief.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;She dropped it, but you were too busy to pick it up.
+It would have been a useful sling for your arm,&#8221; she
+added, with thoughtful malice. &#8220;It seemed so real&mdash;you
+all acted so well, so appropriately. And how you
+keep it up!&#8221; she added, as he cringed when some one
+knocked against his elbow, hurting the injured tendons.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_285' name='page_285'></a>285</span></p>
+<p>Fergus looked at her meditatively before he answered.
+&#8220;Oh, I think we&#8217;ll likely keep it up for some time,&#8221;
+he rejoined, ironically.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then the play isn&#8217;t finished?&#8221; she added. &#8220;There
+is another act? Yes, I thought there was; the programme
+said four.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh yes, there&#8217;s another act,&#8221; he answered, &#8220;but
+it isn&#8217;t to be played now; and I&#8217;m not in it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No, I suppose you are not in it. You really weren&#8217;t
+in the last act. Who will be in it?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Fergus suddenly laughed outright as he looked at
+Holden expostulating intently to a crowd of people
+round him. &#8220;Well, honor bright, I don&#8217;t think there&#8217;ll
+be anybody in it except little Conny Jopp and gentle
+Terry O&#8217;Ryan; and Conny mayn&#8217;t be in it very long.
+But he&#8217;ll be in it for a while, I guess. You see, the curtain
+came down in the middle of a situation, not at the
+end of it. The curtain has to rise again.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Perhaps Orion will rise again&mdash;you think so?&#8221;
+She laughed in satire; for Dicky Fergus had made love
+to her during the last three months with unsuppressed
+activity, and she knew him in his sentimental moments;
+which is fatal. It is fatal if, in a duet, one breathes
+fire and the other frost.</p>
+<p>&#8220;If you want my opinion,&#8221; he said, in a lower voice,
+as they moved toward the door, while people tried to
+listen to them&mdash;&#8220;if you want it straight, I think Orion
+has risen&mdash;right up where shines the evening star&mdash;Oh,
+say, now,&#8221; he broke off, &#8220;haven&#8217;t you had enough
+fun out of me? I tell you, it was touch and go. He
+nearly broke my arm&mdash;would have done it, if I hadn&#8217;t
+gone limp to him; and your cousin Conny Jopp, little
+Conny Jopp, was as near Kingdom Come as a man
+wants at his age. I saw an elephant go <i>must</i> once in
+India, and it was as like O&#8217;Ryan as putty is to dough.
+It isn&#8217;t all over, either, for O&#8217;Ryan will forget and forgive,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_286' name='page_286'></a>286</span>
+and Jopp won&#8217;t. He&#8217;s your cousin, but he&#8217;s a sulker.
+If he has to sit up nights to do it, he&#8217;ll try to get back
+on O&#8217;Ryan. He&#8217;ll sit up nights, but he&#8217;ll do it, if he
+can. And, whatever it is, it won&#8217;t be pretty.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Outside the door they met Gow Johnson, excitement
+in his eyes. He heard Fergus&#8217; last words.</p>
+<p>&#8220;He&#8217;ll see Orion rising if he sits up nights,&#8221; Gow
+Johnson said. &#8220;The game is with Terry&mdash;at last.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Then he called to the dispersing, gossiping crowd:
+&#8220;Hold on&mdash;hold on, you people! I&#8217;ve got news for
+you. Folks, this is O&#8217;Ryan&#8217;s night. It&#8217;s his in the starry
+firmament. Look at him shine!&#8221; he cried, stretching
+out his arm toward the heavens, where the glittering
+galaxy hung near the zenith. &#8220;Terry O&#8217;Ryan&mdash;our
+O&#8217;Ryan&mdash;he&#8217;s struck oil&mdash;on his ranch it&#8217;s been struck.
+Old Vigon found it. Terry&#8217;s got his own at last.
+O&#8217;Ryan&#8217;s in it&mdash;in it alone. Now, let&#8217;s hear the prairie-whisper!&#8221;
+he shouted, in a great, raucous voice. &#8220;Let&#8217;s
+hear the prairie-whisper! What is it?&#8221;</p>
+<p>The crowd responded in a hoarse shout for O&#8217;Ryan
+and his fortune. Even the women shouted&mdash;all except
+Molly Mackinder. She was wondering if O&#8217;Ryan risen
+would be the same to her as O&#8217;Ryan rising. She got
+into her carriage with a sigh, though she said to the few
+friends with her:</p>
+<p>&#8220;If it&#8217;s true, it&#8217;s splendid. He deserves it, too. Oh,
+I&#8217;m glad&mdash;I&#8217;m so glad!&#8221; She laughed; but the laugh
+was a little hysterical.</p>
+<p>She was both glad and sorry. Yet as she drove home
+over the prairie she was silent. Far off in the east was
+a bright light. It was a bonfire built on O&#8217;Ryan&#8217;s ranch,
+near where he had struck oil&mdash;struck it rich. The
+light grew and grew, and the prairie was alive with people
+hurrying toward it. La Touche should have had the
+news hours earlier, but the half-breed French-Canadian,
+Vigon, who had made the discovery, and had started
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_287' name='page_287'></a>287</span>
+for La Touche with the news, went suddenly off his
+head with excitement, and had ridden away into the
+prairie fiercely shouting his joy to an invisible world.
+The news had been brought in later by a farm-hand.</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+
+<p>Terry O&#8217;Ryan had really struck oil, and his ranch was
+a scene of decent revelry, of which Gow Johnson was
+master. But the central figure of it all, the man who
+had, in truth, risen like a star, had become to La Touche
+all at once its notoriety as well as its favorite, its great
+man as well as its friend, he was nowhere to be found.
+He had been seen riding full speed into the prairie toward
+the Kourmash Wood, and the starlit night had swallowed
+him. Constantine Jopp had also disappeared; but at
+first no one gave that thought or consideration.</p>
+<p>As the night went on, however, a feeling began to stir
+which it is not good to rouse in frontier lands. It is
+sure to exhibit itself in forms more objective than are
+found in great populations where methods of punishment
+are various, and even when deadly are often refined.
+But society in new places has only limited
+resources, and is thrown back on primary ways and
+means. La Touche was no exception, and the keener
+spirits, to whom O&#8217;Ryan had ever been &#8220;a white man,&#8221;
+and who so rejoiced in his good-luck now that they
+drank his health a hundred times in his own whiskey
+and cider, were simmering with desire for a public
+reproval of Constantine Jopp&#8217;s conduct. Though it was
+pointed out to them by the astute Gow Johnson that
+Fergus and Holden had participated in the colossal
+joke of the play, they had learned indirectly also the
+whole truth concerning the past of the two men. They
+realized that Fergus and Holden had been duped by
+Jopp into the escapade. Their primitive sense of justice
+exonerated the humorists and arraigned the one malicious
+man. As the night wore on they decided on the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_288' name='page_288'></a>288</span>
+punishment to be meted out by La Touche to the man
+who had not &#8220;acted on the square.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Gow Johnson saw, too late, that he had roused a spirit
+as hard to appease as the demon roused in O&#8217;Ryan
+earlier in the evening. He would have enjoyed the
+<i>battue</i> of punishment under ordinary circumstances; but
+he knew that Miss Molly Mackinder would be humiliated
+and indignant at the half-savage penalty they meant to
+exact. He had determined that O&#8217;Ryan should marry
+her; and this might be an obstruction in the path. It
+was true that O&#8217;Ryan now would be a rich man&mdash;one
+of the richest in the West, unless all signs failed; but,
+meanwhile, a union of fortunes would only be an added
+benefit. Besides, he had seen that O&#8217;Ryan was in
+earnest, and what O&#8217;Ryan wanted he himself wanted
+even more strongly. He was not concerned greatly for
+O&#8217;Ryan&#8217;s absence. He guessed that Terry had ridden
+away into the night to work off the dark spirit that was
+on him, to have it out with himself. Gow Johnson was
+a philosopher. He was twenty years older than O&#8217;Ryan,
+and he had studied his friend as a pious monk his missal.</p>
+<p>He was right in his judgment. When Terry left the
+theatre he was like one in a dream, every nerve in his
+body at tension, his head aflame, his pulses throbbing.
+For miles he rode away into the waste along the northern
+trail, ever away from La Touche and his own home.
+He did not know of the great good-fortune that had
+come to him; and if, in this hour, he had known, he would
+not have cared. As he rode on and on remorse drew
+him into its grasp. Shame seized him that he had let
+passion be his master, that he had lost his self-control,
+had taken a revenge out of all proportion to the injury
+and insult to himself. It did not ease his mind that he
+knew Constantine Jopp had done the thing out of meanness
+and malice; for he was alive to-night in the light
+of the stars, with the sweet, crisp air blowing in his face,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_289' name='page_289'></a>289</span>
+because of an act of courage on the part of his school-days&#8217;
+foe. He remembered now that, when he was
+drowning, he had clung to Jopp with frenzied arms
+and had endangered the bully&#8217;s life also. The long
+torture of owing this debt to so mean a soul was on him
+still, was rooted in him; but suddenly, in the silent,
+searching night, some spirit whispered in his ear that
+this was the price which he must pay for his life saved
+to the world, a compromise with the Inexorable Thing.
+On the verge of oblivion and the end, he had been
+snatched back by relenting Fate, which requires something
+for something given when laws are overriden and
+doom defeated. Yes, the price he was meant to pay
+was gratitude to one of shrivelled soul and innate antipathy;
+and he had not been man enough to see the
+trial through to the end! With a little increased strain
+put upon his vanity and pride, he had run amuck. Like
+some heathen gladiator, he had ravaged in the ring.
+He had gone down into the basements of human life
+and there made a cockpit for his animal rage, till, in
+the contest, brain and intellect had been saturated by
+the fumes and sweat of fleshly fury.</p>
+<p>How quiet the night was, how soothing to the fevered
+mind and body, how the cool air laved the heated head
+and flushed the lungs of the rheum of passion! He
+rode on and on, farther and farther away from home, his
+back upon the scenes where his daily deeds were done.
+It was long past midnight before he turned his horse&#8217;s
+head again homeward.</p>
+<p>Buried in his thoughts, now calm and determined,
+with a new life grown up in him, a new strength different
+from the mastering force which gave him a strength
+in the theatre like one in a delirium, he noticed nothing.
+He was only conscious of the omniscient night and its
+warm, penetrating friendliness; as, in a great trouble,
+when no words can be spoken, a cool, kind palm steals
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_290' name='page_290'></a>290</span>
+into the trembling hand of misery and stills it, gives it
+strength and life and an even pulse. He was now master
+in the house of his soul, and had no fear or doubt as to
+the future or as to his course.</p>
+<p>His first duty was to go to Constantine Jopp and
+speak his regret like a man. And after that it would
+be his duty to carry a double debt his life long for the
+life saved, for the wrong done. He owed an apology
+to La Touche, and he was scarcely aware that the
+native gentlemanliness in him had said through his
+fever of passion over the footlights, &#8220;I beg your pardon.&#8221;
+In his heart he felt that he had offered a mean affront
+to every person present, to the town where his interests
+lay, where his heart lay.</p>
+<p>Where his heart lay&mdash;Molly Mackinder! He knew
+now that vanity had something to do, if not all to do,
+with his violent acts, and though there suddenly shot
+through his mind, as he rode back, a savage thrill at the
+remembrance of how he had handled the three, it was
+only a passing emotion. He was bent on putting
+himself right with Jopp and with La Touche. With
+the former his way was clear; he did not yet see his
+way as to La Touche. How would he be able to make
+the <i>amende honorable</i> to La Touche?</p>
+<p>By-and-by he became somewhat less absorbed and
+enveloped by the comforting night. He saw the
+glimmer of red light afar, and vaguely wondered what it
+was. It was in the direction of O&#8217;Ryan&#8217;s Ranch, but he
+thought nothing of it, because it burned steadily. It
+was probably a fire lighted by settlers trailing to the
+farther North. While the night wore on he rode as
+slowly back to the town as he had galloped from it
+like a centaur with a captive.</p>
+<p>Again and again Molly Mackinder&#8217;s face came before
+him, but he resolutely shut it out of his thoughts. He
+felt that he had no right to think of her until he had
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_291' name='page_291'></a>291</span>
+&#8220;done the right thing&#8221; by Jopp and by La Touche.
+Yet the look in her face as the curtain came down,
+it was not that of one indifferent to him or to what he
+did. He neared the town half-way between midnight
+and morning. Almost unconsciously avoiding the main
+streets, he rode a roundabout way toward the little
+house where Constantine Jopp lived. He could hear
+loud noises in the streets, singing, and hoarse shouts.
+Then silence came, then shouts, and silence again. It
+was all quiet as he rode up to Jopp&#8217;s house, standing
+on the outskirts of the town. There was a bright light
+in the window of a room.</p>
+<p>Jopp, then, was still up. He would not wait till
+to-morrow. He would do the right thing now. He
+would put things straight with his foe before he slept;
+he would do it at any sacrifice to his pride. He had
+conquered his pride.</p>
+<p>He dismounted, threw the bridle over a post, and,
+going into the garden, knocked gently at the door.
+There was no response. He knocked again, and listened
+intently. Now he heard a sound&mdash;like a smothered cry
+or groan. He opened the door quickly and entered.
+It was dark. In another room beyond was a light.
+From it came the same sound he had heard before, but
+louder; also there was a shuffling footstep. Springing
+forward to the half-open door, he pushed it wide, and
+met the terror-stricken eyes of Constantine Jopp&mdash;the
+same look that he had seen at the theatre when his
+hands were on Jopp&#8217;s throat, but more ghastly.</p>
+<p>Jopp was bound to a chair by a lasso. Both arms
+were fastened to the chair-arm, and beneath them, on the
+floor, were bowls into which blood dropped from his
+punctured wrists.</p>
+<p>He had hardly taken it all in&mdash;the work of an instant&mdash;when
+he saw crouched in a corner, madness in his
+eyes, his half-breed Vigon. He grasped the situation
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_292' name='page_292'></a>292</span>
+in a flash. Vigon had gone mad, had lain in wait in
+Jopp&#8217;s house, and, when the man he hated had seated
+himself in the chair, had lassoed him, bound him, and
+was slowly bleeding him to death.</p>
+<p>He had no time to think. Before he could act
+Vigon was upon him also, frenzy in his eyes, a knife
+clutched in his hand. Reason had fled, and he only
+saw in O&#8217;Ryan the frustrator of his revenge. He had
+watched the drip, drip from his victim&#8217;s wrists with
+a dreadful joy.</p>
+<p>They were man and man, but O&#8217;Ryan found in this
+grisly contest a vaster trial of strength than in the
+fight upon the stage a few hours ago. The first lunge
+that Vigon made struck him on the tip of the shoulder
+and drew blood; but he caught the hand holding the
+knife in an iron grasp, while the half-breed, with superhuman
+strength, tried in vain for the long, brown throat
+of the man for whom he had struck oil. As they
+struggled and twisted, the eyes of the victim in the
+chair watched them with agonized emotions. For him
+it was life or death. He could not cry out&mdash;his mouth
+was gagged; but to O&#8217;Ryan his groans were like a distant
+echo of his own hoarse gasps as he fought his desperate
+fight. Terry was as one in an awful dream battling with
+vague, impersonal powers which slowly strangled his life,
+yet held him back in torture from the final surrender.</p>
+<p>For minutes they struggled. At last O&#8217;Ryan&#8217;s
+strength came to a point of breaking, for Vigon was a
+powerful man, and to this was added a madman&#8217;s
+energy. He felt that the end was coming. But all at
+once, through the groans of the victim in the chair,
+Terry became conscious of noises outside&mdash;such noises
+as he had heard before he entered the house, only
+nearer and louder. At the same time he heard a
+horse&#8217;s hoofs, then a knock at the door, and a voice
+calling, &#8220;Jopp! Jopp!&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_293' name='page_293'></a>293</span></p>
+<p>He made a last desperate struggle, and shouted
+hoarsely.</p>
+<p>An instant later there were footsteps in the room,
+followed by a cry of fright and amazement.</p>
+<p>It was Gow Johnson. He had come to warn Constantine
+Jopp that a crowd were come to tar and feather
+him, and to get him away on his own horse.</p>
+<p>Now he sprang to the front door, called to the approaching
+crowd for help, then ran back to help O&#8217;Ryan.
+A moment later a dozen men had Vigon secure, and had
+released Constantine Jopp, now almost dead from loss
+of blood.</p>
+<p>As they took the gag from his mouth and tied their
+handkerchiefs round his bleeding wrists, Jopp sobbed
+aloud. His eyes were fixed on Terry O&#8217;Ryan. Terry
+met the look, and grasped the limp hand lying on the
+chair-arm.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m sorry, O&#8217;Ryan, I&#8217;m sorry for all I&#8217;ve done to you,&#8221;
+Jopp sobbed. &#8220;I was a sneak, but I want to own it. I
+want to be square now. You can tar and feather me, if
+you like. I deserve it.&#8221; He looked at the others. &#8220;I
+deserve it,&#8221; he repeated.</p>
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s what the boys had thought would be appropriate,&#8221;
+said Gow Johnson, with a dry chuckle, and the
+crowd looked at one another and winked. The wink
+was kindly, however. &#8220;To own up and take your
+gruel!&#8221; was the easiest way to touch the men of the
+prairie.</p>
+<p>A half-hour later the roisterers, who had meant to
+carry Constantine Jopp on a rail, carried Terry O&#8217;Ryan
+on their shoulders through the town, against his will.
+As they passed the house where Miss Mackinder lived,
+some one shouted:</p>
+<p>&#8220;Are you watching the rise of Orion?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Many a time thereafter Terry O&#8217;Ryan and Molly
+Mackinder looked at the galaxy in the evening sky with
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_294' name='page_294'></a>294</span>
+laughter and with pride. It had played its part with
+Fate against Constantine Jopp and the little widow at
+Jansen. It had never shone so brightly as on the night
+when Vigon struck oil on O&#8217;Ryan&#8217;s ranch. But Vigon
+had no memory of that. Such is the irony of life.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<a name='THE_ERROR_OF_THE_DAY' id='THE_ERROR_OF_THE_DAY'></a>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_295' name='page_295'></a>295</span>
+<h2>THE ERROR OF THE DAY</h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class='blockquot'>
+<p>The &#8220;Error of the Day&#8221; may be defined as the &#8220;The difference
+between the distance or range which must be put upon the sights
+in order to hit the target and the actual distance from the gun
+to the target.&#8221;&mdash;<i>Admiralty Note.</i></p>
+<p>A great naval gun never fires twice alike. It varies from day
+to day, and expert allowance has to be made in sighting every
+time it is fired. Variations in atmosphere, condition of ammunition,
+and the wear of the gun are the contributory causes to the
+ever-varying &#8220;Error of the Day.&#8221;</p>
+</div>
+<p>&#8220;Say, ain&#8217;t he pretty?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;A Jim-dandy&mdash;oh, my!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What&#8217;s his price in the open market?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Thirty millions&mdash;I think not.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Then was heard the voice of Billy Goat&mdash;his name
+was William Goatry&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+<table summary='poetry' style='margin:0 auto'><tr><td>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>&#8220;Out in the cold world, out in the street,</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>Nothing to wear and nothing to eat,</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>Fatherless, motherless, sadly I roam,</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>Child of misfortune, I&#8217;m driven from home.&#8221;</p>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>A loud laugh followed, for Billy Goat was a popular
+person at Kowatin, in the Saskatchewan country. He
+had an inimitable drollery, heightened by a cast in his
+eye, a very large mouth, and a round, good-humored
+face; also he had a hand and arm like iron, and was
+altogether a great man on a &#8220;spree.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_296' name='page_296'></a>296</span></p>
+<p>There had been a two days&#8217; spree at Kowatin, for no
+other reason than that there had been great excitement
+over the capture and subsequent escape of a prairie-rover
+who had robbed the contractor&#8217;s money-chest
+at the rail-head on the Canadian Pacific Railroad.
+Forty miles from Kowatin he had been caught by,
+and escaped from, the tall, brown-eyed man with the
+hard-bitten face who leaned against the open window
+of the tavern, looking indifferently at the jeering crowd
+before him. For a police officer, he was not unpopular
+with them, but he had been a failure for once, and, as
+Billy Goat had said, &#8220;It tickled us to death to see a
+rider of the plains off his trolley&mdash;on the cold, cold
+ground, same as you and me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>They did not undervalue him. If he had been less a
+man than he was, they would not have taken the trouble
+to cover him with their drunken ribaldry. He had
+scored off them in the past in just such sprees as this,
+when he had the power to do so, and used the power
+good-naturedly and quietly&mdash;but used it.</p>
+<p>Then he was Sergeant Foyle, of the Royal Northwest
+Mounted Police, on duty in a district as large as the
+United Kingdom. And he had no greater admirer than
+Billy Goat, who now reviled him. Not without cause,
+in a way, for he had reviled himself to this extent
+that, when the prairie-rover, Halbeck, escaped on the
+way to Prince Albert, after six months&#8217; hunt for him
+and a final capture in the Kowatin district, Foyle resigned
+the Force before the Commissioner could reproach
+him or call him to account. Usually so exact,
+so certain of his target, some care had not been taken,
+he had miscalculated, and there had been the Error of
+the Day. Whatever it was, it had seemed to him fatal;
+and he had turned his face from the barrack-yard.</p>
+<p>Then he had made his way to the Happy Land
+Hotel at Kowatin, to begin life as &#8220;a free and independent
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_297' name='page_297'></a>297</span>
+gent on the loose,&#8221; as Billy Goat had said. To
+resign had seemed extreme; because, though the Commissioner
+was vexed at Halbeck&#8217;s escape, Foyle was
+the best non-commissioned officer in the Force. He
+had frightened horse-thieves and bogus land-agents
+and speculators out of the country; had fearlessly
+tracked down a criminal or a band of criminals when
+the odds were heavy against him. He carried on his
+cheek the scars of two bullets, and there was one white
+lock in his brown hair where an arrow had torn the
+scalp away as, alone, he drove into the Post a score of
+Indians, fresh from raiding the cattle of an immigrant
+trailing north.</p>
+<p>Now he was out of work, or so it seemed; he had
+stepped down from his scarlet-coated dignity, from the
+place of guardian and guide to civilization, into the
+idleness of a tavern stoop.</p>
+<p>As the little group swayed round him, and Billy Goat
+started another song, Foyle roused himself as though to
+move away&mdash;he was waiting for the mail-stage to take
+him south&mdash;</p>
+<table summary='poetry' style='margin:0 auto'><tr><td>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>&#8220;Oh, father, dear father, come home with me now,</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.735835172921266em;'>The clock in the steeple strikes one;</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>You said you were coming right home from the shop</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.735835172921266em;'>As soon as your day&#8217;s work was done.</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 2.2075055187638em;'>Come home&mdash;come home&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>The song arrested him, and he leaned back against
+the window again. A curious look came into his eyes,
+a look that had nothing to do with the acts of the
+people before him. It was searching into a scene beyond
+this bright sunlight and the far green-brown
+grass, and the little oasis of trees in the distance marking
+a homestead, and the dust of the wagon-wheels out
+on the trail beyond the grain-elevator&mdash;beyond the
+blue horizon&#8217;s rim, quivering in the heat, and into regions
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_298' name='page_298'></a>298</span>
+where this crisp, clear, life-giving, life-saving air
+never blew.</p>
+<table summary='poetry' style='margin:0 auto'><tr><td>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>&#8220;You said you were coming right home from the shop</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.735835172921266em;'>As soon as your day&#8217;s work was done.</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 2.2075055187638em;'>Come home&mdash;come home&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>He remembered when he had first heard this song in
+a play called <i>Ten Nights in a Bar-Room</i>, many years
+before, and how it had wrenched his heart and soul, and
+covered him with a sudden cloud of shame and anger.
+For his father had been a drunkard, and his brother had
+grown up a drunkard, that brother whom he had not
+seen for ten years until&mdash;until&mdash;</p>
+<p>He shuddered, closed his eyes, as though to shut out
+something that the mind saw. He had had a rough
+life, he had become inured to the seamy side of things&mdash;there
+was a seamy side even in this clean, free, wide
+land; and he had no sentimentality; though something
+seemed to hurt and shame him now.</p>
+<table summary='poetry' style='margin:0 auto'><tr><td>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>&#8220;As soon as your day&#8217;s work was done.</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 2.2075055187638em;'>Come home&mdash;come home&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>The crowd was uproarious. The exhilaration had become
+a kind of delirium. Men were losing their heads;
+there was an element of irresponsibility in the new
+outbreak likely to breed some violent act, which every
+man of them would lament when sober again.</p>
+<p>Nettlewood Foyle watched the dust rising from the
+wheels of the stage, which had passed the elevator and
+was nearing the Prairie Home Hotel, far down the street.
+He would soon leave behind him this noisy ribaldry of
+which he was the centre. He tossed his cheroot away.
+Suddenly he heard a low voice behind him.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why don&#8217;t you hit out, sergeant?&#8221; it said.</p>
+<p>He started almost violently, and turned round. Then
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_299' name='page_299'></a>299</span>
+his face flushed, his eyes blurred with feeling and deep
+surprise, and his lips parted in a whispered exclamation
+and greeting.</p>
+<p>A girl&#8217;s face from the shade of the sitting-room was
+looking out at him, half smiling, but with heightened
+color and a suppressed agitation. The girl was not
+more than twenty-five, graceful, supple, and strong.
+Her chin was dimpled; across her right temple was a
+slight scar. She had eyes of a wonderful deep blue;
+they seemed to swim with light. As Foyle gazed at her
+for a moment dumfounded, with a quizzical suggestion
+and smiling still a little more, she said:</p>
+<p>&#8220;You used to be a little quicker, Nett.&#8221; The voice
+appeared to attempt unconcern; but it quivered from a
+force of feeling underneath. It was so long since she
+had seen him.</p>
+<p>He was about to reply, but, at the instant, a reveller
+pushed him with a foot behind the knees so that they
+were sprung forward. The crowd laughed&mdash;all save
+Billy Goat, who knew his man.</p>
+<p>Like lightning, and with cold fury in his eyes, Foyle
+caught the tall cattleman by the forearm, and, with a
+swift, dexterous twist, had the fellow in his power.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Down&mdash;down to your knees, you skunk!&#8221; he said, in
+a low, fierce voice.</p>
+<p>The knees of the big man bent&mdash;Foyle had not taken
+lessons of Ogami, the Jap, for nothing&mdash;they bent, and
+the cattleman squealed, so intense was the pain. It
+was break or bend; and he bent&mdash;to the ground and
+lay there. Foyle stood over him for a moment, a hard
+light in his eyes, and then, as if bethinking himself,
+he looked at the other roisterers and said:</p>
+<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s a limit, and he reached it. Your mouths are
+your own, and you can blow off to suit your fancy, but
+if any one thinks I&#8217;m a tame coyote to be poked with a
+stick&mdash;!&#8221; He broke off, stooped over, and helped the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_300' name='page_300'></a>300</span>
+man before him to his feet. The arm had been strained,
+and the big fellow nursed it.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Hell, but you&#8217;re a twister!&#8221; the cattleman said, with
+a grimace of pain.</p>
+<p>Billy Goat was a gentleman, after his kind, and he
+liked Sergeant Foyle with a great liking. He turned to
+the crowd and spoke.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Say, boys, this mine&#8217;s worked out. Let&#8217;s leave the
+Happy Land to Foyle. Boys, what is he&mdash;what&mdash;is&mdash;he?
+What&mdash;is&mdash;Sergeant Foyle&mdash;boys?&#8221;</p>
+<p>The roar of the song they all knew came in reply, as
+Billy Goat waved his arms about like the wild leader of
+a wild orchestra:</p>
+<table summary='poetry' style='margin:0 auto'><tr><td>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>&#8220;Sergeant Foyle, oh, he&#8217;s a knocker from the West,</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.735835172921266em;'>He&#8217;s a chase-me-Charley, come-and-kiss-me tiger from the zoo;</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>He&#8217;s a dandy on the pinch, and he&#8217;s got a double cinch</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.735835172921266em;'>On the gent that&#8217;s going careless, and he&#8217;ll soon cinch you:</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.735835172921266em;'>And he&#8217;ll soon&mdash;and he&#8217;ll soon&mdash;cinch you!&#8221;</p>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>Foyle watched them go, dancing, stumbling, calling
+back at him, as they moved toward the Prairie Home
+Hotel:</p>
+<table summary='poetry' style='margin:0 auto'><tr><td>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>&#8220;And he&#8217;ll soon&mdash;and he&#8217;ll soon&mdash;cinch you!&#8221;</p>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>His under-lip came out, his eyes half closed, as he
+watched them. &#8220;I&#8217;ve done my last cinch. I&#8217;ve done
+my last cinch,&#8221; he murmured.</p>
+<p>Then, suddenly, the look in his face changed, the eyes
+swam as they had done a minute before at the sight of
+the girl in the room behind. Whatever his trouble was,
+that face had obscured it in a flash, and the pools of
+feeling far down in the depths of a lonely nature had
+been stirred. Recognition, memory, tenderness, desire
+swam in his face, made generous and kind the hard
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_301' name='page_301'></a>301</span>
+lines of the strong mouth. In an instant he had swung
+himself over the window-sill. The girl had drawn away
+now into a more shaded corner of the room, and she
+regarded him with a mingled anxiety and eagerness.
+Was she afraid of something? Did she fear that&mdash;she
+knew not quite what, but it had to do with a long ago?</p>
+<p>&#8220;It was time you hit out, Nett,&#8221; she said, half shyly.
+&#8220;You&#8217;re more patient than you used to be, but you&#8217;re
+surer. My, that was a twist you gave him, Nett. Aren&#8217;t
+you glad to see me?&#8221; she added, hastily and with an
+effort to hide her agitation.</p>
+<p>He reached out and took her hand with a strange
+shyness and a self-consciousness which was alien to his
+nature. The touch of her hand thrilled him. Their
+eyes met. She dropped hers. Then he gathered himself
+together. &#8220;Glad to see you? Of course, of course,
+I&#8217;m glad. You stunned me, Jo. Why, do you know
+where you are? You&#8217;re a thousand miles from home.
+I can&#8217;t get it through my head, not really. What brings
+you here? It&#8217;s ten years&mdash;ten years since I saw you,
+and you were only fifteen, but a fifteen that was as
+good as twenty.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He scanned her face closely. &#8220;What&#8217;s that scar on
+your forehead, Jo? You hadn&#8217;t that&mdash;then.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I ran up against something,&#8221; she said, evasively, her
+eyes glittering, &#8220;and it left that scar. Does it look so
+bad?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No, you&#8217;d never notice it, if you weren&#8217;t looking
+close as I am. You see, I knew your face so well ten
+years ago.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He shook his head with a forced kind of smile. It
+became him, however, for he smiled rarely; and the
+smile was like a lantern turned on his face; it gave
+light and warmth to its quiet strength&mdash;or hardness.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You were always quizzing,&#8221; she said, with an attempt
+at a laugh&mdash;&#8220;always trying to find things out. That&#8217;s
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_302' name='page_302'></a>302</span>
+why you made them reckon with you out here. You
+always could see behind things; always would have your
+own way; always were meant to be a success.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She was beginning to get control of herself again, was
+trying hard to keep things on the surface. &#8220;You were
+meant to succeed&mdash;you had to,&#8221; she added.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve been a failure&mdash;a dead failure,&#8221; he answered,
+slowly. &#8220;So they say. So they said. You heard them,
+Jo.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He jerked his head toward the open window.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, those drunken fools!&#8221; she exclaimed, indignantly,
+and her face hardened. &#8220;How I hate drink! It spoils
+everything.&#8221;</p>
+<p>There was silence for a moment. They were both
+thinking of the same thing&mdash;<i>of the same man</i>. He repeated
+a question.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What brings you out here, Jo?&#8221; he asked, gently.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Dorland,&#8221; she answered, her face setting into determination
+and anxiety.</p>
+<p>His face became pinched. &#8220;Dorl!&#8221; he said, heavily.
+&#8220;What for, Jo? What do you want with Dorl?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;When Cynthy died she left her five hundred dollars
+a year to the baby, and&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, yes, I know. Well, Jo?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, it was all right for five years&mdash;Dorland paid
+it in; but for five years he hasn&#8217;t paid anything. He&#8217;s
+taken it, stolen it from his own child by his own honest
+wife. I&#8217;ve come to get it&mdash;anyway, to stop him from
+doing it any more. His own child&mdash;it puts murder in
+my heart, Nett! I could kill him.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He nodded grimly. &#8220;That&#8217;s likely. And you&#8217;ve
+kept Dorl&#8217;s child with your own money all these years?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve got four hundred dollars a year, Nett, you know;
+and I&#8217;ve been dressmaking&mdash;they say I&#8217;ve got taste,&#8221; she
+added, with a whimsical smile.</p>
+<p>Nett nodded his head. &#8220;Five years. That&#8217;s twenty-five
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_303' name='page_303'></a>303</span>
+hundred dollars he&#8217;s stolen from his own child. It&#8217;s
+eight years old now, isn&#8217;t it?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Bobby is eight and a half,&#8221; she answered.</p>
+<p>&#8220;And his schooling, and his clothing, and everything;
+and you have to pay for it all?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, I don&#8217;t mind, Nett; it isn&#8217;t that. Bobby is
+Cynthy&#8217;s child, and I love him&mdash;love him; but I want
+him to have his rights. Dorl must give up his hold on
+that money&mdash;or&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>He nodded gravely. &#8220;Or you&#8217;ll set the law on him?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s one thing or the other. Better to do it now
+when Bobby is young and can&#8217;t understand.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Or read the newspapers,&#8221; he commented, thoughtfully.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t think I&#8217;ve a hard heart,&#8221; she continued, &#8220;but
+I&#8217;d like to punish him, if it wasn&#8217;t that he&#8217;s your brother,
+Nett, and if it wasn&#8217;t for Bobby. Dorland was dreadfully
+cruel, even to Cynthy.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;How did you know he was up here?&#8221; he asked.</p>
+<p>&#8220;From the lawyer that pays over the money. Dorland
+has had it sent out here to Kowatin this two years.
+And he sent word to the lawyer a month ago that he
+wanted it to get here as usual. The letter left the same
+day as I did, and it got here yesterday with me, I suppose.
+He&#8217;ll be after it&mdash;perhaps to-day. He wouldn&#8217;t
+let it wait long, Dorl wouldn&#8217;t.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Foyle started. &#8220;To-day&mdash;to-day&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>There was a gleam in his eyes, a setting of the lips,
+a line sinking into the forehead between the eyes.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve been watching for him all day, and I&#8217;ll watch
+till he comes. I&#8217;m going to say some things to him
+that he won&#8217;t forget. I&#8217;m going to get Bobby&#8217;s money,
+or have the law to do it&mdash;unless you think I&#8217;m a brute,
+Nett.&#8221; She looked at him wistfully.</p>
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s all right. Don&#8217;t worry about me, Jo. He&#8217;s
+my brother, but I know him&mdash;I know him through and
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_304' name='page_304'></a>304</span>
+through. He&#8217;s done everything that a man can do and
+not be hanged. A thief, a drunkard, and a brute&mdash;and
+he killed a man out here,&#8221; he added, hoarsely. &#8220;I found
+it out myself&mdash;myself. It was murder.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Suddenly, as he looked at her, an idea seemed to
+flash into his mind. He came very near and looked at
+her closely. Then he reached over and almost touched
+the scar on her forehead.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Did he do that, Jo?&#8221;</p>
+<p>For an instant she was silent and looked down at the
+floor. Presently she raised her eyes, her face suffused.
+Once or twice she tried to speak, but failed. At last
+she gained courage, and said:</p>
+<p>&#8220;After Cynthy&#8217;s death I kept house for him for a
+year, taking care of little Bobby. I loved Bobby so&mdash;he
+has Cynthy&#8217;s eyes. One day Dorland&mdash;oh, Nett,
+of course I oughtn&#8217;t to have stayed there&mdash;I know it
+now; but I was only sixteen, and what did I understand!
+And my mother was dead. One day&mdash;oh,
+please, Nett, you can guess. He said something to me.
+I made him leave the house. Before I could make
+plans what to do, he came back mad with drink. I
+went for Bobby, to get out of the house, but he caught
+hold of me. I struck him in the face, and he threw
+me against the edge of the open door. It made the
+scar.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Foyle&#8217;s face was white. &#8220;Why did you never write
+and tell me that, Jo? You know that I&mdash;&#8221; He stopped
+suddenly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You had gone out of our lives down there. I didn&#8217;t
+know where you were for a long time; and then&mdash;then
+it was all right about Bobby and me, except that Bobby
+didn&#8217;t get the money that was his. But now&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>Foyle&#8217;s voice was hoarse and low. &#8220;He made that
+scar, and he&mdash;and you only sixteen&mdash;Oh, my God!&#8221;</p>
+<p>Suddenly his face reddened, and he choked with shame
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_305' name='page_305'></a>305</span>
+and anger. &#8220;And he&#8217;s my brother!&#8221; was all that he
+could say.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Do you see him up here ever?&#8221; she asked, pityingly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I never saw him till a week ago.&#8221; A moment, then
+he added, &#8220;The letter wasn&#8217;t to be sent here in his own
+name, was it?&#8221;</p>
+<p>She nodded. &#8220;Yes, in his own name, Dorland W.
+Foyle. Didn&#8217;t he go by that name when you saw him?&#8221;</p>
+<p>There was an oppressive silence, in which she saw
+that something moved him strangely, and then he answered,
+&#8220;No, he was going by the name of Halbeck&mdash;Hiram
+Halbeck.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The girl gasped. Then the whole thing burst upon
+her. &#8220;Hiram Halbeck! Hiram Halbeck, the thief&mdash;I
+read it all in the papers&mdash;the thief that you caught, and
+that got away. And you&#8217;ve left the Mounted Police because
+of it&mdash;oh, Nett!&#8221; Her eyes were full of tears, her
+face was drawn and gray.</p>
+<p>He nodded. &#8220;I didn&#8217;t know who he was till I arrested
+him,&#8221; he said. &#8220;Then, afterward, I thought of his
+child, and let him get away; and for my poor old mother&#8217;s
+sake. She never knew how bad he was, even as a boy.
+But I remember how he used to steal and drink the
+brandy from her bedside, when she had the fever. She
+never knew the worst of him. But I let him away
+in the night, Jo, and I resigned, and they thought
+that Halbeck had beaten me, had escaped. Of course
+I couldn&#8217;t stay in the Force, having done that. But, by
+the heaven above us, if I had him here now I&#8217;d do the
+thing&mdash;do it, so help me God!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why should you ruin your life for him?&#8221; she said,
+with an outburst of indignation. All that was in her
+heart welled up in her eyes at the thought of what
+Foyle was. &#8220;You must not do it. You shall not do it.
+<i>He</i> must pay for his wickedness, not you. It would be
+a sin. You and what becomes of you mean so much.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_306' name='page_306'></a>306</span>
+Suddenly, with a flash of purpose, she added, &#8220;He will
+come for that letter, Nett. He would run any kind of
+risk to get a dollar. He will come here for that letter&mdash;perhaps
+to-day.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He shook his head moodily, oppressed by the trouble
+that was on him. &#8220;He&#8217;s not likely to venture here,
+after what&#8217;s happened.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You don&#8217;t know him as well as I do, Nett. He is
+so vain he&#8217;d do it, just to show that he could. He&#8217;d
+probably come in the evening. Does any one know
+him here? So many people pass through Kowatin
+every day. Has any one seen him?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Only Billy Goatry,&#8221; he answered, working his way
+to a solution of the dark problem. &#8220;Only Billy Goatry
+knows him. The fellow that led the singing&mdash;that was
+Goatry.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;There he is now,&#8221; he added, as Billy Goat passed the
+window.</p>
+<p>She came and laid a hand on his arm. &#8220;We&#8217;ve got
+to settle things with him,&#8221; she said. &#8220;If Dorl comes,
+Nett&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>There was silence for a moment, then he caught her
+hand in his and held it. &#8220;If he comes, leave him to me,
+Jo. You will leave him to me?&#8221; he added, anxiously.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; she answered. &#8220;You&#8217;ll do what&#8217;s right&mdash;by
+Bobby?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And by Dorl, too,&#8221; he replied, strangely.</p>
+<p>There were loud footsteps without.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s Goatry,&#8221; said Foyle. &#8220;You stay here. I&#8217;ll tell
+him everything. He&#8217;s all right; he&#8217;s a true friend.
+He&#8217;ll not interfere.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The handle of the door turned slowly. &#8220;You keep
+watch on the post-office, Jo,&#8221; he added.</p>
+<p>Goatry came round the opening door with a grin.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Hope I don&#8217;t intrude,&#8221; he said, stealing a half-leering
+look at the girl. As soon as he saw her face,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_307' name='page_307'></a>307</span>
+however, he straightened himself up and took on different
+manners. He had not been so intoxicated as he had
+made out, and he seemed only &#8220;mellow&#8221; as he stood before
+them, with his corrugated face and queer, quaint look,
+the eye with the cast in it blinking faster than the other.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s all right, Goatry,&#8221; said Foyle. &#8220;This lady is
+one of my family from the East.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Goin&#8217; on by stage?&#8221; Goatry said, vaguely, as they
+shook hands.</p>
+<p>She did not reply, for she was looking down the
+street, and presently she started as she gazed. She
+laid a hand suddenly on Foyle&#8217;s arm.</p>
+<p>&#8220;See&mdash;he&#8217;s come,&#8221; she said, in a whisper, and as
+though not realizing Goatry&#8217;s presence. &#8220;He&#8217;s come.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Goatry looked, as well as Foyle. &#8220;Halbeck&mdash;the
+devil!&#8221; he said.</p>
+<p>Foyle turned to him. &#8220;Stand by, Goatry. I want
+you to keep a shut mouth. I&#8217;ve work to do.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Goatry held out his hand. &#8220;I&#8217;m with you. If you
+get him this time, clamp him, clamp him like a tooth in
+a harrow.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Halbeck had stopped his horse at the post-office door.
+Dismounting, he looked quickly round, then drew the
+reins over the horse&#8217;s head, letting them trail, as is the
+custom of the West.</p>
+<p>A few swift words passed between Goatry and Foyle.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll do this myself, Jo,&#8221; he whispered to the girl
+presently. &#8220;Go into another room. I&#8217;ll bring him here.&#8221;</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+
+<p>In another minute Goatry was leading the horse
+away from the post-office, while Foyle stood waiting
+quietly at the door. The departing footsteps of the
+horse brought Halbeck swiftly to the doorway, with a
+letter in his hand.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Hi, there, you damned sucker!&#8221; he called after
+Goatry, and then saw Foyle waiting.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_308' name='page_308'></a>308</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;What the hell&mdash;!&#8221; he said, fiercely, his hand on
+something in his hip-pocket.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Keep quiet, Dorl. I want to have a little talk with
+you. Take your hand away from that gun&mdash;take it
+away!&#8221; he added, with a meaning not to be misunderstood.</p>
+<p>Halbeck knew that one shout would have the town
+on him, and he did not know what card his brother was
+going to play. He let his arm drop to his side. &#8220;What&#8217;s
+your game? What do you want?&#8221; he asked, surlily.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Come over to the Happy Land Hotel,&#8221; Foyle answered,
+and in the light of what was in his mind his words had
+a grim irony.</p>
+<p>With a snarl Halbeck stepped out. Goatry, who had
+handed the horse over to the hostler, watched them coming.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why did I never notice the likeness before?&#8221; Goatry
+said to himself. &#8220;But, gosh! what a difference in the
+men. Foyle&#8217;s going to double cinch him this time, I
+guess.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He followed them inside the hall of the Happy Land.
+When they stepped into the sitting-room, he stood at
+the door waiting. The hotel was entirely empty, the
+roisterers at the Prairie Home having drawn off the
+idlers and spectators. The barman was nodding behind
+the bar, the proprietor was moving about in the backyard
+inspecting a horse. There was a cheerful warmth
+everywhere; the air was like an elixir; the pungent smell
+of a pine-tree at the door gave a kind of medicament
+to the indrawn breath. And to Billy Goat, who sometimes
+sang in the choir of a church not a hundred miles
+away&mdash;for the people agreed to forget his occasional
+sprees&mdash;there came, he knew not why, the words of a
+hymn he had sung only the preceding Sunday:</p>
+<table summary='poetry' style='margin:0 auto'><tr><td>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>&#8220;As pants the hart for cooling streams,</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.735835172921266em;'>When heated in the chase&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_309' name='page_309'></a>309</span></div>
+<p>The words kept ringing in his ears as he listened to
+the conversation inside the room&mdash;the partition was
+thin, the door thinner, and he heard much. Foyle had
+asked him not to intervene, but only to stand by and
+await the issue of this final conference. He meant,
+however, to take a hand in if he thought he was needed,
+and he kept his ear glued to the door. If he thought
+Foyle needed him&mdash;his fingers were on the handle of
+the door.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Now, hurry up! What do you want with me?&#8221;
+asked Halbeck of his brother.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Take your time,&#8221; said ex-Sergeant Foyle, as he
+drew the blind three-quarters down, so that they could
+not be seen from the street.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m in a hurry, I tell you. I&#8217;ve got my plans. I&#8217;m
+going South. I&#8217;ve only just time to catch the Canadian
+Pacific three days from now, riding hard.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;re not going South, Dorl.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Where am I going, then?&#8221; was the sneering reply.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Not farther than the Happy Land.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What the devil&#8217;s all this? You don&#8217;t mean you&#8217;re
+trying to arrest me again, after letting me go?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You don&#8217;t need to ask. You&#8217;re my prisoner.
+You&#8217;re my prisoner,&#8221; he said, in a louder voice&mdash;&#8220;<i>until
+you free yourself</i>.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll do that damn quick, then,&#8221; said the other, his
+hand flying to his hip.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Sit down,&#8221; was the sharp rejoinder, and a pistol was
+in his face before he could draw his own weapon.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Put your gun on the table,&#8221; Foyle said, quietly.
+Halbeck did so. There was no other way.</p>
+<p>Foyle drew it over to himself. His brother made a
+motion to rise.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Sit still, Dorl,&#8221; came the warning voice.</p>
+<p>White with rage, the freebooter sat still, his dissipated
+face and heavy angry lips, looking like a debauched
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_310' name='page_310'></a>310</span>
+and villanous caricature of his brother before
+him.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, I suppose you&#8217;d have potted me, Dorl,&#8221; said
+the ex-sergeant. &#8220;You&#8217;d have thought no more of doing
+that than you did of killing Linley, the ranchman;
+than you did of trying to ruin Jo Byndon, your wife&#8217;s
+sister, when she was sixteen years old, when she was
+caring for your child&mdash;giving her life for the child you
+brought into the world.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What in the name of hell&mdash;it&#8217;s a lie!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t bluster. I know the truth.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Who told you&mdash;the truth?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;She did&mdash;to-day&mdash;an hour ago.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;She here&mdash;out here?&#8221; There was a new, cowed note
+in the voice.</p>
+<p>&#8220;She is in the next room.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What did she come here for?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;To make you do right by your own child. I wonder
+what a jury of decent men would think about a man
+who robbed his child for five years, and let that child
+be fed and clothed and cared for by the girl he tried
+to destroy, the girl he taught what sin there was in the
+world.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;She put you up to this. She was always in love
+with you, and you know it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>There was a dangerous look in Foyle&#8217;s eyes, and his
+jaw set hard. &#8220;There would be no shame in a decent
+woman caring for me, even if it was true. I haven&#8217;t put
+myself outside the boundary as you have. You&#8217;re my
+brother, but you&#8217;re the worst scoundrel in the country&mdash;the
+worst unhanged. Put on the table there the letter
+in your pocket. It holds five hundred dollars belonging
+to your child. There&#8217;s twenty-five hundred dollars
+more to be accounted for.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The other hesitated, then with an oath threw the
+letter on the table. &#8220;I&#8217;ll pay the rest as soon as I can,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_311' name='page_311'></a>311</span>
+if you&#8217;ll stop this damned tomfoolery,&#8221; he said, sullenly,
+for he saw that he was in a hole.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;ll pay it, I suppose, out of what you stole from
+the C. P. R. contractor&#8217;s chest. No, I don&#8217;t think that
+will do.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You want me to go to prison, then?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I think not. The truth would come out at the trial&mdash;the
+whole truth&mdash;the murder and all. There&#8217;s your
+child, Bobby. You&#8217;ve done him enough wrong already.
+Do you want him&mdash;but it doesn&#8217;t matter whether you
+do or not&mdash;do you want him to carry through life the
+fact that his father was a jail-bird and a murderer, just
+as Jo Byndon carries the scar you made when you
+threw her against the door?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What do you want with me, then?&#8221; The man
+sank slowly and heavily back into the chair.</p>
+<p>&#8220;There is a way&mdash;have you never thought of it?
+When you threatened others as you did me, and life
+seemed such a little thing in others&mdash;can&#8217;t you think?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Bewildered, the man looked around helplessly. In
+the silence which followed Foyle&#8217;s words his brain was
+struggling to see a way out. Foyle&#8217;s further words
+seemed to come from a great distance.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s not too late to do the decent thing. You&#8217;ll
+never repent of all you&#8217;ve done; you&#8217;ll never do different.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The old, reckless, irresponsible spirit revived in the
+man; he had both courage and bravado; he was not
+hopeless yet of finding an escape from the net. He
+would not beg, he would struggle.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve lived as I meant to, and I&#8217;m not going to snivel
+or repent now. It&#8217;s all a rotten business, anyhow,&#8221;
+he rejoined.</p>
+<p>With a sudden resolution the ex-sergeant put his own
+pistol in his pocket, then pushed Halbeck&#8217;s pistol over
+toward him on the table. Halbeck&#8217;s eyes lighted eagerly,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_312' name='page_312'></a>312</span>
+grew red with excitement, then a change passed over
+them. They now settled on the pistol, and stayed.</p>
+<p>He heard Foyle&#8217;s voice. &#8220;It&#8217;s with you to do what
+you ought to do. Of course you can kill me. My
+pistol&#8217;s in my pocket. But I don&#8217;t think you will.
+You&#8217;ve murdered one man. You won&#8217;t load your soul
+up with another. Besides, if you kill me, you will never
+get away from Kowatin alive. But it&#8217;s with you&mdash;take
+your choice. It&#8217;s me or you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Halbeck&#8217;s fingers crept out and found the pistol.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Do your duty, Dorl,&#8221; said the ex-sergeant, as he
+turned his back on his brother.</p>
+<p>The door of the room opened, and Goatry stepped
+inside softly. He had work to do, if need be, and his
+face showed it. Halbeck did not see him.</p>
+<p>There was a demon in Halbeck&#8217;s eyes, as his brother
+stood, his back turned, taking his chances. A large
+mirror hung on the wall opposite Halbeck. Goatry
+was watching Halbeck&#8217;s face in the glass, and saw the
+danger. He measured his distance.</p>
+<p>All at once Halbeck caught Goatry&#8217;s face in the
+mirror. The dark devilry faded out of his eyes. His
+lips moved in a whispered oath. Every way was
+blocked.</p>
+<p>With a sudden wild resolution he raised the pistol to
+his head. It cracked, and he fell back heavily in the
+chair. There was a red trickle at the temple.</p>
+<p>He had chosen the best way out.</p>
+<p>&#8220;He had the pluck,&#8221; said Goatry, as Foyle swung
+round with a face of misery.</p>
+<p>A moment afterward came a rush of people. Goatry
+kept them back.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Sergeant Foyle arrested Halbeck, and Halbeck&#8217;s shot
+himself,&#8221; Goatry explained to them.</p>
+<p>A white-faced girl with a scar on her temple made
+her way into the room.</p>
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<a name='linki_13' id='linki_13'></a>
+<img src='images/p312.jpg' alt='' title='' style='width: 392px; height: 576px;' /><br />
+<p class='caption' style='margin: 0 auto; text-align:center;width: 392px;'>
+&#8220;IF YOU KILL ME, YOU WILL NEVER GET AWAY FROM KOWATIN ALIVE&#8221;<br />
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_313' name='page_313'></a>313</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;Come away&mdash;come away, Jo,&#8221; said the voice of the
+man she loved; and he did not let her see the lifeless
+figure in the chair.</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+
+<p>Three days later the plains swallowed them, as they
+made their way with Billy Goatry to the headquarters
+of the Riders of the Plains, where Sergeant Foyle was
+asked to reconsider his resignation: which he did.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<a name='THE_WHISPERER' id='THE_WHISPERER'></a>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_314' name='page_314'></a>314</span>
+<h2>THE WHISPERER</h2>
+</div>
+
+<div class='blockquot'>
+<p>&#8220;And thou shalt be brought down and shalt speak out of the
+ground, and thy speech shall be low out of the dust, and thy
+voice shall be as of one that hath a familiar spirit out of the
+ground, and thy speech shall whisper out of the dust.&#8221;</p>
+</div>
+<p>The harvest was all in, and, as far as eye could observe,
+nothing remained of the golden sea of wheat which had
+covered the wide prairie save the yellow stubble, the
+bed of an ocean of wealth which had been gathered.
+Here the yellow level was broken by a dark patch of
+fallow land, there by a covert of trees also tinged with
+yellow, or deepening to crimson and mauve&mdash;the harbinger
+of autumn. The sun had not the insistent and
+intensive strength of more southerly climes; it was
+buoyant, confident, and heartening, and it shone in a
+turquoise vault which covered and endeared the wide,
+even world beneath. Now and then a flock of wild
+ducks whirred past, making for the marshes or the innumerable
+lakes that vitalized the expanse, or buzzards
+hunched heavily along, frightened from some far resort
+by eager sportsmen.</p>
+<p>That was above; but beneath, on a level with the
+unlifted eye, were houses here and there, looking in the
+vastness like dolls&#8217; habitations. Many of the houses
+stood blank and staring in the expanse, but some had
+trees, and others little oases of green. Everywhere prosperity,
+everywhere the strings of life pulled taut, signs
+that energy had been straining on the leash.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_315' name='page_315'></a>315</span></p>
+<p>Yet there was one spot where it seemed that deadness
+made encampment. It could not be seen in the
+sweep of the eye, you must have travelled and looked
+vigilantly to find it; but it was there&mdash;a lake shimmering
+in the eager sun, washing against a reedy shore,
+a little river running into the reedy lake at one end
+and out at the other, a small, dilapidated house half hid
+in a wood that stretched for half a mile or so upon a
+rising ground. In front of the house, not far from the
+lake, a man was lying asleep upon the ground, a rough
+felt hat drawn over his eyes.</p>
+<p>Like the house, the man seemed dilapidated also: a
+slovenly, ill-dressed, demoralized figure he looked, even
+with his face covered. He seemed in a deep sleep.
+Wild ducks settled on the lake not far from him with
+a swish and flutter; a coyote ran past, veering as it saw
+the recumbent figure; a prairie hen rustled by with a
+shrill cluck, but he seemed oblivious to all. If asleep,
+he was evidently dreaming, for now and then he started,
+or his body twitched and a muttering came from beneath
+the hat.</p>
+<p>The battered house, the absence of barn or stable or
+garden, or any token of thrift or energy, marked the
+man as an excrescence in this theatre of hope and fruitful
+toil. It all belonged to some degenerate land, some
+exhausted civilization, not to this field of vigor where
+life rang like silver.</p>
+<p>So the man lay for hour upon hour. He slept as
+though he had been upon a long journey in which the
+body was worn to helplessness. Or was it that sleep
+of the worn-out spirit which, tortured by remembrance
+and remorse, at last sinks into the depths where the
+conscious vexes the unconscious&mdash;a little of fire, a little
+of ice, and now and then the turn of the screw?</p>
+<p>The day marched nobly on toward evening, growing
+out of its blue and silver into a pervasive golden gleam;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_316' name='page_316'></a>316</span>
+the bare, grayish houses on the prairie were transformed
+into miniature palaces of light. Presently a girl came
+out of the woods behind, looking at the neglected house
+with a half-pitying curiosity. She carried in one hand
+a fishing-rod which had been telescoped till it was no
+bigger than a cane; in the other she carried a small
+fishing-basket. Her father&#8217;s shooting and fishing camp
+was a few miles away by a lake of greater size than this
+which she approached. She had tired of the gay company
+in camp, brought up for sport from beyond the
+American border where she also belonged, and she had
+come to explore the river running into this reedy lake.
+She turned from the house and came nearer to the
+lake, shaking her head, as though compassionating the
+poor folk who lived there. She was beautiful. Her
+hair was brown, going to tawny, but in this soft light
+which enwrapped her she was in a sort of topaz flame.
+As she came on, suddenly she stopped as though transfixed.
+She saw the man&mdash;and saw also a tragedy afoot.</p>
+<p>The man stirred violently in his sleep, cried out, and
+started up. As he did so, a snake, disturbed in its
+travel past him, suddenly raised itself in anger. Startled
+out of sleep by some inner torture, the man heard the
+sinister rattle he knew so well, and gazed paralyzed.</p>
+<p>The girl had been but a few feet away when she first
+saw the man and his angry foe. An instant, then, with
+the instinct of the woods and the plains, and the courage
+that has habitation everywhere, dropping her basket
+she sprang forward noiselessly. The short, telescoped
+fishing-rod she carried swung round her head and completed
+its next half-circle at the head of the reptile,
+even as it was about to strike. The blow was sure,
+and with half-severed head the snake fell dead upon
+the ground beside the man.</p>
+<p>He was like one who has been projected from one
+world to another, dazed, stricken, fearful. Presently
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_317' name='page_317'></a>317</span>
+the look of agonized dismay gave way to such an expression
+of relief as might come upon the face of a
+reprieved victim about to be given to the fire or to the
+knife that flays. The place of dreams from which he
+had emerged was like hell, and this was some world
+of peace that he had not known these many years.
+Always one had been at his elbow&mdash;&#8220;a familiar spirit
+out of the ground&#8221;&mdash;whispering in his ear. He had
+been down in the abysses of life.</p>
+<p>He glanced again at the girl, and realized what she
+had done: she had saved his life. Whether it had been
+worth saving was another question; but he had been
+near to the brink, had looked in, and the animal in him
+had shrunk back from the precipice in a confused agony
+of fear. He staggered to his feet.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Where do you come from?&#8221; he said, pulling his coat
+closer to hide the ragged waistcoat underneath, and
+adjusting his worn and dirty hat&mdash;in his youth he had
+been vain and ambitious, and good-looking also.</p>
+<p>He asked his question in no impertinent tone, but in
+the low voice of one who &#8220;shall whisper out of the dust.&#8221;
+He had not yet recovered from the first impression of
+his awakening, that the world in which he now stood was
+not a real world.</p>
+<p>She understood, and half in pity and half in conquered
+repugnance said:</p>
+<p>&#8220;I come from a camp beyond&#8221;&mdash;she indicated the
+direction by a gesture. &#8220;I had been fishing&#8221;&mdash;she took
+up the basket&mdash;&#8220;and chanced on you&mdash;then.&#8221; She
+glanced at the snake significantly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You killed it in the nick of time,&#8221; he said, in a voice
+that still spoke of the ground, but with a note of half-shamed
+gratitude. &#8220;I want to thank you,&#8221; he added.
+&#8220;You were brave. It would have turned on you if you
+had missed. I know them. I&#8217;ve killed five.&#8221; He spoke
+very slowly, huskily.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_318' name='page_318'></a>318</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, you are safe&mdash;that is the chief thing,&#8221; she
+rejoined, making as though to depart. But presently she
+turned back. &#8220;Why are you so dreadfully poor&mdash;and
+everything?&#8221; she asked, gently.</p>
+<p>His eye wandered over the lake and back again before
+he answered her, in a dull, heavy tone, &#8220;I&#8217;ve had bad
+luck, and, when you get down, there are plenty to kick
+you farther.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You weren&#8217;t always poor as you are now&mdash;I mean
+long ago, when you were young.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m not so old,&#8221; he rejoined, sluggishly&mdash;&#8220;only
+thirty-four.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She could not suppress her astonishment. She looked
+at the hair already gray, the hard, pinched face, the
+lustreless eyes.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yet it must seem long to you,&#8221; she said, with
+meaning.</p>
+<p>Now he laughed&mdash;a laugh sodden and mirthless. He
+was thinking of his boyhood. Everything, save one
+or two spots all fire or all darkness, was dim in his debilitated
+mind.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Too far to go back,&#8221; he said, with a gleam of the
+intelligence which had been strong in him once.</p>
+<p>She caught the gleam. She had wisdom beyond her
+years. It was the greater because her mother was dead,
+and she had had so much wealth to dispense, for her
+father was rich beyond counting, and she controlled his
+household and helped to regulate his charities. She saw
+that he was not of the laboring classes, that he had
+known better days; his speech, if abrupt and cheerless,
+was grammatical.</p>
+<p>&#8220;If you cannot go back, you can go forward,&#8221; she
+said, firmly. &#8220;Why should you be the only man in this
+beautiful land who lives like this, who is idle when there
+is so much to do, who sleeps in the daytime when there
+is so much time to sleep at night?&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_319' name='page_319'></a>319</span></p>
+<p>A faint flush came on the grayish, colorless face. &#8220;I
+don&#8217;t sleep at night,&#8221; he returned, moodily.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why don&#8217;t you sleep?&#8221; she asked.</p>
+<p>He did not answer, but stirred the body of the snake
+with his foot. The tail moved; he stamped upon the
+head with almost frenzied violence, out of keeping with
+his sluggishness.</p>
+<p>She turned away, yet looked back once more&mdash;she felt
+tragedy around her. &#8220;It is never too late to mend,&#8221; she
+said, and moved on, but stopped, for a young man came
+running from the woods toward her.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve had a hunt&mdash;such a hunt for you!&#8221; the young
+man said, eagerly, then stopped short when he saw to
+whom she had been talking. A look of disgust came
+upon his face as he drew her away, his hand on her arm.</p>
+<p>&#8220;In Heaven&#8217;s name, why did you talk to that man?&#8221;
+he said. &#8220;You ought not to have trusted yourself near
+him.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What has he done?&#8221; she asked. &#8220;Is he so bad?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve heard about him. I inquired the other day.
+He was once in a better position as a ranchman&mdash;ten
+years ago; but he came into some money one day, and
+he changed at once. He never had a good character;
+even before he got his money he used to gamble, and
+was getting a bad name. Afterward he began drinking,
+and he took to gambling harder than ever. Presently
+his money all went and he had to work; but his bad
+habits had fastened on him, and now he lives from hand
+to mouth, sometimes working for a month, sometimes
+idle for months. There&#8217;s something sinister about him,
+there&#8217;s some mystery; for poverty, or drink even&mdash;and
+he doesn&#8217;t drink much now&mdash;couldn&#8217;t make him what he
+is. He doesn&#8217;t seek company, and he walks sometimes
+endless miles talking to himself, going as hard as he can.
+How did you come to speak to him, Grace?&#8221;</p>
+<p>She told him all, with a curious abstraction in her
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_320' name='page_320'></a>320</span>
+voice, for she was thinking of the man from a standpoint
+which her companion could not realize. She was
+also trying to verify something in her memory. Ten
+years ago, so her lover had just said, the poor wretch
+behind them had been a different man; and there had
+shot into her mind the face of a ranchman she had seen
+with her father, the railway king, one evening when his
+&#8220;special&#8221; had stopped at a railway station on his tour
+through Montana&mdash;ten years ago. Why did the face of
+the ranchman which had fixed itself on her memory then,
+because he had come on the evening of her birthday and
+had spoiled it for her, having taken her father away from
+her for an hour&mdash;why did his face come to her now?
+What had it to do with the face of this outcast she had
+just left?</p>
+<p>&#8220;What is his name?&#8221; she asked at last.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Roger Lygon,&#8221; he answered.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Roger Lygon,&#8221; she repeated, mechanically. Something
+in the man chained her thought&mdash;his face that
+moment when her hand saved him and the awful fear
+left him and a glimmer of light came into his eyes.</p>
+<p>But her lover beside her broke into song. He was
+happy with her. Everything was before him, her
+beauty, her wealth, herself. He could not dwell upon
+dismal things; his voice rang out on the sharp, sweet,
+evening air:</p>
+<table summary='poetry' style='margin:0 auto'><tr><td>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>&#8220;Oh, where did you get them, the bonny, bonny roses</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.735835172921266em;'>That blossom in your cheeks, and the morning in your eyes?&#8217;</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>&#8217;I got them on the North Trail, the road that never closes,</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.735835172921266em;'>That widens to the seven gold gates of paradise.&#8217;</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>&#8217;Oh, come, let us camp in the North Trail together,</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.735835172921266em;'>With the night-fires lit and the tent-pegs down.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>Left alone, the man by the reedy lake stood watching
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_321' name='page_321'></a>321</span>
+them until they were out of view. The song came back
+to him, echoing across the waters:</p>
+<table summary='poetry' style='margin:0 auto'><tr><td>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.0em;'>&#8220;&#8216;Oh, come, let us camp on the North Trail together,</p>
+<p  style='margin: 0 0 0 0.735835172921266em;'>With the night-fires lit and the tent-pegs down.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+</td></tr></table>
+
+<p>The sunset glow, the girl&#8217;s presence, had given him
+a moment&#8217;s illusion, had absorbed him for a moment,
+acting on his deadened nature like a narcotic at once
+soothing and stimulating. As some wild animal in a
+forgotten land, coming upon ruins of a vast civilization,
+towers, temples and palaces, in the golden glow of an
+Eastern evening, stands abashed and vaguely wondering,
+having neither reason to understand nor feeling
+to enjoy, yet is arrested and abashed, so he stood.
+He had lived the last three years so much alone, had
+been cut off so completely from his kind&mdash;had lived
+so much alone. Yet to-night, at last, he would not be
+alone.</p>
+<p>Some one was coming to-night, some one whom he
+had not seen for a long time. Letters had passed, the
+object of the visit had been defined, and he had spent
+the intervening days since the last letter had arrived,
+now agitated, now apathetic and sullen, now struggling
+with some invisible being that kept whispering in his
+ear, saying to him: &#8220;It was the price of fire and blood
+and shame. You did it&mdash;you&mdash;you&mdash;you! You are
+down, and you will never get up. You can only go
+lower still&mdash;fire and blood and shame!&#8221;</p>
+<p>Criminal as he was, he had never become hardened,
+he had only become degraded. Crime was not his
+vocation. He had no gift for it; still, the crime he had
+committed had never been discovered&mdash;the crime that
+he did with others. There were himself and Dupont
+and another. Dupont was coming to-night&mdash;Dupont,
+who had profited by the crime, and had not spent his
+profits, but had built upon them to further profit; for
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_322' name='page_322'></a>322</span>
+Dupont was avaricious and prudent, and a born criminal.
+Dupont had never had any compunctions or remorse, had
+never lost a night&#8217;s sleep because of what they two had
+done, instigated thereto by the other, who had paid them
+so well for the dark thing.</p>
+<p>The other was Henderley, the financier. He was
+worse perhaps than Dupont, for he was in a different
+sphere of life, was rich beyond counting, and had been
+early nurtured in quiet Christian surroundings. The
+spirit of ambition, rivalry, and the methods of a degenerate
+and cruel finance had seized him, mastered
+him; so that, under the cloak of power&mdash;as a toreador
+hides the blade under the red cloth before his enemy the
+<i>toro</i>&mdash;he held a sword of capital which did cruel and
+vicious things, at last becoming criminal also. Henderley
+had incited and paid; the others, Dupont and
+Lygon, had acted and received. Henderley had had no
+remorse, none at any rate that weighed upon him, for
+he had got used to ruining rivals and seeing strong men
+go down, and those who had fought him come to beg
+or borrow of him in the end. He had seen more than
+one commit suicide, and those they loved go down and
+farther down, and he had helped these up a little, but
+not near enough to put them near his own plane again;
+and he could not see&mdash;it never occurred to him&mdash;that he
+had done any evil to them. Dupont thought upon his
+crimes now and then, and his heart hardened, for he
+had no moral feeling; Henderley did not think at all.
+It was left to the man of the reedy lake to pay the
+penalty of apprehension, to suffer the effects of crime
+upon a nature not naturally criminal.</p>
+<p>Again and again, how many hundreds of times, had
+Roger Lygon seen in his sleep&mdash;had even seen awake,
+so did hallucination possess him&mdash;the new cattle trail
+he had fired for scores of miles. The fire had destroyed
+the grass over millions of acres, two houses had been
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_323' name='page_323'></a>323</span>
+burned and three people had lost their lives; all to satisfy
+the savage desire of one man, to destroy the chance of
+a cattle trade over a great section of country for the
+railway which was to compete with his own&mdash;an act
+which, in the end, was futile, failed of its purpose.
+Dupont and Lygon had been paid their price, and had
+disappeared and been forgotten&mdash;they were but pawns
+in his game&mdash;and there was no proof against Henderley.
+Henderley had forgotten. Lygon wished to forget, but
+Dupont remembered, and meant now to reap fresh profit
+by the remembrance.</p>
+<p>Dupont was coming to-night, and the hatchet of
+crime was to be dug up again. So it had been
+planned.</p>
+<p>As the shadows fell, Lygon roused himself from his
+trance with a shiver. It was not cold, but in him there
+was a nervous agitation, making him cold from head to
+foot; his body seemed as impoverished as his mind.
+Looking with heavy-lidded eyes across the prairie, he
+saw in the distance the barracks of the Riders of the
+Plains and the jail near by, and his shuddering ceased.
+There was where he belonged, within four stone walls;
+yet here he was free to go where he willed, to live as
+he willed, with no eye upon him. With no eye upon
+him? There was no eye, but there was the Whisperer
+whom he could never drive away. Morning and night
+he heard the words: &#8220;You&mdash;you&mdash;you! Fire and blood
+and shame!&#8221; He had snatched sleep when he could
+find it, after long, long hours of tramping over the
+plains, ostensibly to shoot wild fowl, but in truth to
+bring on a great bodily fatigue&mdash;and sleep. His sleep
+only came then in the first watches of the night. As
+the night wore on the Whisperer began again, as the
+cloud of weariness lifted a little from him and the senses
+were released from the heavy sedative of unnatural exertion.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_324' name='page_324'></a>324</span></p>
+<p>The dusk deepened. The moon slowly rose. He
+cooked his scanty meal and took a deep draught from
+a horn of whiskey from beneath a board in the flooring.
+He had not the courage to face Dupont without it, nor
+yet to forget what he must forget if he was to do the
+work Dupont came to arrange&mdash;he must forget the girl
+who had saved his life and the influence of those strange
+moments in which she had spoken down to him, in the
+abyss where he had been lying.</p>
+<p>He sat in the doorway, a fire gleaming behind
+him; he drank in the good air as though his lungs were
+thirsty for it, and saw the silver glitter of the moon
+upon the water. Not a breath of wind stirred, and the
+shining path the moon made upon the reedy lake
+fascinated his eye. Everything was so still except
+that whisper, louder in his ear than it had ever been
+before.</p>
+<p>Suddenly, upon the silver path upon the lake there
+shot a silent canoe, with a figure as silently paddling
+toward him. He gazed for a moment dismayed, and
+then got to his feet with a jerk.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Dupont,&#8221; he said, mechanically.</p>
+<p>The canoe swished among the reeds and rushes,
+scraped on the shore, and a tall, burly figure sprang
+from it and stood still, looking at the house.</p>
+<p>&#8220;<i>Qui reste là</i>&mdash;Lygon?&#8221; he asked.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Dupont,&#8221; was the nervous, hesitating reply.</p>
+<p>Dupont came forward quickly. &#8220;<i>Ah</i>, <i>ben</i>, here we are
+again&mdash;so,&#8221; he grunted, cheerily.</p>
+<p>Entering the house, they sat before the fire, holding
+their hands to the warmth from force of habit, though
+the night was not cold.</p>
+<p>&#8220;<i>Ben</i>, you will do it to-night&mdash;then?&#8221; Dupont said.
+&#8220;<i>Sacré</i>, it is time!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Do what?&#8221; rejoined the other, heavily.</p>
+<p>An angry light leaped into Dupont&#8217;s eyes. &#8220;You not
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_325' name='page_325'></a>325</span>
+unnerstan&#8217; my letters&mdash;bah! You know it all right, so
+queeck.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The other remained silent, staring into the fire with
+wide, searching eyes.</p>
+<p>Dupont put a hand on him. &#8220;You ketch my idee
+queeck. We mus&#8217; have more money from that Henderley&mdash;certainlee.
+It is ten years, and he t&#8217;ink it is
+all right. He t&#8217;ink we come no more becos&#8217; he give
+five t&#8217;ousand dollars to us each. That was to do the
+t&#8217;ing, to fire the country. Now we want another ten
+t&#8217;ousan&#8217; to us each, to forget we do it for him&mdash;<i>hein</i>?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Still there was no reply. Dupont went on, watching
+the other furtively, for he did not like this silence. But
+he would not resent it till he was sure there was good
+cause.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It comes to suit us. He is over there at the Old
+Man Lak&#8217;, where you can get at him easy, not like
+in the city where he lif&#8217;. Over in the States, he laugh
+mebbe, becos&#8217; he is at home, an&#8217; can buy off the law.
+But here&mdash;it is Canadaw, an&#8217; they not care eef he have
+hunder&#8217; meellion dollar. He know that&mdash;sure. Eef you
+say you not care a dam to go to jail, so you can put him
+there, too, becos&#8217; you have not&#8217;ing, an&#8217; so dam seeck
+of everyt&#8217;ing, he will t&#8217;ink ten t&#8217;ousan&#8217; dollar same as one
+cent to Nic Dupont&mdash;<i>ben sûr</i>!&#8221;</p>
+<p>Lygon nodded his head, still holding his hands to the
+blaze. With ten thousand dollars he could get away
+into&mdash;into another world somewhere, some world where
+he could forget, as he forgot for a moment this afternoon
+when the girl said to him, &#8220;It is never too late to mend.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Now, as he thought of her, he pulled his coat together
+and arranged the rough scarf at his neck involuntarily.
+Ten thousand dollars&mdash;but ten thousand dollars
+by blackmail, hush-money, the reward of fire and blood
+and shame! Was it to go on? Was he to commit a
+new crime?
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_326' name='page_326'></a>326</span></p>
+<p>He stirred, as though to shake off the net that he felt
+twisting round him, in the hands of the robust and
+powerful Dupont, on whom crime sat so lightly, who
+had flourished while he, Lygon, had gone lower and
+lower. Ten years ago he had been the better man, had
+taken the lead, was the master, Dupont the obedient
+confederate, the tool. Now, Dupont, once the rough
+river-driver, grown prosperous in a large way for him&mdash;who
+might yet be mayor of his town in Quebec&mdash;he
+held the rod of rule. Lygon was conscious that the
+fifty dollars sent him every New Year for five years by
+Dupont had been sent with a purpose, and that he was
+now Dupont&#8217;s tool. Debilitated, demoralized, how could
+he, even if he wished, struggle against this powerful
+confederate, as powerful in will as in body? Yet if he
+had his own way he would not go to Henderley. He
+had lived with a &#8220;familiar spirit&#8221; so long, he feared
+the issue of this next excursion into the fens of crime.</p>
+<p>Dupont was on his feet now. &#8220;He will be here only
+three days more&mdash;I haf find it so. To-night it mus&#8217; be
+done. As we go I will tell you what to say. I will
+wait at the Forks, an&#8217; we will come back togedder.
+His check will do. Eef he gif at all, the check is all
+right. He will not stop it. Eef he have the money, it is
+better&mdash;<i>sacré</i>&mdash;yes. Eef he not gif&mdash;well, I will tell you,
+there is the other railway man he try to hurt, how would
+he like&mdash;But I will tell you on the river. <i>Maint&#8217;nant</i>&mdash;queeck,
+we go.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Without a word Lygon took down another coat and
+put it on. Doing so he concealed a weapon quickly,
+as Dupont stooped to pick a coal for his pipe from the
+blaze. Lygon had no fixed purpose in taking a weapon
+with him; it was only a vague instinct of caution that
+moved him.</p>
+<p>In the canoe on the river, in an almost speechless
+apathy, he heard Dupont&#8217;s voice giving him instructions.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_327' name='page_327'></a>327</span></p>
+<p>Henderley, the financier, had just finished his game of
+whist and dismissed his friends&mdash;it was equivalent to
+dismissal, rough yet genial as he seemed to be, so did
+immense wealth and its accompanying power affect his
+relations with those about him. In everything he was
+&#8220;considered.&#8221; He was in good-humor, for he had won
+all the evening, and with a smile he rubbed his hands
+among the notes&mdash;three thousand dollars it was. It
+was like a man with a pocketful of money chuckling
+over a coin he had found in the street. Presently he
+heard a rustle of the inner tent-curtain and swung
+round. He faced the man from the reedy lake.</p>
+<p>Instinctively he glanced round for a weapon, mechanically
+his hands firmly grasped the chair in front of him.
+He had been in danger of his life many times, and he
+had no fear. He had been threatened with assassination
+more than once, and he had got used to the idea of
+danger; life to him was only a game.</p>
+<p>He kept his nerve; he did not call out; he looked his
+visitor in the eyes.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What are you doing here? Who are you?&#8221; he said.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t you know me?&#8221; answered Lygon, gazing intently
+at him.</p>
+<p>Face to face with the man who had tempted him to
+crime, Lygon had a new sense of boldness, a sudden
+feeling of reprisal, a rushing desire to put the screw upon
+him. At sight of this millionaire with the pile of notes
+before him there vanished the sickening hesitation of
+the afternoon, of the journey with Dupont. The look
+of the robust, healthy financier was like acid in a wound;
+it maddened him.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You will know me better soon,&#8221; Lygon added, his
+head twitching with excitement.</p>
+<p>Henderley recognized him now. He gripped the armchair
+spasmodically, but presently regained a complete
+composure. He knew the game that was forward here,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_328' name='page_328'></a>328</span>
+and he also thought that if once he yielded to blackmail
+there would never be an end to it. He made no pretence,
+but came straight to the point.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You can do nothing; there is no proof,&#8221; he said,
+with firm assurance.</p>
+<p>&#8220;There is Dupont,&#8221; answered Lygon, doggedly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Who is Dupont?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;The French Canadian who helped me&mdash;I divided
+with him.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You said the man who helped you died. You wrote
+that to me. I suppose you are lying now.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Henderley coolly straightened the notes on the table,
+smoothing out the wrinkles, arranging them according
+to their denominations with an apparently interested
+eye; yet he was vigilantly watching the outcast before
+him. To yield to blackmail would be fatal; not to yield
+to it&mdash;he could not see his way. He had long ago forgotten
+the fire and blood and shame. No Whisperer
+reminded him of that black page in the history of his
+life; he had been immune of conscience. He could not
+understand this man before him. It was as bad a case
+of human degradation as ever he had seen&mdash;he remembered
+the stalwart, if dissipated, ranchman who
+had acted on his instigation. He knew now that he
+had made a foolish blunder then, that the scheme had
+been one of his failures; but he had never looked on it
+as with eyes reproving crime. As a hundred thoughts
+tending toward the solution of the problem by which
+he was faced flashed through his mind, and he rejected
+them all, he repeated mechanically the phrase &#8220;I suppose
+you are lying now.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Dupont is here&mdash;not a mile away,&#8221; was the reply.
+&#8220;He will give proof. He would go to jail or to the
+gallows to put you there, if you do not pay. He is a
+devil&mdash;Dupont.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Still the great man could not see his way out. He
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_329' name='page_329'></a>329</span>
+must temporize for a little longer, for rashness might
+bring scandal or noise; and near by was his daughter,
+the apple of his eye.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What do you want? How much did you figure you
+could get out of me, if I let you bleed me?&#8221; he asked,
+sneeringly and coolly. &#8220;Come now, how much?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Lygon, in whom a blind hatred of the man still raged,
+was about to reply, when he heard a voice calling,
+&#8220;Daddy, Daddy!&#8221;</p>
+<p>Suddenly the red, half-insane light died down in
+Lygon&#8217;s eyes. He saw the snake upon the ground by
+the reedy lake, the girl standing over it&mdash;the girl with
+the tawny hair. This was her voice.</p>
+<p>Henderley had made a step toward a curtain opening
+into another room of the great tent, but before he could
+reach it the curtain was pushed back and the girl entered
+with a smile.</p>
+<p>&#8220;May I come in?&#8221; she said; then stood still, astonished,
+seeing Lygon.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh!&#8221; she exclaimed. &#8220;Oh&mdash;you!&#8221;</p>
+<p>All at once a look came into her face which stirred it
+as a flying insect stirs the water of a pool. On the
+instant she remembered that she had seen the man
+before.</p>
+<p>It was ten years ago in Montana, on the night of her
+birthday. Her father had been called away to talk with
+this man, and she had seen him from the steps of the
+&#8220;special.&#8221; It was only the caricature of the once strong,
+erect ranchman that she saw; but there was no mistake,
+she recognized him now.</p>
+<p>Lygon, dumfounded, looked from her to her father,
+and he saw now in Henderley&#8217;s eyes a fear that was not
+to be misunderstood.</p>
+<p>Here was where Henderley could be smitten, could
+be brought to his knees. It was the vulnerable part of
+him. Lygon could see that he was stunned. The great
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_330' name='page_330'></a>330</span>
+financier was in his power. He looked back again to
+the girl, and her face was full of trouble.</p>
+<p>A sharp suspicion was in her heart that somehow or
+other her father was responsible for this man&#8217;s degradation
+and ruin. She looked Lygon in the eyes.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Did you want to see me?&#8221; she asked.</p>
+<p>She scarcely knew why she said it; but she was sensible
+of trouble, maybe of tragedy, somewhere; and she had
+a vague dread of she knew not what, for, hide it, avoid it,
+as she had done so often, there was in her heart an unhappy
+doubt concerning her father.</p>
+<p>A great change had come over Lygon. Her presence
+had altered him. He was again where she had left him
+in the afternoon.</p>
+<p>He heard her say to her father: &#8220;This was the man
+I told you of&mdash;at the reedy lake. Did you come to see
+me?&#8221; she repeated.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I did not know you were here,&#8221; he answered. &#8220;I
+came&#8221;&mdash;he was conscious of Henderley&#8217;s staring eyes
+fixed upon his helplessly&mdash;&#8220;I came to ask your father if
+he would not buy my shack. There is good shooting at
+the lake; the ducks come plenty, sometimes. I want
+to get away, to start again somewhere. I&#8217;ve been a
+failure. I want to get away, right away south. If he
+would buy it, I could start again. I&#8217;ve had no luck.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He had invented it on the moment, but the girl
+understood better than Lygon or Henderley could have
+dreamed. She had seen the change pass over Lygon.</p>
+<p>Henderley had a hand on himself again, and the
+startled look went out of his eyes.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What do you want for your shack and the lake?&#8221; he
+asked, with restored confidence. The fellow no doubt
+was grateful that his daughter had saved his life, he
+thought.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Five hundred dollars,&#8221; answered Lygon, quickly.</p>
+<p>Henderley would have handed over all that lay on
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_331' name='page_331'></a>331</span>
+the table before him, but he thought it better not to
+do so. &#8220;I&#8217;ll buy it,&#8221; he said. &#8220;You seem to have
+been hit hard. Here is the money. Bring me the
+deed to-morrow&mdash;to-morrow.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll not take the money till I give you the deed,&#8221;
+said Lygon. &#8220;It will do to-morrow. It&#8217;s doing me a
+good turn. I&#8217;ll get away and start again somewhere.
+I&#8217;ve done no good up here. Thank you, sir&mdash;thank
+you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Before they realized it, the tent-curtain rose and fell,
+and he was gone into the night.</p>
+<p>The trouble was still deep in the girl&#8217;s eyes as she
+kissed her father, and he, with an overdone cheerfulness,
+wished her a good-night.</p>
+<p>The man of iron had been changed into a man of
+straw once at least in his lifetime.</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+
+<p>Lygon found Dupont at the Forks.</p>
+<p>&#8220;<i>Eh</i>, <i>ben</i>, it is all right&mdash;yes?&#8221; Dupont asked, eagerly,
+as Lygon joined him.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, it is all right,&#8221; answered Lygon.</p>
+<p>With an exulting laugh and an obscene oath, Dupont
+pushed out the canoe, and they got away into the moonlight.
+No word was spoken for some distance, but Dupont
+kept giving grunts of satisfaction.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You got the ten t&#8217;ousan&#8217; each&mdash;in cash or check,
+eh? The check or the money&mdash;<i>hein</i>?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve got nothing,&#8221; answered Lygon.</p>
+<p>Dupont dropped his paddle with a curse.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You got not&#8217;ing! You said eet was all right!&#8221; he
+growled.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It is all right. I got nothing. I asked for nothing.
+I have had enough. I have finished.&#8221;</p>
+<p>With a roar of rage Dupont sprang on him, and caught
+him by the throat as the canoe swayed and dipped.
+He was blind with fury.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_332' name='page_332'></a>332</span></p>
+<p>Lygon tried with one hand for his knife, and got it,
+but the pressure on his throat was growing terrible.</p>
+<p>For minutes the struggle continued, for Lygon was
+fighting with the desperation of one who makes his last
+awful onset against fate and doom.</p>
+<p>Dupont also had his knife at work. At last it drank
+blood, but as he got it home he suddenly reeled blindly,
+lost his balance, and lurched into the water with a
+groan.</p>
+<p>Lygon, weapon in hand and bleeding freely, waited
+for him to rise and make for the canoe again.</p>
+<p>Ten, twenty, fifty seconds passed. Dupont did not
+rise. A minute went by, and still there was no stir, no
+sign. Dupont would never rise again. In his wild rage
+he had burst a blood-vessel on the brain.</p>
+<p>Lygon bound up his reeking wound as best he could.
+He did it calmly, whispering to himself the while.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I must do it. I must get there if I can. I will not
+be afraid to die then,&#8221; he muttered to himself.</p>
+<p>Presently he grasped an oar and paddled feebly.</p>
+<p>A slight wind had risen, and, as he turned the boat in
+to face the Forks again, it helped to carry the canoe to
+the landing-place.</p>
+<p>Lygon dragged himself out. He did not try to draw
+the canoe up, but began this journey of a mile back to
+the tent he had left so recently. First, step by step,
+leaning against trees, drawing himself forward, a journey
+as long to his determined mind as from youth to age.
+Would it never end? It seemed a terrible climbing-up
+the sides of a cliff, and, as he struggled fainting on, all
+sorts of sounds were in his ears, but he realized that the
+Whisperer was no longer there. The sounds he heard
+did not torture, they helped his stumbling feet. They
+were like the murmur of waters, like the sounds of the
+forest and soft, booming bells. But the bells were only
+the beatings of his heart&mdash;so loud, so swift.</p>
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<a name='linki_14' id='linki_14'></a>
+<img src='images/p332.jpg' alt='' title='' style='width: 387px; height: 564px;' /><br />
+<p class='caption' style='margin: 0 auto; text-align:center;width: 387px;'>
+FOR MINUTES THE STRUGGLE CONTINUED<br />
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_333' name='page_333'></a>333</span></div>
+<p>He was on his knees now, crawling on&mdash;on&mdash;on. At
+last there came a light, suddenly bursting on him from
+a tent he was so near. Then he called, and called
+again, and fell forward on his face. But now he heard
+a voice above him. It was <i>her</i> voice. He had blindly
+struggled on to die near her, near where she was, she
+was so pitiful and good.</p>
+<p>He had accomplished his journey, and her voice was
+speaking above him. There were other voices, but it
+was only hers that he heard.</p>
+<p>&#8220;God help him&mdash;oh, God help him!&#8221; she was saying.</p>
+<p>He drew a long, quiet breath. &#8220;I will sleep now,&#8221; he
+said, clearly.</p>
+<p>He would hear the Whisperer no more.</p>
+<hr class='major' />
+<div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'>
+<a name='AS_DEEP_AS_THE_SEA' id='AS_DEEP_AS_THE_SEA'></a>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_334' name='page_334'></a>334</span>
+<h2>AS DEEP AS THE SEA</h2>
+</div>
+
+<p>&#8220;What can I do, Dan? I&#8217;m broke, too. My last
+dollar went to pay my last debt to-day. I&#8217;ve nothing
+but what I stand in. I&#8217;ve got prospects, but I can&#8217;t
+discount prospects at the banks.&#8221; The speaker laughed
+bitterly. &#8220;I&#8217;ve reaped and I&#8217;m sowing, the same as
+you, Dan.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The other made a nervous motion of protest. &#8220;No;
+not the same as me, Flood&mdash;not the same. It&#8217;s sink
+or swim with me, and if you can&#8217;t help me&mdash;oh, I&#8217;d
+take my gruel without whining, if it wasn&#8217;t for Di!
+It&#8217;s that that knocks me over. It&#8217;s the shame to her.
+Oh, what a cursed ass and fool&mdash;and thief, I&#8217;ve been!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Thief?&mdash;thief?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Flood Rawley dropped the flaming match with which
+he was about to light a cheroot, and stood staring, his
+dark-blue eyes growing wider, his worn, handsome face
+becoming drawn, as swift conviction mastered him.
+He felt that the black words which had fallen from his
+friend&#8217;s lips&mdash;from the lips of Diana Welldon&#8217;s brother&mdash;were
+the truth. He looked at the plump face, the
+full, amiable eyes, now misty with fright, at the characterless
+hand nervously feeling the golden mustache,
+at the well-fed, inert body; and he knew that, whatever
+the trouble or the peril, Dan Welldon could not surmount
+it alone.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What is it?&#8221; Rawley asked, rather sharply, his fingers
+running through his slightly grizzled black hair,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_335' name='page_335'></a>335</span>
+but not excitedly, for he wanted no scenes; and if this
+thing could hurt Di Welldon, and action was necessary,
+he must remain cool. What she was to do, Heaven and
+he only knew; what she had done for him, perhaps
+neither understood fully as yet. &#8220;What is it&mdash;quick?&#8221;
+he added, and his words were like a sharp grip upon Dan
+Welldon&#8217;s shoulder. &#8220;Racing?&mdash;cards?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Dan nodded. &#8220;Yes, over at Askatoon; five hundred
+on Jibway, the favorite&mdash;he fell at the last fence; five
+hundred at poker with Nick Fison; and a thousand
+in land speculation at Edmonton, on margin. Everything
+went wrong.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And so you put your hand in the railway company&#8217;s
+money-chest?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It seemed such a dead certainty&mdash;Jibway; and the
+Edmonton corner-blocks, too. I&#8217;d had luck with Nick
+before; but&mdash;well, there it is, Flood.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;They know&mdash;the railway people&mdash;Shaughnessy
+knows?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, the president knows. He&#8217;s at Calgary now.
+They telegraphed him, and he wired to give me till
+midnight to pay up or go to jail. They&#8217;re watching
+me now. I can&#8217;t stir. There&#8217;s no escape, and there&#8217;s
+no one I can ask for help but you. That&#8217;s why I&#8217;ve
+come, Flood.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Lord, what a fool! Couldn&#8217;t you see what the end
+would be if your plunging didn&#8217;t come off? You&mdash;you
+oughtn&#8217;t to bet, or speculate, or play cards, you&#8217;re
+not clever enough. You&#8217;ve got blind rashness, and so
+you think you&#8217;re bold. And Di&mdash;oh, you idiot! And
+on a salary of a thousand dollars a year!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I suppose Di would help me; but I couldn&#8217;t explain.&#8221;
+The weak face puckered, a lifeless kind of tear gathered
+in the ox-like eyes.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, she probably would help you. She&#8217;d probably
+give you all she&#8217;s saved to go to Europe with and study,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_336' name='page_336'></a>336</span>
+saved from her pictures sold at twenty per cent. of
+their value; and she&#8217;d mortgage the little income she&#8217;s
+got to keep her brother out of jail. Of course she would,
+and of course you ought to be ashamed of yourself for
+thinking of it.&#8221; Rawley lighted his cigar and smoked
+fiercely.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It would be better for her than my going to jail,&#8221;
+stubbornly replied the other. &#8220;But I don&#8217;t want to
+tell her, or to ask her for money. That&#8217;s why I&#8217;ve
+come to you. You needn&#8217;t be so hard, Flood; you&#8217;ve
+not been a saint; and Di knows it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Rawley took the cheroot from his mouth, threw back
+his head, and laughed mirthlessly, ironically. Then
+suddenly he stopped and looked round the room till
+his eyes rested on a portrait-drawing which hung on
+the wall opposite the window, through which the sun
+poured. It was the face of a girl with beautiful bronzed
+hair, and full, fine, beautifully modelled face, with brown
+eyes deep and brooding, which seemed to have time
+and space behind them&mdash;not before them. The lips
+were delicate and full, and had the look suggesting a
+smile which the inward thought has stayed. It was
+like one of the Titian women&mdash;like a Titian that hangs
+on the wall of the Gallery at Munich. The head and
+neck, the whole personality, had an air of distinction
+and destiny. The drawing had been done by a wandering
+duchess who had seen the girl sketching in the foothills
+when on a visit to that &#8220;Wild West&#8221; which has
+such power to refine and inspire minds not superior
+to Nature. Its replica was carried to a castle in Scotland.
+It had been the gift of Diana Welldon on a
+certain day not long ago, when Flood Rawley had made
+a pledge to her, which was as vital to him and to his
+future as two thousand dollars were vital to Dan Welldon
+now.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;ve not been a saint, and Di knows it,&#8221; repeated
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_337' name='page_337'></a>337</span>
+the weak brother of a girl whose fame belonged to the
+West; whose name was a signal for cheerful looks; whose
+buoyant humor and impartial friendliness gained her
+innumerable friends; and whose talent, understood by
+few, gave her a certain protection, lifting her a little
+away from the outwardly crude and provincial life
+around her.</p>
+<p>When Rawley spoke, it was with quiet deliberation,
+and even gentleness. &#8220;I haven&#8217;t been a saint, and she
+knows it, as you say, Dan; but the law is on my side
+as yet, it isn&#8217;t on yours. There&#8217;s the difference.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You used to gamble yourself; you were pretty tough,
+and you oughtn&#8217;t to walk up my back with hobnailed
+boots.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, I gambled, Dan, and I drank, and I raised a
+dust out here. My record was writ pretty big. But I
+didn&#8217;t lay my hands on the ark of the social covenant,
+whose inscription is, <i>Thou shalt not steal</i>; and that&#8217;s why
+I&#8217;m poor but proud, and no one&#8217;s watching for me round
+the corner, same as you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Welldon&#8217;s half-defiant petulance disappeared. &#8220;What&#8217;s
+done can&#8217;t be undone.&#8221; Then, with a sudden burst of
+anguish, &#8220;Oh, get me out of this somehow!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;How? I&#8217;ve got no money. By speaking to your
+sister?&#8221;</p>
+<p>The other was silent.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Shall I do it?&#8221; Rawley peered anxiously into the
+other&#8217;s face, and he knew that there was no real security
+against the shameful trouble being laid bare to her.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I want a chance to start straight again.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The voice was fluttered, almost whining; it carried
+no conviction; but the words had in them a reminder
+of words that Rawley himself had said to Diana Welldon
+but a few months ago, and a new spirit stirred in him.
+He stepped forward and, gripping Dan&#8217;s shoulder with
+a hand of steel, said, fiercely:
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_338' name='page_338'></a>338</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;No, Dan. I&#8217;d rather take you to her in your coffin.
+She&#8217;s never known you, never seen what most of us
+have seen, that all you have&mdash;or nearly all&mdash;is your
+lovely looks and what they call a kind heart. There&#8217;s
+only you two in your family, and she&#8217;s got to live with
+you&mdash;awhile, anyhow. She couldn&#8217;t stand this business.
+She mustn&#8217;t stand it. She&#8217;s had enough to put up
+with in me; but at the worst she could pass me by on the
+other side, and there would be an end. It would have
+been said that Flood Rawley had got his deserts. It&#8217;s
+different with you.&#8221; His voice changed, softened.
+&#8220;Dan, I made a pledge to her that I&#8217;d never play cards
+again for money while I lived, and it wasn&#8217;t a thing
+to take on without some cogitation. But I cogitated,
+and took it on, and started life over again&mdash;me! Began
+practising law again&mdash;barrister, solicitor, notary public&mdash;at
+forty. And at last I&#8217;ve got my chance in a big
+case against the Canadian Pacific. It&#8217;ll make me or
+break me, Dan.... There, I wanted you to see where I
+stand with Di; and now I want you to promise me that
+you&#8217;ll not leave these rooms till I see you again. I&#8217;ll
+get you clear; I&#8217;ll save you, Dan.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Flood! Oh, my God, Flood!&#8221; The voice was
+broken.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;ve got to stay here, and you&#8217;re to remember
+not to get the funk, even if I don&#8217;t come before midnight.
+I&#8217;ll be here then, if I&#8217;m alive. If you don&#8217;t keep your
+word&mdash;but, there, you will.&#8221; Both hands gripped the
+graceful shoulders of the miscreant like a vise.</p>
+<p>&#8220;So help me, Flood,&#8221; was the frightened, whispered
+reply. &#8220;I&#8217;ll make it up to you somehow, some day. I&#8217;ll
+pay you back.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Rawley caught up his cap from the table.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Steady!&mdash;steady! Don&#8217;t go at a fence till you&#8217;re
+sure of your seat, Dan,&#8221; he said. Then, with a long
+look at the portrait on the wall and an exclamation
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_339' name='page_339'></a>339</span>
+which the other did not hear, he left the room with a
+set, determined face.</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+
+<p>&#8220;Who told you? What brought you, Flood?&#8221; the
+girl asked, her chin in her long, white hands, her head
+turned from the easel to him, a book in her lap, the sun
+breaking through the leaves upon her hat, touching the
+Titian hair with splendor.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Fate brought me, and didn&#8217;t tell me,&#8221; he answered,
+with a whimsical quirk of the mouth and his trouble
+lurking behind the sea-deep eyes.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Wouldn&#8217;t you have come if you knew I was here?&#8221;
+she urged, archly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Not for two thousand dollars,&#8221; he answered, the
+look of trouble deepening in his eyes, but his lips were
+smiling. He had a quaint sense of humor, and at his
+last gasp would have noted the ridiculous thing. And
+surely it was a droll malignity of Fate to bring him
+here to her whom, in this moment of all moments in
+his life, he wished far away. Fate meant to try him to
+the uttermost. This hurdle of trial was high, indeed.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Two thousand dollars&mdash;nothing less?&#8221; she inquired,
+gayly. &#8220;You are too specific for a real lover.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Fate fixed the amount,&#8221; he added, dryly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Fate&mdash;you talk so much of Fate,&#8221; she replied, gravely,
+and her eyes looked into the distance. &#8220;You make
+me think of it, too, and I don&#8217;t want to do so. I don&#8217;t
+want to feel helpless, to be the child of Accident and
+Destiny.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, you get the same thing in the &#8216;fore-ordination&#8217;
+that old Minister M&#8217;Gregor preaches every Sunday.
+&#8216;Be elect or be damned,&#8217; he says to us all. Names
+aren&#8217;t important; but, anyhow, it was Fate that led me
+here.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Are you sure it wasn&#8217;t me?&#8221; she asked, softly. &#8220;Are
+you sure I wasn&#8217;t calling you, and you had to come?&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_340' name='page_340'></a>340</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, it was <i>en route</i>, anyhow; and you are always
+calling, if I must tell you,&#8221; he laughed. Suddenly he
+became grave. &#8220;I hear you call me in the night sometimes,
+and I start up and say &#8216;Yes, Di!&#8217; out of my sleep.
+It&#8217;s a queer hallucination. I&#8217;ve got you on the brain,
+certainly.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It seems to vex you&mdash;certainly,&#8221; she said, opening
+the book that lay in her lap, &#8220;and your eyes trouble me
+to-day. They&#8217;ve got a look that used to be in them,
+Flood, before&mdash;before you promised; and another look
+I don&#8217;t understand and don&#8217;t like. I suppose it&#8217;s always
+so. The real business of life is trying to understand
+each other.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You have wonderful thoughts for one that&#8217;s had so
+little chance,&#8221; he said. &#8220;That&#8217;s because you&#8217;re a genius,
+I suppose. Teaching can&#8217;t give that sort of thing&mdash;the
+insight.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What is the matter, Flood?&#8221; she asked, suddenly,
+again, her breast heaving, her delicate, rounded fingers
+interlacing. &#8220;I heard a man say once that you were &#8216;as
+deep as the sea.&#8217; He did not mean it kindly, but I do.
+You are in trouble, and I want to share it if I can.
+Where were you going when you came across me here?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;To see old Busby, the quack-doctor up there,&#8221; he
+answered, nodding toward a shrubbed and wooded
+hillock behind them.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Old Busby!&#8221; she rejoined, in amazement. &#8220;What
+do you want with him&mdash;not medicine of that old quack,
+that dreadful man?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He cures people sometimes. A good many out here
+owe him more than they&#8217;ll ever pay him.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Is he as rich an old miser as they say?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He doesn&#8217;t look rich, does he?&#8221; was the enigmatical
+answer.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Does any one know his real history? He didn&#8217;t
+come from nowhere. He must have had friends once.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_341' name='page_341'></a>341</span>
+Some one must once have cared for him, though he
+seems such a monster now.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yet he cures people sometimes,&#8221; he rejoined, abstractedly.
+&#8220;Probably there&#8217;s some good underneath.
+I&#8217;m going to try and see.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What is it? What is your business with him?
+Won&#8217;t you tell me? Is it so secret?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I want him to help me in a case I&#8217;ve got in hand.
+A client of mine is in trouble&mdash;you mustn&#8217;t ask about
+it; and he can help, I think&mdash;I think so.&#8221; He got to
+his feet. &#8220;I must be going, Di,&#8221; he added. Suddenly
+a flush swept over his face, and he reached out and
+took both her hands. &#8220;Oh, you are a million times too
+good for me!&#8221; he said. &#8220;But if all goes well, I&#8217;ll do my
+best to make you forget it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Wait&mdash;wait one moment,&#8221; she answered. &#8220;Before
+you go I want you to hear what I&#8217;ve been reading over
+and over to myself just now. It is from a book I got
+from Quebec, called <i>When Time Shall Pass</i>. It is a
+story of two like you and me. The man is writing to
+the woman, and it has things that you have said to me&mdash;in
+a different way.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No, I don&#8217;t talk like a book, but I know a star in a
+dark night when I see it,&#8221; he answered, with a catch in
+his throat.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Hush!&#8221; she said, catching his hand in hers as she
+read, while all around them the sounds of summer&mdash;the
+distant clack of a reaper, the crack of a whip, the
+locusts droning, the whir of a young partridge, the
+squeak of a chipmunk&mdash;were tuned to the harmony of
+the moment and her voice:</p>
+<div class='blockquot'>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;Night and the sombre silence, oh, my love, and one
+star shining! First, warm, velvety sleep, and then this
+quick, quiet waking to your voice which seems to call me.
+Is it&mdash;<i>is</i> it you that calls? Do you sometimes, even in
+your dreams, speak to me? Far beneath unconsciousness
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_342' name='page_342'></a>342</span>
+is there the summons of your spirit to me?... I like to
+think so. I like to think that this thing which has come
+to us is deeper, greater than we are. Sometimes day and
+night there flash before my eyes&mdash;my mind&#8217;s eyes&mdash;pictures
+of you and me in places unfamiliar, landscapes never
+before seen, activities uncomprehended and unknown,
+bright, alluring glimpses of some second being, some possible,
+maybe never-to-be-realized future, alas! Yet these
+swift-moving shutters of the soul, or imagination, <i>or</i> reality&mdash;who
+shall say which?&mdash;give me a joy never before felt
+in life. If I am not a better man for this love of mine for
+you, I am <i>more</i> than I was, and shall be more than I am.
+Much of my life in the past was mean and small, so much
+that I have said and done has been unworthy&mdash;my love
+for you is too sharp a light for my gross imperfections of
+the past! Come what will, be what must, I stake my life,
+my heart, my soul on you&mdash;that beautiful, beloved face;
+those deep eyes in which my being is drowned; those lucid,
+perfect hands that have bound me to the mast of your
+destiny. I cannot go back, I must go forward: now I
+must keep on loving you or be shipwrecked. I did not
+know that this was in me, this tide of love, this current
+of devotion. Destiny plays me beyond my ken, beyond
+my dreams. &#8220;<i>O Cith&oelig;ron!</i>&#8221; Turn from me now&mdash;or never,
+O my love! Loose me from the mast, and let the storm
+and wave wash me out into the sea of your forgetfulness
+now&mdash;or never!... But keep me, keep me, if your love is
+great enough, if I bring you any light or joy; for I am
+yours to my uttermost note of life.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+</div>
+<p>&#8220;He knew!&mdash;he knew!&#8221; Rawley said, catching her
+wrists in his hands and drawing her to him. &#8220;If I
+could write, that&#8217;s what I should have said to you,
+beautiful and beloved. How mean and small and ugly
+my life was till you made me over! I was a bad lot.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;So much hung on one little promise,&#8221; she said, and
+drew closer to him. &#8220;You were never bad,&#8221; she added;
+then, with an arm sweeping the universe, &#8220;Oh, isn&#8217;t it
+all good, and isn&#8217;t it all worth living?&#8221;</p>
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<a name='linki_15' id='linki_15'></a>
+<img src='images/p342.jpg' alt='' title='' style='width: 389px; height: 608px;' /><br />
+<p class='caption' style='margin: 0 auto; text-align:center;width: 389px;'>
+&#8220;OH, ISN&#8217;T IT ALL WORTH LIVING?&#8221; SHE SAID<br />
+</p>
+</div>
+
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_343' name='page_343'></a>343</span></div>
+<p>His face lost its glow. Over in the town her brother
+faced a ruined life, and the girl beside him a dark
+humiliation and a shame which would poison her life
+hereafter, unless&mdash;his look turned to the little house
+where the quack-doctor lived. He loosed her hands.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Now for Caliban,&#8221; he said.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I shall be Ariel and follow you&mdash;in my heart,&#8221; she
+said. &#8220;Be sure and make him tell you the story of
+his life,&#8221; she added, with a laugh, as his lips swept the
+hair behind her ears.</p>
+<p>As he moved swiftly away, watching his long strides,
+she said, proudly, &#8220;As deep as the sea.&#8221;</p>
+<p>After a moment she added: &#8220;And he was once a
+gambler, until, until&#8221; she&mdash;glanced at the open book,
+then with sweet mockery looked at her hands&mdash;&#8220;until
+&#8216;those lucid, perfect hands bound me to the mast of
+your destiny.&#8217; O vain Diana! But they are rather
+beautiful,&#8221; she added, softly, &#8220;and I am rather happy.&#8221;
+There was something like a gay little chuckle in her
+throat.</p>
+<p>&#8220;O vain Diana!&#8221; she repeated.</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+
+<p>Rawley entered the door of the hut on the hill without
+ceremony. There was no need for courtesy, and the
+work he had come to do could be easier done without it.</p>
+<p>Old Busby was crouched over a table, his mouth
+lapping milk from a full bowl on the table. He scarcely
+raised his head when Rawley entered&mdash;through the open
+door he had seen his visitor coming. He sipped on, his
+straggling beard dripping. There was silence for a time.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What do you want?&#8221; he growled at last.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Finish your swill, and then we can talk,&#8221; said Rawley,
+carelessly. He took a chair near the door, lighted a
+cheroot and smoked, watching the old man, as he tipped
+the great bowl toward his face, as though it were some
+wild animal feeding. The clothes were patched and
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_344' name='page_344'></a>344</span>
+worn, the coat-front was spattered with stains of all
+kinds, the hair and beard were unkempt and long, giving
+him what would have been the look of a mangy lion
+but that the face had the expression of some beast less
+honorable. The eyes, however, were malignantly intelligent;
+the hands, ill-cared for, were long, well-shaped,
+and capable, but of a hateful yellow color like the face.
+And through all was a sense of power, dark and almost
+mediæval. Secret, evilly wise, and inhuman, he looked
+a being apart, whom men might seek for help in dark
+purposes.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What do you want&mdash;medicine?&#8221; he muttered at
+last, wiping his beard and mouth with the palm of his
+hand, and the palm on his knees.</p>
+<p>Rawley looked at the ominous-looking bottles on the
+shelves above the old man&#8217;s head, at the forceps, knives,
+and other surgical instruments on the walls&mdash;they at
+least were bright and clean&mdash;and, taking the cheroot
+slowly from his mouth, he said:</p>
+<p>&#8220;Shin-plasters are what I want. A friend of mine has
+caught his leg in a trap.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The old man gave an evil chuckle at the joke, for a
+&#8220;shin-plaster&#8221; was a money-note worth a quarter of a
+dollar.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve got some,&#8221; he growled in reply, &#8220;but they cost
+twenty-five cents each. You can have them for your
+friend at the price.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I want eight thousand of them from you. He&#8217;s hurt
+pretty bad,&#8221; was the dogged, dry answer.</p>
+<p>The shaggy eyebrows of the quack drew together,
+and the eyes peered out sharply through half-closed lids.
+&#8220;There&#8217;s plenty of wanting and not much getting in
+this world,&#8221; he rejoined, with a leer of contempt, and
+spat on the floor, while yet the furtive watchfulness of
+the eyes indicated a mind ill at ease.</p>
+<p>Smoke came in placid puffs from the cheroot&mdash;Rawley
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_345' name='page_345'></a>345</span>
+was smoking very hard, but with a judicial meditation,
+as it seemed.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, but if you want a thing so bad that, to get it,
+you&#8217;ll face the devil or the Beast of Revelations, it&#8217;s
+likely to come to you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You call me a beast?&#8221; The reddish-brown face
+grew black like that of a Bedouin in his rage.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I said the Beast of Revelations&mdash;don&#8217;t you know the
+Scriptures?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I know that a fool is to be answered according to
+his folly,&#8221; was the hoarse reply, and the great head
+wagged to and fro in its smarting rage.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, I&#8217;m doing my best; and perhaps when the folly
+is all out we&#8217;ll come to the revelations of the Beast.&#8221;</p>
+<p>There was a silence, in which the gross impostor
+shifted heavily in his seat, while a hand twitched across
+the mouth and then caught at the breast of the threadbare
+black coat abstractedly.</p>
+<p>Rawley leaned forward, one elbow on a knee, the cheroot
+in his fingers. He spoke almost confidentially,
+as to some ignorant and misguided savage&mdash;as he had
+talked to Indian chiefs in his time when searching for
+the truth regarding some crime.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve had a lot of revelations in my time. A lawyer
+and a doctor always do. And though there are folks
+who say I&#8217;m no lawyer, as there are those who say with
+greater truth that you&#8217;re no doctor, speaking technically,
+we&#8217;ve both had &#8216;revelations.&#8217; You&#8217;ve seen a lot that&#8217;s
+seamy, and so have I. You&#8217;re pretty seamy yourself.
+In fact, you&#8217;re as bad a man as ever saved lives&mdash;and
+lost them. You&#8217;ve had a long tether, and you&#8217;ve
+swung on it&mdash;swung wide. But you&#8217;ve had a lot of luck
+that you haven&#8217;t swung high, too.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He paused and flicked away the ash from his cheroot,
+while the figure before him swayed animal-like from
+side to side, muttering.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_346' name='page_346'></a>346</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;ve got brains, a great lot of brains of a kind&mdash;however
+you came by them,&#8221; Rawley continued; &#8220;and
+you&#8217;ve kept a lot of people in the West from passing
+in their checks before their time. You&#8217;ve rooked &#8217;em,
+chiselled &#8217;em out of a lot of cash, too. There was old
+Lamson&mdash;fifteen hundred for the goitre on his neck;
+and Mrs. Gilligan for the cancer&mdash;two thousand, wasn&#8217;t
+it? &#8216;Tincture of Lebanon Leaves&#8217; you called the medicine,
+didn&#8217;t you? You must have made fifty thousand
+or so in the last ten years.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What I&#8217;ve made I&#8217;ll keep,&#8221; was the guttural answer,
+and the talon-like fingers clawed the table.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;ve made people pay high for curing them, saving
+them sometimes; but you haven&#8217;t paid me high for
+saving you in the courts; and there&#8217;s one case that you
+haven&#8217;t paid me for at all. That was when the patient
+died&mdash;and you didn&#8217;t.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The face of the old man became mottled with a sudden
+fear, but he jerked it forward once or twice with
+an effort at self-control. Presently he steadied to the
+ordeal of suspense, while he kept saying to himself,
+&#8220;What does he know&mdash;what&mdash;which?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Malpractice resulting in death&mdash;that was poor Jimmy
+Tearle; and something else resulting in death&mdash;that
+was the switchman&#8217;s wife. And the law is hard in the
+West where a woman&#8217;s in the case&mdash;quick and hard.
+Yes, you&#8217;ve swung wide on your tether; look out that
+you don&#8217;t swing high, old man.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You can prove nothing; it&#8217;s bluff!&#8221; came the reply
+in a tone of malice and of fear.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You forget. I was your lawyer in Jimmy Tearle&#8217;s
+case, and a letter&#8217;s been found written by the switchman&#8217;s
+wife to her husband. It reached me the night he
+was killed by the avalanche. It was handed over to
+me by the post-office, as the lawyer acting for the relatives.
+I&#8217;ve read it. I&#8217;ve got it. It gives you away.&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_347' name='page_347'></a>347</span></p>
+<p>&#8220;I wasn&#8217;t alone.&#8221; Fear had now disappeared, and the
+old man was fighting.</p>
+<p>&#8220;No, you weren&#8217;t alone; and if the switchman and the
+switchman&#8217;s wife weren&#8217;t dead and out of it all, and if
+the other man that didn&#8217;t matter any more than you
+wasn&#8217;t alive and hadn&#8217;t a family that does matter, I
+wouldn&#8217;t be asking you peaceably for two thousand
+dollars as my fee for getting you off two cases that
+might have sent you to prison for twenty years, or,
+maybe, hung you to the nearest tree.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The heavy body pulled itself together, the hands
+clinched. &#8220;Blackmail&mdash;you think I&#8217;ll stand it?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, I think you will. I want two thousand dollars
+to help a friend in a hole, and I mean to have it, if you
+think your neck&#8217;s worth it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Teeth, wonderfully white, showed through the shaggy
+beard. &#8220;If I had to go to prison&mdash;or swing, as you say&mdash;do
+you think I&#8217;d go with my mouth shut? I&#8217;d not
+pay up alone. The West would crack&mdash;holy Heaven,
+I know enough to make it sick. Go on and see! I&#8217;ve
+got the West in my hand.&#8221; He opened and shut his
+fingers with a grimace of cruelty which shook Rawley in
+spite of himself.</p>
+<p>Rawley had trusted to the inspiration of the moment;
+he had had no clearly defined plan; he had believed
+that he could frighten the old man, and by force of will
+bend him to his purposes. It had all been more difficult
+than he had expected. He kept cool, imperturbable,
+and determined, however. He knew that what the old
+quack said was true&mdash;the West might shake with scandal
+concerning a few who, no doubt, in remorse and secret
+fear, had more than paid the penalty of their offences.
+But he thought of Di Welldon and of her criminal
+brother, and every nerve, every faculty, was screwed
+to its utmost limit of endurance and capacity.</p>
+<p>Suddenly the old man gave a new turn to the event.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_348' name='page_348'></a>348</span>
+He got up and, rummaging in an old box, drew out a
+dice-box. Rattling the dice, he threw them out on the
+table before him, a strange, excited look crossing his
+face.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Play for it,&#8221; he said, in a harsh, croaking voice.
+&#8220;Play for the two thousand. Win it, if you can. You
+want it bad. I want to keep it bad. It&#8217;s nice to have;
+it makes a man feel warm&mdash;money does. I&#8217;d sleep in
+ten-dollar bills, I&#8217;d have my clothes made of them, if I
+could; I&#8217;d have my house papered with them; I&#8217;d eat
+&#8217;em. Oh, I know, I know about you&mdash;and her&mdash;Diana
+Welldon! You&#8217;ve sworn off gambling, and you&#8217;ve kept
+your pledge for near a year. Well, it&#8217;s twenty years
+since I gambled&mdash;twenty years. I gambled with these
+then.&#8221; He shook the dice in the box. &#8220;I gambled
+everything I had away&mdash;more than two thousand dollars&mdash;more
+than two thousand dollars.&#8221; He laughed a raw,
+mirthless laugh. &#8220;Well, you&#8217;re the greatest gambler in
+the West. So was I&mdash;in the East. It pulverized me at
+last, when I&#8217;d nothing left&mdash;and drink, drink, drink. I
+gave up both one night and came out West. I started
+doctoring here. I&#8217;ve got money, plenty of money&mdash;medicine,
+mines, land got it for me. I&#8217;ve been lucky.
+Now you come to bluff me&mdash;me! You don&#8217;t know old
+Busby.&#8221; He spat on the floor. &#8220;I&#8217;m not to be bluffed.
+I know too much. Before they could lynch me I&#8217;d talk.
+But to play you, the greatest gambler in the West,
+for two thousand dollars&mdash;yes, I&#8217;d like the sting of
+it again. Twos, fours, double-sixes&mdash;the gentleman&#8217;s
+game!&#8221; He rattled the dice and threw them with a
+flourish out on the table, his evil face lighting up.
+&#8220;Come! You can&#8217;t have something for nothing!&#8221; he
+growled.</p>
+<p>As he spoke, a change came over Rawley&#8217;s face. It
+lost its cool imperturbability, it grew paler, the veins on
+the fine forehead stood out, a new, flaring light came
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_349' name='page_349'></a>349</span>
+into the eyes. The old gambler&#8217;s spirit was alive. But
+even as it rose, sweeping him into that area of fiery
+abstraction where every nerve is strung to a fine tension
+and the surrounding world disappears, he saw the face
+of Diana Welldon, he remembered her words to him not
+an hour before, and the issue of the conflict, other considerations
+apart, was without doubt. But there was
+her brother and his certain fate if the two thousand dollars
+were not paid in by midnight. He was desperate.
+It was in reality for Diana&#8217;s sake. He approached the
+table, and his old calm returned.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I have no money to play with,&#8221; he said, quietly.</p>
+<p>With a gasp of satisfaction, the old man fumbled in
+the inside of his coat and drew out layers of ten, fifty,
+and hundred dollar bills. It was lined with them. He
+passed a pile over to Rawley&mdash;two thousand dollars.
+He placed a similar pile before himself.</p>
+<p>As Rawley laid his hand on the bills, the thought
+rushed through his mind, &#8220;You have it&mdash;keep it!&#8221;
+but he put it away from him. With a gentleman he
+might have done it, with this man before him it was
+impossible. He must take his chances; and it was the
+only chance in which he had hope now, unless he appealed
+for humanity&#8217;s sake, for the girl&#8217;s sake, and told the
+real truth. It might avail. Well, that would be the
+last resort.</p>
+<p>&#8220;For small stakes?&#8221; said the grimy quack, in a gloating
+voice.</p>
+<p>Rawley nodded, and then added: &#8220;We stop at eleven
+o&#8217;clock, unless I&#8217;ve lost or won all before that.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And stake what&#8217;s left on the last throw?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes.&#8221;</p>
+<p>There was silence for a moment, in which Rawley
+seemed to grow older, and a set look came to his mouth&mdash;a
+broken pledge, no matter what the cause, brings
+heavy penalties to the honest mind. He shut his eyes
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_350' name='page_350'></a>350</span>
+for an instant, and, when he opened them, he saw that
+his fellow-gambler was watching him with an enigmatical
+and furtive smile. Did this Caliban have some
+understanding of what was at stake in his heart and
+soul?</p>
+<p>&#8220;Play!&#8221; Rawley said, sharply, and was himself again.</p>
+<p>For hour after hour there was scarce a sound, save
+the rattle of the dice and an occasional exclamation
+from the old man as he threw a double-six. As dusk
+fell, the door had been shut and a lighted lantern was
+hung over their heads.</p>
+<p>Fortune had fluctuated. Once the old man&#8217;s pile
+had diminished to two notes, then the luck had changed
+and his pile grew larger; then fell again; but, as the
+hands of the clock on the wall above the blue medicine
+bottles reached a quarter to eleven, it increased steadily
+throw after throw.</p>
+<p>Now the player&#8217;s fever was in Rawley&#8217;s eyes. His
+face was deadly pale, but his hand threw steadily,
+calmly, almost negligently, as it might seem. All at
+once, at eight minutes to eleven, the luck turned in his
+favor, and his pile mounted again. Time after time
+he dropped double-sixes. It was almost uncanny. He
+seemed to see the dice in the box, and his hand threw
+them out with the precision of a machine. Long afterward
+he had this vivid illusion that he could see
+the dice in the box. As the clock was about to strike
+eleven he had before him three thousand eight hundred
+dollars. It was his throw.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Two hundred,&#8221; he said, in a whisper, and threw.
+He won.</p>
+<p>With a gasp of relief, he got to his feet, the money
+in his hand. He stepped backward from the table,
+then staggered, and a faintness passed over him. He
+had sat so long without moving that his legs bent under
+him. There was a pail of water with a dipper in it on
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_351' name='page_351'></a>351</span>
+a bench. He caught up a dipperful of water, drank it
+empty, and let it fall in the pail again with a clatter.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Dan,&#8221; he said, abstractedly&mdash;&#8220;Dan, you&#8217;re all safe
+now.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Then he seemed to wake, as from a dream, and
+looked at the man at the table. Busby was leaning on
+it with both hands, and staring at Rawley like some
+animal jaded and beaten from pursuit. Rawley walked
+back to the table and laid down two thousand dollars.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I only wanted two thousand,&#8221; he said, and put the
+other two thousand in his pocket.</p>
+<p>The evil eyes gloated, the long fingers clutched the
+pile and swept it into a great inside pocket. Then the
+shaggy head bent forward.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You said it was for Dan,&#8221; he said&mdash;&#8220;Dan Welldon?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Rawley hesitated. &#8220;What is that to you?&#8221; he replied,
+at last.</p>
+<p>With a sudden impulse the old impostor lurched
+round, opened a box, drew out a roll, and threw it on
+the table.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s got to be known sometime,&#8221; he said, &#8220;and you&#8217;ll
+be my lawyer when I&#8217;m put into the ground&mdash;you&#8217;re
+clever. They call me a quack. Malpractice&mdash;bah!
+There&#8217;s my diploma&mdash;James Clifton Welldon. Right
+enough, isn&#8217;t it?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Rawley was petrified. He knew the forgotten story
+of James Clifton Welldon, the specialist, turned gambler,
+who had almost ruined his own brother&mdash;the father
+of Dan and Diana&mdash;at cards and dice, and had then
+ruined himself and disappeared. Here, where his brother
+had died, he had come years ago and practised medicine
+as a quack.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, there&#8217;s plenty of proof, if it&#8217;s wanted!&#8221; he said.
+&#8220;I&#8217;ve got it here.&#8221; He tapped the box behind him.
+&#8220;Why did I do it? Because it&#8217;s my way. And you&#8217;re
+going to marry my niece, and&#8217;ll have it all some day.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_352' name='page_352'></a>352</span>
+But not till I&#8217;ve finished with it&mdash;not unless you win
+it from me at dice or cards.... But no&#8221;&mdash;something
+human came into the old, degenerate face&mdash;&#8220;no more
+gambling for the man that&#8217;s to marry Diana. There&#8217;s
+a wonder and a beauty!&#8221; He chuckled to himself.
+&#8220;She&#8217;ll be rich when I&#8217;ve done with it. You&#8217;re a lucky
+man&mdash;ay, you&#8217;re lucky.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Rawley was about to tell the old man what the two
+thousand dollars was for, but a fresh wave of repugnance
+passed over him, and, hastily drinking another dipperful
+of water, he opened the door. He looked back.
+The old man was crouching forward, lapping milk from
+the great bowl, his beard dripping. In disgust he swung
+round again. The fresh, clear air caught his face.</p>
+<p>With a gasp of relief he stepped out into the night,
+closing the door behind him.</p>
+<!-- generated by ppgen.rb version: 2.27 -->
+<!-- timestamp: Sun Oct 12 13:48:24 -0600 2008 -->
+
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+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Northern Lights, by Gilbert Parker
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+</body>
+</html>
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@@ -0,0 +1,12009 @@
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Northern Lights, by Gilbert Parker
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Northern Lights
+
+Author: Gilbert Parker
+
+Release Date: October 12, 2008 [EBook #26905]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK NORTHERN LIGHTS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: BUT NOW HE HEARD A VOICE ABOVE HIM. IT WAS
+HER VOICE See page 353 ]
+
+
+
+
+NORTHERN LIGHTS
+
+BY
+GILBERT PARKER
+
+ILLUSTRATED
+
+HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
+NEW YORK AND LONDON
+MCMIX
+
+
+
+
+Books by
+GILBERT PARKER
+
+Northern Lights. Illustrated      Post 8vo $1.50
+The Weavers. Illustrated          Post 8vo 1.50
+The Right of Way. Illustrated     Post 8vo 1.50
+A Ladder of Swords. Illustrated   Post 8vo 1.50
+
+Pierre and His People.
+Mrs. Falchion.
+The Trespasser.
+The Translation of a Savage.
+The Trail of the Sword.
+When Valmond Came to Pontiac.
+An Adventurer of the North.
+The Seats of the Mighty.
+The Pomp of the Lavilettes.
+The Battle of the Strong.
+The Lane that Had No Turning.
+Donovan Pasha.
+Old Quebec (In collaboration with C. G. Bryan).
+Round the Compass in Australia.
+A Lover's Diary.
+Embers (Private Publication only).
+
+Copyright, 1909, by HARPER & BROTHERS.
+All rights reserved.
+Published September, 1909.
+
+
+
+
+TO
+ISHBEL, COUNTESS OF ABERDEEN
+A TRUE FRIEND
+OF THE GREAT DOMINION
+
+
+
+
+NOTE
+
+The tales in this book belong to two different epochs in the life of the
+Far West. The first five are reminiscent of "border days and deeds"--of
+days before the great railway was built which changed a waste into a
+fertile field of civilization. The remaining stories cover the period
+passed since the Royal Northwest Mounted Police and the Pullman Car first
+startled the early pioneer, and sent him into the land of the farther
+North or drew him into the quiet circle of civic routine and humdrum
+occupation.
+
+G. P.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+CHAPTER                               PAGE
+A Lodge in the Wilderness                1
+Once at Red Man's River                 21
+The Stroke of the Hour                  38
+Buckmaster's Boy                        57
+To-Morrow                               72
+Qu'appelle                              94
+The Stake and the Plumb-Line           118
+When the Swallows Homeward Fly         160
+George's Wife                          174
+Marcile                                196
+A Man, a Famine, and a Heathen Boy     216
+The Healing Springs and the Pioneers   234
+The Little Widow of Jansen             253
+Watching The Rise of Orion             272
+The Error of the Day                   295
+The Whisperer                          314
+As Deep as the Sea                     334
+
+
+
+
+ILLUSTRATIONS
+
+                                                    PAGE
+
+BUT NOW HE HEARD A VOICE ABOVE HIM. IT WAS
+HER VOICE                                   Frontispiece
+
+THE BIRD SHE HEARD IN THE NIGHT WAS
+CALLING IN HIS EARS NOW                               14
+
+THE START ON THE NORTH TRAIL                          36
+
+SHE SWAYED AND FELL FAINTING AT THE
+FEET OF BA'TISTE                                      56
+
+LITTLE BY LITTLE THEY DREW TO THE EDGE
+OF THE ROCK                                           70
+
+"THEY SHOT ME AN' HURT ME"                            74
+
+"PAULINE," HE SAID, FEEBLY, AND
+FAINTED IN HER ARMS                                  114
+
+THE OLD MAN SHOOK HIS HEAD. THOUGH
+NOT WITH UNDERSTANDING                               166
+
+GEORGE'S WIFE                                        184
+
+THEN HAD HAPPENED THE REAL EVENT OF
+HIS LIFE                                             198
+
+THE FAITH HEALER                                     236
+
+"AS PURTY A WOMAN, TOO--AS PURTY AND
+AS STRAIGHT BEWHILES"                                256
+
+"IF YOU KILL ME, YOU WILL NEVER GET
+AWAY FROM KOWATIN ALIVE"                             312
+
+FOR MINUTES THE STRUGGLE CONTINUED                   332
+
+"OH, ISN'T IT ALL WORTH LIVING?"
+SHE SAID                                             342
+
+
+
+
+NORTHERN LIGHTS
+
+
+
+
+A LODGE IN THE WILDERNESS
+
+
+"Hai-yai, so bright a day, so clear!" said Mitiahwe as she entered the big
+lodge and laid upon a wide, low couch, covered with soft skins, the fur of
+a grizzly which had fallen to her man's rifle. "_Hai-yai_, I wish it would
+last forever--so sweet!" she added, smoothing the fur lingeringly and
+showing her teeth in a smile.
+
+"There will come a great storm, Mitiahwe. See, the birds go south so
+soon," responded a deep voice from a corner by the doorway.
+
+The young Indian wife turned quickly, and, in a defiant, fantastic
+mood--or was it the inward cry against an impending fate, the tragic
+future of those who will not see, because to see is to suffer?--she made
+some quaint, odd motions of the body which belonged to a mysterious dance
+of her tribe, and, with flashing eyes, challenged the comely old woman
+seated on a pile of deer-skins.
+
+"It is morning, and the day will last forever," she said, nonchalantly,
+but her eyes suddenly took on a far-away look, half apprehensive, half
+wondering. The birds were indeed going south very soon, yet had there ever
+been so exquisite an autumn as this, had her man ever had so wonderful a
+trade, her man with the brown hair, blue eyes, and fair, strong face?
+
+"The birds go south, but the hunters and buffalo still go north," Mitiahwe
+urged, searchingly, looking hard at her mother--Oanita, the Swift Wing.
+
+"My dream said that the winter will be dark and lonely, that the ice will
+be thick, the snow deep, and that many hearts will be sick because of the
+black days and the hunger that sickens the heart," answered Swift Wing.
+
+Mitiahwe looked into Swift Wing's dark eyes, and an anger came upon her.
+"The hearts of cowards will freeze," she rejoined, "and to those that will
+not see the sun the world will be dark," she added. Then suddenly she
+remembered to whom she was speaking, and a flood of feeling ran through
+her; for Swift Wing had cherished her like a fledgling in the nest till
+her young white man came from "down East." Her heart had leaped up at
+sight of him, and she had turned to him from all the young men of her
+tribe, waiting in a kind of mist till he, at last, had spoken to her
+mother, and then one evening, her shawl over her head, she had come along
+to his lodge.
+
+A thousand times as the four years passed by she had thought how good it
+was that she had become his wife--the young white man's wife, rather than
+the wife of Breaking Rock, son of White Buffalo, the chief, who had four
+hundred horses and a face that would have made winter and sour days for
+her. Now and then Breaking Rock came and stood before the lodge, a
+distance off, and stayed there hour after hour, and once or twice he came
+when her man was with her; but nothing could be done, for earth and air
+and space were common to them all, and there was no offence in Breaking
+Rock gazing at the lodge where Mitiahwe lived. Yet it seemed as though
+Breaking Rock was waiting--waiting and hoping. That was the impression
+made upon all who saw him, and even old White Buffalo, the chief, shook
+his head gloomily when he saw Breaking Rock, his son, staring at the big
+lodge which was so full of happiness, and so full also of many luxuries
+never before seen at a trading-post on the Koonee River. The father of
+Mitiahwe had been chief, but because his three sons had been killed in
+battle the chieftainship had come to White Buffalo, who was of the same
+blood and family. There were those who said that Mitiahwe should have been
+chieftainess; but neither she nor her mother would ever listen to this,
+and so White Buffalo and the tribe loved Mitiahwe because of her modesty
+and goodness. She was even more to White Buffalo than Breaking Rock, and
+he had been glad that Dingan the white man--Long Hand he was called--had
+taken Mitiahwe for his woman. Yet behind this gladness of White Buffalo,
+and that of Swift Wing, and behind the silent watchfulness of Breaking
+Rock, there was a thought which must ever come when a white man mates with
+an Indian maid, without priest or preacher, or writing, or book, or bond.
+
+Yet four years had gone; and all the tribe, and all who came and went,
+half-breeds, traders, and other tribes, remarked how happy was the white
+man with his Indian wife. They never saw anything but light in the eyes of
+Mitiahwe, nor did the old women of the tribe who scanned her face as she
+came and went, and watched and waited too for what never came--not even
+after four years.
+
+Mitiahwe had been so happy that she had not really missed what never came;
+though the desire to have something in her arms which was part of them
+both had flushed up in her veins at times, and made her restless till her
+man had come home again. Then she had forgotten the unseen for the seen,
+and was happy that they two were alone together--that was the joy of it
+all, so much alone together; for Swift Wing did not live with them, and,
+like Breaking Rock, she watched her daughter's life, standing afar off,
+since it was the unwritten law of the tribe that the wife's mother must
+not cross the path or enter the home of her daughter's husband. But at
+last Dingan had broken through this custom, and insisted that Swift Wing
+should be with her daughter when he was away from home, as now on this
+wonderful autumn morning, when Mitiahwe had been singing to the Sun, to
+which she prayed for her man and for everlasting days with him.
+
+She had spoken angrily but now, because her soul sharply resented the
+challenge to her happiness which her mother had been making. It was her
+own eyes that refused to see the cloud which the sage and bereaved woman
+had seen and conveyed in images and figures of speech natural to the
+Indian mind.
+
+"_Hai-yai_," she said now, with a strange, touching sigh breathing in the
+words, "you are right, my mother, and a dream is a dream; also, if it be
+dreamed three times, then is it to be followed, and it is true. You have
+lived long, and your dreams are of the Sun and the Spirit." She shook a
+little as she laid her hand on a buckskin coat of her man hanging by the
+lodge door; then she steadied herself again, and gazed earnestly into her
+mother's eyes. "Have all your dreams come true, my mother?" she asked,
+with a hungering heart.
+
+"There was the dream that came out of the dark five times, when your
+father went against the Crees, and was wounded, and crawled away into the
+hills, and all our warriors fled--they were but a handful, and the Crees
+like a young forest in number! I went with my dream, and found him after
+many days, and it was after that you were born, my youngest and my last.
+There was also"--her eyes almost closed, and the needle and thread she
+held lay still in her lap--"when two of your brothers were killed in the
+drive of the buffalo. Did I not see it all in my dream, and follow after
+them to take them to my heart? And when your sister was carried off, was
+it not my dream which saw the trail, so that we brought her back again to
+die in peace, her eyes seeing the Lodge whither she was going, open to
+her, and the Sun, the Father, giving her light and promise--for she had
+wounded herself to die that the thief who stole her should leave her to
+herself! Behold, my daughter, these dreams have I had, and others; and I
+have lived long and have seen the bright day break into storm, and the
+herds flee into the far hills where none could follow, and hunger come,
+and--"
+
+"_Hai-yo_, see, the birds flying south," said the girl, with a gesture
+toward the cloudless sky. "Never since I lived have they gone south so
+soon." Again she shuddered slightly, then she spoke slowly: "I also have
+dreamed, and I will follow my dream. I dreamed"--she knelt down beside her
+mother and rested her hands in her mother's lap--"I dreamed that there was
+a wall of hills dark and heavy and far away, and that whenever my eyes
+looked at them they burned with tears; and yet I looked and looked, till
+my heart was like lead in my breast; and I turned from them to the rivers
+and the plains that I loved. But a voice kept calling to me, 'Come, come!
+Beyond the hills is a happy land. The trail is hard, and your feet will
+bleed, but beyond is the happy land.' And I would not go for the voice
+that spoke, and at last there came an old man in my dream and spoke to me
+kindly, and said, 'Come with me, and I will show thee the way over the
+hills to the Lodge where thou shalt find what thou hast lost!' And I said
+to him, 'I have lost nothing'; and I would not go. Twice I dreamed this
+dream, and twice the old man came, and three times I dreamed it; and then
+I spoke angrily to him, as but now I did to thee; and behold he changed
+before my eyes, and I saw that he was now become--" She stopped short, and
+buried her face in her hands for a moment, then recovered herself.
+"Breaking Rock it was I saw before me, and I cried out and fled. Then I
+waked with a cry, but my man was beside me, and his arm was round my neck;
+and this dream, is it not a foolish dream, my mother?"
+
+The old woman sat silent, clasping the hands of her daughter firmly, and
+looking out of the wide doorway toward the trees that fringed the river;
+and presently, as she looked, her face changed and grew pinched all at
+once, and Mitiahwe, looking at her, turned a startled face toward the
+river also.
+
+"Breaking Rock!" she said, in alarm, and got to her feet quickly.
+
+Breaking Rock stood for a moment looking toward the lodge, then came
+slowly forward to them. Never in all the four years had he approached this
+lodge of Mitiahwe, who, the daughter of a chief, should have married
+himself, the son of a chief! Slowly, but with long, slouching stride,
+Breaking Rock came nearer. The two women watched him without speaking.
+Instinctively they knew that he brought news, that something had happened;
+yet Mitiahwe felt at her belt for what no Indian girl would be without;
+and this one was a gift from her man on the anniversary of the day she
+first came to his lodge.
+
+Breaking Rock was at the door now, his beady eyes fixed on Mitiahwe's, his
+figure jerked to its full height, which made him, even then, two inches
+less than Long Hand. He spoke in a loud voice:
+
+"The last boat this year goes down the river to-morrow. Long Hand, your
+man, is going to his people. He will not come back. He has had enough of
+the Blackfoot woman. You will see him no more." He waved a hand to the
+sky. "The birds are going south. A hard winter is coming quick. You will
+be alone. Breaking Rock is rich. He has five hundred horses. Your man is
+going to his own people. Let him go. He is no man. It is four years, and
+still there are but two in your lodge. How!"
+
+He swung on his heel with a chuckle in his throat, for he thought he had
+said a good thing, and that in truth he was worth twenty white men. His
+quick ear caught a movement behind him, however, and he saw the girl
+spring from the lodge-door, something flashing from her belt. But now the
+mother's arms were round her, with cries of protest, and Breaking Rock,
+with another laugh, slipped away softly toward the river.
+
+"That is good," he muttered. "She will kill him, perhaps, when she goes to
+him. She will go, but he will not stay. I have heard."
+
+As he disappeared among the trees, Mitiahwe disengaged herself from her
+mother's arms, went slowly back into the lodge, and sat down on the great
+couch where for so many moons she had lain with her man beside her.
+
+Her mother watched her closely, though she moved about doing little
+things. She was trying to think what she would have done if such a thing
+had happened to her, if her man had been going to leave her. She assumed
+that Dingan would leave Mitiahwe, for he would hear the voices of his
+people calling far away, even as the red man who went East into the great
+cities heard the prairies and the mountains and the rivers and his own
+people calling, and came back, and put off the clothes of civilization,
+and donned his buckskins again, and sat in the Medicine Man's tent, and
+heard the spirits speak to him through the mist and smoke of the sacred
+fire. When Swift Wing first gave her daughter to the white man she foresaw
+the danger now at hand, but this was the tribute of the lower race to the
+higher, and--who could tell? White men had left their Indian wives, but
+had come back again, and forever renounced the life of their own nations,
+and become great chiefs, teaching useful things to their adopted people,
+bringing up their children as tribesmen--bringing up their children! There
+it was, the thing which called them back, the bright-eyed children, with
+the color of the brown prairie in their faces, and their brains so sharp
+and strong. But here was no child to call Dingan back, only the eloquent,
+brave, sweet face of Mitiahwe..... If he went! Would he go? Was he going?
+And now that Mitiahwe had been told that he would go, what would she do?
+In her belt was--but, no, that would be worse than all, and she would lose
+Mitiahwe, her last child, as she had lost so many others. What would she
+herself do if she were in Mitiahwe's place? Ah, she would make him stay
+somehow--by truth or by falsehood; by the whispered story in the long
+night; by her head upon his knee before the lodge-fire, and her eyes fixed
+on his, luring him, as the dream lures the dreamer into the far trail, to
+find the Sun's hunting-ground, where the plains are filled with the deer
+and the buffalo and the wild horse; by the smell of the cooking-pot and
+the favorite spiced drink in the morning; by the child that ran to him
+with his bow and arrows and the cry of the hunter--but there was no child;
+she had forgotten. She was always recalling her own happy early life with
+her man, and the clean-faced papooses that crowded round his knee--one
+wife and many children, and the old Harvester of the Years reaping them so
+fast, till the children stood up as tall as their father and chief. That
+was long ago, and she had had her share--twenty-five years of happiness;
+but Mitiahwe had had only four. She looked at Mitiahwe, standing still for
+a moment like one rapt, then suddenly she gave a little cry. Something had
+come into her mind, some solution of the problem, and she ran and stooped
+over the girl and put both hands on her head.
+
+"Mitiahwe, heart's blood of mine," she said, "the birds go south, but they
+return. What matter if they go so soon, if they return soon. If the Sun
+wills that the winter be dark, and he sends the Coldmaker to close the
+rivers and drive the wild ones far from the arrow and the gun, yet he may
+be sorry, and send a second summer--has it not been so, and the Coldmaker
+has hurried away--away! The birds go south, but they will return,
+Mitiahwe."
+
+"I heard a cry in the night while my man slept," Mitiahwe answered,
+looking straight before her, "and it was like the cry of a bird--calling,
+calling, calling."
+
+"But he did not hear--he was asleep beside Mitiahwe. If he did not wake,
+surely it was good-luck. Thy breath upon his face kept him sleeping.
+Surely it was good-luck to Mitiahwe that he did not hear."
+
+She was smiling a little now, for she had thought of a thing which would,
+perhaps, keep the man here in this lodge in the wilderness; but the time
+to speak of it was not yet. She must wait and see.
+
+Suddenly Mitiahwe got to her feet with a spring, and a light in her eyes.
+"_Hai-yai!_" she said with plaintive smiling, ran to a corner of the
+lodge, and from a leather bag drew forth a horseshoe and looked at it,
+murmuring to herself.
+
+The old woman gazed at her wonderingly. "What is it, Mitiahwe?" she
+asked.
+
+"It is good-luck. So my man has said. It is the way of his people. It is
+put over the door, and if a dream come it is a good dream; and if a bad
+thing come, it will not enter; and if the heart prays for a thing hid from
+all the world, then it brings good-luck. _Hai-yai!_ I will put it over the
+door, and then--" All at once her hand dropped to her side, as though some
+terrible thought had come to her, and, sinking to the floor, she rocked
+her body backward and forward for a time, sobbing. But presently she got
+to her feet again, and, going to the door of the lodge, fastened the
+horseshoe above it with a great needle and a string of buckskin.
+
+"O great Sun," she prayed, "have pity on me and save me. I cannot live
+alone. I am only a Blackfoot wife; I am not blood of his blood. Give, O
+great One, blood of his blood, bone of his bone, soul of his soul, that he
+will say, 'This is mine, body of my body,' and he will hear the cry and
+will stay. O great Sun, pity me!"
+
+The old woman's heart beat faster as she listened. The same thought was in
+the mind of both. If there were but a child, bone of his bone, then
+perhaps he would not go; or, if he went, then surely he would return when
+he heard his papoose calling in the lodge in the wilderness.
+
+As Mitiahwe turned to her, a strange burning light in her eyes, Swift Wing
+said: "It is good. The white man's Medicine for a white man's wife. But if
+there were the red man's Medicine too--"
+
+"What is the red man's Medicine?" asked the young wife, as she smoothed
+her hair, put a string of bright beads around her neck, and wound a red
+sash round her waist.
+
+The old woman shook her head, a curious, half-mystic light in her eyes,
+her body drawn up to its full height, as though waiting for something. "It
+is an old Medicine. It is of winters ago as many as the hairs of the head.
+I have forgotten almost, but it was a great Medicine when there were no
+white men in the land. And so it was that to every woman's breast there
+hung a papoose, and every woman had her man, and the red men were like
+leaves in the forest--but it was a winter of winters ago, and the Medicine
+Men have forgotten; and thou hast no child! When Long Hand comes, what
+will Mitiahwe say to him?"
+
+Mitiahwe's eyes were determined, her face was set, she flushed deeply,
+then the color fled. "What my mother would say, I will say. Shall the
+white man's Medicine fail? If I wish it, then it will be so; and I will
+say so."
+
+"But if the white man's Medicine fail?" Swift Wing made a gesture toward
+the door where the horseshoe hung. "It is Medicine for a white man, will
+it be Medicine for an Indian?"
+
+"Am I not a white man's wife?"
+
+"But if there were the Sun Medicine also, the Medicine of the days long
+ago?"
+
+"Tell me. If you remember--_Kai!_ but you do remember--I see it in your
+face. Tell me, and I will make that Medicine also, my mother."
+
+"To-morrow, if I remember it--I will think, and if I remember it,
+to-morrow I will tell you, my heart's blood. Maybe my dream will come to
+me and tell me. Then, even after all these years a papoose--"
+
+"But the boat will go at dawn to-morrow, and if he go also--"
+
+"Mitiahwe is young, her body is warm, her eyes are bright, the songs she
+sings, her tongue--if these keep him not, and the Voice calls him still to
+go, then still Mitiahwe shall whisper, and tell him--"
+
+"_Hai-yo_--hush," said the girl, and trembled a little, and put both hands
+on her mother's mouth.
+
+For a moment she stood so, then with an exclamation suddenly turned and
+ran through the doorway, and sped toward the river, and into the path
+which would take her to the post, where her man traded with the Indians
+and had made much money during the past six years, so that he could have
+had a thousand horses and ten lodges like that she had just left. The
+distance between the lodge and the post was no more than a mile, but
+Mitiahwe made a detour, and approached it from behind, where she could not
+be seen. Darkness was gathering now, and she could see the glimmer of the
+light of lamps through the windows, and as the doors opened and shut. No
+one had seen her approach, and she stole through a door which was open at
+the rear of the warehousing room, and went quickly to another door leading
+into the shop. There was a crack through which she could see, and she
+could hear all that was said. As she came she had seen Indians gliding
+through the woods with their purchases, and now the shop was clearing
+fast, in response to the urging of Dingan and his partner, a Scotch
+half-breed. It was evident that Dingan was at once abstracted and
+excited.
+
+Presently only two visitors were left--a French half-breed called
+Lablache, a swaggering, vicious fellow, and the captain of the steamer
+_Ste. Anne_, which was to make its last trip south in the morning--even
+now it would have to break its way through the young ice.
+
+Dingan's partner dropped a bar across the door of the shop, and the four
+men gathered about the fire. For a time no one spoke. At last the captain
+of the _Ste. Anne_ said: "It's a great chance, Dingan. You'll be in
+civilization again, and in a rising town of white people--Groise'll be a
+city in five years, and you can grow up and grow rich with the place. The
+Company asked me to lay it all before you, and Lablache here will buy out
+your share of the business, at whatever your partner and you prove it's
+worth. You're young; you've got everything before you. You've made a name
+out here for being the best trader west of the Great Lakes, and now's your
+time. It's none of my affair, of course, but I like to carry through what
+I'm set to do, and the Company said, 'You bring Dingan back with you. The
+place is waiting for him, and it can't wait longer than the last boat
+down.' You're ready to step in when he steps out, ain't you, Lablache?"
+
+Lablache shook back his long hair, and rolled about in his pride. "I give
+him cash for his share to-night--some one is behin' me, _sacre_, yes! It
+is worth so much, I pay and step in--I take the place over. I take half
+the business here, and I work with Dingan's partner. I take your horses,
+Dingan, I take your lodge, I take all in your lodge--_everyt'ing_."
+
+His eyes glistened, and a red spot came to each cheek as he leaned
+forward. At his last word Dingan, who had been standing abstractedly
+listening as it were, swung round on him with a muttered oath, and the
+skin of his face appeared to tighten. Watching through the crack of the
+door, Mitiahwe saw the look she knew well, though it had never been turned
+on her, and her heart beat faster. It was a look that came into Dingan's
+face whenever Breaking Rock crossed his path, or when one or two other
+names were mentioned in his presence, for they were names of men who had
+spoken of Mitiahwe lightly, and had attempted to be jocular about her.
+
+As Mitiahwe looked at him, now unknown to himself, she was conscious of
+what that last word of Lablache's meant. _Everyt'ing_ meant herself.
+Lablache--who had neither the good qualities of the white man nor the
+Indian, but who had the brains of the one and the subtlety of the other,
+and whose only virtue was that he was a successful trader, though he
+looked like a mere woodsman, with rings in his ears, gayly decorated
+buckskin coat and moccasins, and a furtive smile always on his lips!
+_Everyt'ing!_ Her blood ran cold at the thought of dropping the
+lodge-curtain upon this man and herself alone. For no other man than
+Dingan had her blood run faster, and he had made her life blossom. She had
+seen in many a half-breed's and in many an Indian's face the look which
+was now in that of Lablache, and her fingers gripped softly the thing in
+her belt that had flashed out on Breaking Rock such a short while ago. As
+she looked, it seemed for a moment as though Dingan would open the door
+and throw Lablache out, for in quick reflection his eyes ran from the man
+to the wooden bar across the door.
+
+"You'll talk of the shop, and the shop only, Lablache," he said, grimly.
+"I'm not huckstering my home, and I'd choose the buyer if I was selling.
+My lodge ain't to be bought, nor _anything_ in it--not even the broom to
+keep it clean of any half-breeds that'd enter it without leave."
+
+There was malice in the words, but there was greater malice in the tone,
+and Lablache, who was bent on getting the business, swallowed his ugly
+wrath, and determined that, if he got the business, he would get the lodge
+also in due time; for Dingan, if he went, would not take the lodge--or the
+woman--with him; and Dingan was not fool enough to stay when he could go
+to Groise to a sure fortune.
+
+The captain of the _Ste. Anne_ again spoke. "There's another thing the
+Company said, Dingan. You needn't go to Groise, not at once. You can take
+a month and visit your folks down East, and lay in a stock of
+home-feelings before you settle down at Groise for good. They was fair
+when I put it to them that you'd mebbe want to do that. 'You tell Dingan,'
+they said, 'that he can have the month glad and grateful, and a free
+ticket on the railway back and forth. He can have it at once,' they
+said."
+
+Watching, Mitiahwe could see her man's face brighten, and take on a look
+of longing at this suggestion; and it seemed to her that the bird she
+heard in the night was calling in his ears now. Her eyes went blind for a
+moment.
+
+"The game is with you, Dingan. All the cards are in your hands; you'll
+never get such another chance again; and you're only thirty," said the
+captain.
+
+[Illustration: THE BIRD SHE HEARD IN THE NIGHT WAS CALLING IN HIS
+EARS NOW]
+
+"I wish they'd ask me," said Dingan's partner, with a sigh, as he looked
+at Lablache. "I want my chance bad, though we've done well here--good
+gosh, yes, all through Dingan."
+
+"The winters, they go queeck in Groise," said Lablache. "It is life all
+the time, trade all the time, plenty to do and see--and a _bon fortune_ to
+make, bagosh!"
+
+"Your old home was in Nova Scotia, wasn't it, Dingan?" asked the captain,
+in a low voice. "I kem from Connecticut, and I was East to my village las'
+year. It was good, seein' all my old friends again; but I kem back
+content, I kem back full of home-feelin's and content. You'll like the
+trip, Dingan. It'll do you good."
+
+Dingan drew himself up with a start. "All right. I guess I'll do it. Let's
+figure up again," he said to his partner, with a reckless air.
+
+With a smothered cry Mitiahwe turned and fled into the darkness, and back
+to the lodge. The lodge was empty. She threw herself upon the great couch
+in an agony of despair.
+
+A half-hour went by. Then she rose, and began to prepare supper. Her face
+was aflame, her manner was determined, and once or twice her hand went to
+her belt, as though to assure herself of something.
+
+Never had the lodge looked so bright and cheerful; never had she prepared
+so appetizing a supper; never had the great couch seemed so soft and rich
+with furs, so homelike and so inviting after a long day's work. Never had
+Mitiahwe seemed so good to look at, so graceful and alert and
+refined--suffering does its work even in the wild woods, with "wild
+people." Never had the lodge such an air of welcome and peace and home as
+to-night; and so Dingan thought as he drew aside the wide curtains of
+deerskin and entered.
+
+Mitiahwe was bending over the fire, and appeared not to hear him.
+"Mitiahwe," he said, gently. She was singing to herself, to an Indian air,
+the words of a song Dingan had taught her:
+
+      "Open the door: cold is the night, and my feet are heavy,
+      Heap up the fire, scatter upon it the cones and the scented
+       leaves;
+      Spread the soft robe on the couch for the chief that
+       returns,
+      Bring forth the cup of remembrance--"
+
+It was like a low recitative, and it had a plaintive cadence, as of a dove
+that mourned.
+
+"Mitiahwe," he said, in a louder voice, but with a break in it, too; for
+it all rushed upon him, all that she had been to him--all that had made
+the great West glow with life, made the air sweeter, the grass greener,
+the trees more companionable and human: who it was that had given the
+waste places a voice. Yet--yet, there were his own people in the East,
+there was another life waiting for him, there was the life of ambition and
+wealth, and, and home--and children.
+
+His eyes were misty as she turned to him with a little cry of surprise,
+how much natural and how much assumed--for she had heard him enter--it
+would have been hard to say. She was a woman, and therefore the daughter
+of pretence even when most real. He caught her by both arms as she shyly
+but eagerly came to him. "Good girl, good little girl," he said. He looked
+round him. "Well, I've never seen our lodge look nicer than it does
+to-night; and the fire, and the pot on the fire, and the smell of the
+pine-cones, and the cedar-boughs, and the skins, and--"
+
+"And everything," she said, with a queer little laugh, as she moved away
+again to turn the steaks on the fire.
+
+Everything! He started at the word. It was so strange that she should use
+it by accident, when but a little while ago he had been ready to choke the
+wind out of a man's body for using it concerning herself.
+
+It stunned him for a moment, for the West, and the life apart from the
+world of cities, had given him superstition, like that of the Indians,
+whose life he had made his own.
+
+Herself!--to leave her here, who had been so much to him? As true as the
+sun she worshipped, her eyes had never lingered on another man since she
+came to his lodge; and, to her mind, she was as truly sacredly married to
+him as though a thousand priests had spoken, or a thousand Medicine Men
+had made their incantations. She was his woman and he was her man. As he
+chatted to her, telling her of much that he had done that day, and
+wondering how he could tell her of _all_ he had done, he kept looking
+round the lodge, his eye resting on this or that; and everything had its
+own personal history, had become part of their lodge-life, because it had
+a use as between him and her, and not a conventional domestic place. Every
+skin, every utensil, every pitcher and bowl and pot and curtain had been
+with them at one time or another when it became of importance and renowned
+in the story of their days and deeds.
+
+How could he break it to her--that he was going to visit his own people,
+and that she must be alone with her mother all winter, to await his return
+in the spring? His return? As he watched her sitting beside him, helping
+him to his favorite dish, the close, companionable trust and gentleness of
+her, her exquisite cleanness and grace in his eyes, he asked himself if,
+after all, it was not true that he would return in the spring. The years
+had passed without his seriously thinking of this inevitable day. He had
+put it off and off, content to live each hour as it came and take no real
+thought for the future; and yet, behind all was the warning fact that he
+must go one day, and that Mitiahwe could not go with him. Her mother must
+have known that when she let Mitiahwe come to him. Of course; and, after
+all, she would find another mate, a better mate, one of her own people.
+
+But her hand was in his now, and it was small and very warm, and suddenly
+he shook with anger at the thought of one like Breaking Rock taking her to
+his wigwam; or Lablache--this roused him to an inward fury; and Mitiahwe
+saw and guessed the struggle that was going on in him, and she leaned her
+head against his shoulder, and once she raised his hand to her lips, and
+said, "My chief!"
+
+Then his face cleared again, and she got him his pipe and filled it, and
+held a coal to light it; and, as the smoke curled up, and he leaned back
+contentedly for the moment, she went to the door, drew open the curtains,
+and, stepping outside, raised her eyes to the horseshoe. Then she said
+softly to the sky: "O Sun, great Father, have pity on me, for I love him,
+and would keep him. And give me bone of his bone, and one to nurse at my
+breast that is of him. O Sun, pity me this night, and be near me when I
+speak to him, and hear what I say."
+
+"What are you doing out there, Mitiahwe?" Dingan cried; and when she
+entered again he beckoned her to him. "What was it you were saying? Who
+were you speaking to?" he asked. "I heard your voice."
+
+"I was thanking the Sun for his goodness to me. I was speaking for the
+thing that is in my heart, that is life of my life," she added, vaguely.
+
+"Well, I have something to say to you, little girl," he said, with an
+effort.
+
+She remained erect before him waiting for the blow--outwardly calm,
+inwardly crying out in pain. "Do you think you could stand a little
+parting?" he asked, reaching out and touching her shoulder.
+
+"I have been alone before--for five days," she answered, quietly.
+
+"But it must be longer this time."
+
+"How long?" she asked, with eyes fixed on his. "If it is more than a week,
+I will go too."
+
+"It is longer than a month," he said.
+
+"Then I will go."
+
+"I am going to see my people," he faltered.
+
+"By the _Ste. Anne_?"
+
+He nodded. "It is the last chance this year; but I will come back--in the
+spring."
+
+As he said it he saw her shrink, and his heart smote him. Four years such
+as few men ever spent, and all the luck had been with him, and the West
+had got into his bones! The quiet, starry nights, the wonderful days, the
+hunt, the long journeys, the life free of care, and the warm lodge; and,
+here, the great couch--ah, the cheek pressed to his, the lips that
+whispered at his ear, the smooth arm round his neck. It all rushed upon
+him now. His people! His people in the East, who had thwarted his youth,
+vexed and cramped him, saw only evil in his widening desires, and threw
+him over when he came out West--the scallywag, they called him, who had
+never wronged a man--or a woman? Never--wronged--a--woman? The question
+sprang to his lips now. Suddenly he saw it all in a new light. White or
+brown or red, this heart and soul and body before him were all his, sacred
+to him; he was in very truth her "chief."
+
+Untutored as she was, she read him, felt what was going on in him. She saw
+the tears spring to his eyes. Then, coming close to him, she said, softly,
+slowly: "I must go with you if you go, because you must be with me
+when--Oh, _hai-yai_, my chief, shall we go from here? Here in this lodge
+wilt thou be with thine own people--thine own, thou and I--_and thine to
+come_." The great passion in her heart made the lie seem very truth.
+
+With a cry he got to his feet, and stood staring at her for a moment,
+scarcely comprehending; then suddenly he clasped her in his arms.
+
+"Mitiahwe--Mitiahwe, oh, my little girl!" he cried. "You and me--and our
+own--our own people!" Kissing her, he drew her down beside him on the
+couch. "Tell me again--is it so at last?" he said, and she whispered in
+his ear once more.
+
+In the middle of the night he said to her, "Some day, perhaps, we will go
+East--some day, perhaps."
+
+"But now?" she asked, softly.
+
+"Not now--not if I know it," he answered. "I've got my heart nailed to the
+door of this lodge."
+
+As he slept she got quietly out, and, going to the door of the lodge,
+reached up a hand and touched the horseshoe.
+
+"Be good Medicine to me," she said. Then she prayed. "O Sun, pity me, that
+it may be as I have said to him. Oh, pity me, great Father!"
+
+In the days to come Swift Wing said that it was her Medicine--when her
+hand was burned to the wrist in the dark ritual she had performed with the
+Medicine Man the night that Mitiahwe fought for her man; but Mitiahwe said
+it was her Medicine, the horseshoe, which brought one of Dingan's own
+people to the lodge--a little girl with Mitiahwe's eyes and form and her
+father's face. Truth has many mysteries, and the faith of the woman was
+great; and so it was that, to the long end, Mitiahwe kept her man. But
+truly she was altogether a woman, and had good-fortune.
+
+
+
+
+ONCE AT RED MAN'S RIVER
+
+
+"It's got to be settled to-night, Nance, This game is up here, up forever.
+The redcoat police from Ottawa are coming, and they'll soon be roostin' in
+this post, the Injuns are goin', the buffaloes are most gone, and the fur
+trade's dead in these parts. D'ye see?"
+
+The woman did not answer the big, broad-shouldered man bending over her,
+but remained looking into the fire with wide, abstracted eyes, and a face
+somewhat set.
+
+"You and your brother Bantry's got to go. This store ain't worth a cent
+now. The Hudson's Bay Company'll come along with the redcoats, and they'll
+set up a nice little Sunday-school business here for what they call
+'agricultural settlers.' There'll be a railway, and the Yankees'll send up
+their marshals to work with the redcoats on the border, and--"
+
+"And the days of smuggling will be over," put in the girl, in a low voice.
+"No more bull-whackers and mule-skinners 'whooping-it up'; no more
+Blackfeet and Piegans drinking alcohol and water, and cutting one
+anothers' throats. A nice, quiet time coming on the border Abe, eh?"
+
+The man looked at her queerly. She was not prone to sarcasm, she had not
+been given to sentimentalism in the past; she had taken the border-life as
+it was, had looked it straight between the eyes. She had lived up to it,
+or down to it, without any fuss, as good as any man in any phase of the
+life, and the only white woman in this whole West country. It was not in
+the words, but in the tone, that Abe Hawley found something unusual and
+defamatory.
+
+"Why, gol darn it, Nance, what's got into you? You bin a man out West, as
+good a pioneer as ever was on the border. But now you don't sound friendly
+to what's been the game out here, and to all of us that've been risking
+our lives to get a livin'."
+
+"What did I say?" asked the girl, unmoved.
+
+"It ain't what you said, it's the sound o' your voice."
+
+"You don't know my voice, Abe. It ain't always the same. You ain't always
+about; you don't always hear it."
+
+He caught her arm suddenly. "No, but I want to hear it always. I want to
+be always where you are, Nance. That's what's got to be settled
+to-day--to-night."
+
+"Oh, it's got to be settled to-night!" said the girl, meditatively,
+kicking nervously at a log on the fire. "It takes two to settle a thing
+like that, and there's only one says it's got to be settled. Maybe it
+takes more than two--or three--to settle a thing like that." Now she
+laughed mirthlessly.
+
+The man started, and his face flushed with anger; then he put a hand on
+himself, drew a step back, and watched her.
+
+"_One_ can settle a thing, if there's a dozen in it. You see, Nance, you
+and Bantry've got to close out. He's fixing it up to-night over at
+Dingan's Drive, and you can't go it alone when you quit this place. Now,
+it's this way: you can go West with Bantry, or you can go North with me.
+Away North there's buffalo and deer, and game a-plenty, up along the
+Saskatchewan, and farther up on the Peace River. It's going to be all
+right up there for half a lifetime, and we can have it in our own way yet.
+There'll be no smuggling, but there'll be trading, and land to get; and,
+mebbe, there'd be no need of smuggling, for we can make it, I know
+how--good white whiskey--and we'll still have this free life for our own.
+I can't make up my mind to settle down to a clean collar and going to
+church on Sundays, and all that. And the West's in your bones, too. You
+look like the West--"
+
+The girl's face brightened with pleasure, and she gazed at him steadily.
+
+"You got its beauty and its freshness, and you got its heat and cold--"
+
+She saw the tobacco-juice stain at the corners of his mouth, she became
+conscious of the slight odor of spirits in the air, and the light in her
+face lowered in intensity.
+
+"You got the ways of the deer in your walk, the song o' the birds in your
+voice; and you're going North with me, Nance, for I bin talkin' to you
+stiddy four years. It's a long time to wait on the chance, for there's
+always _women_ to be got, same as others have done--men like Dingan with
+Injun girls, and men like Tobey with half-breeds. But I ain't bin lookin'
+that way. I bin lookin' only toward you." He laughed eagerly, and lifted a
+tin cup of whiskey standing on a table near. "I'm lookin' toward you now,
+Nance. Your health and mine together. It's got to be settled now. You got
+to go to the 'Cific Coast with Bantry, or North with me."
+
+The girl jerked a shoulder and frowned a little. He seemed so sure of
+himself.
+
+"Or South with Nick Pringle, or East with someone else," she said,
+quizzically. "There's always four quarters to the compass, even when Abe
+Hawley thinks he owns the world and has a mortgage on eternity. I'm not
+going West with Bantry, but there's three other points that's open."
+
+With an oath the man caught her by the shoulders, and swung her round to
+face him. He was swelling with anger. "You--Nick Pringle, that trading
+cheat, that gambler! After four years, I--"
+
+"Let go my shoulders," she said, quietly. "I'm not your property. Go and
+get some Piegan girl to bully. Keep your hands off. I'm not a bronco for
+you to bit and bridle. You've got no rights. You--" Suddenly she relented,
+seeing the look in his face, and realizing that, after all, it was a
+tribute to herself that she could keep him for four years and rouse him to
+such fury. "But yes, Abe," she added, "you have some rights. We've been
+good friends all these years, and you've been all right out here. You said
+some nice things about me just now, and I liked it, even if it was as if
+you'd learned it out of a book. I've got no po'try in me; I'm plain
+homespun. I'm a sapling, I'm not any prairie-flower, but I like when I
+like, and I like a lot when I like. I'm a bit of hickory, I'm not a
+prairie-flower--"
+
+"Who said you was a prairie-flower? Did I? Who's talking about
+prairie-flowers--"
+
+He stopped suddenly, turned round at the sound of a footstep behind him,
+and saw, standing in a doorway leading to another room, a man who was
+digging his knuckles into his eyes and stifling a yawn. He was a
+refined-looking stripling of not more than twenty-four, not tall, but
+well-made, and with an air of breeding, intensified rather than hidden by
+his rough clothes.
+
+"Je-rick-ety! How long have I slept?" he said, blinking at the two beside
+the fire. "How long?" he added, with a flutter of anxiety in his tone.
+
+"I said I'd wake you," said the girl, coming forward. "You needn't have
+worried."
+
+"I don't worry," answered the young man. "I dreamed myself awake, I
+suppose. I got dreaming of redcoats and U. S. marshals, and an ambush in
+the Barfleur Coulee, and--" He saw a secret, warning gesture from the
+girl, and laughed, then turned to Abe and looked him in the face. "Oh, I
+know him! Abe Hawley's all O.K.--I've seen him over at Dingan's Drive.
+Honor among rogues. We're all in it. How goes it--all right?" he added,
+carelessly, to Hawley, and took a step forward, as though to shake hands.
+Seeing the forbidding look by which he was met, however, he turned to the
+girl again, as Hawley muttered something they could not hear.
+
+"What time is it?" he asked.
+
+"It's nine o'clock," answered the girl, her eyes watching his every
+movement, her face alive.
+
+"Then the moon's up almost?"
+
+"It'll be up in an hour."
+
+"Jerickety! Then I've got to get ready." He turned to the other room again
+and entered.
+
+"College pup!" said Hawley, under his breath, savagely. "Why didn't you
+tell me he was here?"
+
+"Was it any of your business, Abe?" she rejoined, quietly.
+
+"Hiding him away here--"
+
+"Hiding? Who's been hiding him? He's doing what you've done. He's
+smuggling--the last lot for the traders over by Dingan's Drive. He'll get
+it there by morning. He has as much right here as you. What's got into
+you, Abe?"
+
+"What does he know about the business? Why, he's a college man from the
+East. I've heard o' him. Ain't got no more sense for this life than a
+dicky-bird. White-faced college pup! What's he doing out here? If you're a
+friend o' his, you'd better look after him. He's green."
+
+"He's going East again," she said, "and if I don't go West with Bantry, or
+South over to Montana with Nick Pringle, _or North_--"
+
+"Nance!" His eyes burned, his lips quivered.
+
+She looked at him and wondered at the power she had over this bully of the
+border, who had his own way with most people, and was one of the most
+daring fighters, hunters, and smugglers in the country. He was cool, hard,
+and well in hand in his daily life, and yet, where she was concerned,
+"went all to pieces," as some one else had said about himself to her.
+
+She was not without the wiles and tact of her sex. "You go now, and come
+back, Abe," she said, in a soft voice. "Come back in an hour. Come back
+then, and I'll tell you which way I'm going from here."
+
+He was all right again. "It's with you, Nance," he said, eagerly. "I bin
+waiting four years."
+
+As he closed the door behind him the "college pup" entered the room again.
+"Oh, Abe's gone!" he said, excitedly. "I hoped you'd get rid of the old
+rip-roarer. I wanted to be alone with you for a while. I don't really need
+to start yet. With the full moon I can do it before daylight." Then, with
+quick warmth, "Ah, Nancy, Nancy, you're a flower--the flower of all the
+prairies," he added, catching her hand and laughing into her eyes.
+
+She flushed, and for a moment seemed almost bewildered. His boldness,
+joined to an air of insinuation and understanding, had influenced her
+greatly from the first moment they had met, two months ago, as he was
+going South on his smuggling enterprise. The easy way in which he had
+talked to her, the extraordinary sense he seemed to have of what was going
+on in her mind, the confidential meaning in voice and tone and words had,
+somehow, opened up a side of her nature hitherto unexplored. She had
+talked with him freely then, for it was only when he left her that he said
+what he instinctively knew she would remember till they met again. His
+quick comments, his indirect but acute questions, his exciting and
+alluring reminiscences of the East, his subtle yet seemingly frank
+compliments, had only stimulated a new capacity in her, evoked comparisons
+of this delicate-looking, fine-faced gentleman with the men of the West by
+whom she was surrounded. But later he appeared to stumble into expressions
+of admiration for her, as though he was carried off his feet and had been
+stunned by her charm. He had done it all like a master. He had not said
+that she was beautiful--she knew she was not--but that she was wonderful
+and fascinating, and with "something about her" he had never seen in all
+his life: like her own prairies, thrilling, inspiring, and adorable. His
+first look at her had seemed full of amazement. She had noticed that, and
+thought it meant only that he was surprised to find a white girl out here
+among smugglers, hunters, squaw-men, and Indians. But he said that the
+first look at her had made him feel things, feel life and women different
+from ever before; and he had never seen any one like her, nor a face with
+so much in it. It was all very brilliantly done.
+
+"You make me want to live," he had said, and she, with no knowledge of the
+nuances of language, had taken it literally, and had asked him if it had
+been his wish to die; and he had responded to her mistaken interpretation
+of his meaning, saying that he had had such sorrow he had not wanted to
+live. As he said it his face looked, in truth, overcome by some deep,
+inward care; so that there came a sort of feeling she had never had so far
+for any man--that he ought to have some one to look after him. This was
+the first real stirring of the maternal and protective spirit in her
+toward men, though it had shown itself amply enough regarding animals and
+birds. He had said he had not wanted to live, and yet he had come out West
+in order to try and live, to cure the trouble that had started in his
+lungs. The Eastern doctors had told him that the rough, out-door life
+would cure him, or nothing would, and he had vanished from the college
+walls and the pleasant purlieus of learning and fashion into the wilds. He
+had not lied directly to her when he said that he had had deep trouble;
+but he had given the impression that he was suffering from wrongs which
+had broken his spirit and ruined his health. Wrongs there certainly had
+been in his life, by whomever committed.
+
+Two months ago he had left this girl with her mind full of memories of
+what he had said to her, and there was something in the sound of the
+slight cough following his farewell words which had haunted her ever
+since. Her tremendous health and energy, the fire of life burning so
+brightly in her, reached out toward this man living on so narrow a margin
+of force, with no reserve for any extra strain, with just enough for each
+day's use and no more. Four hours before he had come again with his team
+of four mules and an Indian youth, having covered forty miles since his
+last stage. She was at the door, and saw him coming while he was yet a
+long distance off. Some instinct had told her to watch that afternoon, for
+she knew of his intended return and of his dangerous enterprise. The
+Indians had trailed south and east, the traders had disappeared with them,
+her brother Bantry had gone up and over to Dingan's Drive, and, save for a
+few loiterers and last hangers-on, she was alone with what must soon be a
+deserted post; its walls, its great enclosed yard, and its gun-platforms
+(for it had been fortified) left for law and order to enter upon, in the
+persons of the red-coated watchmen of the law.
+
+Out of the South, from over the border, bringing the last great smuggled
+load of whiskey which was to be handed over at Dingan's Drive, and then
+floated on Red Man's River to settlements up North, came the "college
+pup," Kelly Lambton, worn out, dazed with fatigue, but smiling too, for a
+woman's face was ever a tonic to his blood since he was big enough to move
+in life for himself. It needed courage--or recklessness--to run the border
+now; for, as Abe Hawley had said, the American marshals were on the
+pounce, the red-coated mounted police were coming west from Ottawa, and
+word had winged its way along the prairie that these redcoats were only a
+few score miles away, and might be at Fort Stay-Awhile at any moment. The
+trail to Dingan's Drive lay past it. Through Barfleur Coulee, athwart a
+great, open stretch of country, along a wooded belt, and then, suddenly,
+over a ridge, Dingan's Drive and Red Man's River would be reached.
+
+The Government had a mind to make an example, if necessary, by killing
+some smugglers in conflict, and the United States marshals had been goaded
+by vanity and anger at one or two escapes "to have something for their
+money," as they said. That, in their language, meant, "to let the red
+run," and Kelly Lambton had none too much blood to lose.
+
+He looked very pale and beaten as he held Nance Machell's hands now, and
+called her a prairie-flower, as he had done when he left her two months
+before. On his arrival, but now he had said little, for he saw that she
+was glad to see him, and he was dead for sleep, after thirty-six hours of
+ceaseless travel and watching and danger. Now, with the most perilous part
+of his journey still before him, and worn physically as he was, his blood
+was running faster as he looked into the girl's face, and something in her
+abundant force and bounding life drew him to her. Such vitality in a man
+like Abe Hawley would have angered him almost, as it did a little time
+ago, when Abe was there; but possessed by the girl, it roused in him a
+hunger to draw from the well of her perfect health, from the unused vigor
+of her being, something for himself. The touch of her hands warmed him. In
+the fulness of her life, in the strong eloquence of face and form, he
+forgot she was not beautiful. The lightness passed from his words, and his
+face became eager.
+
+"Flower, yes, the flower of the life of the West--that's what I mean," he
+said. "You are like an army marching. When I look at you, my blood runs
+faster. I want to march too. When I hold your hand I feel that life's
+worth living--I want to do things."
+
+She drew her hand away rather awkwardly. She had not now that command of
+herself which had ever been easy with the men of the West, except,
+perhaps, with Abe Hawley when--
+
+But with an attempt, only half-meant, to turn the topic, she said: "You
+must be starting if you want to get through to-night. If the redcoats
+catch you this side of Barfleur Coulee, or in the Coulee itself, you'll
+stand no chance. I heard they was only thirty miles north this afternoon.
+Maybe they'll come straight on here to-night, instead of camping. If they
+have news of your coming, they might. You can't tell."
+
+"You're right." He caught her hand again. "I've got to be going now. But
+Nance--Nance--Nancy, I want to stay here, here with you; or to take you
+with me."
+
+She drew back. "What do you mean?" she asked. "Take me with
+you--me--where?"
+
+"East--away down East."
+
+Her brain throbbed, her pulses beat so hard. She scarcely knew what to
+say, did not know what she said. "Why do you do this kind of thing? Why do
+you smuggle?" she asked. "You wasn't brought up to this."
+
+"To get this load of stuff through is life and death to me," he answered.
+"I've made six thousand dollars out here. That's enough to start me again
+in the East, where I lost everything. But I've got to have six hundred
+dollars clear for the travel--railways and things; and I'm having this
+last run to get it. Then I've finished with the West, I guess. My health's
+better; the lung is closed up, I've only got a little cough now and again,
+and I'm off East. I don't want to go alone." He suddenly caught her in his
+arms. "I want you--you, to go with me, Nancy--Nance!"
+
+Her brain swam. To leave the West behind, to go East to a new life full of
+pleasant things, as this man's wife! Her great heart rose, and suddenly
+the mother in her as well as the woman in her was captured by his wooing.
+She had never known what it was to be wooed like this.
+
+She was about to answer when there came a sharp knock at the door leading
+from the back yard, and Lambton's Indian lad entered. "The soldier--he
+come--many. I go over the ridge, I see. They come quick here," he said.
+
+Nance gave a startled cry, and Lambton turned to the other room for his
+pistols, overcoat, and cap, when there was the sound of horses' hoofs, the
+door suddenly opened, and an officer stepped inside.
+
+"You're wanted for smuggling, Lambton," he said, brusquely. "Don't stir!"
+In his hand was a revolver.
+
+"Oh, bosh! Prove it," answered the young man, pale and startled, but cool
+in speech and action.
+
+"We'll prove it all right. The stuff is hereabouts."
+
+The girl said something to the officer in the Chinook language. She saw he
+did not understand. Then she spoke quickly to Lambton in the same tongue.
+
+"Keep him here a bit," she said. "His men haven't come yet. Your outfit is
+well hid. I'll see if I can get away with it before they find it. They'll
+follow, and bring you with them, that's sure. So if I have luck and get
+through, we'll meet at Dingan's Drive."
+
+Lambton's face brightened. He quickly gave her a few directions in
+Chinook, and told her what to do at Dingan's if she got there first. Then
+she was gone.
+
+The officer did not understand what Nance had said, but he realized that,
+whatever she intended to do, she had an advantage over him. With an
+unnecessary courage he had ridden on alone to make his capture, and, as it
+proved, without prudence. He had got his man, but he had not got the
+smuggled whiskey and alcohol he had come to seize. There was no time to be
+lost. The girl had gone before he realized it. What had she said to the
+prisoner? He was foolish enough to ask Lambton, and Lambton replied
+coolly: "She said she'd get you some supper, but she guessed it would have
+to be cold--What's your name? Are you a colonel, or a captain, or only a
+principal private?"
+
+"I am Captain MacFee, Lambton. And you'll now bring me where your outfit
+is. March!"
+
+The pistol was still in his hand, and he had a determined look in his eye.
+Lambton saw it. He was aware of how much power lay in the threatening face
+before him, and how eager that power was to make itself felt, and provide
+"Examples"; but he took his chances.
+
+"I'll march all right," he answered; "but I'll march to where you tell me.
+You can't have it both ways. You can take me, because you've found me, and
+you can take my outfit, too, when you've found it; but I'm not doing your
+work, not if I know it."
+
+There was a blaze of anger in the eyes of the officer, and it looked for
+an instant as though something of the lawlessness of the border was going
+to mark the first step of the Law in the Wilderness, but he bethought
+himself in time, and said, quietly, yet in a voice which Lambton knew he
+must heed:
+
+"Put on your things--quick."
+
+When this was accomplished, and MacFee had secured the smuggler's pistols,
+he said again, "March, Lambton!"
+
+Lambton marched through the moonlit night toward the troop of men who had
+come to set up the flag of order in the plains and hills, and as he went
+his keen ear heard his own mules galloping away down toward the Barfleur
+Coulee. His heart thumped in his breast. This girl, this prairie-flower,
+was doing this for him, was risking her life, was breaking the law for
+him. If she got through, and handed over the whiskey to those who were
+waiting for it, and it got bundled into the boats going North before the
+redcoats reached Dingan's Drive, it would be as fine a performance as the
+West had ever seen; and he would be six hundred dollars to the good. He
+listened to the mules galloping, till the sounds had died into the
+distance, but he saw now that his captor had heard too, and that the
+pursuit would be desperate.
+
+A half-hour later it began, with MacFee at the head and a dozen troopers
+pounding behind, weary, hungry, bad-tempered, ready to exact payment for
+their hardships and discouragement.
+
+They had not gone a dozen miles when a shouting horseman rode furiously on
+them from behind. They turned with carbines cocked, but it was Abe Hawley
+who cursed them, flung his fingers in their faces, and rode on harder and
+harder. Abe had got the news from one of Nancy's half-breeds, and, with
+the devil raging in his heart, had entered on the chase. His spirit was up
+against them all: against the Law represented by the troopers camped at
+Fort Stay-Awhile, against the troopers and their captain speeding after
+Nancy Machell--his Nance, who was risking her life and freedom for the
+hated, pale-faced smuggler riding between the troopers; and his spirit was
+up against Nance herself.
+
+Nance had said to him, "Come back in an hour," and he had come back to
+find her gone. She had broken her word. She had deceived him. She had
+thrown the four years of his waiting to the winds, and a savage lust was
+in his heart, which would not be appeased till he had done some evil thing
+to some one.
+
+The girl and the Indian lad were pounding through the night with ears
+strained to listen for hoof-beats coming after, with eyes searching
+forward into the trail for swollen creeks and direful obstructions.
+Through Barfleur Coulee it was a terrible march, for there was no road,
+and again and again they were nearly overturned, while wolves hovered in
+their path, ready to reap a midnight harvest. But once in the open again,
+with the full moonlight on their trail, the girl's spirits rose. If she
+could do this thing for the man who had looked into her eyes as no one had
+ever done, what a finish to her days in the West! For they were finished,
+finished forever, and she was going--she was going East; not West with
+Bantry, nor South with Nick Pringle, nor North with Abe Hawley--ah, Abe
+Hawley! He had been a good friend, he had a great heart, he was the best
+man of all the Western men she had known; but another man had come from
+the East, a man who had roused something in her never felt before, a man
+who had said she was wonderful; and he needed some one to take good care
+of him, to make him love life again. Abe would have been all right if
+Lambton had never come, and she had meant to marry Abe in the end; but it
+was different now, and Abe must get over it. Yet she had told Abe to come
+back in an hour. He was sure to do it; and, when he had done it, and found
+her gone on this errand, what would he do? She knew what he would do. He
+would hurt someone. He would follow, too. But at Dingan's Drive, if she
+reached it before the troopers and before Abe, and did the thing she had
+set out to do; and because no whiskey could be found, Lambton must go
+free; and they all stood there together, what would be the end? Abe would
+be terrible; but she was going East, not North, and, when the time came
+she would face it and put things right somehow.
+
+The night seemed endless to her fixed and anxious eyes and mind, yet dawn
+came, and there had fallen no sound of hoof-beats on her ear. The ridge
+above Dingan's Drive was reached and covered, but yet there was no sign of
+her pursuers. At Red Man's River she delivered her load of contraband to
+the traders waiting for it, and saw it loaded into the boats and disappear
+beyond the wooded bend above Dingan's.
+
+Then she collapsed into the arms of her brother Bantry, and was carried,
+fainting, into Dingan's Lodge.
+
+A half-hour later MacFee and his troopers and Lambton came. MacFee grimly
+searched the post and the shore, but he saw by the looks of all that he
+had been foiled. He had no proof of anything, and Lambton must go free.
+
+"You've fooled us," he said to Nance, sourly, yet with a kind of
+admiration, too. "Through you, they got away with it. But I wouldn't try
+it again, if I were you."
+
+"Once is enough," answered the girl, laconically, as Lambton, set free,
+caught both her hands in his and whispered in her ear.
+
+MacFee turned to the others. "You'd better drop this kind of thing," he
+said. "I mean business." They saw the troopers by the horses, and nodded.
+
+"Well, we was about quit of it anyhow," said Bantry. "We've had all we
+want out here."
+
+A loud laugh went up, and it was still ringing when there burst into the
+group, out of the trail, Abe Hawley, on foot.
+
+He looked round the group savagely till his eyes rested on Nance and
+Lambton. "I'm last in," he said, in a hoarse voice. "My horse broke its
+leg cutting across to get here before her--" He waved a hand toward Nance.
+"It's best stickin' to old trails, not tryin' new ones." His eyes were
+full of hate as he looked at Lambton. "I'm keeping to old trails. I'm for
+goin' North, far up, where these two-dollar-a-day and hash-and-clothes
+people ain't come yet." He made a contemptuous gesture toward MacFee and
+his troopers. "I'm goin' North--" He took a step forward and fixed his
+bloodshot eyes on Nance. "I say I'm goin' North. You comin' with me,
+Nance?" He took off his cap to her.
+
+He was haggard, his buckskins were torn, his hair was dishevelled, and he
+limped a little; but he was a massive and striking figure, and MacFee
+watched him closely, for there was that in his eyes which meant trouble.
+"You said, 'Come back in an hour,' Nance, and I come back, as I said I
+would," he went on. "You didn't stand to your word. I've come to git it.
+I'm goin' North, Nance, and I bin waitin' for four years for you to go
+with me. Are you comin'?"
+
+His voice was quiet, but it had a choking kind of sound, and it struck
+strangely in the ears of all. MacFee came nearer.
+
+"Are you comin' with me, Nance, dear?"
+
+She reached a hand toward Lambton, and he took it, but she did not speak.
+Something in Abe's eyes overwhelmed her--something she had never seen
+before, and it seemed to stifle speech in her. Lambton spoke instead.
+
+"She's going East with me," he said. "That's settled."
+
+MacFee started. Then he caught Abe's arm. "Wait!" he said, peremptorily.
+"Wait one minute."
+
+There was something in his voice which held Abe back for the instant.
+
+[Illustration: THE START ON THE NORTH TRAIL]
+
+"You say she is going East with you," MacFee said sharply to Lambton.
+"What for?" He fastened Lambton with his eyes, and Lambton quailed. "Have
+you told her you've got a wife--down East? I've got your history, Lambton.
+Have you told her that you've got a wife you married when you were at
+college--and as good a girl as ever lived?"
+
+It had come with terrible suddenness even to Lambton, and he was too dazed
+to make any reply. With a cry of shame and anger, Nancy started back.
+Growling with rage and hate, Abe Hawley sprang toward Lambton, but the
+master of the troopers stepped between.
+
+No one could tell who moved first, or who first made the suggestion, for
+the minds of all were the same, and the general purpose was instantaneous;
+but in the fraction of a minute Lambton, under menace, was on his hands
+and knees crawling to the riverside. Watchful, but not interfering, the
+master of the troopers saw him set adrift in a canoe without a paddle,
+while he was pelted with mud from the shore.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+The next morning at sunrise Abe Hawley and the girl he had waited for so
+long started on the North trail together, MacFee, master of the troopers
+and justice of the peace, handing over the marriage lines.
+
+
+
+
+THE STROKE OF THE HOUR
+
+
+"They won't come to-night--sure."
+
+The girl looked again toward the west, where, here and there, bare poles,
+or branches of trees, or slips of underbrush, marked a road made across
+the plains through the snow. The sun was going down golden red, folding up
+the sky a wide, soft curtain of pink and mauve and deep purple merging
+into the fathomless blue, where already the stars were beginning to
+quiver. The house stood on the edge of a little forest, which had boldly
+asserted itself in the wide flatness. At this point in the west the
+prairie merged into an undulating territory, where hill and wood rolled
+away from the banks of the Saskatchewan, making another England in beauty.
+The forest was a sort of advance-post of that land of beauty.
+
+Yet there was beauty, too, on this prairie, though there was nothing to
+the east but snow and the forest so far as eye could see. Nobility and
+peace and power brooded over the white world.
+
+As the girl looked, it seemed as though the bosom of the land rose and
+fell. She had felt this vibrating life beat beneath the frozen surface.
+Now, as she gazed, she smiled sadly to herself, with drooping eyelids
+looking out from beneath strong brows.
+
+"I know you--I know you," she said, aloud. "You've got to take your toll.
+And when you're lying asleep like that, or pretending to, you reach
+up--and kill. And yet you can be kind--ah, but you can be kind and
+beautiful! But you must have your toll one way or t'other." She sighed and
+paused; then, after a moment, looking along the trail--"I don't expect
+they'll come to-night, and mebbe not to-morrow, if--if they stay for
+_that_."
+
+Her eyes closed, she shivered a little. Her lips drew tight, and her face
+seemed suddenly to get thinner. "But dad wouldn't--no, he couldn't, not
+considerin'--" Again she shut her eyes in pain.
+
+Her face was now turned from the western road by which she had expected
+her travellers, and toward the east, where already the snow was taking on
+a faint bluish tint, a reflection of the sky deepening toward night in
+that half-circle of the horizon. Distant and a little bleak and cheerless
+the half-circle was looking now.
+
+"No one--not for two weeks," she said, in comment on the eastern trail,
+which was so little frequented in winter, and this year had been less
+travelled than ever. "It would be nice to have a neighbor," she added, as
+she faced the west and the sinking sun again. "I get so lonely--just
+minutes I get lonely. But it's them minutes that seem to count more than
+all the rest when they come. I expect that's it--we don't live in months
+and years, but just in minutes. It doesn't take long for an earthquake to
+do its work--it's seconds then.... P'r'aps dad won't even come to-morrow,"
+she added, as she laid her hand on the latch. "It never seemed so long
+before, not even when he's been away a week." She laughed bitterly. "Even
+bad company's better than no company at all. Sure. And Mickey has been
+here always when dad's been away past times. Mickey was a fool, but he was
+company; and mebbe he'd have been better company if he'd been more of a
+scamp and less a fool. I dunno, but I really think he would. Bad company
+doesn't put you off so."
+
+There was a scratching at the inside of the door. "My, if I didn't forget
+Shako," she said, "and he dying for a run!"
+
+She opened the door quickly, and out jumped a Russian dog of almost full
+breed, with big, soft eyes like those of his mistress, and with the air of
+the north in every motion--like his mistress also.
+
+"Come, Shako, a run--a run!"
+
+An instant after she was flying off on a path toward the woods, her short
+skirts flying and showing limbs as graceful and shapely as those of any
+woman of that world of social grace which she had never seen; for she was
+a prairie girl through and through, born on the plains and fed on its
+scanty fare--scanty as to variety, at least. Backward and forward they
+ran, the girl shouting like a child of ten--she was twenty-three--her eyes
+flashing, her fine white teeth showing, her hands thrown up in sheer
+excess of animal life, her hair blowing about her face--brown, strong
+hair, wavy and plentiful.
+
+Fine creature as she was, her finest features were her eyes and her hands.
+The eyes might have been found in the most savage places; the hands,
+however, only could have come through breeding. She had got them honestly;
+for her mother was descended from an old family of the French province.
+That was why she had the name of Loisette--and had a touch of distinction.
+It was the strain of the patrician in the full blood of the peasant; but
+it gave her something which made her what she was--what she had been since
+a child, noticeable and besought, sometimes beloved. It was too strong a
+nature to compel love often, but it never failed to compel admiration. Not
+greatly a creature of words, she had become moody of late; and even now,
+alive with light and feeling and animal life, she suddenly stopped her
+romp and run, and called the dog to her.
+
+"Heel, Shako!" she said, and made for the door of the little house, which
+looked so snug and homelike. She paused before she came to the door, to
+watch the smoke curling up from the chimney straight as a column, for
+there was not a breath of air stirring. The sun was almost gone, and the
+strong bluish light was settling on everything, giving even the green
+spruce-trees a curious burnished tone.
+
+_Swish! Thud!_ She faced the woods quickly. It was only a sound that she
+had heard how many hundreds of times! It was the snow slipping from some
+broad branch of the fir-trees to the ground. Yet she started now.
+Something was on her mind, agitating her senses, affecting her
+self-control.
+
+"I'll be jumping out of my boots when the fire snaps, or the frost cracks
+the ice, next," she said, aloud, contemptuously. "I dunno what's the
+matter with me. I feel as if some one was hiding somewhere ready to pop
+out on me. I haven't never felt like that before."
+
+She had formed the habit of talking to herself, for it had seemed at
+first, as she was left alone when her father went trapping or upon
+journeys for the Government, that by-and-by she would start at the sound
+of her own voice if she didn't think aloud. So she was given to soliloquy,
+defying the old belief that people who talked to themselves were going
+mad. She laughed at that. She said that birds sang to themselves and
+didn't go mad, and crickets chirruped, and frogs croaked, and owls hooted,
+and she would talk and not go crazy either. So she talked to herself and
+to Shako when she was alone.
+
+How quiet it was inside when her light supper was eaten--bread and beans
+and pea-soup; she had got this from her French mother. Now she sat, her
+elbows on her knees, her chin on her hands, looking into the fire. Shako
+was at her feet upon the great musk-ox rug, which her father had got on
+one of his hunting trips in the Athabasca country years ago. It belonged
+as she belonged. It breathed of the life of the north-land, for the
+timbers of the hut were hewn cedar; the rough chimney, the seats, and the
+shelves on which a few books made a fair show beside the bright tins and
+the scanty crockery, were of pine; and the horned heads of deer and wapiti
+made pegs for coats and caps, and rests for guns and rifles. It was a
+place of comfort; it had an air of well-to-do thrift, even as the girl's
+dress, though plain, was made of good, sound stuff, gray, with a touch of
+dark red to match the auburn of her hair.
+
+A book lay open in her lap, but she had scarcely tried to read it. She had
+put it down after a few moments fixed upon it. It had sent her thoughts
+off into a world where her life had played a part too big for books, too
+deep for the plummet of any save those who had lived through the storm of
+life's trials; and life when it is bitter to the young is bitter with an
+agony the old never know. At last she spoke to herself.
+
+"She knows now! Now she knows what it is, how it feels--your heart like
+red-hot coals, and something in your head that's like a turnscrew, and you
+want to die and can't, for you've got to live and suffer!"
+
+Again she was quiet, and only the dog's heavy breathing, the snap of the
+fire, or the crack of a timber in the deadly frost broke the silence.
+Inside it was warm and bright and homelike; outside it was twenty degrees
+below zero, and like some vast tomb where life itself was congealed, and
+only the white stars, low, twinkling, and quizzical, lived--a life of
+sharp corrosion, not of fire.
+
+Suddenly she raised her head and listened. The dog did the same. None but
+those whose lives are lived in lonely places can be so acute, so sensitive
+to sound. It was a feeling delicate and intense, the whole nature getting
+the vibration. You could have heard nothing, had you been there; none but
+one who was of the wide spaces could have done so. But the dog and the
+woman felt, and both strained toward the window. Again they heard, and
+started to their feet. It was far, far away, and still you could not have
+heard; but now they heard clearly--a cry in the night, a cry of pain and
+despair. The girl ran to the window and pulled aside the bearskin curtain
+which had completely shut out the light. Then she stirred the fire, threw
+a log upon it, snuffed the candles, hastily put on her moccasins, fur
+coat, wool cap, and gloves, and went to the door quickly, the dog at her
+heels. Opening it, she stepped out into the night.
+
+"_Qui va la?_ Who is it? Where?" she called, and strained toward the west.
+She thought it might be her father or Mickey the hired man, or both.
+
+The answer came from the east, out of the homeless, neighborless, empty
+east--a cry, louder now. There were only stars, and the night was dark,
+though not deep dark. She sped along the prairie road as fast as she
+could, once or twice stopping to call aloud. In answer to her calls the
+voice sounded nearer and nearer. Now suddenly she left the trail and bore
+away northward. At last the voice was very near. Presently a figure
+appeared ahead, staggering toward her.
+
+"_Qui va la?_ Who is it?" she asked.
+
+"Ba'tiste Caron," was the reply in English, in a faint voice. She was
+beside him in an instant.
+
+"What has happened? Why are you off the trail?" she said, and supported
+him.
+
+"My Injun stoled my dogs and run off," he replied. "I run after. Then,
+when I am to come to the trail"--he paused to find the English word, and
+could not--"_encore_ to this trail I no can. So. Ah, _bon Dieu_, it has so
+awful!" He swayed and would have fallen, but she caught him, bore him up.
+She was so strong, and he was as slight as a girl, though tall.
+
+"When was that?" she asked.
+
+"Two nights ago," he answered, and swayed.
+
+"Wait," she said, and pulled a flask from her pocket. "Drink
+this--quick!"
+
+He raised it to his lips, but her hand was still on it, and she only let
+him take a little. Then she drew it away, though she had almost to use
+force, he was so eager for it. Now she took a biscuit from her pocket.
+
+"Eat; then some more brandy, after," she urged. "Come on; it's not far.
+See, there's the light," she added, cheerily, raising her head toward the
+hut.
+
+"I saw it just when I have fall down--it safe me. I sit down to die--like
+that! But it safe me, that light--so. Ah, _bon Dieu_, it was so far, and I
+want eat so!"
+
+Already he had swallowed the biscuit.
+
+"When did you eat last?" she asked, as she urged him on.
+
+"Two nights--except for one leetla piece of bread--I fin' it in my pocket.
+_Grace!_ I have travel so far. _Jesu_, I think it ees ten thousan' miles,
+I go. But I mus' go on, I mus' go--_certainement_."
+
+The light came nearer and nearer. His footsteps quickened, though he
+staggered now and then, and went like a horse that has run its race, but
+is driven upon its course again, going heavily with mouth open and head
+thrown forward and down.
+
+"But I mus' to get there, an' you--you will to help me, eh?"
+
+Again he swayed, but her strong arm held him up. As they ran on, in a kind
+of dog-trot, her hand firm upon his arm--he seemed not to notice it--she
+became conscious, though it was half dark, of what sort of man she had
+saved. He was about her own age, perhaps a year or two older, with little,
+if any, hair upon his face, save a slight mustache. His eyes, deep sunken
+as they were, she made out were black, and the face, though drawn and
+famished, had a handsome look. Presently she gave him another sip of
+brandy, and he quickened his steps, speaking to himself the while.
+
+"I haf to do it--if I lif. It is to go, go, go, till I get."
+
+Now they came to the hut where the firelight flickered on the window-pane;
+the door was flung open, and, as he stumbled on the threshold, she helped
+him into the warm room. She almost pushed him over to the fire.
+
+Divested of his outer coat, muffler, cap, and leggings, he sat on a bench
+before the fire, his eyes wandering from the girl to the flames, and his
+hands clasping and unclasping between his knees. His eyes dilating with
+hunger, he watched her preparations for his supper; and when at last--and
+she had been but a moment--it was placed before him, his head swam, and he
+turned faint with the stress of his longing. He would have swallowed a
+basin of pea-soup at a draught, but she stopped him, holding the basin
+till she thought he might venture again. Then came cold beans, and some
+meat which she toasted at the fire and laid upon his plate. They had not
+spoken since first entering the house, when tears had shone in his eyes,
+and he had said:
+
+"You have safe--ah, you have safe me, and so I will do it yet by help _bon
+Dieu_--yes."
+
+The meal was done at last, and he sat with a great dish of tea beside him,
+and his pipe alight.
+
+"What time, if please?" he asked. "I t'ink nine hour, but no sure."
+
+"It is near nine," she said. She hastily tidied up the table after his
+meal, and then came and sat in her chair over against the wall of the rude
+fireplace.
+
+"Nine--dat is good. The moon rise at 'leven; den I go. I go on," he said,
+"if you show me de queeck way."
+
+"You go on--how can you go on?" she asked, almost sharply.
+
+"Will you not to show me?" he asked.
+
+"Show you what?" she asked, abruptly.
+
+"The queeck way to Askatoon," he said, as though surprised that she should
+ask. "They say me if I get here you will tell me queeck way to Askatoon.
+Time, he go so fas', an' I have loose a day an' a night, an' I mus' get
+Askatoon if I lif--I mus' get dere in time. It is all safe to de stroke of
+de hour, _mais_, after, it is--_bon Dieu_!--it is hell then. Who shall
+forgif me--no!"
+
+"The stroke of the hour--the stroke of the hour!" It beat into her brain.
+Were they both thinking of the same thing now?
+
+"You will show me queeck way. I mus' be Askatoon in two days, or it is all
+over," he almost moaned. "Is no man here--I forget dat name, my head go
+round like a wheel; but I know dis place, an' de good God, He help me fin'
+my way to where I call out, _bien sur_. Dat man's name I have forget."
+
+"My father's name is John Alroyd," she answered, absently, for there were
+hammering at her brain the words, "_The stroke of the hour._"
+
+"Ah, now I get--yes. An' your name, it is Loisette Alroy--ah, I have it in
+my mind now--Loisette. I not forget dat name, I not forget you--no."
+
+"Why do you want to go the 'quick' way to Askatoon?" she asked.
+
+He puffed a moment at his pipe before he answered her. Presently he said,
+holding out his pipe, "You not like smoke, mebbe?"
+
+She shook her head in negation, making an impatient gesture.
+
+"I forget ask you," he said. "Dat journee make me forget. When Injun Jo,
+he leave me with the dogs, an' I wake up all alone, an' not know my
+way--not like Jo, I think I die, it is so bad, so _terrible_ in my head.
+Not'ing but snow, not'ing. But dere is de sun; it shine. It say to me,
+'Wake up, Ba'tiste; it will be all right bime-bye.' But all time I t'ink I
+go mad, for I mus' get Askatoon before--_dat_."
+
+She started. Had she not used the same word in thinking of Askatoon.
+"_That_," she had said.
+
+"Why do you want to go the 'quick' way to Askatoon?" she asked again, her
+face pale, her foot beating the floor impatiently.
+
+"To save him before _dat_!" he answered, as though she knew of what he was
+speaking and thinking.
+
+"What is _that_?" she asked. She knew now, surely, but she must ask it
+nevertheless.
+
+"Dat hanging--of Haman," he answered. He nodded to himself. Then he took
+to gazing into the fire. His lips moved as though talking to himself, and
+the hand that held the pipe lay forgotten on his knee.
+
+"What have you to do with Haman?" she asked, slowly, her eyes burning.
+
+"I want safe him--I mus' give him free." He tapped his breast. "It is here
+to mak' him free." He still tapped his breast.
+
+For a moment she stood frozen still, her face thin and drawn and white;
+then suddenly the blood rushed back into her face, and a red storm raged
+in her eyes.
+
+She thought of the sister, younger than herself, whom Rube Haman had
+married and driven to her grave within a year--the sweet Lucy, with the
+name of her father's mother. Lucy had been all English in face and tongue,
+a flower of the west, driven to darkness by this horse-dealing brute, who,
+before he was arrested and tried for murder, was about to marry Kate
+Wimper. Kate Wimper had stolen him from Lucy before Lucy's first and only
+child was born, the child that could not survive the warm mother-life
+withdrawn, and so had gone down the valley whither the broken-hearted
+mother had fled. It was Kate Wimper, who, before that, had waylaid the one
+man for whom she herself had ever cared, and drawn him from her side by
+such attractions as she herself would keep for an honest wife, if such she
+ever chanced to be. An honest wife she would have been had Kate Wimper not
+crossed the straight path of her life. The man she had loved was gone to
+his end also, reckless and hopeless, after he had thrown away his chance
+of a lifetime with Loisette Alroyd. There had been left behind this girl,
+to whom tragedy had come too young, who drank humiliation with a heart as
+proud as ever straightly set its course through crooked ways.
+
+It had hurt her, twisted her nature a little, given a fountain of
+bitterness to her soul, which welled up and flooded her life sometimes. It
+had given her face no sourness, but it put a shadow into her eyes.
+
+She had been glad when Haman was condemned for murder, for she believed he
+had committed it, and ten times hanging could not compensate for that dear
+life gone from their sight--Lucy, the pride of her father's heart. She was
+glad when Haman was condemned, because of the woman who had stolen him
+from Lucy, because of that other man, her lover, gone out of her own life.
+The new hardness in her rejoiced that now the woman, if she had any heart
+at all, must have it bowed down by this supreme humiliation and wrung by
+the ugly tragedy of the hempen rope.
+
+And now this man before her, this man with a boy's face, with the dark,
+luminous eyes, whom she had saved from the frozen plains, he had that in
+his breast which would free Haman, so he had said. A fury had its birth in
+her at that moment. Something seemed to seize her brain and master it,
+something so big that it held all her faculties in perfect control, and
+she felt herself in an atmosphere where all life moved round her
+mechanically, she herself the only sentient thing, so much greater than
+all she saw, or all that she realized by her subconscious self. Everything
+in the world seemed small. How calm it was even with the fury within!
+
+"Tell me," she said, quietly--"tell me how you are able to save Haman?"
+
+"He not kill Wakely. It is my brudder Fadette dat kill and get away. Haman
+he is drunk, and everyt'ing seem to say Haman he did it, an' every one
+know Haman is not friend to Wakely. So the juree say he must be hanging.
+But my brudder he go to die with hawful bad cold queeck, an' he send for
+the priest an' for me, an' tell all. I go to Governor with the priest, an'
+Governor gif me dat writing here." He tapped his breast, then took out a
+wallet and showed the paper to her. "It is life of dat Haman, _voici_! And
+so I safe him for my brudder. Dat was a bad boy, Fadette. He was bad all
+time since he was a baby, an' I t'ink him pretty lucky to die on his bed,
+an' get absolve, and go to purgatore. If he not have luck like dat he go
+to hell, an' stay there."
+
+He sighed, and put the wallet back in his breast carefully, his eyes half
+shut with weariness, his handsome face drawn and thin, his limbs lax with
+fatigue.
+
+"If I get Askatoon before de time for _dat_, I be happy in my heart, for
+dat brudder off mine he get out of purgatore bime-bye, I t'ink."
+
+His eyes were almost shut, but he drew himself together with a great
+effort, and added desperately: "No sleep. If I sleep it is all smash. Man
+say me I can get Askatoon by dat time from here, if I go queeck way across
+lak'--it is all froze now, dat lak'--an' down dat Foxtail Hills. Is it so,
+ma'm'selle?"
+
+"By the 'quick' way if you can make it in time," she said; "but it is no
+way for the stranger to go. There are always bad spots on the ice--it is
+not safe. You could not find your way."
+
+"I mus' get dere in time," he said, desperately.
+
+"You can't do it--alone," she said. "Do you want to risk all and lose?"
+
+He frowned in self-suppression. "Long way, I no can get dere in time?" he
+asked.
+
+She thought a moment. "No; it can't be done by the long way. But there is
+another way--a third trail, the trail the Gover'ment men made a year ago
+when they came to survey. It is a good trail. It is blazed in the woods
+and staked on the plains. You cannot miss. But--but there is so little
+time." She looked at the clock on the wall. "You cannot leave here much
+before sunrise, and--"
+
+"I will leef when de moon rise, at eleven," he interjected.
+
+"You have had no sleep for two nights, and no food. You can't last it
+out," she said, calmly.
+
+The deliberate look on his face deepened to stubbornness.
+
+"It is my vow to my brudder--he is in purgatore. An' I mus' do it," he
+rejoined, with an emphasis there was no mistaking. "You can show me dat
+way?"
+
+She went to a drawer and took out a piece of paper. Then, with a point of
+blackened stick, as he watched her and listened, she swiftly drew his
+route for him.
+
+"Yes, I get it in my head," he said. "I go dat way, but I wish--I wish it
+was dat queeck way. I have no fear, not'ing. I go w'en dat moon rise--I
+go, _bien sur._"
+
+"You must sleep, then, while I get some food for you." She pointed to a
+couch in a corner. "I will wake you when the moon rises."
+
+For the first time he seemed to realize her, for a moment to leave the
+thing which consumed him, and put his mind upon her.
+
+"You not happy--you not like me here?" he asked, simply; then added,
+quickly, "I am not bad man like me brudder--no."
+
+Her eyes rested on him for a moment as though realizing him, while some
+thought was working in her mind behind.
+
+"No, you are not a bad man," she said. "Men and women are equal on the
+plains. You have no fear--I have no fear."
+
+He glanced at the rifles on the walls, then back at her. "My mudder, she
+was good woman. I am glad she did not lif to know what Fadette do." His
+eyes drank her in for a minute, then he said: "I go sleep now, t'ank
+you--till moontime."
+
+In a moment his deep breathing filled the room, the only sound save for
+the fire within and the frost outside.
+
+Time went on. The night deepened.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Loisette sat beside the fire, but her body was half-turned from it toward
+the man on the sofa. She was not agitated outwardly, but within there was
+that fire which burns up life and hope and all the things that come
+between us and great issues. It had burned up everything in her except one
+thought, one powerful motive. She had been deeply wronged, and justice had
+been about to give "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." But the
+man lying there had come to sweep away the scaffolding of justice--he had
+come for that.
+
+Perhaps he might arrive at Askatoon before the stroke of the hour, but
+still he would be too late, for in her pocket now was the Governor's
+reprieve. The man had slept soundly. His wallet was still in his breast;
+but the reprieve was with her.
+
+If he left without discovering his loss, and got well on his way, and
+discovered it then, it would be too late. If he returned--she only saw one
+step before her, she would wait for that, and deal with it when it came.
+She was thinking of Lucy, of her own lover ruined and gone. She was calm
+in her madness.
+
+At the first light of the moon she roused him. She had put food into his
+fur-coat pocket, and after he had drunk a bowl of hot pea-soup, while she
+told him his course again, she opened the door, and he passed out into the
+night. He started forward without a word, but came back again and caught
+her hand.
+
+"_Pardon_," he said; "I go forget everyt'ing except _dat_. But I t'ink
+what you do for me, it is better than all my life. _Bien sur_, I will come
+again, when I get my mind to myself. Ah, but you are beautibul," he said,
+"an' you not happy. Well, I come again--yes, _a Dieu._"
+
+He was gone into the night, with the moon silvering the sky, and the
+steely frost eating into the sentient life of this northern world. Inside
+the house, with the bearskin blind dropped at the window again, and the
+fire blazing high, Loisette sat with the Governor's reprieve in her hand.
+Looking at it, she wondered why it had been given to Ba'tiste Caron and
+not to a police-officer. Ah yes, it was plain--Ba'tiste was a woodsman and
+plainsman, and could go far more safely than a constable, and faster.
+Ba'tiste had reason for going fast, and he would travel night and day--he
+was travelling night and day indeed. And now Ba'tiste might get there, but
+the reprieve would not. He would not be able to stop the hanging of
+Haman--the hanging of Rube Haman.
+
+A change came over her. Her eyes blazed, her breast heaved now. She had
+been so quiet, so cold and still. But life seemed moving in her once
+again. The woman, Kate Wimper, who had helped to send two people to their
+graves, would now drink the dregs of shame, if she was capable of
+shame--would be robbed of her happiness, if so be she loved Rube Haman.
+
+She stood up, as though to put the paper in the fire, but paused suddenly
+at one thought--_Rube Haman was innocent of murder._
+
+Even so, he was not innocent of Lucy's misery and death, or the death of
+the little one who only opened its eyes to the light for an instant, and
+then went into the dark again. But truly she was justified! When Haman was
+gone things would go on just the same--and she had been so bitter, her
+heart had been pierced as with a knife these past three years. Again she
+held out her hand to the fire, but suddenly she gave a little cry and put
+her hand to her head. There was Ba'tiste!
+
+What was Ba'tiste to her? Nothing--nothing at all. She had saved his
+life--even if she wronged Ba'tiste, her debt would be paid. No, she would
+not think of Ba'tiste. Yet she did not put the paper in the fire, but in
+the pocket of her dress. Then she went to her room, leaving the door open.
+The bed was opposite the fire, and, as she lay there--she did not take off
+her clothes, she knew not why--she could see the flames. She closed her
+eyes but could not sleep, and more than once when she opened them she
+thought she saw Ba'tiste sitting there as he had sat hours before. Why did
+Ba'tiste haunt her so? What was it he had said in his broken English as he
+went away?--that he would come back; that she was "beautibul."
+
+All at once as she lay still, her head throbbing, her feet and hands icy
+cold, she sat up listening.
+
+"Ah--again!" she cried. She sprang from her bed, rushed to the door, and
+strained her eyes into the silver night. She called into the icy void,
+"_Qui va la?_ Who goes?"
+
+She leaned forward, her hand at her ear, but no sound came in reply. Once
+more she called, but nothing answered. The night was all light and frost
+and silence.
+
+She had only heard, in her own brain, the iteration of Ba'tiste's calling.
+Would he reach Askatoon in time? she wondered, as she shut the door. Why
+had she not gone with him and attempted the shorter way--the quick way, he
+had called it? All at once the truth came back upon her, stirring her now.
+It would do no good for Ba'tiste to arrive in time. He might plead to them
+all and tell the truth about the reprieve, but it would not avail--Rube
+Haman would hang. That did not matter--even though he was innocent; but
+Ba'tiste's brother would be so long in purgatory. And even that would not
+matter; but she would hurt Ba'tiste--Ba'tiste--Ba'tiste! And Ba'tiste he
+would know that she--and he had called her "beautibul"--that she had--
+
+With a cry she suddenly clothed herself for travel. She put some food and
+drink in a leather bag and slung them over her shoulder. Then she dropped
+on a knee and wrote a note to her father, tears falling from her eyes. She
+heaped wood on the fire and moved toward the door. All at once she turned
+to the crucifix on the wall which had belonged to her mother, and, though
+she had followed her father's Protestant religion, she kissed the feet of
+the sacred figure.
+
+"Oh, Christ, have mercy on me, and bring me safe to my journey's end--in
+time," she said, breathlessly; then she went softly to the door, leaving
+the dog behind.
+
+It opened, closed, and the night swallowed her. Like a ghost she sped the
+quick way to Askatoon. She was six hours behind Ba'tiste, and, going hard
+all the time, it was doubtful if she could get there before the fatal
+hour.
+
+On the trail Ba'tiste had taken there were two huts where he could rest,
+and he had carried his blanket slung on his shoulder. The way she went
+gave no shelter save the trees and caves which had been used to _cache_
+buffalo meat and hides in old days. But beyond this there was danger in
+travelling by night, for the springs beneath the ice of the three lakes
+she must cross made it weak and rotten even in the fiercest weather, and
+what would no doubt have been death to Ba'tiste would be peril at least to
+her. Why had she not gone with him?
+
+"He had in his face what was in Lucy's," she said to herself, as she sped
+on. "She was fine like him, ready to break her heart for those she cared
+for. My, if she had seen him first instead of--"
+
+She stopped short, for the ice gave way to her foot, and she only sprang
+back in time to save herself. But she trotted on, mile after mile, the
+dog-trot of the Indian, head bent forward, toeing in, breathing steadily
+but sharply.
+
+The morning came, noon, then a fall of snow and a keen wind, and despair
+in her heart; but she had passed the danger-spots, and now, if the storm
+did not overwhelm her, she might get to Askatoon in time. In the midst of
+the storm she came to one of the caves of which she had known. Here was
+wood for a fire, and here she ate, and in weariness unspeakable fell
+asleep. When she waked it was near sundown, the storm had ceased, and, as
+on the night before, the sky was stained with color and drowned in
+splendor.
+
+"I will do it--I will do it, Ba'tiste!" she called, and laughed aloud into
+the sunset. She had battled with herself all the way, and she had
+conquered. Right was right, and Rube Haman must not be hung for what he
+did not do. Her heart hardened whenever she thought of the woman, but
+softened again when she thought of Ba'tiste, who had to suffer for the
+deed of a brother in "purgatore." Once again the night and its silence and
+loneliness followed her, the only living thing near the trail till long
+after midnight. After that, as she knew, there were houses here and there
+where she might have rested, but she pushed on unceasing.
+
+At daybreak she fell in with a settler going to Askatoon with his dogs.
+Seeing how exhausted she was, he made her ride a few miles upon his
+sledge; then she sped on ahead again till she came to the borders of
+Askatoon.
+
+People were already in the streets, and all were tending one way. She
+stopped and asked the time. It was within a quarter of an hour of the time
+when Haman was to pay another's penalty. She spurred herself on, and came
+to the jail blind with fatigue. As she neared the jail she saw her father
+and Mickey. In amazement her father hailed her, but she would not stop.
+She was admitted to the prison on explaining that she had a reprieve.
+Entering a room filled with excited people, she heard a cry.
+
+It came from Ba'tiste. He had arrived but ten minutes before, and, in the
+Sheriff's presence, had discovered his loss. He had appealed in vain.
+
+But now, as he saw the girl, he gave a shout of joy which pierced the
+hearts of all.
+
+"Ah, you haf it! Say you haf it, or it is no use--he mus' hang.
+Spik--spik! Ah, my brudder--it is to do him right! Ah, Loisette--_bon
+Dieu, merci!_"
+
+For answer she placed the reprieve in the hands of the Sheriff. Then she
+swayed and fell fainting at the feet of Ba'tiste.
+
+She had come at the stroke of the hour.
+
+When she left for her home again the Sheriff kissed her.
+
+And that was not the only time he kissed her. He did it again six months
+later, at the beginning of the harvest, when she and Ba'tiste Caron
+started off on the long trail of life together. None but Ba'tiste knew the
+truth about the loss of the reprieve, and to him she was "beautibul" just
+the same, and greatly to be desired.
+
+[Illustration: SHE SWAYED AND FELL FAINTING AT THE FEET OF BA'TISTE]
+
+
+
+
+BUCKMASTER'S BOY
+
+
+"I bin waitin' for him, an' I'll git him ef it takes all winter. I'll get
+him--plumb."
+
+The speaker smoothed the barrel of his rifle with mittened hand, which
+had, however, a trigger-finger free. With black eyebrows twitching over
+sunken gray eyes, he looked doggedly down the frosty valley from the ledge
+of high rock where he sat. The face was rough and weather-beaten, with the
+deep tan got in the open life of a land of much sun and little cloud, and
+he had a beard which, untrimmed and growing wild, made him look ten years
+older than he was.
+
+"I bin waitin' a durn while," the mountain-man added, and got to his feet
+slowly, drawing himself out to six and a half feet of burly manhood. The
+shoulders were, however, a little stooped, and the head was thrust forward
+with an eager, watchful look--a habit become a physical characteristic.
+
+Presently he caught sight of a hawk sailing southward along the peaks of
+the white icebound mountains above, on which the sun shone with such sharp
+insistence, making sky and mountain of a piece in deep purity and serene
+stillness.
+
+"That hawk's seen him, mebbe," he said, after a moment. "I bet it went up
+higher when it got him in its eye. Ef it'd only speak and tell me where he
+is--ef he's a day, or two days, or ten days north."
+
+Suddenly his eyes blazed and his mouth opened in superstitious amazement,
+for the hawk stopped almost directly overhead at a great height, and swept
+round in a circle many times, waveringly, uncertainly. At last it resumed
+its flight southward, sliding down the mountains like a winged star.
+
+The mountaineer watched it with a dazed expression for a moment longer,
+then both hands clutched the rifle and half swung it to position
+involuntarily.
+
+"It's seen him, and it stopped to say so. It's seen him, I tell you, an'
+I'll git him. Ef it's an hour, or a day, or a week, it's all the same. I'm
+here watchin', waitin' dead on to him, the poison skunk!"
+
+The person to whom he had been speaking now rose from the pile of cedar
+boughs where he had been sitting, stretched his arms up, then shook
+himself into place, as does a dog after sleep. He stood for a minute
+looking at the mountaineer with a reflective yet a furtively sardonic
+look. He was not above five feet nine inches in height, and he was slim
+and neat; and though his buckskin coat and breeches were worn and even
+frayed in spots, he had an air of some distinction and of concentrated
+force. It was a face that men turned to look at twice and shook their
+heads in doubt afterward--a handsome, worn, secretive face, in as perfect
+control as the strings of an instrument under the bow of a great artist.
+It was the face of a man without purpose in life beyond the
+moment--watchful, careful, remorselessly determined, an adventurer's
+asset, the dial-plate of a hidden machinery.
+
+Now he took the handsome meerschaum pipe from his mouth, from which he had
+been puffing smoke slowly, and said in a cold, yet quiet voice, "How long
+you been waitin', Buck?"
+
+"A month. He's overdue near that. He always comes down to winter at Fort
+o' Comfort, with his string of half-breeds, an' Injuns, an' the dogs."
+
+"No chance to get him at the Fort?"
+
+"It ain't so certain. They'd guess what I was doin' there. It's surer
+here. He's got to come down the trail, an' when I spot him by the Juniper
+clump"--he jerked an arm toward a spot almost a mile farther up the
+valley--"I kin scoot up the underbrush a bit and git him--plumb. I could
+do it from here, sure, but I don't want no mistake. Once only, jest one
+shot, that's all I want, Sinnet."
+
+He bit off a small piece of tobacco from a black plug Sinnet offered him,
+and chewed it with nervous fierceness, his eyebrows working, as he looked
+at the other eagerly. Deadly as his purpose was, and grim and unvarying as
+his vigil had been, the loneliness had told on him, and he had grown
+hungry for a human face and human companionship. Why Sinnet had come he
+had not thought to inquire. Why Sinnet should be going north instead of
+south had not occurred to him. He only realized that Sinnet was not the
+man he was waiting for with murder in his heart; and all that mattered to
+him in life was the coming of his victim down the trail. He had welcomed
+Sinnet with a sullen eagerness, and had told him in short, detached
+sentences the dark story of a wrong and a waiting revenge, which brought a
+slight flush to Sinnet's pale face and awakened a curious light in his
+eyes.
+
+"Is that your shack--that where you shake down?" Sinnet said, pointing
+toward a lean-to in the fir-trees to trees to the right.
+
+"That's it. I sleep there. It's straight on to the Juniper clump, the
+front door is." He laughed viciously, grimly. "Outside or inside, I'm on
+to the Juniper clump. Walk into the parlor?" he added, and drew open a
+rough-made door, so covered with green cedar boughs that it seemed of a
+piece with the surrounding underbrush and trees. Indeed, the little hut
+was so constructed that it could not be distinguished from the woods even
+a short distance away.
+
+"Can't have a fire, I suppose?" Sinnet asked.
+
+"Not daytimes. Smoke 'd give me away if he suspicioned me," answered the
+mountaineer. "I don't take no chances. Never can tell."
+
+"Water?" asked Sinnet, as though interested in the surroundings, while all
+the time he was eying the mountaineer furtively--as it were, prying to the
+inner man, or measuring the strength of the outer man. He lighted a fresh
+pipe and seated himself on a rough bench beside the table in the middle of
+the room, and leaned on his elbows, watching.
+
+The mountaineer laughed. It was not a pleasant laugh to hear. "Listen," he
+said. "You bin a long time out West. You bin in the mountains a good
+while. Listen."
+
+There was silence. Sinnet listened intently. He heard the faint drip,
+drip, drip of water, and looked steadily at the back wall of the room.
+
+"There--rock?" he said, and jerked his head toward the sound.
+
+"You got good ears," answered the other, and drew aside a blanket which
+hung on the back wall of the room. A wooden trough was disclosed hanging
+under a ledge of rock, and water dripped into it softly, slowly.
+
+"Almost providential, that rock," remarked Sinnet. "You've got your well
+at your back door. Food--but you can't go far, and keep your eye on the
+Bend too," he nodded toward the door, beyond which lay the frost-touched
+valley in the early morning light of autumn.
+
+"Plenty of black squirrels and pigeons come here on account of the springs
+like this one, and I get 'em with a bow and arrow. I didn't call myself
+Robin Hood and Daniel Boone not for nothin' when I was knee-high to a
+grasshopper." He drew from a rough cupboard some cold game, and put it on
+the table, with some scones and a pannikin of water. Then he brought out a
+small jug of whiskey and placed it beside his visitor. They began to eat.
+
+"How d'ye cook without fire?" asked Sinnet.
+
+"Fire's all right at nights. He'd never camp 'twixt here an' Juniper Bend
+at night. The next camp's six miles north from here. He'd only come down
+the valley daytimes. I studied it all out, and it's a dead sure thing.
+From daylight till dusk I'm on to him--I got the trail in my eye."
+
+He showed his teeth like a wild dog, as his look swept the valley. There
+was something almost revolting in his concentrated ferocity.
+
+Sinnet's eyes half closed as he watched the mountaineer, and the long,
+scraggy hands and whipcord neck seemed to interest him greatly. He looked
+at his own slim, brown hands with a half smile, and it was almost as cruel
+as the laugh of the other. Yet it had, too, a knowledge and an
+understanding which gave it humanity.
+
+"You're sure he did it?" Sinnet asked, presently, after drinking a very
+small portion of liquor, and tossing some water from the pannikin after
+it. "You're sure Greevy killed your boy, Buck?"
+
+"My name's Buckmaster, ain't it--Jim Buckmaster? Don't I know my own name?
+It's as sure as that. My boy said it was Greevy when he was dying. He told
+Bill Ricketts so, and Bill told me afore he went East. Bill didn't want to
+tell, but he said it was fair I should know, for my boy never did nobody
+any harm--an' Greevy's livin' on! But I'll git him. Right's right."
+
+"Wouldn't it be better for the law to hang him if you've got the proof,
+Buck? A year or so in jail, an' a long time to think over what's going
+round his neck on the scaffold--wouldn't that suit you, if you've got the
+proof?"
+
+A rigid, savage look came into Buckmaster's face.
+
+"I ain't lettin' no judge and jury do my business. I'm for certain sure,
+not for _p'r'aps_! An' I want to do it myself. Clint was only twenty. Like
+boys we was together. I was eighteen when I married, an' he come when
+_she_ went--jest a year--jest a year. An' ever since then we lived
+together, him an' me, an' shot together, an' trapped together, an' went
+gold-washin' together on the Cariboo, an' eat out of the same dish, an'
+slept under the same blanket, and jawed together nights--ever since he was
+five, when old Mother Lablache had got him into pants, an' he was fit to
+take the trail."
+
+The old man stopped a minute, his whipcord neck swelling, his lips
+twitching. He brought a fist down on the table with a bang. "The biggest
+little rip he was, as full of fun as a squirrel, an' never a smile--jest
+his eyes dancin', an' more sense than a judge. He laid hold o' me, that
+cub did--it was like his mother and himself together; an' the years
+flowin' in an' peterin' out, an' him gettin' older, an' always jest the
+same. Always on rock-bottom, always bright as a dollar, an' we livin' at
+Black Nose Lake, layin' up cash agin' the time we was to go South, an' set
+up a house along the railway, an' him to git married. I was for his
+gittin' married same as me, when we had enough cash. I use to think of
+that when he was ten, and when he was eighteen I spoke to him about it;
+but he wouldn't listen--jest laughed at me. You remember how Clint used to
+laugh, sort of low and teasin' like--you remember that laugh o' Clint's,
+don't you?"
+
+Sinnet's face was toward the valley and Juniper Bend, but he slowly turned
+his head and looked at Buckmaster strangely out of his half-shut eyes. He
+took the pipe from his mouth slowly.
+
+"I can hear it now," he answered, slowly. "I hear it often, Buck."
+
+The old man gripped his arm so suddenly that Sinnet was startled--in so
+far as anything could startle any one who had lived a life of chance and
+danger and accident--and his face grew a shade paler; but he did not move,
+and Buckmaster's hand tightened convulsively.
+
+"You liked him, an' he liked you; he first learnt poker off you, Sinnet.
+He thought you was a tough, but he didn't mind that no more than I did. It
+ain't for us to say what we're goin' to be, not always. Things in life git
+stronger than we are. You was a tough, but who's goin' to judge you? I
+ain't; for Clint took to you, Sinnet, an' he never went wrong in his
+thinkin'. God! he was wife an' child to me--an' he's dead--dead--dead!"
+
+The man's grief was a painful thing to see. His hands gripped the table,
+while his body shook with sobs, though his eyes gave forth no tears. It
+was an inward convulsion, which gave his face the look of unrelieved
+tragedy and suffering--Laocoon struggling with the serpents of sorrow and
+hatred which were strangling him.
+
+"Dead an' gone," he repeated, as he swayed to and fro, and the table
+quivered in his grasp. Presently, however, as though arrested by a
+thought, he peered out of the doorway toward Juniper Bend. "That hawk seen
+him--it seen him. He's comin', I know it, an' I'll git him--plumb." He had
+the mystery and imagination of the mountain-dweller.
+
+The rifle lay against the wall behind him, and he turned and touched it
+almost caressingly. "I ain't let go like this since he was killed, Sinnet.
+It don't do. I got to keep myself stiddy to do the trick when the minute
+comes. At first I usen't to sleep at nights, thinkin' of Clint, an'
+missin' him, an' I got shaky and no good. So I put a cinch on myself, an'
+got to sleepin' again--from the full dusk to dawn, for Greevy wouldn't
+take the trail at night. I've kept stiddy." He held out his hand as though
+to show that it was firm and steady, but it trembled with the emotion
+which had conquered him. He saw it, and shook his head angrily.
+
+"It was seein' you, Sinnet. It burst me. I ain't seen no one to speak to
+in a month, an' with you sittin' there, it was like Clint an' me cuttin'
+and comin' again off the loaf an' the knuckle-bone of ven'son."
+
+Sinnet ran a long finger slowly across his lips, and seemed meditating
+what he should say to the mountaineer. At length he spoke, looking into
+Buckmaster's face: "What was the story Ricketts told you? What did your
+boy tell Ricketts? I've heard, too, about it, and that's why I asked you
+if you had proofs that Greevy killed Clint. Of course, Clint should know,
+and if he told Ricketts, that's pretty straight; but I'd like to know if
+what I heard tallies with what Ricketts heard from Clint. P'r'aps it'd
+ease your mind a bit to tell it. I'll watch the Bend--don't you trouble
+about that. You can't do these two things at one time. I'll watch for
+Greevy; you give me Clint's story to Ricketts. I guess you know I'm
+feelin' for you, an' if I was in your place I'd shoot the man that killed
+Clint, if it took ten years. I'd have his heart's blood--all of it.
+Whether Greevy was in the right or in the wrong, I'd have him--_plumb_."
+
+Buckmaster was moved. He gave a fierce exclamation and made a gesture of
+cruelty. "Clint right or wrong? There ain't no question of that. My boy
+wasn't the kind to be in the wrong. What did he ever do but what was
+right? If Clint was in the wrong I'd kill Greevy jest the same, for Greevy
+robbed him of all the years that was before him--only a sapling he was,
+an' all his growin' to do, all his branches to widen an' his roots to
+spread. But that don't enter in it, his bein' in the wrong. It was a
+quarrel, and Clint never did Greevy any harm. It was a quarrel over cards,
+an' Greevy was drunk, an' followed Clint out into the prairie in the night
+and shot him like a coyote. Clint hadn't no chance, an' he jest lay there
+on the ground till morning, when Ricketts and Steve Joicey found him. An'
+Clint told Ricketts who it was."
+
+"Why didn't Ricketts tell it right out at once?" asked Sinnet.
+
+"Greevy was his own cousin--it was in the family, an' he kept thinkin' of
+Greevy's gal, Em'ly. Her--what'll it matter to her? She'll get married, an
+she'll forgit. I know her, a gal that's got no deep feelin' like Clint had
+for me. But because of her Ricketts didn't speak for a year. Then he
+couldn't stand it any longer, an' he told me--seein' how I suffered, an'
+everybody hidin' their suspicions from me, an' me up here out o' the way,
+an' no account. That was the feelin' among 'em: What was the good of
+making things worse? They wasn't thinkin' of the boy or of Jim Buckmaster,
+his father. They was thinkin' of Greevy's gal--to save her trouble."
+
+Sinnet's face was turned toward Juniper Bend, and the eyes were fixed, as
+it were, on a still more distant object--a dark, brooding, inscrutable
+look.
+
+"Was that all Ricketts told you, Buck?" The voice was very quiet, but it
+had a suggestive note.
+
+"That's all Clint told Bill before he died. That was enough."
+
+There was a moment's pause, and then, puffing out long clouds of smoke,
+and in a tone of curious detachment, as though he were telling something
+that he saw now in the far distance, or as a spectator of a battle from a
+far vantage-point might report to a blind man standing near, Sinnet said:
+
+"P'r'aps Ricketts didn't know the whole story; p'r'aps Clint didn't know
+it all to tell him; p'r'aps Clint didn't remember it all. P'r'aps he
+didn't remember anything except that he and Greevy quarrelled, and that
+Greevy and he shot at each other in the prairie. He'd only be thinking of
+the thing that mattered most to him--that his life was over, an' that a
+man had put a bullet in him, an'--"
+
+Buckmaster tried to interrupt him, but he waved a hand impatiently, and
+continued: "As I say, maybe he didn't remember everything; he had been
+drinkin' a bit himself, Clint had. He wasn't used to liquor, and couldn't
+stand much. Greevy was drunk, too, and gone off his head with rage. He
+always gets drunk when he first comes south to spend the winter with his
+girl Em'ly." He paused a moment, then went on a little more quickly.
+"Greevy was proud of her--couldn't even bear her being crossed in any way;
+and she has a quick temper, and if she quarrelled with anybody Greevy
+quarrelled too."
+
+"I don't want to know anything about her," broke in Buckmaster, roughly.
+"She isn't in this thing. I'm goin' to get Greevy. I bin waitin' for him,
+an' I'll git him."
+
+"You're going to kill the man that killed your boy, if you can, Buck; but
+I'm telling my story in my own way. You told Rickett's story; I'll tell
+what I've heard. And before you kill Greevy you ought to know all there is
+that anybody else knows--or suspicions about it."
+
+"I know enough. Greevy done it, an' I'm here."
+
+With no apparent coherence and relevancy Sinnet continued, but his voice
+was not so even as before. "Em'ly was a girl that wasn't twice alike. She
+was changeable. First it was one, then it was another, and she didn't seem
+to be able to fix her mind. But that didn't prevent her leadin' men on.
+She wasn't changeable, though, about her father. She was to him what your
+boy was to you. There she was like you, ready to give everything up for
+her father."
+
+"I tell y' I don't want to hear about her," said Buckmaster, getting to
+his feet and setting his jaws. "You needn't talk to me about her. She'll
+git over it. I'll never git over what Greevy done to me or to Clint--jest
+twenty, jest twenty! I got my work to do."
+
+He took his gun from the wall, slung it into the hollow of his arm, and
+turned to look up the valley through the open doorway.
+
+The morning was sparkling with life--the life and vigor which a touch of
+frost gives to the autumn world in a country where the blood tingles to
+the dry, sweet sting of the air. Beautiful, and spacious, and buoyant, and
+lonely, the valley and the mountains seemed waiting, like a new-born
+world, to be peopled by man. It was as though all had been made ready for
+him--the birds whistling and singing in the trees, the whisk of the
+squirrels leaping from bough to bough, the peremptory sound of the
+woodpecker's beak against the bole of a tree, the rustle of the leaves as
+a wood-hen ran past--a waiting, virgin world.
+
+Its beauty and its wonderful dignity had no appeal to Buckmaster. His eyes
+and mind were fixed on a deed which would stain the virgin wild with the
+ancient crime that sent the first marauder on human life into the
+wilderness.
+
+As Buckmaster's figure darkened the doorway Sinnet seemed to waken as from
+a dream, and he got swiftly to his feet. "Wait--you wait, Buck. You've got
+to hear all. You haven't heard my story yet. Wait, I tell you."
+
+His voice was so sharp and insistent, so changed, that Buckmaster turned
+from the doorway and came back into the room.
+
+"What's the use of my hearin'? You want me not to kill Greevy, because of
+that gal. What's she to me?"
+
+"Nothing to you, Buck, but Clint was everything to her."
+
+The mountaineer stood like one petrified.
+
+"What's that--what's that you say? It's a damn lie!"
+
+"It wasn't cards--the quarrel, not the real quarrel. Greevy found Clint
+kissing her. Greevy wanted her to marry Gatineau, the lumber-king. That
+was the quarrel."
+
+A snarl was on the face of Buckmaster. "Then she'll not be sorry when I
+git him. It took Clint from her as well as from me." He turned to the door
+again.
+
+"But, wait, Buck, wait one minute and hear--"
+
+He was interrupted by a low, exultant growl, and he saw Buckmaster's rifle
+clutched as a hunter, stooping, clutches his gun to fire on his prey.
+
+"Quick, the spy-glass!" he flung back at Sinnet. "It's him, but I'll make
+sure."
+
+Sinnet caught the telescope from the nails where it hung, and looked out
+toward Juniper Bend. "It's Greevy--and his girl, and the half-breeds," he
+said, with a note in his voice that almost seemed agitation, and yet few
+had ever seen Sinnet agitated. "Em'ly must have gone up the trail in the
+night."
+
+"It's my turn now," the mountaineer said, hoarsely, and, stooping, slid
+away quickly into the undergrowth.
+
+Sinnet followed, keeping near him, neither speaking. For a half mile they
+hastened on, and now and then Buckmaster drew aside the bushes, and looked
+up the valley, to keep Greevy and his _bois brulees_ in his eye. Just so
+had he and his son and Sinnet stalked the wapiti and the red deer along
+these mountains; but this was a man that Buckmaster was stalking now, with
+none of the joy of the sport which had been his since a lad; only the
+malice of the avenger. The lust of a mountain feud was on him; he was
+pursuing the price of blood.
+
+At last Buckmaster stopped at a ledge of rock just above the trail. Greevy
+would pass below, within three hundred yards of his rifle. He turned to
+Sinnet with cold and savage eyes. "You go back," he said. "It's my
+business. I don't want you to see. You don't want to see, then you won't
+know, and you won't need to lie. You said that the man that killed Clint
+ought to die. He's going to die, but it's none o' your business. I want to
+be alone. In a minute he'll be where I kin git him--plumb. You go,
+Sinnet--right off. It's my business."
+
+There was a strange, desperate look in Sinnet's face; it was as hard as
+stone, but his eyes had a light of battle in them.
+
+"It's my business right enough, Buck," he said, "and you're not going to
+kill Greevy. That girl of his has lost her lover, your boy. It's broke her
+heart almost, and there's no use making her an orphan too. She can't stand
+it. She's had enough. You leave her father alone--you hear me, let up!" He
+stepped between Buckmaster and the ledge of rock from which the
+mountaineer was to take aim.
+
+There was a terrible look in Buckmaster's face. He raised his
+single-barrelled rifle, as though he would shoot Sinnet; but, at the
+moment, he remembered that a shot would warn Greevy, and that he might not
+have time to reload. He laid his rifle against a tree swiftly.
+
+"Git away from here," he said, with a strange rattle in his throat. "Git
+away quick; he'll be down past here in a minute."
+
+Sinnet pulled himself together as he saw Buckmaster snatch at a great
+clasp-knife in his belt. He jumped and caught Buckmaster's wrist in a grip
+like a vise.
+
+"Greevy didn't kill him, Buck," he said. But the mountaineer was gone mad,
+and did not grasp the meaning of the words. He twined his left arm round
+the neck of Sinnet, and the struggle began, he fighting to free Sinnet's
+hand from his wrist, to break Sinnet's neck. He did not realize what he
+was doing. He only knew that this man stood between him and the murderer
+of his boy, and all the ancient forces of barbarism were alive in him.
+Little by little they drew to the edge of the rock, from which there was a
+sheer drop of two hundred feet. Sinnet fought like a panther for safety,
+but no sane man's strength could withstand the demoniacal energy that bent
+and crushed him. Sinnet felt his strength giving. Then he said, in a
+hoarse whisper: "Greevy didn't kill him. I killed him, and--"
+
+At that moment he was borne to the ground with a hand on his throat, and
+an instant after the knife went home.
+
+Buckmaster got to his feet and looked at his victim for an instant, dazed
+and wild; then he sprang for his gun. As he did so the words that Sinnet
+had said as they struggled rang in his ears, "_Greevy didn't kill him; I
+killed him_!"
+
+He gave a low cry and turned back toward Sinnet, who lay in a pool of
+blood.
+
+Sinnet was speaking. He went and stooped over him.
+
+[Illustration: LITTLE BY LITTLE THEY DREW TO THE EDGE OF THE ROCK]
+
+"Em'ly threw me over for Clint," the voice said, huskily, "and I followed
+to have it out with Clint. So did Greevy, but Greevy was drunk. I saw them
+meet. I was hid. I saw that Clint would kill Greevy, and I fired. I was
+off my head--I'd never cared for any woman before, and Greevy was her
+father. Clint was off his head too. He had called me names that day--a
+cardsharp, and a liar, and a thief, and a skunk, he called me, and I hated
+him just then. Greevy fired twice--wide. He didn't know but what he killed
+Clint, but he didn't. I did. So I tried to stop you, Buck--"
+
+Life was going fast, and speech failed him; but he opened his eyes again
+and whispered: "I didn't want to die, Buck. I am only thirty-five, and
+it's too soon; but it had to be. Don't look that way, Buck. You got the
+man that killed him--plumb. But Em'ly didn't play fair with me--made a
+fool of me, the only time in my life I ever cared for a woman. You leave
+Greevy alone, Buck, and tell Em'ly for me I wouldn't let you kill her
+father."
+
+"You--Sinnet--you, you done it! Why, he'd have fought for you. You--done
+it--to him--to Clint!"
+
+Now that the blood-feud had been satisfied, a great change came over the
+mountaineer. He had done his work, and the thirst for vengeance was gone.
+Greevy he had hated, but this man had been with him in many a winter's
+hunt. His brain could hardly grasp the tragedy--it had all been too
+sudden.
+
+Suddenly he stooped down. "Sinnet," he said, "ef there was a woman in it,
+that makes all the difference. Sinnet, ef--"
+
+But Sinnet was gone upon a long trail that led into an illimitable
+wilderness. With a moan the old man ran to the ledge of rock. Greevy and
+his girl were below.
+
+"When there's a woman in it--!" he said, in a voice of helplessness and
+misery, and watched her till she disappeared from view. Then he turned,
+and, lifting up in his arms the man he had killed, carried him into the
+deeper woods.
+
+
+
+
+TO-MORROW
+
+
+I
+
+"My, nothing's the matter with the world to-day! It's so good it almost
+hurts."
+
+She raised her head from the white petticoat she was ironing, and gazed
+out of the doorway and down the valley with a warm light in her eyes and a
+glowing face. The snow-tipped mountains far above and away, the
+fir-covered, cedar-ranged foothills, and, lower down, the wonderful maple
+and ash woods, with their hundred autumn tints, all merging to one soft,
+red tone, the roar of the stream tumbling down the ravine from the
+heights, the air that braced the nerves like wine--it all seemed to be
+part of her, the passion of life corresponding to the passion of living in
+her.
+
+After watching the scene dreamily for a moment, she turned and laid the
+iron she had been using upon the hot stove near. Taking up another, she
+touched it with a moistened finger to test the heat, and, leaning above
+the table again, passed it over the linen for a few moments, smiling at
+something that was in her mind. Presently she held the petticoat up,
+turned it round, then hung it in front of her, eying it with critical
+pleasure.
+
+"_To-morrow!_" she said, nodding at it. "You won't be seen, I suppose, but
+_I'll_ know you're nice enough for a queen--and that's enough to know."
+She blushed a little, as though some one had heard her words and was
+looking at her, then she carefully laid the petticoat over the back of a
+chair. "No queen's got one whiter, if I do say it," she continued, tossing
+her head.
+
+In that, at any rate, she was right, for the water of the mountain springs
+was pure, the air was clear, and the sun was clarifying; and little
+ornamented or frilled as it was, the petticoat was exquisitely soft and
+delicate. It would have appealed to more eyes than a woman's.
+
+"To-morrow!" She nodded at it again and turned again to the bright world
+outside. With arms raised and hands resting against the timbers of the
+doorway, she stood dreaming. A flock of pigeons passed with a whir not far
+away, and skirted the woods making down the valley. She watched their
+flight abstractedly, yet with a subconscious sense of pleasure. Life--they
+were Life, eager, buoyant, belonging to this wild region, where still the
+heart could feel so much at home, where the great world was missed so
+little.
+
+Suddenly, as she gazed, a shot rang out down the valley, and two of the
+pigeons came tumbling to the ground, a stray feather floating after. With
+a startled exclamation she took a step forward. Her brain became confused
+and disturbed. She had looked out on Eden, and it had been ravaged before
+her eyes. She had been thinking of to-morrow, and this vast prospect of
+beauty and serenity had been part of the pageant in which it moved. Not
+the valley alone had been marauded, but that "To-morrow," and all it meant
+to her.
+
+Instantly the valley had become clouded over for her, its glory and its
+grace despoiled. She turned back to the room where the white petticoat lay
+upon the chair, but stopped with a little cry of alarm.
+
+A man was standing in the centre of the room. He had entered stealthily by
+the back door, and had waited for her to turn round. He was haggard and
+travel-stained, and there was a feverish light in his eyes. His fingers
+trembled as they adjusted his belt, which seemed too large for him.
+Mechanically he buckled it tighter.
+
+"You're Jenny Long, ain't you?" he asked. "I beg pardon for sneakin' in
+like this, but they're after me, some ranchers and a constable--one o' the
+Riders of the Plains. I've been tryin' to make this house all day. You're
+Jenny Long, ain't you?"
+
+She had plenty of courage, and, after the first instant of shock, she had
+herself in hand. She had quickly observed his condition, had marked the
+candor of the eye and the decision and character of the face, and doubt of
+him found no place in her mind. She had the keen observation of the
+dweller in lonely places, where every traveller has the potentialities of
+a foe, while the door of hospitality is opened to him after the custom of
+the wilds. Year in, year out, since she was a little girl and came to live
+here with her Uncle Sanger when her father died--her mother had gone
+before she could speak--travellers had halted at this door, going North or
+coming South, had had bite and sup, and bed, maybe, and had passed on,
+most of them never to be seen again. More than that, too, there had been
+moments of peril, such as when, alone, she had faced two wood-thieves with
+a revolver, as they were taking her mountain-pony with them, and herself
+had made them "hands-up," and had marched them into a prospector's camp
+five miles away.
+
+She had no doubt about the man before her. Whatever he had done, it was
+nothing dirty or mean--of that she was sure.
+
+"Yes, I'm Jenny Long," she answered. "What have you done? What are they
+after you for?"
+
+[Illustration: "THEY SHOT ME AN' HURT ME"]
+
+"Oh! to-morrow," he answered--"to-morrow I got to git to Bindon. It's life
+or death. I come from prospecting two hundred miles up North. I done it in
+two days and a half. My horse dropped dead--I'm near dead myself. I tried
+to borrow another horse up at Clancey's, and at Scotton's Drive, but they
+didn't know me, and they bounced me. So I borrowed a horse off Weigall's
+paddock, to make for here--to you. I didn't mean to keep that horse. Hell,
+I'm no horse-stealer! But I couldn't explain to them, except that I had to
+git to Bindon to save a man's life. If people laugh in your face, it's no
+use explainin'. I took a roan from Weigall's, and they got after me. 'Bout
+six miles up they shot at me an' hurt me."
+
+She saw that one arm hung limp at his side and that his wrist was wound
+with a red bandana.
+
+She started forward. "Are you hurt bad? Can I bind it up or wash it for
+you? I've got plenty of hot water here, and it's bad letting a wound get
+stale."
+
+He shook his head. "I washed the hole clean in the creek below. I doubled
+on them. I had to go down past your place here, and then work back to be
+rid of them. But there's no telling when they'll drop onto the game, and
+come back for me. My only chance was to git to you. Even if I had a horse,
+I couldn't make Bindon in time. It's two days round the gorge by trail. A
+horse is no use now--I lost too much time since last night. I can't git to
+Bindon to-morrow in time, if I ride the trail."
+
+"The river?" she asked, abruptly.
+
+"It's the only way. It cuts off fifty mile. That's why I come to you."
+
+She frowned a little, her face became troubled, and her glance fell on his
+arm nervously. "What've I got to do with it?" she asked, almost sharply.
+
+"Even if this was all right"--he touched the wounded arm--"I couldn't take
+the rapids in a canoe. I don't know them, an' it would be sure death.
+That's not the worst, for there's a man at Bindon would lose his
+life--p'r'aps twenty men--I dunno; but one man sure. To-morrow, it's go or
+stay with him. He was good--Lord, but he was good!--to my little gal years
+back. She'd only been married to me a year when he saved her, riskin' his
+own life. No one else had the pluck. My little gal, only twenty she was,
+an' pretty as a picture, an' me fifty miles away when the fire broke out
+in the hotel where she was. He'd have gone down to hell for a friend, an'
+he saved my little gal. I had her for five years after that. That's why I
+got to git to Bindon to-morrow. If I don't, I don't want to see to-morrow.
+I got to go down the river to-night."
+
+She knew what he was going to ask her. She knew he was thinking what all
+the North knew, that she was the first person to take the Dog Nose Rapids
+in a canoe, down the great river scarce a stone's-throw from her door; and
+that she had done it in safety many times. Not in all the West and North
+were there a half dozen people who could take a canoe to Bindon, and they
+were not here. She knew that he meant to ask her to paddle him down the
+swift stream, with its murderous rocks, to Bindon. She glanced at the
+white petticoat on the chair, and her lips tightened. To-morrow--to-morrow
+was as much to her here as it would be to this man before her, or the man
+he would save at Bindon.
+
+"What do you want?" she asked, hardening her heart.
+
+"Can't you see? I want you to hide me here till to-night. There's a full
+moon, an' it would be as plain goin' as by day. They told me about you up
+North, and I said to myself, 'If I git to Jenny Long, an' tell her about
+my friend at Bindon, an' my little gal, she'll take me down to Bindon in
+time.' My little gal would have paid her own debt if she'd ever had the
+chance. She didn't--she's lying up on Mazy Mountain. But one woman'll do a
+lot for the sake of another woman. Say, you'll do it, won't you? If I
+don't git there by to-morrow noon, it's no good."
+
+She would not answer. He was asking more than he knew. Why should she be
+sacrificed? Was it her duty to pay the "little gal's debt," to save the
+man at Bindon? To-morrow was to be the great day in her own life. The one
+man in all the world was coming to marry her to-morrow. After four years'
+waiting, after a bitter quarrel in which both had been to blame, he was
+coming from the mining town of Selby to marry her to-morrow.
+
+"What will happen? Why will your friend lose his life if you don't get to
+Bindon?"
+
+"By noon to-morrow, by twelve o'clock noon; that's the plot; that's what
+they've schemed. Three days ago, I heard. I got a man free from trouble
+North--he was no good, but I thought he ought to have another chance, and
+I got him free. He told me of what was to be done at Bindon. There'd been
+a strike in the mine, an' my friend had took it in hand with
+knuckle-dusters on. He isn't the kind to fell a tree with a jack-knife.
+Then three of the strikers that had been turned away--they was the
+ringleaders--they laid a plan that'd make the devil sick. They've put a
+machine in the mine, an' timed it, an' it'll go off when my friend comes
+out of the mine at noon to-morrow."
+
+Her face was pale now, and her eyes had a look of pain and horror. Her
+man--him that she was to marry--was the head of a mine also at Selby,
+forty miles beyond Bindon, and the horrible plot came home to her with
+piercing significance.
+
+"Without a second's warning," he urged, "to go like that, the man that was
+so good to my little gal, an' me with a chance to save him, an' others
+too, p'r'aps. You won't let it be. Say, I'm pinnin' my faith to you.
+I'm--"
+
+Suddenly he swayed. She caught him, held him, and lowered him gently in a
+chair. Presently he opened his eyes. "It's want o' food, I suppose," he
+said. "If you've got a bit of bread and meat--I must keep up."
+
+She went to a cupboard, but suddenly turned toward him again. Her ears had
+caught a sound outside in the underbrush. He had heard also, and he half
+staggered to his feet.
+
+"Quick--in here!" she said, and, opening a door, pushed him inside. "Lie
+down on my bed, and I'll bring you vittles as quick as I can," she added.
+Then she shut the door, turned to the ironing-board, and took up the iron,
+as the figure of a man darkened the doorway.
+
+"Hello, Jinny, fixin' up for to-morrow?" the man said, stepping inside,
+with a rifle under his arm and some pigeons in his hand.
+
+She nodded and gave him an impatient, scrutinizing glance. His face had a
+fatuous kind of smile.
+
+"Been celebrating the pigeons?" she asked, dryly, jerking her head toward
+the two birds, which she had seen drop from her Eden skies a short time
+before.
+
+"I only had one swig of whiskey, honest Injun!" he answered. "I s'pose I
+might have waited till to-morrow, but I was dead-beat. I got a bear over
+by the Ten-mile Reach, and I was tired. I ain't so young as I used to be,
+and, anyhow, what's the good? What's ahead of me? You're going to git
+married to-morrow after all these years we bin together, and you're going
+down to Selby from the mountains, where I won't see you, not once in a
+blue moon. Only that old trollop, Mother Massy, to look after me."
+
+"Come down to Selby and live there. You'll be welcome by Jake and me."
+
+He stood his gun in the corner and, swinging the pigeons in his hand,
+said: "Me live out of the mountains! Don't you know better than that? I
+couldn't breathe, and I wouldn't want to breathe. I've got my shack here,
+I got my fur business, and they're still fond of whiskey up North!" He
+chuckled to himself, as he thought of the illicit still farther up the
+mountain behind them. "I make enough to live on, and I've put a few
+dollars by, though I won't have so many after to-morrow, after I've given
+you a little pile, Jinny."
+
+"P'r'aps there won't be any _to-morrow_, as you expect," she said,
+slowly.
+
+The old man started. "What! you and Jake ain't quarrelled again? You ain't
+broke it off at the last moment, same as before? You ain't had a letter
+from Jake?" He looked at the white petticoat on the chair-back, and shook
+his head in bewilderment.
+
+"I've had no letter," she answered. "I've had no letter from Selby for a
+month. It was all settled then, and there was no good writing, when he was
+coming to-morrow with the minister and the license. Who do you think'd be
+postman from Selby here? It must have cost him ten dollars to send the
+last letter."
+
+"Then what's the matter? I don't understand," the old man urged,
+querulously. He did not want her to marry and leave him, but he wanted no
+more troubles; he did not relish being asked awkward questions by every
+mountaineer he met as to why Jenny Long didn't marry Jake Lawson.
+
+"There's only one way that I can be married to-morrow," she said, at last,
+"and that's by you taking a man down the Dog Nose Rapids to Bindon
+to-night."
+
+He dropped the pigeons on the floor, dumfounded. "What in--"
+
+He stopped short, in sheer incapacity to go further. Jenny had not always
+been easy to understand, but she was wholly incomprehensible now.
+
+She picked up the pigeons and was about to speak, but she glanced at the
+bedroom door, where her exhausted visitor had stretched himself on her
+bed, and beckoned her uncle to another room.
+
+"There's a plate of vittles ready for you in there," she said. "I'll tell
+you as you eat."
+
+He followed her into the little living-room adorned by the trophies of his
+earlier achievements with gun and rifle, and sat down at the table, where
+some food lay covered by a clean white cloth.
+
+"No one'll ever look after me as you've done, Jinny," he said, as he
+lifted the cloth and saw the palatable dish ready for him. Then he
+remembered again about to-morrow and the Dog Nose Rapids.
+
+"What's it all about, Jinny? What's that about my canoeing a man down to
+Bindon?"
+
+"Eat, uncle," she said, more softly than she had yet spoken, for his words
+about her care of him had brought a moisture to her eyes. "I'll be back in
+a minute and tell you all about it."
+
+"Well, it's about took away my appetite," he said. "I feel a kind of
+sinking." He took from his pocket a bottle, poured some of its contents
+into a tin cup, and drank it off.
+
+"No, I suppose you couldn't take a man down to Bindon," she said, as she
+saw his hand trembling on the cup. Then she turned and entered the other
+room again. Going to the cupboard, she hastily heaped a plate with food,
+and, taking a dipper of water from a pail near by, she entered her bedroom
+hastily and placed what she had brought on a small table, as her visitor
+rose slowly from the bed.
+
+He was about to speak, but she made a protesting gesture.
+
+"I can't tell you anything yet," she said.
+
+"Who was it come?" he asked.
+
+"My uncle--I'm going to tell him."
+
+"The men after me may git here any minute," he urged, anxiously.
+
+"They'd not be coming into my room," she answered, flushing slightly.
+
+"Can't you hide me down by the river till we start?" he asked, his eyes
+eagerly searching her face. He was assuming that she would take him down
+the river; but she gave no sign.
+
+"I've got to see if he'll take you first?" she answered.
+
+"He--your uncle, Tom Sanger? He drinks, I've heard. He'd never git to
+Bindon."
+
+She did not reply directly to his words. "I'll come back and tell you.
+There's a place you could hide by the river where no one could ever find
+you," she said, and left the room.
+
+As she stepped out, she saw the old man standing in the doorway of the
+other room. His face was petrified with amazement.
+
+"Who you got in that room, Jinny? What man you got in that room? I heard a
+man's voice. Is it because o' him that you bin talkin' about no weddin'
+to-morrow? Is it one o' the others come back, puttin' you off Jake
+again?"
+
+Her eyes flashed fire at his first words, and her breast heaved with
+anger, but suddenly she became composed again and motioned him to a
+chair.
+
+"You eat, and I'll tell you all about it, Uncle Tom," she said, and,
+seating herself at the table also, she told him the story of the man who
+must go to Bindon.
+
+When she had finished, the old man blinked at her for a minute without
+speaking, then he said, slowly: "I heard something 'bout trouble down at
+Bindon yisterday from a Hudson's Bay man goin' North, but I didn't take it
+in. You've got a lot o' sense, Jinny, an' if you think he's tellin' the
+truth, why, it goes; but it's as big a mixup as a lariat in a steer's
+horns. You've got to hide him sure, whoever he is, for I wouldn't hand an
+Eskimo over, if I'd taken him in my home once; we're mountain people. A
+man ought to be hung for horse-stealin', but this was different. He was
+doing it to save a man's life, an' that man at Bindon was good to his
+little gal, an' she's dead."
+
+He moved his head from side to side with the air of a sentimental
+philosopher. He had all the vanity of a man who had been a success in a
+small, shrewd, culpable way--had he not evaded the law for thirty years
+with his whiskey-still?
+
+"I know how he felt," he continued. "When Betsy died--we was only four
+years married--I could have crawled into a knot-hole an' died there. You
+got to save him, Jinny, but"--he came suddenly to his feet--"he ain't safe
+here. They might come any minute, if they've got back on his trail. I'll
+take him up the gorge. You know where."
+
+"You sit still, Uncle Tom," she rejoined. "Leave him where he is a minute.
+There's things must be settled first. They ain't going to look for him in
+my bedroom, be they?"
+
+The old man chuckled. "I'd like to see 'em at it. You got a temper, Jinny;
+and you got a pistol, too, eh?" He chuckled again. "As good a shot as any
+in the mountains. I can see you darin' 'em to come on. But what if Jake
+come, and he found a man in your bedroom"--he wiped the tears of laughter
+from his eyes--"why, Jinny--"
+
+He stopped short, for there was anger in her face. "I don't want to hear
+any more of that. I do what I want to do," she snapped out.
+
+"Well, well, you always done what you wanted; but we got to git him up the
+hills, till it's sure they're out o' the mountains and gone back. It'll be
+days, mebbe."
+
+"Uncle Tom, you've took too much to drink," she answered. "You don't
+remember he's got to be at Bindon by to-morrow noon. He's got to save his
+friend by then."
+
+"Pshaw! Who's going to take him down the river to-night? You're goin' to
+be married to-morrow. If you like, you can give him the canoe. It'll never
+come back, nor him neither!"
+
+"You've been down with me," she responded, suggestively. "And you went
+down once by yourself."
+
+He shook his head. "I ain't been so well this summer. My sight ain't what
+it was. I can't stand the racket as I once could. 'Pears to me I'm gettin'
+old. No, I couldn't take them rapids, Jinny, not for one frozen minute."
+
+She looked at him with trouble in her eyes, and her face lost some of its
+color. She was fighting back the inevitable, even as its shadow fell upon
+her. "You wouldn't want a man to die, if you could save him, Uncle
+Tom--blown up, sent to Kingdom Come without any warning at all; and
+perhaps he's got them that love him--and the world so beautiful."
+
+"Well, it ain't nice dyin' in the summer, when it's all sun, and there's
+plenty everywhere; but there's no one to go down the river with him.
+What's his name?"
+
+Her struggle was over. She had urged him, but in very truth she was urging
+herself all the time, bringing herself to the axe of sacrifice.
+
+"His name's Dingley. I'm going down the river with him--down to Bindon."
+
+The old man's mouth opened in blank amazement. His eyes blinked
+helplessly.
+
+"What you talkin' about, Jinny? Jake's comin' up with the minister, an'
+you're goin' to be married at noon to-morrow."
+
+"I'm takin' him"--she jerked her head toward the room where Dingley
+was--"down Dog Nose Rapids to-night. He's risked his life for his friend,
+thinkin' of her that's dead an' gone, and a man's life is a man's life. If
+it was Jake's life in danger, what 'd I think of a woman that could save
+him, and didn't?"
+
+"Onct you broke off with Jake Lawson--the day before you was to be
+married; an' it's took years to make up an' agree again to be spliced. If
+Jake comes here to-morrow, and you ain't here, what do you think he'll do?
+The neighbors are comin' for fifty miles round, two is comin' up a hundred
+miles, and you can't--Jinny, you can't do it. I bin sick of answerin'
+questions all these years 'bout you and Jake, an' I ain't goin' through it
+again. I've told more lies than there's straws in a tick."
+
+She flamed out. "Then take him down the river yourself--a man to do a
+man's work. Are you afeard to take the risk?"
+
+He held out his hands slowly and looked at them. They shook a little.
+"Yes, Jinny," he said, sadly, "I'm afeard. I ain't what I was. I made a
+mistake, Jinny. I've took too much whiskey. I'm older than I ought to be.
+I oughtn't never to have had a whiskey-still, an' I wouldn't have drunk so
+much. I got money--money for you, Jinny, for you an' Jake, but I've lost
+what I'll never git back. I'm afeard to go down the river with him. I'd go
+smash in the Dog Nose Rapids. I got no nerve. I can't hunt the grizzly any
+more, nor the puma, Jinny. I got to keep to common shootin', now and
+henceforth, amen! No, I'd go smash in Dog Nose Rapids."
+
+She caught his hands impulsively. "Don't you fret, Uncle Tom. You've bin a
+good uncle to me, and you've bin a good friend, and you ain't the first
+that's found whiskey too much for him. You ain't got an enemy in the
+mountains. Why, I've got two or three--"
+
+"Shucks! Women--only women whose beaux left 'em to follow after you.
+That's nothing, an' they'll be your friends fast enough after you're
+married to-morrow."
+
+"I ain't going to be married to-morrow. I'm going down to Bindon to-night.
+If Jake's mad, then it's all over, and there'll be more trouble among the
+women up here."
+
+By this time they had entered the other room. The old man saw the white
+petticoat on the chair. "No woman in the mountains ever had a petticoat
+like that, Jinny. It'd make a dress, it's that pretty an' neat. Golly! I'd
+like to see it on you, with the blue skirt over, and just hitched up a
+little."
+
+"Oh, shut up--shut up!" she said, in sudden anger, and caught up the
+petticoat as though she would put it away; but presently she laid it down
+again and smoothed it with quick, nervous fingers. "Can't you talk sense
+and leave my clothes alone? If Jake comes, and I'm not here, and he wants
+to make a fuss, and spoil everything, and won't wait, you give him this
+petticoat. You put it in his arms. I bet you'll have the laugh on him.
+He's got a temper."
+
+"So've you, Jinny, dear, so've you," said the old man, laughing. "You're
+goin' to have your own way, same as ever--same as ever."
+
+II
+
+A moon of exquisite whiteness silvering the world, making shadows on the
+water as though it were sunlight and the daytime, giving a spectral look
+to the endless array of poplar trees on the banks, glittering on the foam
+of the rapids. The spangling stars made the arch of the sky like some
+gorgeous chancel in a cathedral as vast as life and time. Like the day
+which was ended, in which the mountain-girl had found a taste of Eden, it
+seemed too sacred for mortal strife. Now and again there came the note of
+a night-bird, the croak of a frog from the shore; but the serene stillness
+and beauty of the primeval North was over all.
+
+For two hours after sunset it had all been silent and brooding, and then
+two figures appeared on the bank of the great river. A canoe was softly
+and hastily pushed out from its hidden shelter under the overhanging bank,
+and was noiselessly paddled out to mid-stream, dropping down the current
+meanwhile.
+
+It was Jenny Long and the man who must get to Bindon. They had waited till
+nine o'clock, when the moon was high and full, to venture forth. Then
+Dingley had dropped from her bedroom window, had joined her under the
+trees, and they had sped away, while the man's hunters, who had come
+suddenly, and before Jenny could get him away into the woods, were
+carousing inside. These had tracked their man back to Tom Sanger's house,
+and at first they were incredulous that Jenny and her uncle had not seen
+him. They had prepared to search the house, and one had laid his finger on
+the latch of her bedroom door; but she had flared out with such anger
+that, mindful of the supper she had already begun to prepare for them,
+they had desisted, and the whiskey-jug which the old man brought out
+distracted their attention.
+
+One of their number, known as the Man from Clancey's had, however, been
+outside when Dingley had dropped from the window, and had seen him from a
+distance. He had not given the alarm, but had followed, to make the
+capture by himself. But Jenny had heard the stir of life behind them, and
+had made a sharp detour, so that they had reached the shore and were out
+in mid-stream before their tracker got to the river. Then he called to
+them to return, but Jenny only bent a little lower and paddled on, guiding
+the canoe toward the safe-channel through the first small rapids leading
+to the great Dog Nose Rapids.
+
+A rifle-shot rang out, and a bullet "pinged" over the water and splintered
+the side of the canoe where Dingley sat. He looked calmly back, and saw
+the rifle raised again, but did not stir, in spite of Jenny's warning to
+lie down.
+
+"He'll not fire on you so long as he can draw a bead on me," he said,
+quietly.
+
+Again a shot rang out, and the bullet sang past his head.
+
+"If he hits me, you go straight on to Bindon," he continued. "Never mind
+about me. Go to the Snowdrop Mine. Get there by twelve o'clock, and warn
+them. Don't stop a second for me--"
+
+Suddenly three shots rang out in succession--Tom Sanger's house had
+emptied itself on the bank of the river--and Dingley gave a sharp
+exclamation.
+
+"They've hit me, but it's the same arm as before," he growled. "They got
+no right to fire at me. It's not the law. Don't stop," he added, quickly,
+as he saw her half turn round.
+
+Now there were loud voices on the shore. Old Tom Sanger was threatening to
+shoot the first man that fired again, and he would have kept his word.
+
+"Who you firin' at?" he shouted. "That's my niece, Jinny Long, an' you let
+that boat alone. This ain't the land o' lynch law. Dingley ain't escaped
+from gaol. You got no right to fire at him."
+
+"No one ever went down Dog Nose Rapids at night," said the Man from
+Clancey's, whose shot had got Dingley's arm. "There ain't a chance of them
+doing it. No one's ever done it."
+
+The two were in the roaring rapids now, and the canoe was jumping through
+the foam like a race-horse. The keen eyes on the bank watched the canoe
+till it was lost in the half-gloom below the first rapids, and then they
+went slowly back to Tom Sanger's house.
+
+"So there'll be no wedding to-morrow," said the Man from Clancey's.
+
+"Funerals, more likely," drawled another.
+
+"Jinny Long's in that canoe, an' she ginerally does what she wants to,"
+said Tom Sanger, sagely.
+
+"Well, we done our best, and now I hope they'll get to Bindon," said
+another.
+
+Sanger passed the jug to him freely. Then they sat down and talked of the
+people who had been drowned in Dog Nose Rapids, and of the last wedding in
+the mountains.
+
+III
+
+It was as the Man from Clancey's had said, no one had ever gone down Dog
+Nose Rapids in the night-time, and probably no one but Jenny Long would
+have ventured it. Dingley had had no idea what a perilous task had been
+set his rescuer. It was only when the angry roar of the great rapids
+floated up-stream to them, increasing in volume till they could see the
+terror of tumbling waters just below, and the canoe shot forward like a
+snake through the swift, smooth current which would sweep them into the
+vast caldron, that he realized the terrible hazard of the enterprise.
+
+The moon was directly overhead when they drew upon the race of rocks and
+fighting water and foam. On either side only the shadowed shore, forsaken
+by the races which had hunted and roamed and ravaged here--not a light,
+nor any sign of life, or the friendliness of human presence to make their
+isolation less complete, their danger, as it were, shared by
+fellow-mortals. Bright as the moon was, it was not bright enough for
+perfect pilotage. Never in the history of white men had these rapids been
+ridden at night-time. As they sped down the flume of the deep,
+irresistible current, and were launched into the trouble of rocks and
+water, Jenny realized how great their peril was, and how different the
+track of the waters looked at night-time from daytime. Outlines seemed
+merged, rocks did not look the same, whirlpools had a different vortex,
+islands of stone had a new configuration. As they sped on, lurching,
+jumping, piercing a broken wall of wave and spray like a torpedo, shooting
+an almost sheer fall, she came to rely on a sense of intuition rather than
+memory, for night had transformed the waters.
+
+Not a sound escaped either. The man kept his eyes fixed on the woman; the
+woman scanned the dreadful pathway with eyes deep-set and burning,
+resolute, vigilant, and yet defiant, too, as though she had been trapped
+into this track of danger, and was fighting without great hope, but with
+the temerity and nonchalance of despair. Her arms were bare to the
+shoulder almost, and her face was again and again drenched, but second
+succeeded second, minute followed minute in a struggle which might well
+turn a man's hair gray, and now, at last--how many hours was it since they
+had been cast into this den of roaring waters?--at last, suddenly, over a
+large fall, and here smooth waters again, smooth and untroubled, and
+strong and deep. Then, and only then, did a word escape either; but the
+man had passed through torture and unavailing regret, for he realized that
+he had had no right to bring this girl into such a fight. It was not _her_
+friend who was in danger at Bindon. Her life had been risked without due
+warrant. "I didn't know, or I wouldn't have asked it," he said, in a low
+voice. "Lord, but you are a wonder--to take that hurdle for no one that
+belonged to you, and to do it as you've done it. This country will rise to
+you." He looked back on the raging rapids far behind, and he shuddered.
+"It was a close call, and no mistake. We must have been within a foot of
+down-you-go fifty times. But it's all right now, if we can last it out and
+git there." Again he glanced back, then turned to the girl. "It makes me
+pretty sick to look at it," he continued. "I bin through a lot, but that's
+as sharp practice as I want."
+
+"Come here and let me bind up your arm," she answered. "They hit you--the
+sneaks! Are you bleeding much?"
+
+He came near her carefully, as she got the big canoe out of the current
+into quieter water. She whipped the scarf from about her neck, and with
+his knife ripped up the seam of his sleeve. Her face was alive with the
+joy of conflict and elated with triumph. Her eyes were shining. She bathed
+the wound--the bullet had passed clean through the fleshy part of the
+arm--and then carefully tied the scarf round it over her handkerchief.
+
+"I guess it's as good as a man could do it," she said, at last.
+
+"As good as any doctor," he rejoined.
+
+"I wasn't talking of your arm," she said.
+
+"Course not. Excuse me. You was talkin' of them rapids, and I've got to
+say there ain't a man that could have done it and come through like you. I
+guess the man that marries you'll get more than his share of luck."
+
+"I want none of that," she said, sharply, and picked up her paddle again,
+her eyes flashing anger.
+
+He took a pistol from his pocket and offered it to her. "I didn't mean any
+harm by what I said. Take this if you think I won't know how to behave
+myself," he urged.
+
+She flung up her head a little. "I knew what I was doing before I
+started," she said. "Put it away. How far is it, and can we do it in
+time?"
+
+"If you can hold out, we can do it; but it means going all night and all
+morning; and it ain't dawn yet, by a long shot."
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Dawn came at last, and the mist of early morning, and the imperious and
+dispelling sun; and with mouthfuls of food as they drifted on, the two
+fixed their eyes on the horizon beyond which lay Bindon. And now it seemed
+to the girl as though this race to save a life, or many lives, was the one
+thing in existence. _To-morrow_ was to-day, and the white petticoat was
+lying in the little house in the mountains, and her wedding was an
+interminable distance off, so had this adventure drawn her into its risks
+and toils and haggard exhaustion.
+
+Eight, nine, ten, eleven o'clock came, and then they saw signs of
+settlement. Houses appeared here and there upon the banks, and now and
+then a horseman watched them from the shore, but they could not pause.
+Bindon--Bindon--Bindon--the Snowdrop Mine at Bindon, and a death-dealing
+machine timed to do its deadly work, were before the eyes of the two
+_voyageurs_.
+
+Half-past eleven, and the town of Bindon was just beyond them. A quarter
+to twelve, and they had run their canoe into the bank beyond which were
+the smokestacks and chimneys of the mine. Bindon was peacefully pursuing
+its way, though here and there were little groups of strikers who had not
+resumed work.
+
+Dingley and the girl scrambled up the bank. Trembling with fatigue, they
+hastened on. The man drew ahead of her, for she had paddled for fifteen
+hours, practically without ceasing, and the ground seemed to rise up at
+her. But she would not let him stop.
+
+He hurried on, reached the mine, and entered, shouting the name of his
+friend. It was seven minutes to twelve.
+
+A moment later, a half-dozen men came rushing from that portion of the
+mine where Dingley had been told the machine was placed, and at their head
+was Lawson, the man he had come to save.
+
+The girl hastened on to meet them, but she grew faint and leaned against a
+tree, scarce conscious. She was roused by voices.
+
+"No, it wasn't me, it wasn't me that done it; it was a girl. Here she
+is--Jenny Long! You got to thank her, Jake."
+
+Jake! Jake! The girl awakened to full understanding now. Jake--what Jake?
+She looked, then stumbled forward with a cry.
+
+"Jake--it was my Jake!" she faltered.
+
+The mine-boss caught her in his arms.
+
+"You, Jenny! It's you that's saved me!"
+
+Suddenly there was a rumble as of thunder, and a cloud of dust and stone
+rose from the Snowdrop Mine.
+
+The mine-boss tightened his arm round the girl's waist. "That's what I
+missed, through him and you, Jenny," he said.
+
+"What was you doing here, and not at Selby, Jake?" she asked.
+
+"They sent for me--to stop the trouble here."
+
+"But what about our wedding to-day?" she asked, with a frown.
+
+"A man went from here with a letter to you three days ago," he said,
+"asking you to come down here and be married. I suppose he got drunk, or
+had an accident, and didn't reach you. It had to be. I was needed
+here--couldn't tell what would happen."
+
+"It has happened out all right," said Dingley, "and this'll be the end of
+it. You got them miners solid now. The strikers'll eat humble pie after
+to-day."
+
+"We'll be married to-day, just the same," the mine-boss said, as he gave
+some brandy to the girl.
+
+But the girl shook her head. She was thinking of a white petticoat in a
+little house in the mountains.
+
+"I'm not going to be married to-day," she said, decisively.
+
+"Well, to-morrow," said the mine-boss.
+
+But the girl shook her head again. "To-day is to-morrow," she answered.
+"You can wait, Jake. I'm going back home to be married."
+
+
+
+
+QU'APPELLE
+
+
+(_Who calls?_)
+
+"But I'm white; I'm not an Indian. My father was a white man. I've been
+brought up as a white girl. I've had a white girl's schooling."
+
+Her eyes flashed as she sprang to her feet and walked up and down the room
+for a moment, then stood still, facing her mother--a dark-faced,
+pock-marked woman, with heavy, somnolent eyes--and waited for her to
+speak. The reply came slowly and sullenly:
+
+"I am a Blackfoot woman. I lived on the Muskwat River among the braves for
+thirty years. I have killed buffalo. I have seen battles. Men, too, I have
+killed when they came to steal our horses and crept in on our lodges in
+the night--the Crees! I am a Blackfoot. You are the daughter of a
+Blackfoot woman. No medicine can cure that. Sit down. You have no sense.
+You are not white. They will not have you. Sit down."
+
+The girl's handsome face flushed; she threw up her hands in an agony of
+protest. A dreadful anger was in her panting breast, but she could not
+speak. She seemed to choke with excess of feeling. For an instant she
+stood still, trembling with agitation, then she sat down suddenly on a
+great couch covered with soft deer-skins and buffalo robes. There was deep
+in her the habit of obedience to this sombre but striking woman. She had
+been ruled firmly, almost oppressively, and she had not yet revolted.
+Seated on the couch, she gazed out of the window at the flying snow, her
+brain too much on fire for thought, passion beating like a pulse in all
+her lithe and graceful young body, which had known the storms of life and
+time for only twenty years.
+
+The wind shrieked and the snow swept past in clouds of blinding drift,
+completely hiding from sight the town below them, whose civilization had
+built itself many habitations and was making roads and streets on the
+green-brown plain, where herds of buffalo had stamped and streamed and
+thundered not long ago. The town was a mile and a half away, and these two
+were alone in a great circle of storm, one of them battling against a
+tempest which might yet overtake her, against which she had set her face
+ever since she could remember; though it had only come to violence since
+her father died two years before--a careless, strong, wilful white man,
+who had lived the Indian life for many years, but had been swallowed at
+last by the great wave of civilization streaming westward and northward,
+wiping out the game and the Indian, and overwhelming the rough, fighting,
+hunting, pioneer life. Joel Renton had made money, by good luck chiefly,
+having held land here and there which he had got for nothing, and had then
+almost forgotten about it, and, when reminded of it, still held on to it
+with that defiant stubbornness which often possesses improvident and
+careless natures. He had never had any real business instinct, and to
+swagger a little over the land he held and to treat offers of purchase
+with contempt was the loud assertion of a capacity he did not possess. So
+it was that stubborn vanity, beneath which was his angry protest against
+the prejudice felt by the new people of the West for the white pioneer who
+married an Indian and lived the Indian life--so it was that this gave him
+competence and a comfortable home after the old trader had been driven out
+by the railway and the shopkeeper. With the first land he sold he sent his
+daughter away to school in a town farther east and south, where she had
+been brought in touch with a life that at once cramped and attracted her;
+where, too, she had felt the first chill of racial ostracism, and had
+proudly fought it to the end, her weapons being talent, industry, and a
+hot, defiant ambition.
+
+There had been three years of bitter, almost half-sullen, struggle,
+lightened by one sweet friendship with a girl whose face she had since
+drawn in a hundred different poses on stray pieces of paper, on the walls
+of the big, well-lighted attic to which she retreated for hours every day,
+when she was not abroad on the prairies, riding the Indian pony that her
+uncle the Piegan Chief, Ice Breaker, had given her years before. Three
+years of struggle, and then her father had died, and the refuge for her
+vexed, defiant heart was gone. While he lived she could affirm the rights
+of a white man's daughter, the rights of the daughter of a pioneer who had
+helped to make the West; and her pride in him had given a glow to her
+cheek and a spring to her step which drew every eye. In the chief street
+of Portage la Drome men would stop their trafficking and women nudge one
+another when she passed, and wherever she went she stirred interest,
+excited admiration, or aroused prejudice--but the prejudice did not matter
+so long as her father, Joel Renton, lived. Whatever his faults, and they
+were many--sometimes he drank too much, and swore a great deal, and
+bullied and stormed--she blinked at them all, for he was of the conquering
+race, a white man who had slept in white sheets and eaten off white
+tablecloths, and used a knife and fork, since he was born; and the women
+of his people had had soft petticoats and fine stockings, and silk gowns
+for festal days, and feathered hats of velvet, and shoes of polished
+leather, always and always, back through many generations. She had held
+her head high, for she was of his women, of the women of his people, with
+all their rights and all their claims. She had held it high till that
+stormy day--just such a day as this, with the surf of snow breaking
+against the house--when they carried him in out of the wild turmoil and
+snow, laying him on the couch where she now sat, and her head fell on his
+lifeless breast, and she cried out to him in vain to come back to her.
+
+Before the world her head was still held high, but in the attic-room, and
+out on the prairies far away, where only the coyote or the prairie hen
+saw, her head drooped, and her eyes grew heavy with pain and sombre
+protest. Once in an agony of loneliness, and cruelly hurt by a conspicuous
+slight put upon her at the Portage by the wife of the Reeve of the town,
+who had daughters twain of pure white blood got from behind the bar of a
+saloon in Winnipeg, she had thrown open her window at night, with the
+frost below zero, and stood in her thin nightdress, craving the death
+which she hoped the cold would give her soon. It had not availed, however,
+and once again she had ridden out in a blizzard to die, but had come upon
+a man lost in the snow, and her own misery had passed from her, and her
+heart, full of the blood of plainsmen, had done for another what it would
+not do for itself. The Indian in her had, with strange, sure instinct,
+found its way to Portage la Drome, the man, with both hands and one foot
+frozen, on her pony, she walking at his side, only conscious that she had
+saved one, not two lives that day.
+
+Here was another such day, here again was the storm in her heart which had
+driven her into the plains that other time, and here again was that
+tempest of white death outside.
+
+_"You have no sense. You are not white. They will not have you. Sit
+down_--" The words had fallen on her ears with a cold, deadly smother.
+There came a chill upon her which stilled the wild pulses in her, which
+suddenly robbed the eyes of their brightness and gave a drawn look to the
+face.
+
+"You are not white. They will not have you, Pauline." The Indian mother
+repeated the words after a moment, her eyes grown still more gloomy; for
+in her, too, there was a dark tide of passion moving. In all the outlived
+years this girl had ever turned to the white father rather than to her,
+and she had been left more and more alone. Her man had been kind to her,
+and she had been a faithful wife, but she had resented the natural
+instinct of her half-breed child, almost white herself and with the
+feelings and ways of the whites, to turn always to her father, as though
+to a superior guide, to a higher influence and authority. Was not she
+herself the descendant of Blackfoot and Piegan chiefs through generations
+of rulers and warriors? Was there not Piegan and Blackfoot blood in the
+girl's veins? Must only the white man's blood be reckoned when they made
+up their daily account and balanced the books of their lives, credit and
+debtor--misunderstanding and kind act, neglect and tenderness, reproof and
+praise, gentleness and impulse, anger and caress--to be set down in the
+everlasting record? Why must the Indian always give way--Indian habits,
+Indian desires, the Indian way of doing things, the Indian point of view,
+Indian food, Indian medicine? Was it all bad, and only that which belonged
+to white life good?
+
+"Look at your face in the glass, Pauline," she added, at last. "You are
+good-looking, but it isn't the good looks of the whites. The lodge of a
+chieftainess is the place for you. There you would have praise and honor;
+among the whites you are only a half-breed. What is the good? Let us go
+back to the life out there beyond the Muskwat River--up beyond. There is
+hunting still, a little, and the world is quiet, and nothing troubles.
+Only the wild dog barks at night, or the wolf sniffs at the door, and all
+day there is singing. Somewhere out beyond the Muskwat the feasts go on,
+and the old men build the great fires, and tell tales, and call the wind
+out of the north, and make the thunder speak; and the young men ride to
+the hunt or go out to battle, and build lodges for the daughters of the
+tribe; and each man has his woman, and each woman has in her breast the
+honor of the tribe, and the little ones fill the lodge with laughter. Like
+a pocket of deerskin is every house, warm and small and full of good
+things. _Hai-yai_, what is this life to that! There you will be head and
+chief of all, for there is money enough for a thousand horses; and your
+father was a white man, and these are the days when the white man rules.
+Like clouds before the sun are the races of men, and one race rises and
+another falls. Here you are not first, but last; and the child of the
+white father and mother, though they be as the dirt that flies from a
+horse's heels, it is before you. Your mother is a Blackfoot."
+
+As the woman spoke slowly and with many pauses, the girl's mood changed,
+and there came into her eyes a strange, dark look deeper than anger. She
+listened with a sudden patience which stilled the agitation in her breast
+and gave a little touch of rigidity to her figure. Her eyes withdrew from
+the wild storm without and gravely settled on her mother's face, and with
+the Indian woman's last words understanding pierced, but did not dispel,
+the sombre and ominous look in her eyes.
+
+There was silence for a moment, and then she spoke almost as evenly as her
+mother had done.
+
+"I will tell you everything. You are my mother, and I love you; but you
+will not see the truth. When my father took you from the lodges and
+brought you here, it was the end of the Indian life. It was for you to go
+on with him, but you would not go. I was young, but I saw, and I said that
+in all things I would go with him. I did not know that it would be hard,
+but at school, at the very first, I began to understand. There was only
+one, a French girl--I loved her--a girl who said to me, 'You are as white
+as I am, as any one, and your heart is the same, and you are beautiful.'
+Yes, Manette said I was beautiful."
+
+She paused a moment, a misty, far-away look came into her eyes, her
+fingers clasped and unclasped, and she added:
+
+"And her brother, Julien--he was older--when he came to visit Manette he
+spoke to me as though I was all white, and was good to me. I have never
+forgotten, never. It was five years ago, but I remember him. He was tall
+and strong, and as good as Manette--as good as Manette. I loved Manette,
+but she suffered for me, for I was not like the others, and my ways were
+different--then. I had lived up there on the Warais among the lodges, and
+I had not seen things--only from my father, and he did so much in an
+Indian way. So I was sick at heart, and sometimes I wanted to die; and
+once--But there was Manette, and she would laugh and sing, and we would
+play together, and I would speak French and she would speak English, and I
+learned from her to forget the Indian ways. What were they to me? I had
+loved them when I was of them, but I came on to a better life. The Indian
+life is to the white life as the parfleche pouch to--to this." She laid
+her hand upon a purse of delicate silver mesh hanging at her waist. "When
+your eyes are opened you must go on, you cannot stop. There is no going
+back. When you have read of all there is in the white man's world, when
+you have seen, then there is no returning. You may end it all, if you
+wish, in the snow, in the river, but there is no returning. The lodge of a
+chief--ah, if my father had heard you say that--!"
+
+The Indian woman shifted heavily in her chair, then shrank away from the
+look fixed on her. Once or twice she made as if she would speak, but sank
+down in the great chair, helpless and dismayed.
+
+"The lodge of a chief!" the girl continued, in a low, bitter voice. "What
+is the lodge of a chief? A smoky fire, a pot, a bed of skins--_aih-yi_! If
+the lodges of the Indians were millions, and I could be head of all, and
+rule the land, yet would I rather be a white girl in the hut of her white
+man, struggling for daily bread among the people who sweep the buffalo
+out, but open up the land with the plough, and make a thousand live where
+one lived before. It is peace you want, my mother, peace and solitude, in
+which the soul goes to sleep. Your days of hope are over, and you want to
+drowse by the fire. I want to see the white man's cities grow, and the
+armies coming over the hill with the ploughs and the reapers and the
+mowers, and the wheels and the belts and engines of the great factories,
+and the white woman's life spreading everywhere; for I am a white man's
+daughter. I can't be both Indian and white. I will not be like the sun
+when the shadow cuts across it and the land grows dark. I will not be
+half-breed. I will be white or I will be Indian; and I will be white,
+white only. My heart is white, my tongue is white, I think, I feel, as
+white people think and feel. What they wish, I wish; as they live, I live;
+as white women dress, I dress."
+
+She involuntarily drew up the dark-red skirt she wore, showing a white
+petticoat and a pair of fine stockings on an ankle as shapely as she had
+ever seen among all the white women she knew. She drew herself up with
+pride, and her body had a grace and ease which the white woman's
+convention had not cramped.
+
+Yet, with all her protests, no one would have thought her English. She
+might have been Spanish, or Italian, or Roumanian, or Slav, though nothing
+of her Indian blood showed in purely Indian characteristics, and something
+sparkled in her, gave a radiance to her face and figure which the storm
+and struggle in her did not smother. The white women of Portage la Drome
+were too blind, too prejudiced, to see all that she really was, and
+admiring white men could do little, for Pauline would have nothing to do
+with them till the women met her absolutely as an equal; and from the
+other half-breeds, who intermarried with one another and were content to
+take a lower place than the pure whites, she held aloof, save when any of
+them was ill or in trouble. Then she recognized the claim of race, and
+came to their doors with pity and soft impulses to help them. French and
+Scotch and English half-breeds, as they were, they understood how she was
+making a fight for all who were half-Indian, half-white, and watched her
+with a furtive devotion, acknowledging her superior place, and proud of
+it.
+
+"I will not stay here," said the Indian mother, with sullen stubbornness.
+"I will go back beyond the Warais. My life is my own life, and I will do
+what I like with it."
+
+The girl started, but became composed again on the instant. "Is your life
+all your own, mother?" she asked. "I did not come into the world of my own
+will. If I had I would have come all white or all Indian. I am your
+daughter, and I am here, good or bad--is your life all your own?"
+
+"You can marry and stay here, when I go. You are twenty. I had my man,
+your father, when I was seventeen. You can marry. There are men. You have
+money. They will marry you--and forget the rest."
+
+With a cry of rage and misery the girl sprang to her feet and started
+forward, but stopped suddenly at sound of a hasty knocking and a voice
+asking admittance. An instant later, a huge, bearded, broad-shouldered man
+stepped inside, shaking himself free of the snow, laughing half-sheepishly
+as he did so, and laying his fur cap and gloves with exaggerated care on
+the wide window-sill.
+
+"John Alloway," said the Indian woman, in a voice of welcome and with a
+brightening eye, for it would seem as though he came in answer to her
+words of a few moments before. With a mother's instinct she had divined at
+once the reason for the visit, though no warning thought crossed the mind
+of the girl, who placed a chair for their visitor with a heartiness which
+was real--was not this the white man she had saved from death in the snow
+a year ago? Her heart was soft toward the life she had kept in the world.
+She smiled at him, all the anger gone from her eyes, and there was almost
+a touch of tender anxiety in her voice as she said:
+
+"What brought you out in this blizzard? It wasn't safe. It doesn't seem
+possible you got here from the Portage."
+
+The huge ranchman and auctioneer laughed cheerily. "Once lost, twice get
+there," he exclaimed, with a quizzical toss of the head, thinking he had
+said a good thing. "It's a year ago to the very day that I was lost out
+back"--he jerked a thumb over his shoulder--"and you picked me up and
+brought me in; and what was I to do but come out on the anniversary and
+say thank you? I'd fixed up all year to come to you, and I wasn't to be
+stopped, 'cause it was like the day we first met, old Coldmaker hitting
+the world with his whips of frost, and shaking his ragged blankets of snow
+over the wild West."
+
+"Just such a day," said the Indian woman, after a pause. Pauline remained
+silent, placing a little bottle of cordial before their visitor, with
+which he presently regaled himself, raising his glass with an air.
+
+"Many happy returns to us both!" he said, and threw the liqueur down his
+throat, smacked his lips, and drew his hand down his great mustache and
+beard, like some vast animal washing its face with its paw. Smiling, and
+yet not at ease, he looked at the two women and nodded his head
+encouragingly, but whether the encouragement was for himself or for them
+he could not have told.
+
+His last words, however, had altered the situation. The girl had caught at
+a suggestion in them which startled her. This rough, white plainsman was
+come to make love to her, and to say--what? He was at once awkward and
+confident, afraid of her, of her refinement, grace, beauty, and education,
+and yet confident in the advantage of his position, a white man bending to
+a half-breed girl. He was not conscious of the condescension and majesty
+of his demeanor, but it was there, and his untutored words and ways must
+make it all too apparent to the girl. The revelation of the moment made
+her at once triumphant and humiliated. This white man had come to make
+love to her, that was apparent; but that he, ungrammatical, crude, and
+rough, should think he had but to put out his hand, and she in whom every
+subtle emotion and influence had delicate response, whose words and ways
+were as far removed from his as day from night, would fly to him, brought
+the flush of indignation to her cheek. She responded to his toast with a
+pleasant nod, however, and said:
+
+"But if you will keep coming in such wild storms, there will not be many
+anniversaries." Laughing, she poured out another glass of liqueur for
+him.
+
+"Well, now, p'r'aps you're right, and so the only thing to do is not to
+keep coming, but to stay--stay right where _you_ are."
+
+The Indian woman could not see her daughter's face, which was turned to
+the fire, but she herself smiled at John Alloway, and nodded her head
+approvingly. Here was the cure for her own trouble and loneliness. Pauline
+and she, who lived in different worlds, and yet were tied to each other by
+circumstances they could not control, would each work out her own destiny
+after her own nature, since John Alloway had come a-wooing. She would go
+back on the Warais, and Pauline would remain at the Portage, a white woman
+with her white man. She would go back to the smoky fires in the huddled
+lodges; to the venison stew and the snake dance; to the feasts of the
+medicine-men, and the long sleeps in the summer days, and the winter's
+tales, and be at rest among her own people; and Pauline would have revenge
+of the wife of the prancing Reeve, and perhaps the people would forget who
+her mother was.
+
+With these thoughts flying through her sluggish mind, she rose and moved
+heavily from the room, with a parting look of encouragement at Alloway, as
+though to say, a man that is bold is surest.
+
+With her back to the man, Pauline watched her mother leave the room, saw
+the look she gave Alloway. When the door was closed she turned and looked
+Alloway in the eyes.
+
+"How old are you?" she asked, suddenly.
+
+He stirred in his seat nervously. "Why, fifty, about," he answered, with
+confusion.
+
+"Then you'll be wise not to go looking for anniversaries in blizzards,
+when they're few at the best," she said, with a gentle and dangerous
+smile.
+
+"Fifty--why, I'm as young as most men of thirty," he responded, with an
+uncertain laugh. "I'd have come here to-day if it had been snowing
+pitchforks and chain-lightning. I made up my mind I would. You saved my
+life, that's dead sure; and I'd be down among the moles if it wasn't for
+you and that Piegan pony of yours. Piegan ponies are wonders in a
+storm--seem to know their way by instinct. You, too--why, I bin on the
+plains all my life, and was no better than a baby that day; but you--why,
+you had Piegan in you--why, yes--"
+
+He stopped short for a moment, checked by the look in her face, then went
+blindly on: "And you've got Blackfoot in you, too; and you just felt your
+way through the tornado and over the blind prairie like a bird reaching
+for the hills. It was as easy to you as picking out a maverick in a bunch
+of steers to me. But I never could make out what you was doing on the
+prairie that terrible day. I've thought of it a hundred times. What was
+you doing, if it ain't cheek to ask?"
+
+"I was trying to lose a life," she answered, quietly, her eyes dwelling on
+his face, yet not seeing him; for it all came back on her, the agony which
+had driven her out into the tempest to be lost evermore.
+
+He laughed. "Well now, that's good," he said; "that's what they call
+speaking sarcastic. You was out to save, and not to lose, a life; that was
+proved to the satisfaction of the court." He paused and chuckled to
+himself, thinking he had been witty, and continued: "And I was that court,
+and my judgment was that the debt of that life you saved had to be paid to
+you within one calendar year, with interest at the usual per cent. for
+mortgages on good security. That was my judgment, and there's no appeal
+from it. I am the great Justinian in this case!"
+
+"Did you ever save anybody's life?" she asked, putting the bottle of
+cordial away, as he filled his glass for the third time.
+
+"Twice certain, and once divided the honors," he answered, pleased at the
+question.
+
+"And did you expect to get any pay, with or without interest?" she added.
+
+"Me! I never thought of it again. But yes--by gol, I did! One case was
+funny, as funny can be. It was Ricky Wharton over on the Muskwat River. I
+saved his life right enough, and he came to me a year after and said, 'You
+saved my life, now what are you going to do with it? I'm stony broke. I
+owe a hundred dollars, and I wouldn't be owing it if you hadn't saved my
+life. When you saved it I was five hundred to the good, and I'd have left
+that much behind me. Now I'm on the rocks, because you insisted on saving
+my life; and you just got to take care of me.' I 'insisted'! Well, that
+knocked me silly, and I took him on--blame me, if I didn't keep Ricky a
+whole year, till he went north looking for gold. Get pay?--why, I _paid_!
+Saving life has its responsibilities, little gal."
+
+"You can't save life without running some risk yourself, not as a rule,
+can you?" she said, shrinking from his familiarity.
+
+"Not as a rule," he replied. "You took on a bit of risk with me, you and
+your Piegan pony."
+
+"Oh, I was young," she responded, leaning over the table and drawing faces
+on a piece of paper before her. "I could take more risks, I was only
+nineteen!"
+
+"I don't catch on," he rejoined. "If it's sixteen or--"
+
+"Or fifty," she interposed.
+
+"What difference does it make? If you're done for, it's the same at
+nineteen as fifty, and _vicey-versey_."
+
+"No, it's not the same," she answered. "You leave so much more that you
+want to keep, when you go at fifty."
+
+"Well, I dunno. I never thought of that."
+
+"There's all that has belonged to you. You've been married, and have
+children, haven't you?"
+
+He started, frowned, then straightened himself. "I got one girl--she's
+East with her grandmother," he said, jerkily.
+
+"That's what I said; there's more to leave behind at fifty," she replied,
+a red spot on each cheek. She was not looking at him, but at the face of a
+man on the paper before her--a young man with abundant hair, a strong
+chin, and big, eloquent eyes; and all around his face she had drawn the
+face of a girl many times, and beneath the faces of both she was writing
+_Manette and Julien_.
+
+The water was getting too deep for John Alloway. He floundered toward the
+shore. "I'm no good at words," he said--"no good at argyment; but I've got
+a gift for stories--round the fire of a night, with a pipe and tin basin
+of tea; so I'm not going to try and match you. You've had a good education
+down at Winnipeg. Took every prize, they say, and led the school, though
+there was plenty of fuss because they let you do it, and let you stay
+there, being half-Indian. You never heard what was going on outside, I
+s'pose. It didn't matter, for you won out. Blamed foolishness, trying to
+draw the line between red and white that way. Of course, it's the women
+always, always the women, striking out for all-white or nothing. Down
+there at Portage they've treated you mean, mean as dirt. The Reeve's
+wife--well, we'll fix that up all right. I guess John Alloway ain't to be
+bluffed. He knows too much, and they all know he knows enough. When John
+Alloway, 32 Main Street, with a ranch on the Katanay, says, 'We're coming,
+Mr. and Mrs. John Alloway is coming,' they'll get out their cards
+_visite_, I guess."
+
+Pauline's head bent lower, and she seemed laboriously etching lines into
+the faces before her--Manette and Julien, Julien and Manette; and there
+came into her eyes the youth and light and gayety of the days when Julien
+came of an afternoon and the riverside rang with laughter--the dearest,
+lightest days she had ever spent.
+
+The man of fifty went on, seeing nothing but a girl over whom he was
+presently going to throw the lasso of his affection and take her home with
+him, yielding and glad, a white man and his half-breed girl--but such a
+half-breed!
+
+"I seen enough of the way some of them women treated you," he continued,
+"and I sez to myself, Her turn next. There's a way out, I sez, and John
+Alloway pays his debts. When the anniversary comes round I'll put things
+right, I sez to myself. She saved my life, and she shall have the rest of
+it, if she'll take it, and will give a receipt in full, and open a new
+account in the name of John and Pauline Alloway. Catch it? See--Pauline?"
+
+Slowly she got to her feet. There was a look in her eyes such as had been
+in her mother's a little while before, but a hundred times intensified, a
+look that belonged to the flood and flow of generations of Indian life,
+yet controlled in her by the order and understanding of centuries of white
+men's lives, the pervasive, dominating power of race.
+
+For an instant she kept her eyes toward the window. The storm had suddenly
+ceased, and a glimmer of sunset light was breaking over the distant wastes
+of snow.
+
+"You want to pay a debt you think you owe," she said, in a strange,
+lustreless voice, turning to him at last. "Well, you have paid it. You
+have given me a book to read which I will keep always. And I give you a
+receipt in full for your debt."
+
+"I don't know about any book," he answered, dazedly. "I want to marry you
+right away."
+
+"I am sorry, but it is not necessary," she replied, suggestively. Her face
+was very pale now.
+
+"But I want to. It ain't a debt. That was only a way of putting it. I want
+to make you my wife. I got some position, and I can make the West sit up
+and look at you and be glad."
+
+Suddenly her anger flared out, low and vivid and fierce, but her words
+were slow and measured. "There is no reason why I should marry you--not
+one. You offer me marriage as a prince might give a penny to a beggar. If
+my mother were not an Indian woman, you would not have taken it all as a
+matter of course. But my father was a white man, and I am a white man's
+daughter, and I would rather marry an Indian, who would think me the best
+thing there was in the light of the sun, than marry you. Had I been pure
+white you would not have been so sure; you would have asked, not offered.
+I am not obliged to you. You ought to go to no woman as you came to me.
+See, the storm has stopped. You will be quite safe going back now. The
+snow will be deep, perhaps, but it is not far."
+
+She went to the window, got his cap and gloves, and handed them to him. He
+took them, dumbfounded and overcome.
+
+"Say, I ain't done it right, mebbe, but I meant well, and I'd be good to
+you and proud of you, and I'd love you better than anything I ever saw,"
+he said, shamefacedly, but eagerly and honestly, too.
+
+"Ah, you should have said those last words first," she answered.
+
+"I say them now."
+
+"They come too late; but they would have been too late in any case," she
+added. "Still, I am glad you said them."
+
+She opened the door for him.
+
+"I made a mistake," he urged, humbly. "I understand better now. I never
+had any schoolin'."
+
+"Oh, it isn't that," she answered, gently. "Good-bye."
+
+Suddenly he turned. "You're right--it couldn't ever be," he said.
+"You're--you're great. And I owe you my life still!"
+
+He stepped out into the biting air.
+
+For a moment Pauline stood motionless in the middle of the room, her gaze
+fixed upon the door which had just closed; then, with a wild gesture of
+misery and despair, she threw herself upon the couch in a passionate
+outburst of weeping. Sobs shook her from head to foot, and her hands,
+clenched above her head, twitched convulsively.
+
+Presently the door opened and her mother looked in eagerly. At what she
+saw her face darkened and hardened for an instant, but then the girl's
+utter abandonment of grief and agony convinced and conquered her. Some
+glimmer of the true understanding of the problem which Pauline represented
+got into her heart and drove the sullen selfishness from her face and eyes
+and mind. She came over heavily and, sinking upon her knees, swept an arm
+around the girl's shoulder. She realized what had happened, and probably
+this was the first time in her life that she had ever come by instinct to
+a revelation of her daughter's mind or of the faithful meaning of
+incidents of their lives.
+
+"You said no to John Alloway," she murmured.
+
+Defiance and protest spoke in the swift gesture of the girl's hands. "You
+think because he was white that I'd drop into his arms! No--no--no!"
+
+"You did right, little one."
+
+The sobs suddenly stopped, and the girl seemed to listen with all her
+body. There was something in her Indian mother's voice she had never heard
+before--at least, not since she was a little child and swung in a deerskin
+hammock in a tamarac-tree by Renton's Lodge, where the chiefs met and the
+West paused to rest on its onward march. Something of the accents of the
+voice that crooned to her then was in the woman's tones now.
+
+"He offered it like a lump of sugar to a bird--I know. He didn't know that
+you have great blood--yes, but it is true. My man's grandfather, he was of
+the blood of the kings of England. My man had the proof. And for a
+thousand years my people have been chiefs. There is no blood in all the
+West like yours. My heart was heavy, and dark thoughts came to me, because
+my man is gone, and the life is not my life, and I am only an Indian woman
+from the Warais, and my heart goes out there always now. But some great
+Medicine has been poured into my heart. As I stood at the door and saw you
+lying there, I called to the Sun. 'O great Spirit,' I said, 'help me to
+understand, for this girl is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh, and
+Evil has come between us!' And the Sun Spirit poured the Medicine into my
+spirit, and there is no cloud between us now. It has passed away, and I
+see. Little white one, the white life is the only life, and I will live it
+with you till a white man comes and gives you a white man's home. But not
+John Alloway. Shall the crow nest with the oriole?"
+
+As the woman spoke with slow, measured voice full of the cadences of a
+heart revealing itself, the girl's breath at first seemed to stop, so
+still she lay; then, as the true understanding of the words came to her,
+she panted with excitement, her breast heaved, and the blood flushed her
+face. When the slow voice ceased, and the room became still, she lay quiet
+for a moment, letting the new thing find secure lodgment in her thought;
+then, suddenly, she raised herself and threw her arms round her mother in
+a passion of affection.
+
+"Lalika! O mother Lalika!" she said, tenderly, and kissed her again and
+again. Not since she was a little girl, long before they left the Warais,
+had she called her mother by her Indian name, which her father had
+humorously taught her to do in those far-off happy days by the beautiful,
+singing river and the exquisite woods, when, with a bow and arrow, she had
+ranged, a young Diana who slew only with love.
+
+"Lalika, mother Lalika, it is like the old, old times," she added, softly.
+"Ah, it does not matter now, for you understand!"
+
+"I do not understand altogether," murmured the Indian woman, gently. "I am
+not white, and there is a different way of thinking; but I will hold your
+hand, and we will live the white life together."
+
+Cheek to cheek they saw the darkness come, and afterwards the silver moon
+steal up over a frozen world, in which the air bit like steel and braced
+the heart like wine. Then, at last, before it was nine o'clock, after her
+custom, the Indian woman went to bed, leaving her daughter brooding
+peacefully by the fire.
+
+For a long time Pauline sat with hands clasped in her lap, her gaze on the
+tossing flames, in her heart and mind a new feeling of strength and
+purpose. The way before her was not clear, she saw no further than this
+day, and all that it had brought; yet she was as one that has crossed a
+direful flood and finds herself on a strange shore in an unknown country,
+with the twilight about her, yet with so much of danger passed that there
+was only the thought of the moment's safety round her, the camp-fire to be
+lit, and the bed to be made under the friendly trees and stars.
+
+For a half-hour she sat so, and then, suddenly, she raised her head
+listening, leaning toward the window, through which the moonlight
+streamed. She heard her name called without, distinct and
+strange--"_Pauline! Pauline!_"
+
+Starting up, she ran to the door and opened it. All was silent and cruelly
+cold. Nothing but the wide plain of snow and the steely air. But as she
+stood intently listening, the red glow from the fire behind her, again
+came the cry--"Pauline!"--not far away. Her heart beat hard, and she
+raised her head and called--why was it she should call out in a language
+not her own?--"_Qu'appelle? Qu'appelle?_"
+
+And once again on the still night air came the trembling appeal,
+"Pauline!"
+
+"_Qu'appelle? Qu'appelle_?" she cried; then, with a gasping murmur of
+understanding and recognition she ran forward in the frozen night toward
+the sound of the voice. The same intuitive sense which had made her call
+out in French, without thought or reason, had revealed to her who it was
+that called; or was it that even in the one word uttered there was the
+note of a voice always remembered since those days with Manette at
+Winnipeg?
+
+Not far away from the house, on the way to Portage la Drome, but a little
+distance from the road, was a crevasse, and toward this she sped, for once
+before an accident had happened there. Again the voice called as she
+sped--"Pauline!"--and she cried out that she was coming. Presently she
+stood above the declivity, and peered over. Almost immediately below her,
+a few feet down, was a man lying in the snow. He had strayed from the
+obliterated road, and had fallen down the crevasse, twisting his foot
+cruelly. Unable to walk, he had crawled several hundred yards in the snow,
+but his strength had given out, and then he had called to the house, on
+whose dark windows flickered the flames of the fire, the name of the girl
+he had come so far to see.
+
+[Illustration: "PAULINE," HE SAID, FEEBLY, AND FAINTED IN HER ARMS]
+
+With a cry of joy and pain at once she recognized him now. It was as her
+heart had said--it was Julien, Manette's brother. In a moment she was
+beside him, her arm around his shoulder.
+
+"Pauline!" he said, feebly, and fainted in her arms. An instant later she
+was speeding to the house, and, rousing her mother and two of the
+stablemen, she snatched a flask of brandy from a cupboard and hastened
+back.
+
+An hour later Julien Labrosse lay in the great sitting-room beside the
+fire, his foot and ankle bandaged, and at ease, his face alight with all
+that had brought him there. And once again the Indian mother with a sure
+instinct knew why he had come, and saw that now her girl would have a
+white man's home, and, for her man, one of the race like her father's
+race, white and conquering.
+
+"I'm sorry to give trouble," Julien said, laughing--he had a trick of
+laughing lightly; "but I'll be able to get back to the Portage
+to-morrow."
+
+To this the Indian mother said, however: "To please yourself is a great
+thing, but to please others is better; and so you will stay here till you
+can walk back to the Portage, M'sieu' Julien."
+
+"Well, I've never been so comfortable," he said--"never so happy. If you
+don't mind the trouble!"
+
+The Indian woman nodded pleasantly, and found an excuse to leave the room.
+But before she went she contrived to place near his elbow one of the
+scraps of paper on which Pauline had drawn his face, with that of Manette.
+It brought a light of hope and happiness into his eyes, and he thrust the
+paper under the fur robes of the couch.
+
+"What are you doing with your life?" Pauline asked him, as his eyes sought
+hers a few moments later.
+
+"Oh, I have a big piece of work before me," he answered eagerly, "a great
+chance--to build a bridge over the St. Lawrence, and I'm only thirty! I've
+got my start. Then, I've made over the old Seigneury my father left me,
+and I'm going to live in it. It will be a fine place, when I've done with
+it, comfortable and big, with old oak timbers and walls, and deep
+fireplaces, and carvings done in the time of Louis Quinze, and dark-red
+velvet curtains for the drawing-room, and skins and furs. Yes, I must have
+skins and furs like these here." He smoothed the skins with his hand.
+
+"Manette, she will live with you?" Pauline asked.
+
+"Oh no, her husband wouldn't like that. You see, Manette is to be married.
+She told me to tell you all about it."
+
+He told her all that was to tell of Manette's courtship, and added that
+the wedding would take place in the spring.
+
+"Manette wanted it when the leaves first flourish and the birds come
+back," he said, gayly; "and so she's not going to live with me at the
+Seigneury, you see. No, there it is, as fine a house, good enough for a
+prince, and I shall be there alone, unless--"
+
+His eyes met hers, and he caught the light that was in them before the
+eyelids drooped over them and she turned her head to the fire. "But the
+spring is two months off yet," he added.
+
+"The spring?" she asked, puzzled, yet half afraid to speak.
+
+"Yes, I'm going into my new house when Manette goes into her new house--in
+the spring. And I won't go alone if--"
+
+He caught her eyes again, but she rose hurriedly and said: "You must sleep
+now. Good-night." She held out her hand.
+
+"Well, I'll tell you the rest to-morrow--to-morrow night, when it's quiet
+like this, and the stars shine," he answered. "I'm going to have a home of
+my own like this--ah, _bien sur_, Pauline."
+
+That night the old Indian mother prayed to the Sun. "O great Spirit," she
+said, "I give thanks for the Medicine poured into my heart. Be good to my
+white child when she goes with her man to the white man's home far away. O
+great Spirit, when I return to the lodges of my people, be kind to me, for
+I shall be lonely; I shall not have my child; I shall not hear my white
+man's voice. Give me good Medicine, O Sun and great Father, till my dream
+tells me that my man comes from over the hills for me once more."
+
+
+
+
+THE STAKE AND THE PLUMB-LINE
+
+
+She went against all good judgment in marrying him; she cut herself off
+from her own people, from the life in which she had been an alluring and
+beautiful figure. Washington had never had two such seasons as those in
+which she moved; for the diplomatic circle who had had "the run of the
+world" knew her value, and were not content without her. She might have
+made a brilliant match with one ambassador thirty years older than
+herself--she was but twenty-two; and there were at least six attaches and
+secretaries of legation who entered upon a tournament for her heart and
+hand; but she was not for them. All her fine faculties of tact and
+fairness, of harmless strategy, and her gifts of wit and unexpected humor
+were needed to keep her cavaliers constant and hopeful to the last; but
+she never faltered, and she did not fail. The faces of old men brightened
+when they saw her, and one or two ancient figures who, for years, had been
+seldom seen at social functions now came when they knew she was to be
+present. There were, of course, a few women who said she would coquette
+with any male from nine to ninety; but no man ever said so; and there was
+none, from first to last, but smiled with pleasure at even the mention of
+her name, so had her vivacity, intelligence, and fine sympathy conquered
+them. She was a social artist by instinct. In their hearts they all
+recognized how fair and impartial she was; and she drew out of every man
+the best that was in him. The few women who did not like her said that she
+chattered; but the truth was she made other people talk by swift
+suggestion or delicate interrogation.
+
+After the blow fell, Freddy Hartzman put the matter succinctly, and told
+the truth faithfully, when he said: "The first time I met her, I told her
+all I'd ever done that could be told, and all I wanted to do; including a
+resolve to carry her off to some desert place and set up a Kingdom of Two.
+I don't know how she did it. I was like a tap, and poured myself out; and
+when it was all over I thought she was the best talker I'd ever heard. But
+yet she'd done nothing except look at me and listen, and put in a question
+here and there, that was like a baby asking to see your watch. Oh, she was
+a lily-flower, was Sally Seabrook, and I've never been sorry I told her
+all my little story! It did me good. Poor darling--it makes me sick
+sometimes when I think of it. Yet she'll win out all right--a hundred to
+one she'll win out. She was a star."
+
+Freddy Hartzman was in an embassy of repute; he knew the chancelleries and
+salons of many nations, and was looked upon as one of the ablest and
+shrewdest men in the diplomatic service. He had written one of the best
+books on international law in existence, he talked English like a native,
+he had published a volume of delightful verse, and had omitted to publish
+several others, including a tiny volume which Sally Seabrook's charms had
+inspired him to write. His view of her was shared by most men who knew the
+world, and especially by the elderly men who had a real knowledge of human
+nature, among whom was a certain important member of the United States
+executive called John Appleton. When the end of all things at Washington
+came for Sally, these two men united to bear her up, that her feet should
+not stumble upon the stony path of the hard journey she had undertaken.
+Appleton was not a man of much speech; but his words had weight; for he
+was not only a minister; he came of an old family which had ruled the
+social destinies of a state, and had alternately controlled and disturbed
+its politics. On the day of the sensation, in the fiery cloud of which
+Sally disappeared, Appleton delivered himself of his mind in the matter at
+a reception given by the President.
+
+"She will come back--and we will all take her back, be glad to have her
+back," he said. "She has the grip of a lever which can lift the eternal
+hills with the right pressure. Leave her alone--leave her alone. This is a
+democratic country, and she'll prove democracy a success before she's
+done."
+
+The world knew that John Appleton had offered her marriage, and he had
+never hidden the fact. What they did not know was that she had told him
+what she meant to do before she did it. He had spoken to her plainly,
+bluntly, then with a voice that was blurred and a little broken, urging
+her against the course toward which she was set; but it had not availed;
+and, realizing that he had come upon a powerful will underneath the sunny
+and so human surface, he had ceased to protest, to bear down upon her mind
+with his own iron force. When he realized that all his reasoning was
+wasted, that all worldly argument was vain, he made one last attempt, a
+forlorn hope, as though to put upon record what he believed to be the
+truth.
+
+"There is no position you cannot occupy," he said. "You have the perfect
+gift in private life, and you have a public gift. You have a genius for
+ruling. Say, my dear, don't wreck it all. I know you are not for me, but
+there are better men in the country than I am. Hartzman will be a great
+man one day--he wants you. Young Tilden wants you; he has millions, and he
+will never disgrace them or you, the power which they can command, and the
+power which you have. And there are others. Your people have told you they
+will turn you off; the world will say things--will rend you. There is
+nothing so popular for the moment as the fall of a favorite. But that's
+nothing--it's nothing at all compared with the danger to yourself. I
+didn't sleep last night thinking of it. Yet I'm glad you wrote me; it gave
+me time to think, and I can tell you the truth as I see it. Haven't you
+thought that he will drag you down, down, down, wear out your soul, break
+and sicken your life, destroy your beauty--you are beautiful, my dear,
+beyond what the world sees, even. Give it up--ah, give it up, and don't
+break our hearts! There are too many people loving you for you to
+sacrifice them--and yourself, too.... You've had such a good time!"
+
+"It's been like a dream," she interrupted, in a far-away voice--"like a
+dream, these two years."
+
+"And it's been such a good dream," he urged; "and you will only go to a
+bad one, from which you will never wake. The thing has fastened on him; he
+will never give it up. And penniless, too--his father has cast him off. My
+girl, it's impossible. Listen to me. There's no one on earth that would do
+more for you than I would--no one."
+
+"Dear, dear friend!" she cried, with a sudden impulse, and caught his hand
+in hers and kissed it before he could draw it back. "You are so true, and
+you think you are right. But, but"--her eyes took on a deep, steady,
+far-away look--"but I will save him; and we shall not be penniless in the
+end. Meanwhile I have seven hundred dollars a year of my own. No one can
+touch that. Nothing can change me now--and I have promised."
+
+When he saw her fixed determination, he made no further protest, but asked
+that he might help her, be with her the next day, when she was to take a
+step which the wise world would say must lead to sorrow and a miserable
+end.
+
+The step she took was to marry Jim Templeton, the drunken, cast-off son of
+a millionaire senator from Kentucky, who controlled railways and owned a
+bank, and had so resented his son's inebriate habits that for five years
+he had never permitted Jim's name to be mentioned in his presence. Jim had
+had twenty thousand dollars left him by his mother, and a small income of
+three hundred dollars from an investment which had been made for him when
+a little boy. And this had carried him on; for, drunken as he was, he had
+sense enough to eke out the money, limiting himself to three thousand
+dollars a year. He had four thousand dollars left, and his tiny income of
+three hundred, when he went to Sally Seabrook, after having been sober for
+a month, and begged her to marry him.
+
+Before dissipation had made him look ten years older than he was, there
+had been no handsomer man in all America. Even yet he had a remarkable
+face: long, delicate, with dark-brown eyes, as fair a forehead as man
+could wish, and black, waving hair, streaked with gray--gray, though he
+was but twenty-nine years of age.
+
+When Sally was fifteen and he twenty-two, he had fallen in love with her
+and she with him; and nothing had broken the early romance. He had
+captured her young imagination, and had fastened his image on her heart.
+Her people, seeing the drift of things, had sent her to a school on the
+Hudson, and the two did not meet for some time. Then came a stolen
+interview, and a fastening of the rivets of attraction--for Jim had gifts
+of a wonderful kind. He knew his Horace and Anacreon and Heine and
+Lamartine and Dante in the originals, and a hundred others; he was a
+speaker of power and grace; and he had a clear, strong head for business.
+He was also a lawyer, and was junior attorney to his father's great
+business. It was because he had the real business gift, not because he had
+a brilliant and scholarly mind, that his father had taken him into his
+concerns, and was the more unforgiving when he gave way to temptation.
+Otherwise, he would have pensioned Jim off, and dismissed him from his
+mind as a useless, insignificant person; for Horace, Anacreon, and
+philosophy and history were to him the recreations of the feeble-minded.
+He had set his heart on Jim, and what Jim could do and would do by-and-by
+in the vast financial concerns he controlled, when he was ready to slip
+out and down; but Jim had disappointed him beyond calculation.
+
+In the early days of their association Jim had left his post and taken to
+drink at critical moments in their operations. At first, high words had
+been spoken, then there came the strife of two dissimilar natures, and
+both were headstrong, and each proud and unrelenting in his own way. Then,
+at last, had come the separation, irrevocable and painful; and Jim had
+flung out into the world, a drunkard, who, sober for a fortnight, or a
+month, or three months, would afterward go off on a spree, in which he
+quoted Sappho and Horace in taverns, and sang bacchanalian songs with a
+voice meant for the stage--a heritage from an ancestor who had sung upon
+the English stage a hundred years before. Even in his cups, even after his
+darling vice had submerged him, Jim Templeton was a man marked out from
+his fellows, distinguished and very handsome. Society, however, had ceased
+to recognize him for a long time, and he did not seek it. For two or three
+years he practised law now and then. He took cases, preferably criminal
+cases, for which very often he got no pay; but that, too, ceased at last.
+Now, in his quiet, sober intervals he read omnivorously, and worked out
+problems in physics for which he had a taste, until the old appetite
+surged over him again. Then his spirits rose, and he was the old brilliant
+talker, the joyous galliard until, in due time, he became silently and
+lethargically drunk.
+
+In one of his sober intervals he had met Sally Seabrook in the street. It
+was the first time in four years, for he had avoided her, and though she
+had written to him once or twice, he had never answered her--shame was in
+his heart. Yet all the time the old song was in Sally's ears. Jim
+Templeton had touched her in some distant and intimate corner of her
+nature where none other had reached; and in all her gay life, when men had
+told their tale of admiration in their own way, her mind had gone back to
+Jim, and what he had said under the magnolia-trees; and his voice had
+drowned all others. She was not blind to what he had become, but a deep
+belief possessed her that she, of all the world, could save him. She knew
+how futile it would look to the world, how wild a dream it looked even to
+her own heart, how perilous it was; but, play upon the surface of things
+as she had done so much and so often in her brief career, she was seized
+of convictions having origin, as it might seem, in something beyond
+herself.
+
+So when she and Jim met in the street, the old, true thing rushed upon
+them both, and for a moment they stood still and looked at each other. As
+they might look who say farewell forever, so did each dwell upon the
+other's face. That was the beginning of the new epoch. A few days more,
+and Jim came to her and said that she alone could save him; and she meant
+him to say it, had led him to the saying, for the same conviction was
+burned deep in her own soul. She knew the awful risk she was taking, that
+the step must mean social ostracism, and that her own people would be no
+kinder to her than society; but she gasped a prayer, smiled at Jim as
+though all were well, laid her plans, made him promise her one thing on
+his knees, and took the plunge.
+
+Her people did as she expected. She was threatened with banishment from
+heart and home--with disinheritance; but she pursued her course; and the
+only person who stood with her and Jim at the altar was John Appleton, who
+would not be denied, and who had such a half-hour with Jim before the
+ceremony as neither of them forgot in the years that the locust ate
+thereafter. And, standing at the altar, Jim's eyes were still wet, with
+new resolves in his heart and a being at his side meant for the best man
+in the world. As he knelt beside her, awaiting the benediction, a sudden
+sense of the enormity of this act came upon him, and for her sake he would
+have drawn back then, had it not been too late. He realized that it was a
+crime to put this young, beautiful life in peril; that his own life was a
+poor, contemptible thing, and that he had been possessed of the egotism of
+the selfish and the young.
+
+But the thing was done, and a new life was begun. Before they were
+launched upon it, however, before society had fully grasped the sensation,
+or they had left upon their journey to northern Canada, where Sally
+intended they should work out their problem and make their home, far and
+free from all old associations, a curious thing happened. Jim's father
+sent an urgent message to Sally to come to him. When she came, he told her
+she was mad, and asked her why she had thrown her life away.
+
+"Why have you done it?" he said. "You--you knew all about him; you might
+have married the best man in the country. You could rule a kingdom; you
+have beauty and power, and make people do what you want; and you've got a
+sot."
+
+"He is your son," she answered, quietly.
+
+She looked so beautiful and so fine as she stood there, fearless and
+challenging before him, that he was moved. But he would not show it.
+
+"He was my son--when he was a man," he retorted grimly.
+
+"He is the son of the woman you once loved," she answered.
+
+The old man turned his head away.
+
+"What would she have said to what you did to Jim?"
+
+He drew himself around sharply. Her dagger had gone home, but he would not
+let her know it.
+
+"Leave her out of the question--she was a saint," he said, roughly.
+
+"She cannot be left out; nor can you. He got his temperament naturally; he
+inherited his weakness. From your grandfather, from her father. Do you
+think you are in no way responsible?"
+
+He was silent for a moment, but then said, stubbornly: "Why--why have you
+done it? What's between him and me can't be helped; we are father and son;
+but you--you had no call, no responsibility."
+
+"I love Jim. I always loved him, ever since I can remember, as you did. I
+see my way ahead. I will not desert him. No one cares what happens to him,
+no one but me. Your love wouldn't stand the test; mine will."
+
+"Your folks have disinherited you--you have almost nothing, and I will not
+change my mind. What do you see ahead of you?"
+
+"Jim--only Jim--and God."
+
+Her eyes were shining, her hands were clasped together at her side in the
+tenseness of her feeling, her indomitable spirit spoke in her face.
+
+Suddenly the old man brought his fist down on the table with a bang. "It's
+a crime--oh, it's a crime, to risk your life so! You ought to have been
+locked up. I'd have done it."
+
+"Listen to me," she rejoined, quietly. "I know the risk. But do you think
+that I could have lived my life out, feeling that I might have saved Jim
+and didn't try? You talk of beauty and power and ruling--you say what
+others have said to me. Which is the greater thing, to get what pleases
+one, or to work for something which is more to one than all else in the
+world? To save one life, one intellect, one great man--oh, he has the
+making of a great man in him!--to save a soul, would not life be well
+lost, would not love be well spent, in doing it?"
+
+"Love's labor lost," said the old man, slowly, cynically, but not without
+emotion.
+
+"I have ambition," she continued. "No girl was ever more ambitious, but my
+ambition is to make the most and best of myself. Place?--Jim and I will
+hold it yet. Power?--it shall be as it must be; but Jim and I will work
+for it to fulfil ourselves. For me--ah, if I can save him--and I mean to
+do so!--do you think that I would not then have my heaven on earth? You
+want money--money--money, power, and to rule; and these are to you the
+best things in the world. I make my choice differently, though I would
+have these other things if I could; and I hope I shall. But Jim first--Jim
+first, your son, Jim--my husband, Jim!"
+
+The old man got to his feet slowly. She had him at bay. "But you are
+great," he said, "great! It is an awful stake--awful! Yet, if you win,
+you'll have what money can't buy. And listen to me. We'll make the stake
+bigger. It will give it point, too, in another way. If you keep Jim sober
+for four years from the day of your marriage, on the last day of that four
+years I'll put in your hands for you and him, or for your child--if you
+have one--five millions of dollars. I am a man of my word. While Jim
+drinks I won't take him back; he's disinherited. I'll give him nothing now
+or hereafter. Save him for four years--if he can do that he will do
+all--and there's five millions as sure as the sun's in heaven. Amen and
+amen."
+
+He opened the door. There was a strange, soft light in her eyes as she
+came to go.
+
+"Aren't you going to kiss me?" she said, looking at him whimsically.
+
+He was disconcerted. She did not wait, but reached up and kissed him on
+the cheek. "Good-bye," she said, with a smile. "We'll win the stake.
+Good-bye."
+
+An instant and she was gone. He shut the door, then turned and looked in a
+mirror on the wall. Abstractedly he touched the cheek she had kissed.
+Suddenly a change passed over his face. He dropped in a chair, and his
+fist struck the table as he said: "By God, she may do it, she may do it!
+But it's life and death--it's life and death."
+
+Society had its sensation, and then the veil dropped. For a long time none
+looked behind it except Jim's father. He had too much at stake not to have
+his telescope upon them. A detective followed them to keep Jim's record.
+But this they did not know.
+
+II
+
+From the day they left Washington Jim put his life and his fate in his
+wife's hands. He meant to follow her judgment, and, self-willed and strong
+in intellect as he was, he said that she should have a fair chance of
+fulfilling her purpose. There had been many _pour parlers_ as to what Jim
+should do. There was farming. She set that aside, because it meant
+capital, and it also meant monotony and loneliness; and capital was
+limited, and monotony and loneliness were bad for Jim, deadening an active
+brain which must not be deprived of stimulants--stimulants of a different
+sort, however, from those which had heretofore mastered it. There was the
+law. But Jim would have to become a citizen of Canada, change his flag,
+and where they meant to go--to the outskirts--there would be few
+opportunities for the law; and with not enough to _do_ there would be
+danger. Railway construction? That seemed good in many ways, but Jim had
+not the professional knowledge necessary; his railway experience with his
+father had only been financial. Above all else he must have
+responsibility, discipline, and strict order in his life.
+
+"Something that will be good for my natural vanity, and knock the nonsense
+out of me," Jim agreed, as they drew farther and farther away from
+Washington and the past, and nearer and nearer to the Far North and their
+future. Never did two more honest souls put their hands in each other's,
+and set forth upon the thorniest path to a goal which was their heart's
+desire. Since they had become one, there had come into Sally's face that
+illumination which belongs only to souls possessed of an idea greater than
+themselves, outside themselves--saints, patriots; faces which have been
+washed in the salt tears dropped for others' sorrows and lighted by the
+fire of self-sacrifice. Sally Seabrook, the high-spirited, the radiant,
+the sweetly wilful, the provoking, to concentrate herself upon this narrow
+theme--to reconquer the lost paradise of one vexed mortal soul!
+
+What did Jim's life mean? It was only one in the millions coming and
+going, and every man must work out his own salvation. Why should she cramp
+her soul to this one issue, when the same soul could spend itself upon the
+greater motives and in the larger circle? A wide world of influence had
+opened up before her; position, power, adulation, could all have been
+hers, as John Appleton and Jim's father had said. She might have moved in
+well-trodden ways, through gardens of pleasure, lived a life where all
+would be made easy, where she would be shielded at every turn, and her
+beauty would be flattered by luxury into a constant glow. She was not so
+primitive, so unintellectual, as not to have thought of this, else her
+decision would have had less importance; she would have been no more than
+an infatuated, emotional woman with a touch of second-class drama in her
+nature. She had thought of it all, and she had made her choice. The easier
+course was the course for meaner souls, and she had not one vein of thin
+blood nor a small idea in her whole nature. She had a heart and mind for
+great issues. She believed that Jim had a great brain, and would and could
+accomplish great things. She knew that he had in him the strain of
+hereditary instinct--his mother's father had ended a brief life in a
+drunken duel on the Mississippi, and Jim's boyhood had never had
+discipline or direction, or any strenuous order. He might never acquire
+order, and the power that order and habit and the daily iteration of
+necessary thoughts and acts bring; but the prospect did not appal her. She
+had taken the risk with her eyes wide open; had set her own life and
+happiness in the hazard. But Jim must be saved, must be what his talents,
+his genius, entitled him to be. And the long game must have the long
+thought.
+
+So, as they drew into the great Saskatchewan Valley, her hand in his, and
+hope in his eyes, and such a look of confidence and pride in her as
+brought back his old, strong beauty of face and smoothed the careworn
+lines of self-indulgence, she gave him his course: as a private he must
+join the North-West Mounted Police, the red-coated riders of the plains,
+and work his way up through every stage of responsibility, beginning at
+the foot of the ladder of humbleness and self-control. She believed that
+he would agree with her proposal; but her hands clasped his a little more
+firmly and solicitously--there was a faint, womanly fear at her heart--as
+she asked him if he would do it. The life meant more than occasional
+separation; it meant that there would be periods when she would not be
+with him; and there was great danger in that; but she knew that the risks
+must be taken, and he must not be wholly reliant on her presence for his
+moral strength.
+
+His face fell for a moment when she made the suggestion, but it cleared
+presently, and he said, with a dry laugh: "Well, I guess they must make me
+a sergeant pretty quick. I'm a colonel in the Kentucky Carbineers!"
+
+She laughed, too; then a moment afterward, womanlike, wondered if she was
+right, and was a little frightened. But that was only because she was not
+self-opinionated, and was anxious, more anxious than any woman in all the
+North.
+
+It happened as Jim said; he was made a sergeant at once--Sally managed
+that; for, when it came to the point, she saw the conditions in which the
+privates lived, and realized that Jim must be one of them, and clean out
+the stables, and groom his horse and the officers' horses, and fetch and
+carry, her heart failed her, and she thought that she was making her
+remedy needlessly heroical. So, she went to see the commissioner, who was
+on a tour of scrutiny on their arrival at the post, and, as better men
+than he had done in more knowing circles, he fell under her spell. If she
+had asked for a lieutenancy, he would probably have corrupted some member
+of Parliament into securing it for Jim.
+
+But Jim was made a sergeant, and the commissioner and the captain of the
+troop kept their eyes on him. So did other members of the troop who did
+not quite know their man, and attempted, figuratively, to pinch him here
+and there. They found that his actions were greater than his words, and
+both were in perfect harmony in the end, though his words often seemed
+pointless to their minds, until they understood that they had conveyed
+truths through a medium more like a heliograph than a telephone. By-and-by
+they began to understand his heliographing, and, when they did that, they
+began to swear by him, not at him.
+
+In time it was found that the troop never had a better disciplinarian than
+Jim. He knew when to shut his eyes, and when to keep them open. To
+non-essentials he kept his eyes shut; to essentials he kept them very wide
+open. There were some men of good birth from England and elsewhere among
+them, and these mostly understood him first. But they all understood Sally
+from the beginning, and after a little they were glad enough to be
+permitted to come, on occasion, to the five-roomed little house near the
+barracks, and hear her talk, then answer her questions, and, as men had
+done at Washington, open out their hearts to her. They noticed, however,
+that while she made them barley-water, and all kinds of soft drinks from
+citric acid, sarsaparilla, and the like, and had one special drink of her
+own invention, which she called cream-nectar, no spirits were to be had.
+They also noticed that Jim never drank a drop of liquor, and by-and-by,
+one way or another, they got a glimmer of the real truth, before it became
+known who he really was or anything of his story. And the interest in the
+two, and in Jim's reformation, spread through the country, while Jim
+gained reputation as the smartest man in the force.
+
+They were on the outskirts of civilization--as Jim used to say, "One step
+ahead of the procession." Jim's duty was to guard the columns of
+settlement and progress, and to see that every man got his own rights and
+not more than his rights; that justice should be the plumb-line of march
+and settlement. His principle was embodied in certain words which he
+quoted once to Sally from the prophet Amos--"_And the Lord said unto me,
+Amos, what seest thou? And I said, A plumb-line_."
+
+On the day that Jim became a lieutenant his family increased by one. It
+was a girl, and they called her Nancy, after Jim's mother. It was the
+anniversary of their marriage, and, so far, Jim had won, with what
+fightings and strugglings and wrestlings of the spirit only Sally and
+himself knew. And she knew as well as he, and always saw the storm coming
+before it broke--a restlessness, then a moodiness, then a hungry, eager,
+helpless look, and afterward an agony of longing, a feverish desire to
+break away and get the thrilling thing which would still the demon within
+him.
+
+There had been moments when his doom seemed certain--he knew and she knew
+that if he once got drunk again he would fall never to rise. On one
+occasion, after a hard, long, hungry ride, he was half-mad with desire,
+but even as he seized the flask that was offered to him by his only enemy,
+the captain of B Troop, at the next station eastward, there came a sudden
+call to duty, two hundred Indians having gone upon the war-path. It saved
+him, it broke the spell. He had to mount and away, with the antidote and
+stimulant of responsibility driving him on.
+
+Another occasion was equally perilous to his safety. They had been idle
+for days in a hot week in summer, waiting for orders to return from the
+rail-head where they had gone to quell a riot, and where drink and
+hilarity were common. Suddenly--more suddenly than it had ever come, the
+demon of his thirst had Jim by the throat. Sergeant Sewell, of the
+gray-stubble head, who loved him more than his sour heart had loved
+anybody in all his life, was holding himself ready for the physical
+assault he must make upon his superior officer if he raised a glass to his
+lips, when salvation came once again. An accident had occurred far down on
+the railway line, and the operator of the telegraph-office had that very
+day been stricken down with pleurisy and pneumonia. In despair the manager
+had sent to Jim, eagerly hoping that he might help them, for the Riders of
+the Plains were a sort of court of appeal for every trouble in the Far
+North.
+
+Instantly Jim was in the saddle with his troop. Out of curiosity he had
+learned telegraphy when a boy, as he had learned many things, and, arrived
+at the scene of the accident, he sent messages and received them--by
+sound, not on paper as did the official operator, to the amazement and
+pride of the troop. Then, between caring for the injured in the accident,
+against the coming of the relief train, and nursing the sick operator
+through the dark moments of his dangerous illness, he passed a crisis of
+his own disease triumphantly; but not the last crisis.
+
+So the first and so the second and third years passed in safety.
+
+III
+
+"Please, I want to go, too, Jim."
+
+Jim swung round and caught the child up in his arms.
+
+"Say, how dare you call your father _Jim_--eh, tell me that?"
+
+"It's what mummy calls you--it's pretty."
+
+"I don't call her 'mummy' because you do, and you mustn't call me _Jim_
+because she does--do you hear?"
+
+The whimsical face lowered a little, then the rare and beautiful dark blue
+eyes raised slowly, shaded by the long lashes, and the voice said,
+demurely, "Yes--Jim."
+
+"Nancy--Nancy," said a voice from the corner in reproof, mingled with
+suppressed laughter. "Nancy, you mustn't be saucy. You must say 'father'
+to--"
+
+"Yes, mummy. I'll say father to--Jim."
+
+"You imp--you imp of delight," said Jim, as he strained the dainty little
+lass to his breast, while she appeared interested in a wave of his black
+hair, which she curled around her finger.
+
+Sally came forward with the little parcel of sandwiches she had been
+preparing, and put them in the saddlebags lying on a chair at the door, in
+readiness for the journey Jim was about to make. Her eyes were glistening,
+and her face had a heightened color. The three years which had passed
+since she married had touched her not at all to her disadvantage, rather
+to her profit. She looked not an hour older; motherhood had only added to
+her charm, lending it a delightful gravity. The prairie life had given a
+shining quality to her handsomeness, an air of depth and firmness, an
+exquisite health and clearness to the color in her cheeks. Her step was as
+light as Nancy's, elastic and buoyant--a gliding motion which gave a
+sinuous grace to the movements of her body. There had also come into her
+eyes a vigilance such as deaf people possess, a sensitive observation
+imparting a deeper intelligence to the face.
+
+Here was the only chance by which you could guess the story of her life.
+Her eyes were like the ears of an anxious mother who can never sleep till
+every child is abed; whose sense is quick to hear the faintest footstep
+without or within; and who, as years go on, and her children grow older
+and older, must still lie awake hearkening for the late footstep on the
+stair. In Sally's eyes was the story of the past three years: of love and
+temptation and struggle, of watchfulness and yearning and anxiety, of
+determination and an inviolable hope. Her eyes had a deeper look than that
+in Jim's. Now, as she gazed at him, the maternal spirit rose up from the
+great well of protectiveness in her and engulfed both husband and child.
+There was always something of the maternal in her eyes when she looked at
+Jim. He did not see it--he saw only the wonderful blue, and the humor
+which had helped him over such difficult places these past three years. In
+steadying and strengthening Jim's will, in developing him from his
+Southern indolence into Northern industry and sense of responsibility,
+John Appleton's warnings had rung in Sally's ears, and Freddy Hartzman's
+forceful and high-minded personality had passed before her eyes with an
+appeal powerful and stimulating; but always she came to the same upland of
+serene faith and white-hearted resolve; and Jim became dearer and dearer.
+
+The baby had done much to brace her faith in the future and comfort her
+anxious present. The child had intelligence of a rare order. She would lie
+by the half-hour on the floor, turning over the leaves of a book without
+pictures, and, before she could speak, would read from the pages in a
+language all her own. She made a fairy world for herself, peopled by
+characters to whom she gave names, to whom she assigned curious attributes
+and qualities. They were as real to her as though flesh and blood, and she
+was never lonely, and never cried; and she had buried herself in her
+father's heart. She had drawn to her the roughest men in the troop, and
+for old Sewell, the grim sergeant, she had a specially warm place.
+
+"You can love me if you like," she had said to him at the very start, with
+the egotism of childhood; but made haste to add, "because I love you,
+Gri-Gri." She called him Gri-Gri from the first, but they knew only long
+afterward that "gri-gri" meant "gray-gray," to signify that she called him
+after his grizzled hairs.
+
+What she had been in the life-history of Sally and Jim they both knew. Jim
+regarded her with an almost superstitious feeling. Sally was his strength,
+his support, his inspiration, his bulwark of defence; Nancy was the charm
+he wore about his neck--his mascot, he called her. Once, when she was ill,
+he had suffered as he had never done before in his life. He could not
+sleep nor eat, and went about his duties like one in a dream. When his
+struggles against his enemy were fiercest, he kept saying over her name to
+himself, as though she could help him. Yet always it was Sally's hand he
+held in the darkest hours, in his brutal moments; for in this fight
+between appetite and will there are moments when only the animal seems to
+exist, and the soul disappears in the glare and gloom of the primal
+emotions. Nancy he called his "lucky sixpence," but he called Sally his
+"guinea-girl."
+
+From first to last his whimsicality never deserted him. In his worst
+hours, some innate optimism and humor held him steady in his fight. It was
+not depression that possessed him at the worst, but the violence of an
+appetite most like a raging pain which men may endure with a smile upon
+their lips. He carried in his face the story of a conflict, the aftermath
+of bitter experience; and through all there pulsed the glow of experience.
+He had grown handsomer, and the graceful decision of his figure, the
+deliberate certainty of every action, heightened the force of a singular
+personality. As in the eyes of Sally, in his eyes was a long, reflective
+look which told of things overcome, and yet of dangers present. His lips
+smiled often, but the eyes said: "I have lived, I have seen, I have
+suffered, and I must suffer more. I have loved, I have been loved under
+the shadow of the sword. Happiness I have had, and golden hours, but not
+peace--never peace. My soul has need of peace."
+
+In the greater, deeper experience of their lives, the more material side
+of existence had grown less and less to them. Their home was a model of
+simple comfort and some luxury, though Jim had insisted that Sally's
+income should not be spent, except upon the child, and should be saved for
+the child, their home being kept on his pay and on the tiny income left by
+his mother. With the help of an Indian girl, and a half-breed for out-door
+work and fires and gardening, Sally had cared for the house herself.
+Ingenious and tasteful, with a gift for cooking and an educated hand, she
+had made her little home as pretty as their few possessions would permit.
+Refinement covered all, and three or four score books were like so many
+friends to comfort her when Jim was away; like kind and genial neighbors
+when he was at home. From Browning she had written down in her long,
+sliding handwriting, and hung up beneath Jim's looking-glass, the
+heartening and inspiring words:
+
+         "One who never turned his back, but marched breast
+           forward,
+             Never doubted clouds would break,
+         Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would
+           triumph,
+         Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,
+           Sleep to wake."
+
+They had lived above the sordid, and there was something in the nature of
+Jim's life to help them to it. He belonged to a small handful of men who
+had control over an empire, with an individual responsibility and
+influence not contained in the scope of their commissions. It was a matter
+of moral force and character, and of uniform, symbolical only of the great
+power behind; of the long arm of the State; of the insistence of the law,
+which did not rely upon force alone, but on the certainty of its
+administration. In such conditions the smallest brain was bound to expand,
+to take on qualities of judgment and temperateness which would never be
+developed in ordinary circumstances. In the case of Jim Templeton, who
+needed no stimulant to his intellect, but rather a steadying quality, a
+sense of proportion, the daily routine, the command of men, the diverse
+nature of his duties, half civil, half military, the personal appeals made
+on all sides by the people of the country for advice, for help, for
+settlement of disputes, for information which his well-instructed mind
+could give--all these modified the romantic brilliance of his intellect,
+made it and himself more human.
+
+It had not come to him all at once. His intellect at first stood in his
+way. His love of paradox, his deep observation, his insight--all made him
+inherently satirical, though not cruelly so; but satire had become pure
+whimsicality at last; and he came to see that, on the whole, the world was
+imperfect, but also, on the whole, was moving toward perfection rather
+than imperfection. He grew to realize that what seemed so often weakness
+in men was tendency and idiosyncrasy rather than evil. And in the end he
+thought better of himself as he came to think better of all others. For he
+had thought less of all the world because he had thought so little of
+himself. He had overestimated his own faults, had made them into crimes in
+his own eyes, and, observing things in others of similar import, had
+become almost a cynic in intellect, while in heart he had remained a boy.
+
+In all that he had changed a great deal. His heart was still the heart of
+a boy, but his intellect had sobered, softened, ripened--even in this
+secluded and seemingly unimportant life; as Sally had said and hoped it
+would. Sally's conviction had been right. But the triumph was not yet
+achieved. She knew it. On occasion the tones of his voice told her, the
+look that came into his eyes proclaimed it to her, his feverishness and
+restlessness made it certain. How many a night had she thrown her arm over
+his shoulder, and sought his hand and held it while in the dark silence,
+wide-eyed, dry-lipped, and with a throat like fire he had held himself
+back from falling. There was liquor in the house--the fight would not have
+been a fight without it. She had determined that he should see his enemy
+and meet him in the plains and face him down; and he was never many feet
+away from his possible disaster. Yet for long over three years all had
+gone well. There was another year. Would he last out the course?
+
+At first the thought of the great stake for which she was playing in terms
+of currency, with the head of Jim's father on every note, was much with
+her. The amazing nature of the offer of five millions of dollars
+stimulated her imagination, roused her; gold coins are counters in the
+game of success, signs and tokens. Money alone could not have lured her;
+but rather what it represented--power, width of action, freedom to help
+when the heart prompted, machinery for carrying out large plans, ability
+to surround with advantage those whom we love. So, at first, while yet the
+memories of Washington were much with her, the appeal of the millions was
+strong. The gallant nature of the contest and the great stake braced her;
+she felt the blood quicken in her pulse.
+
+But, all through, the other thing really mastered her: the fixed idea that
+Jim must be saved. As it deepened, the other life that she had lived
+became like the sports in which we shared when children, full of vivacious
+memory, shining with impulse and the stir of life, but not to be
+repeated--days and deeds outgrown. So the light of one idea shone in her
+face. Yet she was intensely human too; and if her eyes had not been set on
+the greater glory, the other thought might have vulgarized her mind, made
+her end and goal sordid--the descent of a nature rather than its
+ascension.
+
+When Nancy came, the lesser idea, the stake, took on a new importance, for
+now it seemed to her that it was her duty to secure for the child its
+rightful heritage. Then Jim, too, appeared in a new light, as one who
+could never fulfil himself unless working through the natural channels of
+his birth, inheritance, and upbringing. Jim, drunken and unreliable, with
+broken will and fighting to find himself--the waste places were for him,
+until he was the master of his will and emotions. Once, however, secure in
+ability to control himself, with cleansed brain and purpose defined, the
+widest field would be still be too narrow for his talents--and the five,
+yes, the fifty millions of his father must be his.
+
+She had never repented having married Jim; but twice in those three years
+she had broken down and wept as though her heart would break. There were
+times when Jim's nerves were shaken in his struggle against the unseen
+foe, and he had spoken to her querulously, almost sharply. Yet in her
+tears there was no reproach for him, rather for herself--the fear that she
+might lose her influence over him, that she could not keep him close to
+her heart, that he might drift away from her in the commonplaces and
+monotony of work and domestic life. Everything so depended on her being to
+him not only the one woman for whom he cared, but the woman without whom
+he could care for nothing else.
+
+"O, my God, give me his love," she had prayed. "Let me keep it yet a
+little while. For his sake, not for my own, let me have the power to hold
+his love. Make my mind always quiet, and let me blow neither hot nor cold.
+Help me to keep my temper sweet and cheerful, so that he will find the
+room empty where I am not, and his footsteps will quicken when he comes to
+the door. Not for my sake, dear God, but for his, or my heart will
+break--it will break unless Thou dost help me to hold him. O Lord, keep me
+from tears; make my face happy that I may be goodly to his eyes, and
+forgive the selfishness of a poor woman who has little, and would keep her
+little and cherish it, for Christ's sake."
+
+Twice had she poured out her heart so, in the agony of her fear that she
+should lose favor in Jim's sight--she did not know how alluring she was,
+in spite of the constant proofs offered her. She had had her will with all
+who came her way, from Governor to Indian brave. Once, in a journey they
+had made far north, soon after they came, she had stayed at a Hudson Bay
+Company's post for some days, while there came news of restlessness among
+the Indians, because of lack of food, and Jim had gone farther north to
+steady the tribes, leaving her with the factor and his wife and a
+half-breed servant.
+
+While she and the factor's wife were alone in the yard of the post one
+day, an Indian chief, Arrowhead, in war-paint and feathers, entered
+suddenly, brandishing a long knife. He had been drinking, and there was
+danger in his black eyes. With a sudden inspiration she came forward
+quickly, nodded and smiled to him, and then pointed to a grindstone
+standing in the corner of the yard. As she did so, she saw Indians
+crowding into the gate armed with knives, guns, bows, and arrows. She
+beckoned to Arrowhead, and he followed her to the grindstone. She poured
+some water on the wheel and began to turn it, nodding at the now impassive
+Indian to begin. Presently he nodded also, and put his knife on the stone.
+She kept turning steadily, singing to herself the while, as with anxiety
+she saw the Indians drawing closer and closer in from the gate. Faster and
+faster she turned, and at last the Indian lifted his knife from the stone.
+She reached out her hand with simulated interest, felt the edge with her
+thumb, the Indian looking darkly at her the while. Presently, after
+feeling the edge himself, he bent over the stone again, and she went on
+turning the wheel, still singing softly. At last he stopped again and felt
+the edge. With a smile which showed her fine, white teeth, she said, "Is
+that for me?" making a significant sign across her throat at the same
+time.
+
+The old Indian looked at her grimly, then slowly shook his head in
+negation.
+
+"I go hunt Yellow Hawk to-night," he said. "I go fight; I like marry you
+when I come back. _How_!" he said, and turned away toward the gate.
+
+Some of his braves held back, the blackness of death in their looks. He
+saw. "My knife is sharp," he said. "The woman is brave. She shall live--go
+and fight Yellow Hawk, or starve and die."
+
+Divining their misery, their hunger, and the savage thought that had come
+to them, Sally had whispered to the factor's wife to bring food, and the
+woman now came running out with two baskets full, and returned for more.
+Sally ran forward among the Indians and put the food into their hands.
+With grunts of satisfaction they seized what she gave, and thrust it into
+their mouths, squatting on the ground. Arrowhead looked on stern and
+immobile, but when at last she and the factor's wife sat down before the
+braves with confidence and an air of friendliness, he sat down also; yet,
+famished as he was, he would not touch the food. At last Sally, realizing
+his proud defiance of hunger, offered him a little lump of pemmican and a
+biscuit, and with a grunt he took it from her hands and ate it. Then, at
+his command, a fire was lit, the pipe of peace was brought out, and Sally
+and the factor's wife touched their lips to it, and passed it on.
+
+So was a new treaty of peace and loyalty made with Arrowhead and his tribe
+by a woman without fear, whose life had seemed not worth a minute's
+purchase; and, as the sun went down, Arrowhead and his men went forth to
+make war upon Yellow Hawk beside the Nettigon River. In this wise had her
+influence spread in the land.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Standing now with the child in his arms and his wife looking at him with a
+shining moisture of the eyes, Jim laughed outright. There came upon him a
+sudden sense of power, of aggressive force--the will to do. Sally
+understood, and came and laughingly grasped his arm.
+
+"Oh, Jim," she said, playfully, "you are getting muscles like steel. You
+hadn't these when you were colonel of the Kentucky Carbineers!"
+
+"I guess I need them now," he said, smiling, and with the child still in
+his arms drew her to a window looking northward. As far as the eye could
+see, nothing but snow, like a blanket spread over the land. Here and there
+in the wide expanse a tree silhouetted against the sky, a tracery of
+eccentric beauty, and off in the far distance a solitary horseman riding
+toward the post--riding hard.
+
+"It was root, hog, or die with me, Sally," he continued, "and I rooted....
+I wonder--that fellow on the horse--I have a feeling about him. See, he's
+been riding hard and long--you can tell by the way the horse drops his
+legs. He sags a bit himself.... But isn't it beautiful, all that out
+there--the real quintessence of life."
+
+The air was full of delicate particles of frost on which the sun sparkled,
+and though there was neither bird nor insect, nor animal, nor stir of
+leaf, nor swaying branch or waving grass, life palpitated in the air,
+energy sang its song in the footstep that crunched the frosty ground, that
+broke the crusted snow; it was in the delicate wind that stirred the flag
+by the barracks away to the left; hope smiled in the wide prospect over
+which the thrilling, bracing air trembled. Sally had chosen right.
+
+"You had a big thought when you brought me here, guinea-girl," he added,
+presently. "We are going to win out here"--he set the child down--"you and
+I and this lucky sixpence." He took up his short fur coat. "Yes, we'll
+win, honey." Then, with a brooding look in his face, he added:
+
+               "'The end comes as came the beginning,
+                 And shadows fail into the past;
+               And the goal, is it not worth the winning,
+                 If it brings us but home at the last?
+               While far through the pain of waste places
+                 We tread, 'tis a blossoming rod
+               That drives us to grace from disgraces,
+                 From the fens to the gardens of God!'"
+
+He paused reflectively. "It's strange that this life up here makes you
+feel that you must live a bigger life still, that this is only the wide
+porch to the great labor-house--it makes you want to do things. Well,
+we've got to win the stake first," he added, with a laugh.
+
+"The stake is a big one, Jim--bigger than you think."
+
+"You and her and me--me that was in the gutter."
+
+"What is the gutter, dadsie?" asked Nancy.
+
+"The gutter--the gutter is where the dish-water goes, midget," he
+answered, with a dry laugh.
+
+"Oh, I don't think you'd like to be in the gutter," Nancy said, solemnly.
+
+"You have to get used to it first, miss," answered Jim. Suddenly Sally
+laid both hands on Jim's shoulders and looked him in the eyes. "You must
+win the stake, Jim. Think--now!"
+
+She laid a hand on the head of the child. He did not know that he was
+playing for a certain five millions, perhaps fifty millions, of dollars.
+She had never told him of his father's offer. He was fighting only for
+salvation, for those he loved, for freedom. As they stood there, the
+conviction had come upon her that they had come to the last battle-field,
+that this journey which Jim now must take would decide all, would give
+them perfect peace or lifelong pain. The shadow of battle was over them,
+but he had no foreboding, no premonition; he had never been so full of
+spirits and life.
+
+To her adjuration Jim replied by burying his face in her golden hair, and
+he whispered: "Say, I've done near four years, my girl. I think I'm all
+right now--I think. This last six months, it's been easy--pretty fairly
+easy."
+
+"Four months more, only four months more--God be good to us!" she said,
+with a little gasp.
+
+If he held out for four months more, the first great stage in their
+life-journey would be passed, the stake won.
+
+"I saw a woman get an awful fall once," Jim said, suddenly. "Her bones
+were broken in twelve places, and there wasn't a spot on her body without
+injury. They set and fixed up every broken bone except one. It was split
+down. They didn't dare perform the operation; she couldn't stand it. There
+was a limit to pain, and she had reached the boundary. Two years went by,
+and she got better every way, but inside her leg those broken pieces of
+bone were rubbing against each other. She tried to avoid the inevitable
+operation, but Nature said, 'You must do it, or die in the end.' She
+yielded. Then came the long preparations for the operation. Her heart
+shrank, her mind got tortured. She'd suffered too much. She pulled herself
+together, and said, 'I must conquer this shrinking body of mine by my
+will. How shall I do it?' Something within her said, 'Think and do for
+others. Forget yourself.' And so, as they got her ready for her torture,
+she visited hospitals, agonized cripple as she was, and smiled and talked
+to the sick and broken, telling them of her own miseries endured and
+dangers faced, of the boundary of human suffering almost passed; and so
+she got her courage for her own trial. And she came out all right in the
+end. Well, that's the way I've felt sometimes. But I'm ready for my
+operation now whenever it comes, and it's coming, I know. Let it come when
+it must." He smiled.
+
+There came a knock at the door, and presently Sewell entered. "The
+Commissioner wishes you to come over, sir," he said.
+
+"I was just coming, Sewell. Is all ready for the start?"
+
+"Everything's ready, sir, but there's to be a change of orders.
+Something's happened--a bad job up in the Cree country, I think."
+
+A few minutes later Jim was in the Commissioner's office. The murder of a
+Hudson's Bay Company's man had been committed in the Cree country. The
+stranger whom Jim and Sally had seen riding across the plains had brought
+the news for thirty miles, word of the murder having been carried from
+point to point. The Commissioner was uncertain what to do, as the Crees
+were restless through want of food and the absence of game, and a force
+sent to capture Arrowhead, the chief who had committed the murder, might
+precipitate trouble. Jim solved the problem by offering to go alone and
+bring the chief into the post. It was two hundred miles to the Cree
+encampment, and the journey had its double dangers.
+
+Another officer was sent on the expedition for which Jim had been
+preparing, and he made ready to go upon his lonely duty. His wife did not
+know till three days after he had gone what the nature of his mission
+was.
+
+IV
+
+Jim made his journey in good weather with his faithful dogs alone, and
+came into the camp of the Crees armed with only a revolver. If he had gone
+with ten men, there would have been an instant melee, in which he would
+have lost his life. This is what the chief had expected, had prepared for;
+but Jim was more formidable alone, with power far behind him which could
+come with force and destroy the tribe, if resistance was offered, than
+with fifty men. His tongue had a gift of terse and picturesque speech,
+powerful with a people who had the gift of imagination. With five hundred
+men ready to turn him loose in the plains without dogs or food, he carried
+himself with a watchful coolness and complacent determination which got
+home to their minds with great force.
+
+For hours the struggle for the murderer went on, a struggle of mind over
+inferior mind and matter.
+
+Arrowhead was a chief whose will had never been crossed by his own people,
+and to master that will by a superior will, to hold back the destructive
+force which, to the ignorant minds of the braves, was only a natural force
+of defence, meant a task needing more than authority behind it. For the
+very fear of that authority put in motion was an incentive to present
+resistance--to stave off the day of trouble. The faces that surrounded Jim
+were thin with hunger, and the murder that had been committed by the chief
+had, as its origin, the foolish replies of the Hudson's Bay Company's man
+to their demand for supplies. Arrowhead had killed him with his own hand.
+
+But Jim Templeton was of a different calibre. Although he had not been
+told it, he realized that, indirectly, hunger was the cause of the crime
+and might easily become the cause of another; for their tempers were
+sharper even than their appetites. Upon this he played; upon this he made
+an exhortation to the chief. He assumed that Arrowhead had become violent
+because of his people's straits, that Arrowhead's heart yearned for his
+people and would make sacrifice for them. Now, if Arrowhead came quietly,
+he would see that supplies of food were sent at once, and that
+arrangements were made to meet the misery of their situation. Therefore,
+if Arrowhead came freely, he would have so much in his favor before his
+judges; if he would not come quietly, then he must be brought by force;
+and if they raised a hand to prevent it, then destruction would fall upon
+all--all save the women and children. The law must be obeyed. They might
+try to resist the law through him, but, if violence was shown, he would
+first kill Arrowhead, and then destruction would descend like a wind out
+of the north, darkness would swallow them, and their bones would cover the
+plains.
+
+As he ended his words a young brave sprang forward with hatchet raised.
+Jim's revolver slipped down into his palm from his sleeve, and a bullet
+caught the brave in the lifted arm. The hatchet dropped to the ground.
+
+Then Jim's eyes blazed, and he turned a look of anger on the chief, his
+face pale and hard, as he said: "The stream rises above the banks; come
+with me, chief, or all will drown. I am master, and I speak. Ye are hungry
+because ye are idle. Ye call the world yours, yet ye will not stoop to
+gather from the earth the fruits of the earth. Ye sit idle in the summer,
+and women and children die round you when winter comes. Because the game
+is gone, ye say. Must the world stand still because a handful of Crees
+need a hunting-ground? Must the makers of cities and the wonders of the
+earth, who fill the land with plenty--must they stand far off, because the
+Crees and their chief would wander over a million acres, for each man a
+million, when by a hundred--ay, by ten--each white man would live in
+plenty and make the land rejoice? See! Here is the truth. When the Great
+Spirit draws the game away so that the hunting is poor, ye sit down and
+fill your hearts with murder, and in the blackness of your thoughts kill
+my brother. Idle and shiftless and evil ye are, while the earth cries out
+to give you of its plenty, a great harvest from a little seed, if ye will
+but dig and plant, and plough and sow and reap, and lend your backs to
+toil. Now hear and heed. The end is come. For this once ye shall be
+fed--by the blood of my heart, ye shall be fed! And another year ye shall
+labor, and get the fruits of your labor, and not stand waiting, as it
+were, till a fish shall pass the spear or a stag water at your door, that
+ye may slay and eat. The end is come, ye idle men. O chief, hearken! One
+of your braves would have slain me, even as you slew my brother--he one,
+and you a thousand. Speak to your people as I have spoken, and then come
+and answer for the deed done by your hand. And this I say that right shall
+be done between men and men. Speak."
+
+Jim had made his great effort, and not without avail. Arrowhead rose
+slowly, the cloud gone out of his face, and spoke to his people, bidding
+them wait in peace until food came, and appointing his son chief in his
+stead until his return.
+
+"The white man speaks truth, and I will go," he said. "I shall return," he
+continued, "if it be written so upon the leaves of the Tree of Life; and
+if it be not so written, I shall fade like a mist, and the tepees will
+know me not again. The days of my youth are spent, and my step no longer
+springs from the ground. I shuffle among the grass and the fallen leaves,
+and my eyes scarce know the stag from the doe. The white man is master--if
+he wills it we shall die; if he wills it we shall live. And this was ever
+so. It is in the tale of our people. One tribe ruled, and the others were
+their slaves. If it is written on the leaves of the Tree of Life that the
+white man rule us forever, then it shall be so, I have spoken. Now,
+behold, I go."
+
+Jim had conquered, and together they sped away with the dogs through the
+sweet-smelling spruce woods where every branch carried a cloth of white,
+and the only sound heard was the swish of a blanket of snow as it fell to
+the ground from the wide webs of green, or a twig snapped under the load
+it bore. Peace brooded in the silent and comforting forest, and Jim and
+Arrowhead, the Indian ever ahead, swung along, mile after mile, on their
+snow-shoes, emerging at last upon the wide, white prairie.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+A hundred miles of sun and fair weather, sleeping at night in the open in
+a trench dug in the snow, no fear in the thoughts of Jim, nor evil in the
+heart of the heathen man. There had been moments of watchfulness, of
+uncertainty, on Jim's part, the first few hours of the first night after
+they left the Cree reservation; but the conviction speedily came to Jim
+that all was well; for the chief slept soundly from the moment he lay down
+in his blankets between the dogs. Then Jim went to sleep as in his own
+bed, and, waking, found Arrowhead lighting a fire from a little load of
+sticks from the sledges. And between murderer and captor there sprang up
+the companionship of the open road which brings all men to a certain land
+of faith and understanding, unless they are perverted and vile. There was
+no vileness in Arrowhead. There were no handcuffs on his hands, no sign of
+captivity; they two ate out of the same dish, drank from the same basin,
+broke from the same bread. The crime of Arrowhead, the gallows waiting for
+him, seemed very far away. They were only two silent travellers, sharing
+the same hardship, helping to give material comfort to each other--in the
+inevitable democracy of those far places, where small things are not great
+nor great things small; where into men's hearts comes the knowledge of the
+things that matter; where, from the wide, starry sky, from the august
+loneliness, and the soul of the life which has brooded there for untold
+generations, God teaches the values of this world and the next.
+
+One hundred miles of sun and fair weather, and then fifty miles of bitter,
+aching cold, with nights of peril from the increasing chill, so that Jim
+dared not sleep lest he should never wake again, but die benumbed and
+exhausted! Yet Arrowhead slept through all. Day after day so, and then ten
+miles of storm such as come only to the vast barrens of the northlands;
+and woe to the traveller upon whom the icy wind and the blinding snow
+descended! Woe came upon Jim Templeton and Arrowhead, the heathen.
+
+In the awful struggle between man and nature that followed, the captive
+became the leader. The craft of the plains, the inherent instinct, the
+feeling which was more than eyesight became the only hope. One whole day
+to cover ten miles--an endless path of agony, in which Jim went down again
+and again, but came up blinded by snow and drift, and cut as with lashes
+by the angry wind. At the end of the ten miles was a Hudson Bay Company's
+post and safety; and through ten hours had the two struggled toward it,
+going off at tangents, circling on their own tracks; but the Indian, by an
+instinct as sure as the needle to the pole, getting the direction to the
+post again, in the moments of direst peril and uncertainty. To Jim the
+world became a sea of maddening forces which buffeted him; a whirlpool of
+fire in which his brain was tortured, his mind was shrivelled up; a vast
+army rending itself, each man against the other. It was a purgatory of
+music, broken by discords; and then at last--how sweet it all was, after
+the eternity of misery!--"Church bells and voices low," and Sally singing
+to him, Nancy's voice calling! Then, nothing but sleep--sleep, a sinking
+down millions of miles in an ether of drowsiness which thrilled him; and
+after--no more.
+
+None who has suffered up to the limit of what the human body and soul may
+bear can remember the history of those distracted moments when the
+struggle became one between the forces in nature and the forces in man,
+between agonized body and smothered mind, yet with the divine intelligence
+of the created being directing, even though subconsciously, the fight.
+
+How Arrowhead found the post in the mad storm he could never have told.
+Yet he found it, with Jim unconscious on the sledge and with limbs frozen,
+all the dogs gone but two, the leathers over the Indian's shoulders as he
+fell against the gate of the post with a shrill cry that roused the factor
+and his people within, together with Sergeant Sewell, who had been sent
+out from headquarters to await Jim's arrival there. It was Sewell's hand
+which first felt Jim's heart and pulse, and found that there was still
+life left, even before it could be done by the doctor from headquarters,
+who had come to visit a sick man at the post.
+
+For hours they worked with snow upon the frozen limbs to bring back life
+and consciousness. Consciousness came at last with half delirium, half
+understanding; as, emerging from the passing sleep of anaesthetics, the eye
+sees things and dimly registers them before the brain has set them in any
+relation to life or comprehension.
+
+But Jim was roused at last, and the doctor presently held to his lips a
+glass of brandy. Then from infinite distance Jim's understanding returned;
+the mind emerged, but not wholly, from the chaos in which it was
+travelling. His eyes stood out in eagerness.
+
+"Brandy! brandy!" he said, hungrily.
+
+With an oath Sewell snatched the glass from the doctor's hand, put it on
+the table, then stooped to Jim's ear and said, hoarsely: "Remember--Nancy.
+For God's sake, sir, don't drink!"
+
+Jim's head fell back, the fierce light went out of his eyes, the face
+became grayer and sharper. "Sally--Nancy--Nancy," he whispered, and his
+fingers clutched vaguely at the quilt.
+
+"He must have brandy or he will die. The system is pumped out. He must be
+revived," said the doctor. He reached again for the glass of spirits.
+
+Jim understood now. He was on the borderland between life and death, his
+feet were at the brink. "No--not--brandy, no!" he moaned. "Sally--Sally,
+kiss me," he said, faintly, from the middle world in which he was.
+
+"Quick, the broth!" said Sewell to the factor, who had been preparing it.
+"Quick, while there's a chance." He stooped and called into Jim's ear:
+"For the love of God, wake up, sir. They're coming--they're both
+coming--Nancy's coming. They'll soon be here." What matter that he
+lied?--a life was at stake.
+
+Jim's eyes opened again. The doctor was standing with the brandy in his
+hand. Half madly Jim reached out. "I must live until they come," he cried;
+"the brandy--ah, give it! Give it--ah, no, no, I must not," he added,
+gasping, his lips trembling, his hands shaking.
+
+Sewell held the broth to his lips. He drank a little, yet his face became
+grayer and grayer; a bluish tinge spread about his mouth.
+
+"Have you nothing else, sir?" asked Sewell, in despair.
+
+The doctor put down the brandy, went quickly to his medicine-case, dropped
+into a glass some liquid from a phial, came over again, and poured a
+little between the lips; then a little more, as Jim's eyes opened again;
+and at last every drop in the glass trickled down the sinewy throat.
+
+Presently as they watched him the doctor said: "It will not do. He must
+have brandy. It has life--food--in it."
+
+Jim understood the words. He knew that if he drank the brandy the chances
+against his future were terrible. He had made his vow, and he must keep
+it. Yet the thirst was on him; his enemy had him by the throat again, was
+dragging him down. Though his body was so cold, his throat was on fire.
+But in the extremity of his strength his mind fought on--fought on,
+growing weaker every moment. He was having his last fight. They watched
+him with an aching anxiety, and there was anger in the doctor's face. He
+had no patience with these forces arrayed against him.
+
+At last the doctor whispered to Sewell, "It's no use; he must have the
+brandy, or he can't live an hour."
+
+Sewell weakened; the tears fell down his rough, hard cheeks. "It'll ruin
+him--it's ruin or death."
+
+"Trust a little more in God and in the man's strength. Let us give him the
+chance. Force it down his throat--he's not responsible," said the
+physician, to whom saving life was more than all else.
+
+Suddenly there appeared at the bedside Arrowhead, gaunt and weak, his face
+swollen, the skin of it broken by the whips of storm.
+
+"He is my brother," he said, and, stooping, laid both hands, which he had
+held before the fire for a long time, on Jim's heart. "Take his feet, his
+hands, his legs, and his head in your hands," he said to them all. "Life
+is in us; we will give him life."
+
+He knelt down and kept both hands on Jim's heart, while the others, even
+the doctor, awed by his act, did as they were bidden. "Shut your eyes. Let
+your life go into him. Think of him, and him alone. Now!" said Arrowhead,
+in a strange voice.
+
+He murmured, and continued murmuring, his body drawing closer and closer
+to Jim's body, while in the deep silence, broken only by the chanting of
+his low, monotonous voice, the others pressed Jim's hands and head and
+feet and legs--six men under the command of a heathen murderer.
+
+The minutes passed. The color came back to Jim's face, the skin of his
+hands filled up, they ceased twitching, his pulse got stronger, his eyes
+opened with a new light in them.
+
+"I'm living, anyhow," he said, at last, with a faint smile. "I'm
+hungry--broth, please."
+
+The fight was won, and Arrowhead, the pagan murderer, drew over to the
+fire and crouched down beside it, his back to the bed, impassive and
+still. They brought him a bowl of broth and bread, which he drank slowly,
+and placed the empty bowl between his knees. He sat there through the
+night, though they tried to make him lie down.
+
+As the light came in at the windows, Sewell touched him on the shoulder
+and said, "He is sleeping now."
+
+"I hear my brother breathe," answered Arrowhead. "He will live."
+
+All night he had listened, and had heard Jim's breath as only a man who
+has lived in waste places can hear. "He will live. What I take with one
+hand I give with the other."
+
+He had taken the life of the factor; he had given Jim his life. And when
+he was tried three months later for murder, some one else said this for
+him, and the hearts of all, judge and jury, were so moved they knew not
+what to do.
+
+But Arrowhead was never sentenced, for, at the end of the first day's
+trial, he lay down to sleep and never waked again. He was found the next
+morning still and cold, and there was clasped in his hands a little doll
+which Nancy had given him on one of her many visits to the prison during
+her father's long illness. They found a piece of paper in his belt with
+these words in the Cree language: "With my hands on his heart at the post
+I gave him the life that was in me, saving but a little until now.
+Arrowhead, the chief, goes to find life again by the well at the root of
+the tree. _How!_"
+
+V
+
+On the evening of the day that Arrowhead made his journey to "the well at
+the root of the tree" a stranger knocked at the door of Captain
+Templeton's cottage; then, without awaiting admittance, entered.
+
+Jim was sitting with Nancy on his knee, her head against his shoulder,
+Sally at his side, her face alight with some inner joy. Before the knock
+came to the door Jim had just said, "Why do your eyes shine so, Sally?
+What's in your mind?" She had been about to answer, to say to him what had
+been swelling her heart with pride, though she had not meant to tell him
+what he had forgotten--not till midnight. But the figure that entered the
+room, a big man with deep-set eyes, a man of power who had carried
+everything before him in the battle of life, answered for her.
+
+"You have won the stake, Jim," he said, in a hoarse voice. "You and she
+have won the stake, and I've brought it--brought it."
+
+Before they could speak he placed in Sally's hands bonds for five million
+dollars.
+
+"Jim--Jim, my son!" he burst out. Then, suddenly, he sank into a chair
+and, putting his head in his hands, sobbed aloud.
+
+"My God, but I'm proud of you--speak to me, Jim. You've broken me up." He
+was ashamed of his tears, but he could not wipe them away.
+
+"Father, dear old man!" said Jim, and put his hands on the broad
+shoulders.
+
+Sally knelt down beside him, took both the great hands from the
+tear-stained face, and laid them against her cheek. But presently she put
+Nancy on his knees.
+
+"I don't like you to cry," the child said, softly; "but to-day I cried
+too, 'cause my Indian man is dead."
+
+The old man could not speak, but he put his cheek down to hers. After a
+minute, "Oh, but she's worth ten times that!" he said, as Sally came close
+to him with the bundle he had thrust into her hands.
+
+"What is it?" said Jim.
+
+"It's five million dollars--for Nancy," she said.
+
+"Five--million--what--?"
+
+"The stake, Jim," said Sally. "If you did not drink for four years--never
+touched a drop--we were to have five million dollars."
+
+"You never told him, then--you never told him that?" asked the old man.
+
+"I wanted him to win without it," she said. "If he won, he would be the
+stronger; if he lost, it would not be so hard for him to bear."
+
+The old man drew her down and kissed her cheek. He chuckled, though the
+tears were still in his eyes.
+
+"You are a wonder--the tenth wonder of the world!" he blurted.
+
+Jim stood staring at the bundle in Nancy's hands. "Five millions--five
+million dollars!" he kept saying to himself.
+
+"I said Nancy's worth ten times that, Jim." The old man caught his hand
+and pressed it. "But it was a damned near thing, I tell you," he added.
+"They tried to break me and my railways and my bank. I had to fight the
+combination, and there was one day when I hadn't that five million dollars
+there, nor five. Jim, they tried to break the old man! And if they'd
+broken me, they'd have made me out a scoundrel to her--to this wife of
+yours who risked everything for both of us--for both of us, Jim; for she'd
+given up the world to save you, and she was playing like a soul in hell
+for heaven. If they'd broken me, I'd never have lifted my head again. When
+things were at their worst I played to save that five millions--her stake
+and mine; I played for that. I fought for it as a man fights his way out
+of a burning house. And I won--I won. And it was by fighting for that five
+millions I saved fifty--fifty millions, son. They didn't break the old
+man, Jim. They didn't break him--not much."
+
+"There are giants in the world still," said Jim, his own eyes full. He
+knew now his father and himself, and he knew the meaning of all the bitter
+and misspent life of the old days. He and his father were on a level of
+understanding at last.
+
+"Are you a giant?" asked Nancy, peering up into her grandfather's eyes.
+
+The old man laughed, then sighed. "Perhaps I was once, more or less, my
+dear," saying to her what he meant for the other two--"perhaps I was; but
+I've finished. I'm through. I've had my last fight."
+
+He looked at his son. "I pass the game on to you, Jim. You can do it. I
+knew you could do it as the reports came in this year. I've had a
+detective up here for four years. I had to do it. It was the devil in me.
+You've got to carry on the game, Jim; I'm done. I'll stay home and potter
+about. I want to go back to Kentucky, and build up the old place, and take
+care of it a bit--your mother always loved it. I'd like to have it as it
+was when she was there long ago. But I'll be ready to help you when I'm
+wanted, understand."
+
+"You want me to run things--your colossal schemes? You think--?"
+
+"I don't think. I'm old enough to know,"
+
+
+
+
+WHEN THE SWALLOWS HOMEWARD FLY
+
+
+The arrogant Sun had stalked away into the evening, trailing behind him
+banners of gold and crimson, and a swift twilight was streaming over the
+land. As the sun passed, the eyes of two men on a high hill followed it,
+and the look of one was like a light in a window to a lost traveller. It
+had in it the sense of home and the tale of a journey done. Such a journey
+this man had made as few have ever attempted and fewer accomplished. To
+the farthermost regions of snow and ice, where the shoulder of a continent
+juts out into the northwestern arctic seas, he had travelled on foot and
+alone, save for his dogs, and for Indian guides who now and then
+shepherded him from point to point. The vast ice-hummocks had been his
+housing; pemmican, the raw flesh of fish, and even the fat and oil of
+seals had been his food. Ever and ever through long months the everlasting
+white glitter of the snow and ice, ever and ever the cold stars, the
+cloudless sky, the moon at full, or swung like a white sickle in the sky
+to warn him that his life must be mown like grass. At night to sleep in a
+bag of fur and wool, by day the steely wind, or the air shaking with a
+filmy powder of frost; while the illimitably distant sun made the tiny
+flakes sparkle like silver--a _poudre_ day, when the face and hands are
+most like to be frozen, and all so still and white and passionless, yet
+aching with energy. Hundreds upon hundreds of miles that endless trail
+went winding to the farthest Northwest. No human being had ever trod its
+lengths before, though Indians or a stray Hudson's Bay Company man had
+made journeys over part of it during the years that have passed since
+Prince Rupert sent his adventurers to dot that northern land with posts
+and forts and trace fine arteries of civilization through the wastes.
+
+Where this man had gone none other had been of white men from the western
+lands, though from across the wide Pacific, from the Eastern world,
+adventurers and exiles had once visited what is now known as the Yukon
+Valley. So this man, browsing in the library of his grandfather, an
+Eastern scholar, had come to know; and for love of adventure, and because
+of the tale of a valley of gold and treasure to be had, and because he had
+been ruined by bad investments, he had made a journey like none ever
+essayed before. And on his way up to those regions, where the veil before
+the face of God is very thin and fine, and men's hearts glow within them,
+where there was no oasis save the unguessed deposit of a great human dream
+that his soul could feel, the face of a girl had haunted him. Her
+voice--so sweet a voice that it rang like muffled silver in his ears,
+till, in the everlasting theatre of the pole, the stars seemed to repeat
+it through millions of echoing hills, growing softer and softer as the
+frost hushed it to his ears--had said to him late and early, "You must
+come back with the swallows." Then she had sung a song which had been like
+a fire in his heart, not alone because of the words of it, but because of
+the soul in her voice, and it had lain like a coverlet on his heart to
+keep it warm:
+
+           "Adieu! The sun goes awearily down,
+           The mist creeps up o'er the sleepy town,
+           The white sail bends to the shuddering mere,
+           And the reapers have reaped and the night is here.
+
+           "Adieu! And the years are a broken song,
+           The right grows weak in the strife with wrong,
+           The lilies of love have a crimson stain,
+           And the old days never will come again.
+
+           "Adieu! Where the mountains afar are dim
+           'Neath the tremulous tread of the seraphim,
+           Shall not our querulous hearts prevail,
+           That have prayed for the peace of the Holy Grail?
+
+           "Adieu! Sometime shall the veil between
+           The things that are and that might have been
+           Be folded back for our eyes to see,
+           And the meaning of all shall be clear to me."
+
+It had been but an acquaintance of five days while he fitted out for his
+expedition, but in this brief time it had sunk deep into his mind that
+life was now a thing to cherish, and that he must indeed come back; though
+he had left England caring little if, in the peril and danger of his
+quest, he ever returned. He had been indifferent to his fate till he came
+to the Valley of the Saskatchewan, to the town lying at the foot of the
+maple hill beside the great northern stream, and saw the girl whose life
+was knit with the far North, whose mother's heart was buried in the great
+wastes where Sir John Franklin's expedition was lost; for her husband had
+been one of the ill-fated if not unhappy band of lovers of that
+civilization for which they had risked all and lost all save immortality.
+Hither the two had come after he had been cast away on the icy plains,
+and, as the settlement had crept north, had gone north with it, always on
+the outer edge of house and field, ever stepping northward. Here, with
+small income but high hearts and quiet souls, they had lived and labored.
+
+And when this newcomer from the old land set his face northward to an
+unknown destination, the two women had prayed as the mother did in the old
+days when the daughter was but a babe at her knee, and it was not yet
+certain that Franklin and his men had been cast away forever. Something in
+him--his great height, his strength of body, his clear, meditative eyes,
+his brave laugh--reminded her of him, her husband, who, like Sir Humphrey
+Gilbert, had said that it mattered little where men did their duty, since
+God was always near to take or leave as it was His will. When Bickersteth
+went, it was as though one they had known all their lives had passed; and
+the woman knew also that a new thought had been sown in her daughter's
+mind, a new door opened in her heart.
+
+And he had returned. He was now looking down into the valley where the
+village lay. Far, far over, two days' march away, he could see the cluster
+of houses, and the glow of the sun on the tin spire of the little mission
+church where he had heard the girl and her mother sing, till the hearts of
+all were swept by feeling and ravished by the desire for "the peace of the
+Holy Grail." The village was, in truth, but a day's march away from him,
+but he was not alone, and the journey could not be hastened. Beside him,
+his eyes also upon the sunset and the village, was a man in a costume
+half-trapper, half-Indian, with bushy gray beard and massive frame, and a
+distant, sorrowful look, like that of one whose soul was tuned to past
+suffering. As he sat, his head sunk on his breast, his elbow resting on a
+stump of pine--the token of a progressive civilization--his chin upon his
+hand, he looked like the figure of Moses made immortal by Michael Angelo.
+But his strength was not like that of the man beside him, who was thirty
+years younger. When he walked, it was as one who had no destination, who
+had no haven toward which to travel, who journeyed as one to whom the
+world is a wilderness, and one tent or one hut is the same as another, and
+none is home.
+
+Like two ships meeting hull to hull on the wide seas, where a few miles of
+water will hide them from each other, whose ports are thousands of miles
+apart, whose courses are not the same, they two had met, the elder man,
+sick and worn and near to death, in the poor hospitality of an Indian's
+tepee. John Bickersteth had nursed the old man back to strength, and had
+brought him southward with him--a silent companion, who spoke in
+monosyllables, who had no conversation at all of the past and little of
+the present, but who was a woodsman and an arctic traveller of the most
+expert kind, who knew by instinct where the best places for shelter and
+for sleeping might be found, who never complained, and was wonderful with
+the dogs. Close as their association was, Bickersteth had felt concerning
+the other that his real self was in some other sphere or place toward
+which his mind was always turning, as though to bring it back.
+
+Again and again had Bickersteth tried to get the old man to speak about
+the past, but he had been met by a dumb sort of look, a straining to
+understand. Once or twice the old man had taken his hands in both of his
+own and gazed with painful eagerness into his face, as though trying to
+remember or to comprehend something that eluded him. Upon these occasions
+the old man's eyes dropped tears in an apathetic quiet, which tortured
+Bickersteth beyond bearing. Just such a look he had seen in the eyes of a
+favorite dog when he had performed an operation on it to save its life--a
+reproachful, non-comprehending, loving gaze.
+
+Bickersteth understood a little of the Chinook language, which is familiar
+to most Indian tribes, and he had learned that the Indians knew nothing
+exact concerning the old man; but rumors had passed from tribe to tribe
+that this white man had lived forever in the farthest North among the
+arctic tribes, and that he passed from people to people, disappearing into
+the untenanted wilderness, but reappearing again among stranger tribes,
+never resting, and as one always seeking what he could not find.
+
+One thing had helped this old man in all his travels and sojourning. He
+had, as it seemed to the native people, a gift of the hands; for when they
+were sick a few moments' manipulation of his huge, quiet fingers
+vanquished pain. A few herbs he gave in tincture, and these also were
+praised; but it was a legend that when he was persuaded to lay on his
+hands and close his eyes, and with his fingers to "search for the pain and
+find it, and kill it," he always prevailed. They believed that, though his
+body was on earth, his soul was with Manitou, and that it was his soul
+which came into him again, and gave the Great Spirit's healing to the
+fingers. This had been the man's safety through how many years--or how
+many generations--they did not know; for legends regarding the pilgrim had
+grown and were fostered by the medicine-men, who, by giving him great age
+and supernatural power, could, with more self-respect, apologize for their
+own incapacity.
+
+So the years--how many it was impossible to tell, since he did not know or
+would not say--had gone on; and now, after ceaseless wandering, his face
+was turned toward that civilization out of which he had come so long
+ago--or was it so long ago?--one generation, or two, or ten? It seemed to
+Bickersteth at times as though it were ten, so strange, so unworldly was
+his companion. At first he thought that the man remembered more than he
+would appear to acknowledge, but he found that after a day or two
+everything that happened as they journeyed was also forgotten.
+
+It was only visible things, or sounds, that appeared to open the doors of
+memory of the most recent happenings. These happenings, if not varied,
+were of critical moment, since, passing down from the land of unchanging
+ice and snow, they had come into March and April storms and the perils of
+the rapids and the swollen floods of May. Now, in June, two years and a
+month since Bickersteth had gone into the wilds, they looked down upon the
+goal of one at least--of the younger man who had triumphed in his quest up
+in these wilds abandoned centuries ago.
+
+With the joyous thought in his heart that he had discovered anew one of
+the greatest gold-fields of the world, that a journey unparalleled had
+been accomplished, he turned toward his ancient companion, and a feeling
+of pity and human love enlarged within him. He, John Bickersteth, was
+going into a world again where--as he believed--a happy fate awaited him;
+but what of this old man? He had brought him out of the wilds, out of the
+unknown--was he only taking him into the unknown again? Were there
+friends, any friends anywhere in the world, waiting for him? He called
+himself by no name, he said he had no name. Whence came he? Of whom?
+Whither was he wending now? Bickersteth had thought of the problem often,
+and he had no answer for it save that he must be taken care of, if not by
+others, then by himself; for the old man had saved him from drowning; had
+also saved him from an awful death on a March day when he fell into a
+great hole and was knocked insensible in the drifting snow; had saved him
+from brooding on himself--the beginning of madness--by compelling him to
+think for another. And sometimes, as he looked at the old man, his
+imagination had caught the spirit of the legend of the Indians, and he had
+cried out, "O soul, come back and give him memory--give him back his
+memory, Manitou the mighty!"
+
+[Illustration: THE OLD MAN SHOOK HIS HEAD. THOUGH NOT WITH UNDERSTANDING]
+
+Looking on the old man now, an impulse seized him. "Dear old man," he
+said, speaking as one speaks to a child that cannot understand, "you shall
+never want while I have a penny, or have head or hands to work. But is
+there no one that you care for or that cares for you, that you remember,
+or that remembers you?"
+
+The old man shook his head, though not with understanding, and he laid a
+hand on the young man's shoulder, and whispered:
+
+"Once it was always snow, but now it is green, the land. I have seen it--I
+have seen it once." His shaggy eyebrows gathered over, his eyes searched,
+searched the face of John Bickersteth. "Once, so long ago--I cannot
+think," he added, helplessly.
+
+"Dear old man," Bickersteth said, gently, knowing he would not wholly
+comprehend, "I am going to ask her--Alice--to marry me, and if she does,
+she will help look after you, too. Neither of us would have been here
+without the other, dear old man, and we shall not be separated. Whoever
+you are, you are a gentleman, and you might have been my father or
+hers--or hers."
+
+He stopped suddenly. A thought had flashed through his mind, a thought
+which stunned him, which passed like some powerful current through his
+veins, shocked him, then gave him a palpitating life. It was a wild
+thought, but yet why not?--why not? There was the chance, the faint,
+far-off chance. He caught the old man by the shoulders and looked him in
+the eyes, scanned his features, pushed back the hair from the rugged
+forehead.
+
+"Dear old man," he said, his voice shaking, "do you know what I'm
+thinking? I'm thinking that you may be of those who went out to the Arctic
+Sea with Sir John Franklin--with Sir John Franklin, you understand. Did
+you know Sir John Franklin?--is it true, dear old boy?--is it true? Are
+you one that has lived to tell the tale? Did you know Sir John
+Franklin?--is it--tell me, is it true?"
+
+He let go the old man's shoulders, for over the face of the other there
+had passed a change. It was strained and tense. The hands were
+outstretched, the eyes were staring straight into the west and the coming
+night.
+
+"It is--it is--that's it!" cried Bickersteth. "That's it--oh, love o' God,
+that's it! Sir John Franklin--Sir John Franklin, and all the brave lads
+that died up there! You remember the ship--the Arctic Sea--the ice-fields,
+and Franklin--you remember him? Dear old man, say you remember Franklin?"
+
+The thing had seized him. Conviction was upon him, and he watched the
+other's anguished face with anguish and excitement in his own. But--but it
+might be, it might be her father--the eyes, the forehead are like hers;
+the hands, the long hands, the pointed fingers. "Dear old man, did you
+have a wife and child, and were they both called Alice--do you remember?
+Franklin!--Alice! Do you remember?"
+
+The old man got slowly to his feet, his arms outstretched, the look in his
+face changing, understanding, struggling for its place, memory fighting
+for its own, the soul contending for its mastery.
+
+"Franklin--Alice--the snow," he said, confusedly, and sank down.
+
+"God have mercy!" cried Bickersteth, as he caught the swaying body and
+laid it upon the ground. "He was there--almost."
+
+He settled the old man against the great pine stump and chafed his hands.
+"Man, dear man, if you belong to her--if you do, can't you see what it
+will mean to me? She can't say no to me then. But if it's true, you'll
+belong to England and to all the world, too, and you'll have fame
+everlasting. I'll have gold for her and for you, and for your Alice, too,
+dear old man. Wake up now and remember if you are Dyke Allingham, who went
+with Franklin to the silent seas of the Pole. If it's you, really you,
+what wonder you lost your memory! You saw them all die, Franklin and all,
+die there in the snow, with all the white world round them. If you were
+there, what a travel you have had, what strange things you have seen!
+Where the world is loneliest, God lives most. If you get close to the
+heart of things, it's no marvel you forgot what you were, or where you
+came from; because it didn't matter; you knew that you were only one of
+thousands of millions who have come and gone, that make up the soul of
+things, that make the pulses of the universe beat. That's it, dear old
+man. The universe would die, if it weren't for the souls that leave this
+world and fill it with life. Wake up! Wake up, Allingham, and tell us
+where you've been, and what you've seen."
+
+He did not labor in vain. Slowly consciousness came back, and the gray
+eyes opened wide, the lips smiled faintly under the bushy beard; but
+Bickersteth saw that the look in the face was much the same as it had been
+before. The struggle had been too great, the fight for the other lost self
+had exhausted him, mind and body, and only a deep obliquity and a great
+weariness filled the countenance. He had come back to the verge, he had
+almost again discovered himself; but the opening door had shut fast
+suddenly, and he was back again in the night, the incompanionable night of
+forgetfulness.
+
+Bickersteth saw that the travail and strife had drained life and energy,
+and that he must not press the mind and vitality of this exile of time and
+the unknown too far. He felt that when the next test came the old man
+would either break completely, and sink down into another and everlasting
+forgetfulness, or tear away forever the veil between himself and his past,
+and emerge into a long-lost life. His strength must be shepherded, and he
+must be kept quiet and undisturbed until they came to the town yonder in
+the valley, over which the night was slowly settling down. There two women
+waited, the two Alices, from both of whom had gone lovers into the North.
+The daughter was living over again in her young love the pangs of suspense
+through which her mother had passed. Two years since Bickersteth had gone,
+and not a sign!
+
+Yet, if the girl had looked from her bedroom window, this Friday night,
+she would have seen on the far hill a sign; for there burned a fire beside
+which sat two travellers who had come from the uttermost limits of snow.
+But as the fire burned--a beacon to her heart if she had but known it--she
+went to her bed, the words of a song she had sung at choir-practice with
+tears in her voice and in her heart ringing in her ears. A concert was to
+be held after the service on the coming Sunday night, at which there was
+to be a collection for funds to build another mission-house a hundred
+miles farther north, and she had been practising music she was to sing.
+Her mother had been an amateur singer of great power, and she was renewing
+her mother's gift in a voice behind which lay a hidden sorrow. As she
+cried herself to sleep the words of the song which had moved her kept
+ringing in her ears and echoing in her heart:
+
+                    "When the swallows homeward fly,
+                    And the roses' bloom is o'er--"
+
+But her mother, looking out into the night, saw on the far hill the fire,
+burning like a star, where she had never seen a fire set before, and a
+hope shot into her heart for her daughter--a hope that had flamed up and
+died down so often during the past year. Yet she had fanned with
+heartening words every such glimmer of hope when it came, and now she went
+to bed saying, "Perhaps he will come to-morrow." In her mind, too, rang
+the words of the song which had ravished her ears that night, the song she
+had sung the night before her own husband, Dyke Allingham, had gone with
+Franklin to the Polar seas:
+
+                   "When the swallows homeward fly--"
+
+As she and her daughter entered the little church on the Sunday evening,
+two men came over the prairie slowly toward the town, and both raised
+their heads to the sound of the church-bell calling to prayer. In the eyes
+of the younger man there was a look which has come to many in this world
+returning from hard enterprise and great dangers, to the familiar streets,
+the friendly faces of men of their kin and clan--to the lights of home.
+
+The face of the older man, however, had another look. It was such a
+look as is seldom seen in the faces of men, for it showed the struggle
+of a soul to regain its identity. The words which the old man had
+uttered in response to Bickersteth's appeal before he fainted
+away--"Franklin--Alice--the snow"--had showed that he was on the verge;
+the bells of the church pealing in the summer air brought him near it once
+again. How many years had gone since he had heard church-bells?
+Bickersteth, gazing at him in eager scrutiny, wondered if, after all, he
+might be mistaken about him. But no, this man had never been born and
+bred in the Far North. His was a type which belonged to the civilization
+from which he himself had come. There would soon be the test of it all.
+Yet he shuddered, too, to think what might happen if it was all true,
+and discovery or reunion should shake to the centre the very life of
+the two long-parted ones.
+
+He saw the look of perplexed pain and joy at once in the face of the old
+man, but he said nothing, and he was almost glad when the bell stopped.
+The old man turned to him.
+
+"What is it?" he said. "I remember--" but he stopped suddenly, shaking his
+head.
+
+An hour later, cleared of the dust of travel, the two walked slowly toward
+the church from the little tavern where they were lodged. The service was
+now over, but the concert had begun. The church was full, and there were
+people in the porch; but these made way for the two strangers; and, as
+Bickersteth was recognized by two or three present, place was found for
+them. Inside, the old man stared round him in a confused and troubled way,
+but his motions were quiet and abstracted, and he looked like some old
+viking, his workaday life done, come to pray ere he went hence forever.
+They had entered in a pause in the concert, but now two ladies came
+forward to the chancel steps, and one with her hands clasped before her,
+began to sing:
+
+                   "When the swallows homeward fly,
+                     And the roses' bloom is o'er,
+                   And the nightingale's sweet song
+                     In the woods is heard no more--"
+
+It was Alice--Alice the daughter--and presently the mother, the other
+Alice, joined in the refrain. At sight of them Bickersteth's eyes had
+filled, not with tears, but with a cloud of feeling, so that he went
+blind. There she was, the girl he loved. Her voice was ringing in his
+ears. In his own joy for one instant he had forgotten the old man beside
+him and the great test that was now upon him. He turned quickly, however,
+as the old man got to his feet. For an instant the lost exile of the North
+stood as though transfixed. The blood slowly drained from his face, and in
+his eyes was an agony of struggle and desire. For a moment an awful
+confusion had the mastery, and then suddenly a clear light broke into his
+eyes, his face flushed healthily and shone, his arms went up, and there
+rang in his ears the words:
+
+                    "Then I think, with bitter pain,
+                    Shall we ever meet again
+                    When the swallows homeward fly?"
+
+"Alice!--Alice!" he called, and tottered forward up the aisle, followed by
+John Bickersteth.
+
+"Alice, I have come back!" he cried again.
+
+
+
+
+GEORGE'S WIFE
+
+
+"She's come, and she can go back. No one asked her, no one wants her, and
+she's got no rights here. She thinks she'll come it over me, but she'll
+get nothing, and there's no place for her here."
+
+The old, gray-bearded man, gnarled and angular, with overhanging brows and
+a harsh face, made this little speech of malice and unfriendliness,
+looking out on the snow-covered prairie through the window. Far in the
+distance were a sleigh and horses like a spot in the snow, growing larger
+from minute to minute.
+
+It was a day of days. Overhead the sun was pouring out a flood of light
+and warmth, and, though it was bitterly cold, life was beating hard in the
+bosom of the West. Men walked lightly, breathed quickly, and their eyes
+were bright with the brightness of vitality and content. Even the old man
+at the window of this lonely house, in a great, lonely stretch of country,
+with the cedar hills behind it, had a living force which defied his
+seventy-odd years, though the light in his face was hard and his voice was
+harder still. Under the shelter of the foothills, cold as the day was, his
+cattle were feeding in the open, scratching away the thin layer of snow
+and browsing on the tender grass underneath. An arctic world in
+appearance, it had an abounding life which made it friendly and
+generous--the harshness belonged to the surface. So, perhaps, it was with
+the old man who watched the sleigh in the distance coming nearer, but that
+in his nature on which any one could feed was not so easily reached as the
+fresh young grass under the protecting snow.
+
+"She'll get nothing out of me," he repeated, as the others in the room
+behind him made no remark, and his eyes ranged gloatingly over the cattle
+under the foothills and the buildings which he had gathered together to
+proclaim his substantial greatness in the West. "Not a _sou markee_!" he
+added, clinking some coins in his pocket. "She's got no rights."
+
+"Cassy's got as much right here as any of us, Abel, and she's coming to
+say it, I guess."
+
+The voice which spoke was unlike a Western voice. It was deep and full and
+slow, with an organ-like quality. It was in good-keeping with the tall,
+spare body and large, fine, rugged face of the woman to whom it belonged.
+She sat in a rocking-chair, but did not rock, her fingers busy with the
+knitting-needles, her feet planted squarely on the home-made hassock at
+her feet.
+
+The old man waited for a minute in a painful silence, then he turned
+slowly round, and, with tight-pressed lips, looked at the woman in the
+rocking-chair. If it had been any one else who had "talked back" at him,
+he would have made quick work of them, for he was of that class of tyrant
+who pride themselves on being self-made, and have an undue respect for
+their own judgment and importance. But the woman who had ventured to
+challenge his cold-blooded remarks about his dead son's wife, now
+hastening over the snow to the house her husband had left under a cloud
+eight years before, had no fear of him, and, maybe, no deep regard for
+him. He respected her, as did all who knew her--a very reticent,
+thoughtful, busy being, who had been like a well of comfort to so many
+that had drunk and passed on out of her life, out of time and time's
+experiences. Seventy-nine years saw her still upstanding, strong, full of
+work, and fuller of life's knowledge. It was she who had sent the horses
+and sleigh for Cassy when the old man, having read the letter that Cassy
+had written him, said that she could "freeze at the station" for all of
+him. Aunt Kate had said nothing then, but, when the time came, by her
+orders the sleigh and horses were at the station; and the old man had made
+no direct protest, for she was the one person he had never dominated nor
+bullied. If she had only talked, he would have worn her down, for he was
+fond of talking, and it was said by those who were cynical and incredulous
+about him that he had gone to prayer-meetings, had been a local preacher,
+only to hear his own voice. Probably, if there had been any politics in
+the West in his day, he would have been a politician, though it would have
+been too costly for his taste, and religion was very cheap; it enabled him
+to refuse to join in many forms of expenditure, on the ground that he "did
+not hold by such things."
+
+In Aunt Kate, the sister of his wife, dead so many years ago, he had found
+a spirit stronger than his own. He valued her; he had said more than once,
+to those who he thought would never repeat it to her, that she was a
+"great woman"; but self-interest was the mainspring of his appreciation.
+Since she had come again to his house--she had lived with him once before
+for two years when his wife was slowly dying--it had been a different
+place. Housekeeping had cost less than before, yet the cooking was better,
+the place was beautifully clean, and discipline without rigidity reigned
+everywhere. One by one the old woman's boys and girls had died--four of
+them--and she was now alone, with not a single grandchild left to cheer
+her; and the life out here with Abel Baragar had been unrelieved by much
+that was heartening to a woman; for Black Andy, Abel's son, was not an
+inspiring figure, though even his moroseness gave way under her influence.
+So it was that when Cassy's letter came her breast seemed to grow warmer
+and swell with longing to see the wife of her nephew, who had such a bad
+reputation in Abel's eyes, and to see George's little boy, who was coming,
+too. After all, whatever Cassy was, she was the mother of Abel's son's
+son; and Aunt Kate was too old and wise to be frightened by tales told of
+Cassy or any one else. So, having had her own way so far regarding Cassy's
+coming, she looked Abel calmly in the eyes, over the gold-rimmed
+spectacles which were her dearest possession--almost the only thing of
+value she had. She was not afraid of Abel's anger, and he knew it; but his
+eldest son, Black Andy, was present, and he must make a show of being
+master of the situation.
+
+"Aunt Kate," he said, "I didn't make a fuss about you sending the horses
+and sleigh for her, because women do fool things sometimes. I suppose
+curiosity got the best of you. Anyhow, mebbe it's right Cassy should find
+out, once for all, how things stand, and that they haven't altered since
+she took George away, and ruined his life, and sent him to his grave.
+That's why I didn't order Mick back when I saw him going out with the
+team."
+
+"Cassy Mavor," interjected a third voice from a corner behind the great
+stove--"Cassy Mavor, of the variety-dance-and-song, and a talk with the
+gallery between!"
+
+Aunt Kate looked over at Black Andy, and stopped knitting, for there was
+that in the tone of the sullen ranchman which stirred in her a sudden
+anger, and anger was a rare and uncomfortable sensation to her. A flush
+crept slowly over her face, then it died away, and she said quietly to
+Black Andy--for she had ever prayed to be master of the demon of temper
+down deep in her, and she was praying now--
+
+"She earnt her living by singing and dancing, and she's brought up
+George's boy by it, and singing and dancing isn't a crime. David danced
+before the Lord. I danced myself when I was a young girl, and before I
+joined the church. 'Twas about the only pleasure I ever had; 'bout the
+only one I like to remember. There's no difference to me 'twixt making
+your feet handy and clever and full of music, and playing with your
+fingers on the piano or on a melodeon at a meeting. As for singing, it's
+God's gift; and many a time I wisht I had it. I'd have sung the blackness
+out of your face and heart, Andy." She leaned back again and began to knit
+very fast. "I'd like to hear Cassy sing, and see her dance, too."
+
+Black Andy chuckled coarsely. "I often heard her sing and saw her dance
+down at Lumley's before she took George away East. You wouldn't have
+guessed she had consumption. She knocked the boys over down to Lumley's.
+The first night at Lumley's done for George."
+
+Black Andy's face showed no lightening of its gloom as he spoke, but there
+was a firing-up of the black eyes, and the woman with the knitting felt
+that--for whatever reason--he was purposely irritating his father.
+
+"The devil was in her heels and in her tongue," Andy continued. "With her
+big mouth, red hair, and little eyes she'd have made anybody laugh. I
+laughed."
+
+"You laughed!" snapped out his father, with a sneer.
+
+Black Andy's eyes half closed with a morose look, then he went on: "Yes, I
+laughed at Cassy. While she was out here at Lumley's getting cured,
+accordin' to the doctor's orders, things seemed to get a move on in the
+West. But it didn't suit professing Christians like you, dad." He jerked
+his head toward the old man and drew the spittoon near with his feet.
+
+"The West hasn't been any worse off since she left," snarled the old man.
+
+"Well, she took George with her," grimly retorted Black Andy.
+
+Abel Baragar's heart had been warmer toward his dead son George than to
+any one else in the world. George had been as fair of face and hair as
+Andrew was dark, as cheerful and amusing as Andrew was gloomy and
+dispiriting, as agile and dexterous of mind and body as his brother was
+slow and angular, as emotional and warm-hearted as the other was
+phlegmatic and sour--or so it seemed to the father and to nearly all
+others.
+
+In those old days they had not been very well off. The railway was not
+completed, and the West had not begun "to move." The old man had bought
+and sold land and cattle and horses, always living on a narrow margin of
+safety, but in the hope that one day the choice bits of land he was
+shepherding here and there would take a leap up in value; and his judgment
+had been right. His prosperity had all come since George went away with
+Cassy Mavor. His anger at George had been the more acute, because the
+thing happened at a time when his affairs were on the edge of a precipice.
+He had won through it, but only by the merest shave, and it had all left
+him with a bad spot in his heart, in spite of his "having religion."
+Whenever he remembered George he instinctively thought of those black days
+when a Land and Cattle Syndicate was crowding him over the edge into the
+chasm of failure, and came so near doing it. A few thousand dollars less
+to put up here and there, and he would have been ruined; his blood became
+hotter whenever he thought of it. He had had to fight the worst of it
+through alone, for George, who had been useful as a kind of buyer and
+seller, who was ever all things to all men, and ready with quip and jest,
+and not a little uncertain as to truth--to which the old man shut his eyes
+when there was a "deal" on--had, in the end, been of no use at all, and
+had seemed to go to pieces just when he was most needed. His father had
+put it all down to Cassy Mavor, who had unsettled things since she had
+come to Lumley's, and, being a man of very few ideas, he cherished those
+he had with an exaggerated care. Prosperity had not softened him; it had
+given him an arrogance unduly emphasized by a reputation for rigid virtue
+and honesty. The indirect attack which Andrew now made on George's memory
+roused him to anger, as much because it seemed to challenge his own
+judgment as cast a slight on the name of the boy whom he had cast off, yet
+who had a firmer hold on his heart than any human being ever had. It had
+only been pride which had prevented him from making it up with George
+before it was too late; but, all the more, he was set against the woman
+who "kicked up her heels for a living"; and, all the more, he resented
+Black Andy, who, in his own grim way, had managed to remain a partner with
+him in their present prosperity, and had done so little for it.
+
+"George helped to make what you've got," he said, darkly, now. "The West
+missed George. The West said, 'There was a good man ruined by a woman.'
+The West'd never think anything or anybody missed you, 'cept yourself.
+When you went North, it never missed you; when you come back, its jaw
+fell. You wasn't fit to black George's boots."
+
+Black Andy's mouth took on a bitter sort of smile, and his eyes drooped
+furtively as he struck the damper of the stove heavily with his foot; then
+he replied, slowly:
+
+"Well, that's all right; but if I wasn't fit to black his boots, it ain't
+my fault. I git my nature honest, as he did. We wasn't any cross-breeds, I
+s'pose. We got the strain direct, and we was all right on her side."
+
+He jerked his head toward Aunt Kate, whose face was growing pale. She
+interposed now.
+
+"Can't you leave the dead alone?" she asked, in a voice ringing a little.
+"Can't you let them rest? Ain't it enough to quarrel about the living?
+Cassy'll be here soon," she added, peering out of the window, "and if I
+was you I'd try and not make her sorry she ever married a Baragar. It
+ain't a feeling that'd make a sick woman live long."
+
+Aunt Kate did not strike often, but when she did she struck hard. Abel
+Baragar staggered a little under this blow, for, at the moment, it seemed
+to him that he saw his dead wife's face looking at him from the chair
+where her sister now sat. Down in his ill-furnished heart, where there had
+been little which was companionable, there was a shadowed corner. Sophy
+Baragar had been such a true-hearted, brave-souled woman, and he had been
+so impatient and exacting with her, till the beautiful face, which had
+been reproduced in George, had lost its color and its fire, had become
+careworn and sweet with that sweetness which goes early out of the world.
+In all her days the vanished wife had never hinted at as much as Aunt Kate
+suggested now, and Abel Baragar shut his eyes against the thing which he
+was seeing. He was not all hard, after all.
+
+Aunt Kate turned to Black Andy now.
+
+"Mebbe Cassy ain't for long," she said. "Mebbe she's come out for what she
+came out for before. It seems to me it's that, or she wouldn't have come;
+because she's young yet, and she's fond of her boy, and she'd not want to
+bury herself alive out here with us. Mebbe her lungs is bad again."
+
+"Then she's sure to get another husband out here," said the old man,
+recovering himself. "She got one before easy, on the same ticket." With
+something of malice he looked over at Black Andy.
+
+"If she can sing and dance as she done nine years ago, I shouldn't
+wonder," answered Black Andy, smoothly. These two men knew each other;
+they had said hard things to each other for many a year, yet they lived on
+together unshaken by each other's moods and bitternesses.
+
+"I'm getting old--I'm seventy-nine--and I ain't for long," urged Aunt
+Kate, looking Abel in the eyes. "Some day soon I'll be stepping out and
+away. Then things'll go to sixes and sevens, as they did after Sophy died.
+Some one ought to be here that's got a right to be here, not a hired
+woman."
+
+Suddenly the old man raged out:
+
+"Her--off the stage to look after this! Her, that's kicked up her heels
+for a living! It's--no, she's no good. She's common. She's come, and she
+can go. I ain't having sweepings from the streets living here as if they
+had rights."
+
+Aunt Kate set her lips.
+
+"Sweepings! You've got to take that back, Abel. It's not Christian. You've
+got to take that back."
+
+"He'll take it back all right before we've done, I guess," remarked Black
+Andy. "He'll take a lot back."
+
+"Truth's truth, and I'll stand by it, and--"
+
+The old man stopped, for there came to them now, clearly, the sound of
+sleigh-bells. They all stood still for an instant, silent and attentive,
+then Aunt Kate moved toward the door.
+
+"Cassy's come," she said. "Cassy and George's boy've come."
+
+Another instant and the door was opened on the beautiful, white, sparkling
+world, and the low sleigh, with its great, warm, buffalo robes, in which
+the small figures of a woman and a child were almost lost, stopped at the
+door. Two whimsical but tired eyes looked over a rim of fur at the old
+woman in the doorway, then Cassy's voice rang out:
+
+"Hello! that's Aunt Kate, I know! Well, here we are, and here's my boy.
+Jump, George!"
+
+A moment later and the gaunt old woman folded both mother and son in her
+arms and drew them into the room. The door was shut, and they all faced
+one another.
+
+The old man and Black Andy did not move, but stood staring at the trim
+figure in black, with the plain face, large mouth, and tousled red hair,
+and the dreamy-eyed, handsome little boy beside her.
+
+Black Andy stood behind the stove, looking over at the new-comers with
+quizzical, almost furtive eyes, and his father remained for a moment with
+mouth open, gazing at his dead son's wife and child, as though not quite
+comprehending the scene. The sight of the boy had brought back, in some
+strange, embarrassing way, a vision of thirty years before, when George
+was a little boy in buckskin pants and jacket, and was beginning to ride
+the prairie with him. This boy was like George, yet not like him. The face
+was George's, the sensuous, luxurious mouth; but the eyes were not those
+of a Baragar, nor yet those of Aunt Kate's family; and they were not
+wholly like the mother's. They were full and brimming, while hers were
+small and whimsical; yet they had her quick, humorous flashes and her
+quaintness.
+
+"Have I changed so much? Have you forgotten me?" Cassy asked, looking the
+old man in the eyes. "You look as strong as a bull." She held out her hand
+to him and laughed.
+
+"Hope I see you well," said Abel Baragar, mechanically, as he took the
+hand and shook it awkwardly.
+
+"Oh, I'm all right," answered the nonchalant little woman, undoing her
+jacket. "Shake hands with your grandfather, George. That's right--don't
+talk too much," she added, with a half-nervous little laugh, as the old
+man, with a kind of fixed smile, and the child shook hands in silence.
+
+Presently she saw Black Andy behind the stove. "Well, Andy, have you been
+here ever since?" she asked, and, as he came forward, she suddenly caught
+him by both arms, stood on tiptoe, and kissed him. "Last time I saw you,
+you were behind the stove at Lumley's. Nothing's ever too warm for you,"
+she added. "You'd be shivering on the equator. You were always hugging the
+stove at Lumley's."
+
+"Things were pretty warm there, too, Cassy," he said, with a sidelong look
+at his father.
+
+She saw the look, her face flushed with sudden temper, then her eyes fell
+on her boy, now lost in the arms of Aunt Kate, and she curbed herself.
+
+"There were plenty of things doing at Lumley's in those days," she said,
+brusquely. "We were all young and fresh then," she added, and then
+something seemed to catch her voice, and she coughed a little--a hard,
+dry, feverish cough. "Are the Lumleys all right? Are they still there, at
+the Forks?" she asked, after the little paroxysm of coughing.
+
+"Cleaned out--all scattered. We own the Lumleys' place now," replied Black
+Andy, with another sidelong glance at his father, who, as he put some more
+wood on the fire and opened the damper of the stove wider, grimly watched
+and listened.
+
+"Jim, and Lance, and Jerry, and Abner?" she asked, almost abstractedly.
+
+"Jim's dead--shot by a U. S. marshal by mistake for a smuggler," answered
+Black Andy, suggestively. "Lance is up on the Yukon, busted; Jerry is one
+of our hands on the place; and Abner is in jail."
+
+"Abner--in jail!" she exclaimed, in a dazed way. "What did he do? Abner
+always seemed so straight."
+
+[Illustration: GEORGE'S WIFE]
+
+"Oh, he sloped with a thousand dollars of the railway people's money. They
+caught him, and he got seven years."
+
+"He was married, wasn't he?" she asked, in a low voice.
+
+"Yes, to Phenie Tyson. There's no children, so she's all right, and
+divorce is cheap over in the States, where she is now."
+
+"Phenie Tyson didn't marry Abner because he was a saint, but because he
+was a man, I suppose," she replied, gravely. "And the old folks?"
+
+"Both dead. What Abner done sent the old man to his grave. But Abner's
+mother died a year before."
+
+"What Abner done killed his father," said Abel Baragar, with dry emphasis.
+"Phenie Tyson was extravagant--wanted this and that, and nothin' was too
+good for her. Abner spoilt his life gettin' her what she wanted; and it
+broke old Ezra Lumley's heart."
+
+George's wife looked at him for a moment with her eyes screwed up, and
+then she laughed softly. "My, it's curious how some folks go up and some
+go down! It must be lonely for Phenie waiting all these years for Abner to
+get free.... I had the happiest time in my life at Lumley's. I was getting
+better of my--cold. While I was there I got lots of strength stored up, to
+last me many a year when I needed it; and, then, George and I were married
+at Lumley's!"
+
+Aunt Kate came slowly over with the boy and laid a hand on Cassy's
+shoulder, for there was an undercurrent to the conversation which boded no
+good. The very first words uttered had plunged Abel Baragar and his son's
+wife into the midst of the difficulty which she had hoped might, after
+all, be avoided.
+
+"Come, and I'll show you your room, Cassy," she said. "It faces south, and
+you'll get the sun all day. It's like a sun-parlor. We're going to have
+supper in a couple of hours, and you must rest some first. Is the house
+warm enough for you?"
+
+The little, garish woman did not reply directly, but shook back her red
+hair and caught her boy to her breast and kissed him; then she said, in
+that staccato manner which had given her words on the stage such point and
+emphasis: "Oh, this house is a'most too warm for me, Aunt Kate!"
+
+Then she moved toward the door with the grave, kindly old woman, her son's
+hand in her own.
+
+"You can see the Lumleys' place from your window, Cassy," said Black Andy,
+grimly. "We got a mortgage on it, and foreclosed it, and it's ours now;
+and Jerry Lumley's stock-riding for us. Anyhow, he's better off than
+Abner, or Abner's wife."
+
+Cassy turned at the door and faced him. Instinctively she caught at some
+latent conflict with old Abel Baragar in what Black Andy had said, and her
+face softened, for it suddenly flashed into her mind that he was not
+against her.
+
+"I'm glad to be back West," she said. "It meant a lot to me when I was at
+Lumley's." She coughed a little again, but turned to the door with a
+laugh.
+
+"How long have you come to stay here--out West?" asked the old man,
+furtively.
+
+"Oh, there's plenty of time to think of that!" she answered, brusquely,
+and she heard Black Andy laugh derisively as the door closed behind her.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+In a blaze of joy the sun swept down behind the southern hills, and the
+windows of Lumley's house at the Forks, catching the oblique rays,
+glittered and shone like flaming silver. Nothing of life showed, save the
+cattle here and there, creeping away to the shelter of the foothills for
+the night. The white, placid snow made a coverlet as wide as the vision of
+the eye, save where spruce and cedar trees gave a touch of warmth and
+refuge here and there. A wonderful, buoyant peace seemed to rest upon the
+wide, silent expanse. The birds of song were gone South over the hills,
+and the living wild things of the prairies had stolen into
+winter-quarters. Yet, as Cassy Mavor looked out upon the exquisite beauty
+of the scene, upon the splendid outspanning of the sun along the hills,
+the deep plangent blue of the sky and the thrilling light, she saw a world
+in agony and she heard the moans of the afflicted. The sun shone bright on
+the windows of Lumley's house, but she could hear the crying of Abner's
+wife, and of old Ezra and Eliza Lumley, when their children were stricken
+or shamed; when Abel Baragar drew tighter and tighter the chains of the
+mortgage, which at last made them tenants in the house once their own.
+Only eight years ago, and all this had happened. And what had not happened
+to her, too, in those eight years!
+
+With George--reckless, useless, loving, lying George--she had left
+Lumley's with her sickness cured, as it seemed, after a long year in the
+West, and had begun life again. What sort of life had it been? "Kicking up
+her heels on the stage," as Abel Baragar had said; but, somehow, not as it
+was before she went West to give her perforated lung to the healing air of
+the plains, and to live out-doors with the men--a man's life. Then she had
+never put a curb on her tongue, or greatly on her actions, except that,
+though a hundred men quarrelled openly, or in their own minds, about her,
+no one had ever had any _right_ to quarrel about her. With a tongue which
+made men gasp with laughter, with as comic a gift as ever woman had, and
+as equally comic a face, she had been a good-natured little tyrant in her
+way. She had given a kiss here and there, and had taken one, but always
+there had been before her mind the picture of a careworn woman who
+struggled to bring up her three children honestly, and without the help of
+charity, and, with a sigh of content and weariness, had died as Cassy made
+her first hit on the stage and her name became a household word. And
+Cassy, garish, gay, freckled, witty, and whimsical, had never forgotten
+those days when her mother prayed and worked her heart out to do her duty
+by her children. Cassy Mavor had made her following, had won her place,
+was the idol of "the gallery"; and yet she was "of the people," as she had
+always been, until her first sickness came, and she had gone out to
+Lumley's, out along the foothills of the Rockies.
+
+What had made her fall in love with George Baragar? She could not have
+told, if she had been asked. He was wayward, given to drink at times,
+given also to card-playing and racing; but he had a way with him which few
+women could resist and that made men his friends; and he had a sense of
+humor akin to her own. In any case, one day she let him catch her up in
+his arms, and there was the end of it. But no, not the end, after all. It
+was only the beginning of real life for her. All that had gone before
+seemed but playing on the threshold, though it had meant hard, bitter
+hard, work, and temptation, and patience, and endurance of many kinds. And
+now George was gone forever. But George's little boy lay there on the bed
+in a soft sleep, with all his life before him.
+
+She turned from the warm window and the buoyant, inspiring scene to the
+bed. Stooping over, she kissed the sleeping boy with an abrupt eagerness,
+and made a little awkward, hungry gesture of love over him, and her face
+flushed hot with the passion of motherhood in her.
+
+"All I've got now," she murmured. "Nothing else left--nothing else at
+all."
+
+She heard the door open behind her, and she turned round. Aunt Kate was
+entering with a bowl in her hands.
+
+"I heard you moving about, and I've brought you something hot to drink,"
+she said.
+
+"That's real good of you, Aunt Kate," was the cheerful reply. "But it's
+near supper-time, and I don't need it."
+
+"It's boneset tea--for your cold," answered Aunt Kate, gently, and put it
+on the high dressing-table made of a wooden box and covered with muslin.
+"For your cold, Cassy," she repeated.
+
+The little woman stood still a moment gazing at the steaming bowl, lines
+growing suddenly around her mouth, then she looked at Aunt Kate
+quizzically. "Is my cold bad--so bad that I need boneset?" she asked, in a
+queer, constrained voice.
+
+"It's comforting, is boneset tea, even when there's no cold, 'specially
+when the whiskey's good, and the boneset and camomile has steeped some
+days."
+
+"Have you been steeping them some days?" Cassy asked, softly, eagerly.
+
+Aunt Kate nodded, then tried to explain.
+
+"It's always good to be prepared, and I didn't know but what the cold you
+used to have might be come back," she said. "But I'm glad if it ain't--if
+that cough of yours is only one of the measly little hacks people get in
+the East, where it's so damp."
+
+Cassy was at the window again, looking out at the dying radiance of the
+sun. Her voice seemed hollow and strange and rather rough, as she said, in
+reply:
+
+"It's a real cold, deep down, the same as I had nine years ago, Aunt Kate;
+and it's come to stay, I guess. That's why I came back West. But I
+couldn't have gone to Lumley's again, even if they were at the Forks now,
+for I'm too poor. I'm a back-number now. I had to give up singing and
+dancing a year ago, after George died. So I don't earn my living any more,
+and I had to come to George's father, with George's boy."
+
+Aunt Kate had a shrewd mind, and was tactful, too. She did not understand
+why Cassy, who had earned so much money all these years, should be so poor
+now, unless it was that she hadn't saved--that she and George hadn't
+saved. But, looking at the face before her, and the child on the bed, she
+was convinced that the woman was a good woman; that, singer and dancer as
+she was, there was no reason why any home should be closed to her, or any
+heart should shut its doors before her. She guessed a reason for this
+poverty of Cassy Mavor, but it only made her lay a hand on the little
+woman's shoulders and look into her eyes.
+
+"Cassy," she said, gently, "you was right to come here. There's trials
+before you, but for the boy's sake you must bear them. Sophy, George's
+mother, had to bear them, and Abel was fond of her, too, in his way. He's
+stored up a lot of things to say, and he'll say them; but you'll keep the
+boy in your mind, and be patient, won't you, Cassy? You got rights here,
+and it's comfortable, and there's plenty, and the air will cure your lung
+as it did before. It did all right before, didn't it?" She handed the bowl
+of boneset tea. "Take it; it'll do you good, Cassy," she added.
+
+Cassy said nothing in reply. She looked at the bed where her boy lay, she
+looked at the angular face of the woman, with its brooding motherliness,
+at the soft, gray hair, and, with a little gasp of feeling, she raised the
+bowl to her lips and drank freely. Then, putting it down, she said:
+
+"He doesn't mean to have us, Aunt Kate, but I'll try and keep my temper
+down. Did he ever laugh in his life?"
+
+"He laughs sometimes--kind o' laughs."
+
+"I'll make him laugh real, if I can," Cassy rejoined. "I've made a lot of
+people laugh in my time."
+
+The old woman leaned suddenly over, and drew the red, ridiculous head to
+her shoulder with a gasp of affection, and her eyes were full of tears.
+
+"Cassy," she exclaimed, "Cassy, you make me cry!" and then she turned and
+hurried from the room.
+
+Three hours later the problem was solved in the big sitting-room where
+Cassy had first been received with her boy. Aunt Kate sat with her feet on
+a hassock, rocking gently and watching and listening. Black Andy was
+behind the great stove with his chair tilted back, carving the bowl of a
+pipe; the old man sat rigid by the table, looking straight before him and
+smacking his lips now and then as he was wont to do at meeting; while
+Cassy, with her chin in her hands and elbows on her knees, gazed into the
+fire and waited for the storm to break.
+
+Her little flashes of humor at dinner had not brightened things, and she
+had had an insane desire to turn cartwheels round the room, so implacable
+and highly strained was the attitude of the master of the house, so
+unctuous was the grace and the thanksgiving before and after the meal.
+Abel Baragar had stored up his anger and his righteous antipathy for
+years, and this was the first chance he had had of visiting his
+displeasure on the woman who had "ruined" George, and who had now come to
+get "rights," which he was determined she should not have. He had steeled
+himself against seeing any good in her whatever. Self-will, self-pride,
+and self-righteousness were big in him, and so the supper had ended in
+silence, and with a little attack of coughing on the part of Cassy, which
+made her angry at herself. Then the boy had been put to bed, and she had
+come back to await the expected outburst. She could feel it in the air,
+and while her blood tingled in a desire to fight this tyrant to the bitter
+end, she thought of her boy and his future, and she calmed the tumult in
+her veins.
+
+She did not have to wait very long. The querulous voice of the old man
+broke the silence.
+
+"When be you goin' back East? What time did you fix for goin'?" he asked.
+
+She raised her head and looked at him squarely. "I didn't fix any time for
+going East again," she replied. "I came out West this time to stay."
+
+"I thought you was on the stage," was the rejoinder.
+
+"I've left the stage. My voice went when I got a bad cold again, and I
+couldn't stand the draughts of the theatre, and so I couldn't dance,
+either. I'm finished with the stage. I've come out here for good and
+all."
+
+"Where did you think of livin' out here?"
+
+"I'd like to have gone to Lumley's, but that's not possible, is it?
+Anyway, I couldn't afford it now. So I thought I'd stay here, if there was
+room for me."
+
+"You want to board here?"
+
+"I didn't put it to myself that way. I thought perhaps you'd be glad to
+have me. I'm handy. I can cook, I can sew, and I'm quite cheerful and
+kind. Then there's George--little George. I thought you'd like to have
+your grandson here with you."
+
+"I've lived without him--or his father--for eight years, an' I could bear
+it awhile yet, mebbe."
+
+There was a half-choking sound from the old woman in the rocking-chair,
+but she did not speak, though her knitting dropped into her lap.
+
+"But if you knew us better, perhaps you'd like us better," rejoined Cassy,
+gently. "We're both pretty easy to get on with, and we see the bright side
+of things. He has a wonderful disposition, has George."
+
+"I ain't goin' to like you any better," said the old man, getting to his
+feet. "I ain't goin' to give you any rights here. I've thought it out, and
+my mind's made up. You can't come it over me. You ruined my boy's life and
+sent him to his grave. He'd have lived to be an old man out here; but you
+spoiled him. You trapped him into marrying you, with your kicking and your
+comic songs, and your tricks of the stage, and you parted us--parted him
+and me forever."
+
+"That was your fault. George wanted to make it up."
+
+"With you!" The old man's voice rose shrilly, the bitterness and passion
+of years was shooting high in the narrow confines of his mind. The geyser
+of his prejudice and antipathy was furiously alive. "To come back with you
+that ruined him and broke up my family, and made my life like bitter
+aloes! No! And if I wouldn't have him with you, do you think I'll have you
+without him? By the God of Israel, no!"
+
+Black Andy was now standing up behind the stove intently watching, his
+face grim and sombre; Aunt Kate sat with both hands gripping the arms of
+the rocker.
+
+Cassy got slowly to her feet. "I've been as straight a woman as your
+mother or your wife ever was," she said, "and all the world knows it. I'm
+poor--and I might have been rich. I was true to myself before I married
+George, and I was true to George after, and all I earned he shared; and
+I've got little left. The mining stock I bought with what I saved went
+smash, and I'm poor as I was when I started to work for myself. I can work
+awhile yet; but I wanted to see if I could fit in out here and get well
+again, and have my boy fixed in the house of his grandfather. That's the
+way I'm placed, and that's how I came. But give a dog a bad name--ah, you
+shame your dead boy in thinking bad of me! I didn't ruin him. I didn't
+kill him. He never came to any bad through me. I helped him; he was happy.
+Why, I--" She stopped suddenly, putting a hand to her mouth. "Go on, say
+what you want to say, and let's understand once for all," she added, with
+a sudden sharpness.
+
+Abel Baragar drew himself up. "Well, I say this. I'll give you three
+thousand dollars, and you can go somewhere else to live. I'll keep the boy
+here. That's what I've fixed in my mind to do. You can go, and the boy
+stays. I ain't goin' to live with you that spoiled George's life."
+
+The eyes of the woman dilated, she trembled with a sudden rush of anger,
+then stood still, staring in front of her without a word. Black Andy
+stepped from behind the stove.
+
+"You are going to stay here, Cassy," he said, "here where you have rights
+as good as any, and better than any, if it comes to that." He turned to
+his father. "You thought a lot of George," he added. "He was the apple of
+your eye. He had a soft tongue, and most people liked him; but George was
+foolish--I've known it all these years. George was pretty foolish. He
+gambled, he bet at races, he speculated--wild. You didn't know it. He took
+ten thousand dollars of your money, got from the Wonegosh farm he sold for
+you. He--"
+
+Cassy Mavor started forward with a cry, but Black Andy waved her down.
+
+"No, I'm going to tell it. George lost your ten thousand dollars, dad,
+gambling, racing, speculating. He told her--Cassy--two days after they was
+married, and she took the money she earned on the stage and give it to him
+to pay you back on the quiet through the bank. You never knew, but that's
+the kind of boy your son George was, and that's the kind of wife he had.
+George told me all about it when I went East six years ago."
+
+He came over to Cassy and stood beside her. "I'm standing by George's
+wife," he said, taking her hand, while she shut her eyes in her
+misery--had she not hid her husband's wrong-doing all these years?--"I'm
+standing by her. If it hadn't been for that ten thousand dollars she paid
+back for George, you'd have been swamped, when the Syndicate got after
+you, and we wouldn't have had Lumley's place, nor this, nor anything. I
+guess she's got rights here, dad, as good as any."
+
+The old man sank slowly into a chair. "George--George stole from me--stole
+money from me!" he whispered. His face was white. His pride and vainglory
+were broken. He was a haggard, shaken figure. His self-righteousness was
+levelled in the dust.
+
+With sudden impulse Cassy stole over to him and took his hand and held it
+tight.
+
+"Don't! Don't feel so bad!" she said. "He was weak and wild then. But he
+was all right afterward. He was happy with me."
+
+"I've owed Cassy this for a good many years, dad," said Black Andy, "and
+it had to be paid. She's got better stuff in her than any Baragar."
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+An hour later the old man said to Cassy at the door of her room: "You got
+to stay here and git well. It's yours, the same as the rest of us--what's
+here."
+
+Then he went down-stairs and sat with Aunt Kate by the fire.
+
+"I guess she's a good woman," he said, at last. "I didn't use her right."
+
+"You've been lucky with your women-folk," Aunt Kate answered, quietly.
+
+"Yes, I've been lucky," he answered. "I dunno if I deserve it. Mebbe not.
+Do you think she'll git well?"
+
+"It's a healing air out here," Aunt Kate answered, and listened to the
+wood of the house snapping in the sharp frost.
+
+
+
+
+MARCILE
+
+
+That the day was beautiful, that the harvest of the West had been a great
+one, that the salmon-fishing had been larger than ever before, that gold
+had been found in the Yukon, made no difference to Jacques Grassette, for
+he was in the condemned cell of Bindon Jail, living out those days which
+pass so swiftly between the verdict of the jury and the last slow walk
+with the Sheriff.
+
+He sat with his back to the stone wall, his hands on his knees, looking
+straight before him. All that met his physical gaze was another stone
+wall, but with his mind's eye he was looking beyond it into spaces far
+away. His mind was seeing a little house with dormer-windows, and a steep
+roof on which the snow could not lodge in winter-time; with a narrow stoop
+in front where one could rest of an evening, the day's work done; the
+stone-and-earth oven near by in the open, where the bread for a family of
+twenty was baked; the wooden plough tipped against the fence, to wait the
+"fall" cultivation; the big iron cooler in which the sap from the
+maple-trees was boiled, in the days when the snow thawed and spring opened
+the heart of the wood; the flash of the sickle and the scythe hard by; the
+fields of the little, narrow farm running back from the St. Lawrence like
+a riband; and, out on the wide stream, the great rafts with their riverine
+population floating down to Michelin's mill-yards.
+
+For hours he had sat like this, unmoving, his gnarled red hands clamping
+each leg as though to hold him steady while he gazed; and he saw himself
+as a little lad, barefooted, doing chores, running after the shaggy,
+troublesome pony which would let him catch it when no one else could, and,
+with only a halter on, galloping wildly back to the farm-yard, to be
+hitched up in the cariole which had once belonged to the old Seigneur. He
+saw himself as a young man back from "the States," where he had been
+working in the mills, regarded austerely by little Father Roche, who had
+given him his first Communion--for, down in Massachusetts he had learned
+to wear his curly hair plastered down on his forehead, smoke bad cigars,
+and drink "old Bourbon," to bet and to gamble, and be a figure at
+horse-races.
+
+Then he saw himself, his money all gone, but the luck still with him, at
+Mass on the Sunday before going to the backwoods lumber-camp for the
+winter, as boss of a hundred men. He had a way with him, and he had
+brains, had Jacques Grassette, and he could manage men, as Michelin the
+lumber-king himself had found in a great river-row and strike, when
+bloodshed seemed certain. Even now the ghost of a smile played at his lips
+as he recalled the surprise of the old _habitants_ and of Father Roche
+when he was chosen for this responsible post; for to run a great
+lumber-camp well, hundreds of miles from civilisation, where there is no
+visible law, no restraints of ordinary organized life, and where men, for
+seven months together, never saw a woman or a child, and ate pork and
+beans, and drank white whiskey, was a task of administration as difficult
+as managing a small republic new-created out of violent elements of
+society. But Michelin was right, and the old Seigneur, Sir Henri
+Robitaille, who was a judge of men, knew he was right, as did also
+Hennepin the school-master, whose despair Jacques had been, for he never
+worked at his lessons as a boy, and yet he absorbed Latin and mathematics
+by some sure but unexplainable process. "Ah, if you would but work,
+Jacques, you _vaurien_, I would make a great man of you," Hennepin had
+said to him more than once; but this had made no impression on Jacques. It
+was more to the point that the ground-hogs and black squirrels and pigeons
+were plentiful in Casanac Woods.
+
+And so he thought as he stood at the door of the Church of St. Francis on
+that day before going "out back" to the lumber-camp. He had reached the
+summit of greatness--to command men. That was more than wealth or
+learning, and as he spoke to the old Seigneur going in to Mass, he still
+thought so, for the Seigneur's big house and the servants and the great
+gardens had no charm for him. The horses--that was another thing; but
+there would be plenty of horses in the lumber-camp; and, on the whole, he
+felt himself rather superior to the old Seigneur, who now was
+Lieutenant-Governor of the province in which lay Bindon Jail.
+
+At the door of the Church of St. Francis he had stretched himself up with
+good-natured pride, for he was by nature gregarious and friendly, but with
+a temper quick and strong, and even savage when roused; though Michelin
+the lumber-king did not know that when he engaged him as boss, having seen
+him only at the one critical time when his superior brain and will saw its
+chance to command and had no personal interest in the strife. He had been
+a miracle of coolness then, and his six-foot-two of pride and muscle was
+taking natural tribute at the door of the Church of St. Francis, where he
+waited till nearly every one had entered, and Father Roche's voice could
+be heard in the Mass.
+
+[Illustration: THEN HAD HAPPENED THE REAL EVENT OF HIS LIFE]
+
+Then had happened the real event of his life: a black-eyed, rose-cheeked
+girl went by with her mother, hurrying in to Mass. As she passed him their
+eyes met, and his blood leaped in his veins. He had never seen her before,
+and, in a sense, he had never seen any woman before. He had danced with
+many a one, and kissed a few in the old days among the flax-beaters, at
+the harvesting, in the gayeties of a wedding, and also down in
+Massachusetts. That, however, was a different thing, which he forgot an
+hour after; but this was the beginning of the world for him; for he knew
+now, of a sudden, what life was, what home meant, why "old folks" slaved
+for their children, and mothers wept when girls married or sons went away
+from home to bigger things; why in there, in at Mass, so many were praying
+for all the people and thinking only of one. All in a moment it came--and
+stayed; and he spoke to her, to Marcile, that very night, and he spoke
+also to her father, Valloir the farrier, the next morning by lamplight,
+before he started for the woods. He would not be gainsaid, nor take no for
+an answer, nor accept, as a reason for refusal, that she was only sixteen,
+and that he did not know her, for she had been away with a childless aunt
+since she was three. That she had fourteen brothers and sisters who had to
+be fed and cared for did not seem to weigh with the farrier. That was an
+affair of _le bon Dieu_, and enough would be provided for them all as
+heretofore--one could make little difference; and though Jacques was a
+very good match, considering his prospects and his favor with the
+lumber-king, Valloir had a kind of fear of him, and could not easily
+promise his beloved Marcile, the flower of his flock, to a man of whom the
+priest so strongly disapproved. But it was a new sort of Jacques Grassette
+who, that morning, spoke to him with the simplicity and eagerness of a
+child; and the suddenly conceived gift of a pony stallion, which every man
+in the parish envied Jacques, won Valloir over; and Jacques went "away
+back" with the first timid kiss of Marcile Valloir burning on his cheek.
+"Well, bagosh, you are a wonder!" said Jacques' father, when he told him
+the news, and saw Jacques jump into the cariole and drive away.
+
+Here in prison, this, too, Jacques saw--this scene; and then the wedding
+in the spring, and the tour through the parishes for days together, lads
+and lasses journeying with them; and afterward the new home with a bigger
+stoop than any other in the village, with some old, gnarled
+crab-apple-trees and lilac bushes, and four years of happiness, and a
+little child that died; and all the time Jacques rising in the esteem of
+Michelin the lumber-king, and sent on inspections, and to organize camps;
+for weeks, sometimes for months, away from the house behind the lilac
+bushes--and then the end of it all, sudden and crushing and unredeemable.
+
+Jacques came back one night and found the house empty. Marcile had gone to
+try her luck with another man.
+
+That was the end of the upward career of Jacques Grassette. He went out
+upon a savage hunt which brought him no quarry, for the man and the woman
+had disappeared as completely as though they had been swallowed by the
+sea. And here, at last, he was waiting for the day when he must settle a
+bill for a human life taken in passion and rage.
+
+His big frame seemed out of place in the small cell, and the watcher
+sitting near him, to whom he had not addressed a word nor replied to a
+question since the watching began, seemed an insignificant factor in the
+scene. Never had a prisoner been more self-contained, or rejected more
+completely all those ministrations of humanity which relieve the horrible
+isolation of the condemned cell. Grassette's isolation was complete. He
+lived in a dream, did what little there was to do in a dark abstraction,
+and sat hour after hour, as he was sitting now, piercing, with a brain at
+once benumbed to all outer things and afire with inward things, those
+realms of memory which are infinite in a life of forty years.
+
+"_Sacre!_" he muttered at last, and a shiver seemed to pass through him
+from head to foot; then an ugly and evil oath fell from his lips, which
+made his watcher shrink back appalled, for he also was a Catholic, and had
+been chosen of purpose, in the hope that he might have an influence on
+this revolted soul. It had, however, been of no use, and Grassette had
+refused the advances and ministrations of the little good priest, Father
+Laflamme, who had come from the coast of purpose to give him the offices
+of the Church. Silent, obdurate, sullen, he had looked the priest straight
+in the face, and had said, in broken English, "_Non_, I pay my bill. _Nom
+de diable!_ I will say my own Mass, light my own candle, go my own way. I
+have too much."
+
+Now, as he sat glooming, after his outbreak of oaths, there came a
+rattling noise at the door, the grinding of a key in the lock, the
+shooting of bolts, and a face appeared at the little wicket in the door.
+Then the door opened, and the Sheriff stepped inside, accompanied by a
+white-haired, stately old man. At sight of this second figure--the Sheriff
+had come often before, and would come for one more doleful walk with
+him--Grassette started. His face, which had never whitened in all the
+dismal and terrorizing doings of the capture and the trial and sentence,
+though it had flushed with rage more than once, now turned a little pale,
+for it seemed as if this old man had stepped out of the visions which had
+just passed before his eyes.
+
+"His Honor, the Lieutenant-Governor, Sir Henri Robitaille, has come to
+speak with you.... Stand up!" the Sheriff added, sharply, as Grassette
+kept his seat.
+
+Grassette's face flushed with anger, for the prison had not broken his
+spirit; then he got up slowly. "I not stand up for you," he growled at the
+Sheriff; "I stand up for him." He jerked his head toward Sir Henri
+Robitaille. This grand Seigneur, with Michelin had believed in him in
+those far-off days which he had just been seeing over again, and all his
+boyhood and young manhood was rushing back on him. But now it was the
+Governor who turned pale, seeing who the criminal was.
+
+"Jacques Grassette!" he cried, in consternation and emotion, for under
+another name the murderer had been tried and sentenced, nor had his
+identity been established--the case was so clear, the defence had been
+perfunctory, and Quebec was very far away!
+
+"M'sieu'!" was the respectful response, and Grassette's fingers twitched.
+
+"It was my sister's son you killed, Grassette," said the Governor, in a
+low, strained voice.
+
+"_Nom de Dieu_!" said Grassette, hoarsely.
+
+"I did not know, Grassette," the Governor went on--"I did not know it was
+you."
+
+"Why did you come, m'sieu'?"
+
+"Call him 'your Honor,'" said the Sheriff, sharply.
+
+Grassette's face hardened, and his look, turned upon the Sheriff, was
+savage and forbidding. "I will speak as it please me. Who are you? What do
+I care? To hang me--that is your business; but, for the rest, you spik to
+me differen'! Who are you? Your father kep' a tavern for thieves, _vous
+savez bien_!" It was true that the Sheriff's father had had no savory
+reputation in the West.
+
+The Governor turned his head away in pain and trouble, for the man's rage
+was not a thing to see--and they both came from the little parish of St.
+Francis, and had passed many an hour together.
+
+"Never mind, Grassette," he said, gently. "Call me what you will. You've
+got no feeling against me; and I can say with truth that I don't want your
+life for the life you took."
+
+Grassette's breast heaved. "He put me out of my work, the man I kill. He
+pass the word against me, he hunt me out of the mountains, he call--_tete
+de diable_! he call me a name so bad. Everything swim in my head, and I
+kill him."
+
+The Governor made a protesting gesture. "I understand. I am glad his
+mother was dead. But do you not think how sudden it was? Now here, in the
+thick of life, then, out there, beyond this world in the dark--in
+purgatory."
+
+The brave old man had accomplished what every one else, priest, lawyer,
+Sheriff, and watcher, had failed to do: he had shaken Grassette out of his
+blank isolation and obdurate unrepentance, had touched some chord of
+recognizable humanity.
+
+"It is done--_bien_, I pay for it," responded Grassette, setting his jaw.
+"It is two deaths for me. Waiting and remembering, and then with the
+Sheriff there the other--so quick, and all."
+
+The Governor looked at him for some moments without speaking. The Sheriff
+intervened again officiously.
+
+"His Honor has come to say something important to you," he remarked,
+oracularly.
+
+"Hold you--does he need a Sheriff to tell him when to spik?" was
+Grassette's surly comment. Then he turned to the Governor. "Let us speak
+in French," he said, in _patois_. "This rope-twister will not understan'.
+He is no good--I spit at him!"
+
+The Governor nodded, and, despite the Sheriff's protest, they spoke in
+French, Grassette with his eyes intently fixed on the other, eagerly
+listening.
+
+"I have come," said the Governor, "to say to you, Grassette, that you
+still have a chance of life."
+
+He paused, and Grassette's face took on a look of bewilderment and vague
+anxiety. A chance of life--what did it mean?
+
+"Reprieve?" he asked, in a hoarse voice.
+
+The Governor shook his head. "Not yet; but there is a chance. Something
+has happened. A man's life is in danger, or it may be he is dead; but more
+likely he is alive. You took a life; perhaps you can save one now.
+Keeley's Gulch, the mine there!"
+
+"They have found it--gold?" asked Grassette, his eyes staring. He was
+forgetting for a moment where and what he was.
+
+"He went to find it, the man whose life is in danger. He had heard from a
+trapper who had been a miner once. While he was there a landslip came, and
+the opening to the mine was closed up."
+
+"There were two ways in. Which one did he take?" cried Grassette.
+
+"The only one he could take, the only one he or any one else knew. You
+know the other way in--you only, they say."
+
+"I found it--the easier, quick way in; a year ago I found it."
+
+"Was it near the other entrance?"
+
+Grassette shook his head. "A mile away."
+
+"If the man is alive--and we think he is--you are the only person that can
+save him. I have telegraphed the Government. They do not promise, but they
+will reprieve, and save your life if you find the man."
+
+"Alive or dead?"
+
+"Alive or dead, for the act would be the same. I have an order to take you
+to the Gulch, if you will go; and I am sure that you will have your life
+if you do it. I will promise--ah, yes, Grassette, but it shall be so!
+Public opinion will demand it. You will do it?"
+
+"To go free--_altogether_?"
+
+"Well, but if your life is saved, Grassette?"
+
+The dark face flushed, then grew almost repulsive again in its
+sullenness.
+
+"Life--and this, in prison, shut in year after year! To do always what
+some one else wills, to be a slave to a warder! To have men like that over
+me that have been a boss of men--wasn't it that drove me to kill?--to be
+treated like dirt! And to go on with this, while outside there is free
+life, and to go where you will at your own price--no! What do I care for
+life? What is it to me! To live like this--ah, I would break my head
+against these stone walls, I would choke myself with my own hands! If I
+stayed here, I would kill again--I would kill--kill!"
+
+"Then to go free altogether--that would be the wish of all the world, if
+you save this man's life, if it can be saved. Will you not take the
+chance? We all have to die some time or other, Grassette, some sooner,
+some later; and when you go, will you not want to take to God in your
+hands a life saved for a life taken? Have you forgotten God, Grassette? We
+used to remember Him in the Church of St. Francis down there at home."
+
+There was a moment's silence, in which Grassette's head was thrust
+forward, his eyes staring into space. The old Seigneur had touched a
+vulnerable corner in his nature.
+
+Presently he said in a low voice: "To be free altogether!... What is his
+name? Who is he?"
+
+"His name is Bignold," the Governor answered. He turned to the Sheriff
+inquiringly. "That is it, is it not?" he asked, in English, again.
+
+"James Tarran Bignold," answered the Sheriff.
+
+The effect of these words upon Grassette was remarkable. His body appeared
+to stiffen, his face became rigid, he stared at the Governor blankly,
+appalled; the color left his face, and his mouth opened with a curious and
+revolting grimace. The others drew back, startled, and watched him.
+
+"_Sang de Dieu_!" he murmured at last, with a sudden gesture of misery and
+rage.
+
+Then the Governor understood: he remembered that the name just given by
+the Sheriff and himself was the name of the Englishman who had carried off
+Grassette's wife years ago. He stepped forward and was about to speak, but
+changed his mind. He would leave it all to Grassette; he would not let the
+Sheriff know the truth, unless Grassette himself disclosed the situation.
+He looked at Grassette with a look of poignant pity and interest combined.
+In his own placid life he had never had any tragic happening, his blood
+had run coolly, his days had been blessed by an urbane fate; such scenes
+as this were but a spectacle to him; there was no answering chord of human
+suffering in his own breast to make him realize what Grassette was
+undergoing now; but he had read widely, he had been an acute observer of
+the world and its happenings, and he had a natural human sympathy which
+had made many a man and woman eternally grateful to him.
+
+What would Grassette do? It was a problem which had no precedent, and the
+solution would be a revelation of the human mind and heart. What would the
+man do?
+
+"Well, what is all this, Grassette?" asked the Sheriff, brusquely. His
+official and officious intervention, behind which was the tyranny of the
+little man, given a power which he was incapable of wielding wisely, would
+have roused Grassette to a savage reply a half-hour before, but now it was
+met by a contemptuous wave of the hand, and Grassette kept his eyes fixed
+on the Governor.
+
+"James Tarran Bignold!" Grassette said, harshly, with eyes that searched
+the Governor's face; but they found no answering look there. The Governor,
+then, did not remember that tragedy of his home and hearth, and the man
+who had made of him an Ishmael. Still, Bignold had been almost a stranger
+in the parish, and it was not curious if the Governor had forgotten.
+
+"Bignold!" he repeated, but the Governor gave no response.
+
+"Yes, Bignold is his name, Grassette," said the Sheriff. "You took a life,
+and now, if you save one, that'll balance things. As the Governor says,
+there'll be a reprieve anyhow. It's pretty near _the day_, and this isn't
+a bad world to kick in, so long as you kick with one leg on the ground,
+and--"
+
+The Governor hastily intervened upon the Sheriff's brutal remarks. "There
+is no time to be lost, Grassette. He has been ten days in the mine."
+
+Grassette's was not a slow brain. For a man of such physical and bodily
+bulk, he had more talents than are generally given. If his brain had been
+slower, his hand also would have been slower to strike. But his
+intelligence had been surcharged with hate these many years, and since the
+day he had been deserted it had ceased to control his actions--a
+passionate and reckless wilfulness had governed it. But now, after the
+first shock and stupefaction, it seemed to go back to where it was before
+Marcile went from him, gather up the force and intelligence it had then,
+and come forward again to this supreme moment, with all that life's harsh
+experiences had done for it, with the education that misery and misdoing
+give. Revolutions are often the work of instants, not years, and the
+crucial test and problem by which Grassette was now faced had lifted him
+into a new atmosphere, with a new capacity alive in him. A moment ago his
+eyes had been bloodshot and swimming with hatred and passion; now they
+grew, almost suddenly, hard and lurking and quiet, with a strange,
+penetrating force and inquiry in them.
+
+"Bignold--where does he come from?--What is he?" he asked the Sheriff.
+
+"He is an Englishman; he's only been out here a few months. He's been
+shooting and prospecting; but he's a better shooter than a prospector.
+He's a stranger; that's why all the folks out here want to save him if
+it's possible. It's pretty hard dying in a strange land far away from all
+that's yours. Maybe he's got a wife waiting for him over there."
+
+"_Nom de Dieu_!" said Grassette, with suppressed malice, under his
+breath.
+
+"Maybe there's a wife waiting for him, and there's her to think of. The
+West's hospitable, and this thing has taken hold of it; the West wants to
+save this stranger, and it's waiting for you, Grassette, to do its work
+for it, you being the only man that can do it, the only one that knows the
+other secret way into Keeley's Gulch. Speak right out, Grassette. It's
+your chance for life. Speak out quick."
+
+The last three words were uttered in the old slave-driving tone, though
+the earlier part of the speech had been delivered oracularly, and had
+brought again to Grassette's eyes the reddish, sullen look which had made
+them, a little while before, like those of some wounded, angered animal at
+bay; but it vanished slowly, and there was silence for a moment. The
+Sheriff's words had left no vestige of doubt in Grassette's mind. This
+Bignold was the man who had taken Marcile away, first to the English
+province, then into the States, where he had lost track of them, then over
+to England. Marcile--where was Marcile now?
+
+In Keeley's Gulch was the man who could tell him, the man who had ruined
+his home and his life. Dead or alive, he was in Keeley's Gulch, the man
+who knew where Marcile was; and if he knew where Marcile was, and if she
+was alive, and he was outside these prison walls, what would he do to her?
+And if he was outside these prison walls, and in the Gulch, and the man
+was there alive before him, what would he do?
+
+Outside these prison walls--to be out there in the sun, where life would
+be easier to give up, if it had to be given up! An hour ago he had been
+drifting on a sea of apathy, and had had his fill of life. An hour ago he
+had had but one desire, and that was to die fighting, and he had even
+pictured to himself a struggle in this narrow cell where he would compel
+them to kill him, and so in any case let him escape the rope. Now he was
+suddenly brought face to face with the great central issue of his life,
+and the end, whatever that end might be, could not be the same in meaning,
+though it might be the same concretely. If he elected to let things be,
+then Bignold would die out there in the Gulch, starved, anguished, and
+alone. If he went, he could save his own life by saving Bignold, if
+Bignold was alive; or he could go--and not save Bignold's life or his own!
+What would he do?
+
+The Governor watched him with a face controlled to quietness, but with an
+anxiety which made him pale in spite of himself.
+
+"What will you do, Grassette?" he said, at last, in a low voice and with a
+step forward to him. "Will you not help to clear your conscience by doing
+this thing? You don't want to try and spite the world by not doing it. You
+can make a lot of your life yet, if you are set free. Give yourself and
+give the world a chance. You haven't used it right. Try again."
+
+Grassette imagined that the Governor did not remember who Bignold was, and
+that this was an appeal against his despair, and against revenging himself
+on the community which had applauded his sentence. If he went to the
+Gulch, no one would know or could suspect the true situation, every one
+would be unprepared for that moment when Bignold and he would face each
+other--and all that would happen then.
+
+Where was Marcile? Only Bignold knew. Alive or dead? Only Bignold knew.
+
+"_Bien_, I will do it, m'sieu'," he said to the Governor. "I am to go
+alone--eh?"
+
+The Sheriff shook his head. "No; two warders will go with you--and
+myself."
+
+A strange look passed over Grassette's face. He seemed to hesitate for a
+moment, then he said again: "_Bon_, I will go."
+
+"Then there is, of course, the doctor," said the Sheriff.
+
+"_Bon_!" said Grassette. "What time is it?"
+
+"Twelve o'clock," answered the Sheriff, and made a motion to the warder to
+open the door of the cell.
+
+"By sundown!" Grassette said, and he turned with a determined gesture to
+leave the cell.
+
+At the gate of the prison a fresh, sweet air caught his face.
+Involuntarily he drew in a great draught of it, and his eyes seemed to
+gaze out, almost wonderingly, over the grass and the trees to the
+boundless horizon. Then he became aware of the shouts of the crowd--shouts
+of welcome. This same crowd had greeted him with shouts of execration when
+he had left the court-house after his sentence. He stood still for a
+moment and looked at them, as it were only half comprehending that they
+were cheering him now, and that voices were saying, "Bravo, Grassette!
+Save him, and we'll save you."
+
+Cheer upon cheer, but he took no notice. He walked like one in a dream--a
+long, strong step. He turned neither to left nor right, not even when the
+friendly voice of one who had worked with him bade him "Cheer up and do
+the trick." He was busy working out a problem which no one but himself
+could solve. He was only half conscious of his surroundings; he was moving
+in a kind of detached world of his own, where the warders and the Sheriff
+and those who followed were almost abstract and unreal figures. He was
+living with a past which had been everlastingly distant, and had now
+become a vivid and buffeting present. He returned no answers to the
+questions addressed to him, and would not talk, save when for a little
+while they dismounted from their horses and sat under the shade of a great
+ash-tree for a few moments and snatched a mouthful of luncheon. Then he
+spoke a little and asked some questions, but lapsed into a moody silence
+afterward. His life and nature were being passed through a fiery crucible.
+In all the years that had gone he had had an ungovernable desire to kill
+both Bignold and Marcile if he ever met them--a primitive, savage desire
+to blot them out of life and being. His fingers had ached for Marcile's
+neck, that neck in which he had lain his face so often in the transient,
+unforgettable days of their happiness. If she was alive now!--if she was
+still alive!
+
+Her story was hidden there in Keeley's Gulch with Bignold, and he was
+galloping hard to reach his foe. As he went, by some strange alchemy of
+human experience, by that new birth of his brain, the world seemed
+different from what it had ever been before, at least since the day when
+he had found an empty home and a shamed hearthstone. He got a new feeling
+toward it, and life appealed to him as a thing that might have been so
+well worth living! But since that was not to be, then he would see what he
+could do to get compensation for all that he had lost, to take toll for
+the thing that had spoiled him, and given him a savage nature and a raging
+temper, which had driven him at last to kill a man who, in no real sense,
+had injured him.
+
+Mile after mile they journeyed, a troop of interested people coming after;
+the sun and the clear, sweet air, the waving grass, the occasional
+clearings where settlers had driven in the tent-pegs of home; the forest
+now and then swallowing them, the mountains rising above them like a blank
+wall, and then suddenly opening out before them; and the rustle and
+scamper of squirrels and coyotes; and over their heads the whistle of
+birds, the slow beat of wings of great wild-fowl. The tender sap of youth
+was in this glowing and alert new world, and, by sudden contrast with the
+prison walls which he had just left behind, the earth seemed recreated,
+unfamiliar, compelling, and companionable. Strange that in all the years
+that had been since he had gone back to his abandoned home to find Marcile
+gone, the world had had no beauty, no lure for him. In the splendor of it
+all he had only raged and stormed, hating his fellow-man, waiting, however
+hopelessly, for the day when he should see Marcile and the man who had
+taken her from him. And yet now, under the degradation of his crime and
+its penalty, and the unmanning influence of being the helpless victim of
+the iron power of the law, rigid, ugly, and demoralizing--now with the
+solution of his life's great problem here before him in the hills, with
+the man for whom he had waited so long caverned in the earth but a
+hand-reach away, as it were, his wrongs had taken a new manifestation in
+him, and the thing that kept crying out in him every moment was, Where is
+Marcile?
+
+It was four o'clock when they reached the pass which only Grassette knew,
+the secret way into the Gulch. There was two hours' walking through the
+thick, primeval woods, where few had ever been, except the ancient tribes
+which had once lorded it here; then came a sudden drop into the earth, a
+short travel through a dim cave, and afterward a sheer wall of stone
+enclosing a ravine where the rocks on either side nearly met overhead.
+
+Here Grassette gave the signal to shout aloud, and the voice of the
+Sheriff called out: "Hello, Bignold! Hello! Hello, Bignold! Are you
+there?--Hello!" His voice rang out clear and piercing, and then came a
+silence--a long, anxious silence. Again the voice rang out: "Hello!
+Hello-o-o! Bignold! Bigno-o-ld!"
+
+They strained their ears. Grassette was flat on the ground, his ear to the
+earth. Suddenly he got to his feet, his face set, his eyes glittering.
+
+"He is there beyon'--I hear him," he said, pointing farther down the
+Gulch. "Water--he is near it."
+
+"We heard nothing," said the Sheriff--"not a sound."
+
+"I hear ver' good. He is alive. I hear him--so," responded Grassette; and
+his face had a strange, fixed look which the others interpreted to be
+agitation at the thought that he had saved his own life by finding
+Bignold--and alive; which would put his own salvation beyond doubt.
+
+He broke away from them and hurried down the Gulch. The others followed
+hard after, the Sheriff and the warders close behind; but he outstripped
+them.
+
+Suddenly he stopped and stood still, looking at something on the ground.
+They saw him lean forward and his hands stretched out with a fierce
+gesture. It was the attitude of a wild animal ready to spring.
+
+They were beside him in an instant, and saw at his feet Bignold worn to a
+skeleton, with eyes starting from his head and fixed on Grassette in agony
+and stark fear.
+
+The Sheriff stooped to lift Bignold up, but Grassette waved them back with
+a fierce gesture, standing over the dying man.
+
+"He spoil my home. He break me--I have my bill to settle here," he said,
+in a voice hoarse and harsh. "It is so? It is so--eh? Spik!" he said to
+Bignold.
+
+"Yes," came feebly from the shrivelled lips. "Water! Water!" the wretched
+man gasped. "I'm dying!"
+
+A sudden change came over Grassette. "Water--queeck!" he said.
+
+The Sheriff stooped and held a hatful of water to Bignold's lips, while
+another poured brandy from a flask into the water.
+
+Grassette watched them eagerly. When the dying man had swallowed a little
+of the spirit and water, Grassette leaned over him again, and the others
+drew away. They realized that these two men had an account to settle, and
+there was no need for Grassette to take revenge, for Bignold was going
+fast.
+
+"You stan' far back," said Grassette, and they fell away.
+
+Then he stooped down to the sunken, ashen face, over which death was fast
+drawing its veil.
+
+"Marcile--where is Marcile?" he asked.
+
+The dying man's lips opened. "God forgive me--God save my soul!" he
+whispered. He was not concerned for Grassette now.
+
+"Queeck--queeck, where is Marcile?" Grassette said, sharply. "Come back,
+Bignold. Listen--where is Marcile?"
+
+He strained to hear the answer. Bignold was going, but his eyes opened
+again, however, for this call seemed to pierce to his soul as it struggled
+to be free.
+
+"Ten years--since--I saw her," he whispered. "Good girl--Marcile. She
+loves you, but she--is afraid." He tried to say something more, but his
+tongue refused its office.
+
+"Where is she?--spik!" commanded Grassette, in a tone of pleading and
+agony now.
+
+Once more the flying spirit came back. A hand made a motion toward his
+pocket, then lay still.
+
+Grassette felt hastily in the dead man's pocket, drew forth a letter, and
+with half-blinded eyes read the few lines it contained. It was dated from
+a hospital in New York, and was signed, "Nurse Marcile."
+
+With a groan of relief Grassette stood staring at the dead man. When the
+others came to him again, his lips were moving, but they did not hear what
+he was saying. They took up the body and moved away with it up the
+ravine.
+
+"It's all right, Grassette. You'll be a free man," said the Sheriff.
+
+Grassette did not answer. He was thinking how long it would take him to
+get to Marcile, when he was free.
+
+He had a true vision of beginning life again with Marcile.
+
+
+
+
+A MAN, A FAMINE, AND A HEATHEN BOY
+
+
+I
+
+Athabasca in the Far North is the scene of this story--Athabasca, one of
+the most beautiful countries in the world in summer, but a cold, bare land
+in winter. Yet even in winter it is not so bleak and bitter as the
+districts southwest of it, for the Chinook winds steal through from the
+Pacific and temper the fierceness of the frozen Rockies. Yet forty and
+fifty degrees below zero is cold, after all, and July strawberries in this
+wild Northland are hardly compensation for seven months of ice and snow,
+no matter how clear and blue the sky, how sweet the sun during its short
+journey in the day. Some days, too, the sun may not be seen even when
+there is no storm, because of the fine, white, powdered frost in the air.
+
+A day like this is called a _poudre_ day; and woe to the man who tempts it
+unthinkingly, because the light makes the delicate mist of frost shine
+like silver. For that powder bites the skin white in short order, and
+sometimes reckless men lose ears or noses or hands under its sharp caress.
+But when it really storms in that Far North, then neither man nor beast
+should be abroad--not even the Eskimo dogs; though times and seasons can
+scarcely be chosen when travelling in Athabasca, for a storm comes
+unawares. Upon the plains you will see a cloud arising, not in the sky,
+but from the ground--a billowy surf of drifting snow; then another white
+billow from the sky will sweep down and meet it, and you are caught
+between.
+
+He who went to Athabasca to live a generation ago had to ask himself if
+the long winter, spent chiefly indoors, with, maybe, a little trading with
+the Indians, meagre sport, and scant sun, savages and half-breeds the only
+companions, and out of all touch with the outside world, letters coming
+but once a year; with frozen fish and meat, always the same, as the staple
+items in a primitive fare; with danger from starvation and marauding
+tribes; with endless monotony, in which men sometimes go mad--he had to
+ask himself if these were to be cheerfully endured because, in the short
+summer, the air is heavenly, the rivers and lakes are full of fish, the
+flotilla of canoes of the fur-hunters is pouring down, and all is gayety
+and pleasant turmoil; because there is good shooting in the autumn, and
+the smell of the land is like a garden, and hardy fruits and flowers are
+at hand.
+
+That is a question which was asked William Rufus Holly once upon a time.
+
+William Rufus Holly, often called "Averdoopoy," sometimes "Sleeping
+Beauty," always Billy Rufus, had had a good education. He had been to
+high-school and to college, and he had taken one or two prizes _en route_
+to graduation; but no fame travelled with him, save that he was the
+laziest man of any college year for a decade. He loved his little
+porringer, which is to say that he ate a good deal; and he loved to read
+books, which is not to say that he loved study; he hated getting out of
+bed, and he was constantly gated for morning chapel. More than once he had
+sweetly gone to sleep over his examination papers. This is not to say that
+he failed at his examinations--on the contrary, he always succeeded; but
+he only did enough to pass and no more; and he did not wish to do more
+than pass. His going to sleep at examinations was evidence that he was
+either indifferent or self-indulgent, and it certainly showed that he was
+without nervousness. He invariably roused himself, or his professor roused
+him, a half-hour before the papers should be handed in, and, as it were,
+by a mathematical calculation he had always done just enough to prevent
+him being plucked.
+
+He slept at lectures, he slept in hall, he slept as he waited his turn to
+go to the wicket in a cricket match, and he invariably went to sleep
+afterward. He even did so on the day he had made the biggest score in the
+biggest game ever played between his college and the pick of the country;
+but he first gorged himself with cake and tea. The day he took his degree
+he had to be dragged from a huge grandfather's chair and forced along in
+his ragged gown--"ten holes and twelve tatters"--to the function in the
+convocation-hall. He looked so fat and shiny, so balmy and sleepy, when he
+took his degree and was handed his prize for a poem on Sir John Franklin,
+that the public laughed, and the college men in the gallery began
+singing--
+
+                   "Bye O, my baby,
+                   Father will come to you soo-oon!"
+
+He seemed not to care, but yawned in his hand as he put his prize book
+under his arm through one of the holes in his gown, and in two minutes was
+back in his room, and in another five was fast asleep.
+
+It was the general opinion that William Rufus Holly, fat, yellow-haired,
+and twenty-four years old, was doomed to failure in life, in spite of the
+fact that he had a little income of a thousand dollars a year and had made
+a century in an important game of cricket. Great, therefore, was the
+surprise of the college, and afterward of the Province, when, at the
+farewell dinner of the graduates, Sleeping Beauty announced, between his
+little open-eyed naps, that he was going Far North as a missionary.
+
+At first it was thought he was joking, but when at last, in his calm and
+dreamy look, they saw he meant what he said, they arose and carried him
+round the room on a chair, making impromptu songs as they travelled. They
+toasted Billy Rufus again and again, some of them laughing till they cried
+at the thought of Averdoopoy going to the Arctic regions. But an uneasy
+seriousness fell upon these "beautiful, bountiful, brilliant boys," as
+Holly called them later, when in a simple, honest, but indolent speech he
+said he had applied for ordination.
+
+Six months later William Rufus Holly, a deacon in holy orders, journeyed
+to Athabasca in the Far North.
+
+On his long journey there was plenty of time to think. He was embarked on
+a career which must forever keep him in the wilds; for very seldom indeed
+does a missionary of the North ever return to the crowded cities or take a
+permanent part in civilized life.
+
+What the loneliness of it would be he began to feel, as for hours and
+hours he saw no human being on the plains; in the thrilling stillness of
+the night; in fierce storms in the woods, when his half-breed guides bent
+their heads to meet the wind and rain, and did not speak for hours; in the
+long, adventurous journey on the river by the day, in the cry of the
+plaintive loon at night; in the scant food for every meal. Yet what the
+pleasure would be he felt in the joyous air, the exquisite sunshine, the
+flocks of wild-fowl flying north, _honking_ on their course; in the song
+of the half-breeds as they ran the rapids. Of course, he did not think
+these things quite as they are written here--all at once and all together;
+but in little pieces from time to time, feeling them rather than saying
+them to himself.
+
+At least he did understand how serious a thing it was, his going as a
+missionary into the Far North. Why did he do it? Was it a whim, or the
+excited imagination of youth, or that prompting which the young often have
+to make the world better? Or was it a fine spirit of adventure with a good
+heart behind it? Perhaps it was a little of all these; but there was also
+something more, and it was to his credit.
+
+Lazy as William Rufus Holly had been at school and college, he had still
+thought a good deal, even when he seemed only sleeping; perhaps he thought
+more because he slept so much, because he studied little and read a great
+deal. He always knew what everybody thought--that he would never do
+anything but play cricket till he got too heavy to run, and then would
+sink into a slothful, fat, and useless middle and old age; that his life
+would be a failure. And he knew that they were right; that if he stayed
+where he could live an easy life, a fat and easy life he would lead; that
+in a few years he would be good for nothing except to eat and sleep--no
+more. One day, waking suddenly from a bad dream of himself so fat as to be
+drawn about on a dray by monstrous fat oxen with rings through their
+noses, led by monkeys, he began to wonder what he should do--the hardest
+thing to do; for only the hardest life could possibly save him from
+failure, and, in spite of all, he really did want to make something of his
+life. He had been reading the story of Sir John Franklin's Arctic
+expedition, and all at once it came home to him that the only thing for
+him to do was to go to the Far North and stay there, coming back about
+once every ten years to tell the people in the cities what was being done
+in the wilds. Then there came the inspiration to write his poem on Sir
+John Franklin, and he had done so, winning the college prize for poetry.
+But no one had seen any change in him in those months; and, indeed, there
+had been little or no change, for he had an equable and practical, though
+imaginative, disposition, despite his avoirdupois, and his new purpose did
+not stir him yet from his comfortable sloth.
+
+And in all the journey west and north he had not been stirred greatly from
+his ease of body, for the journey was not much harder than playing cricket
+every day, and there were only the thrill of the beautiful air, the new
+people, and the new scenes to rouse him. As yet there was no great
+responsibility. He scarcely realized what his life must be until one
+particular day.
+
+Then Sleeping Beauty waked wide up, and from that day lost the name. Till
+then he had looked and borne himself like any other traveller,
+unrecognized as a parson or "mikonaree." He had not had prayers in camp
+_en route_, he had not preached, he had held no meetings. He was as yet
+William Rufus Holly, the cricketer, the laziest dreamer of a college
+decade. His religion was simple and practical; he had never had any morbid
+ideas; he had lived a healthy, natural, and honorable life, until he went
+for a mikonaree, and, if he had no cant, he had not a clear idea of how
+many-sided, how responsible, his life must be--until that one particular
+day.
+
+This is what happened then.
+
+From Fort O'Call, an abandoned post of the Hudson's Bay Company on the
+Peace River, nearly the whole tribe of the Athabasca Indians in
+possession of the post now had come up the river, with their chief,
+Knife-in-the-Wind, to meet the mikonaree. Factors of the Hudson's Bay
+Company, _coureurs de bois_, and _voyageurs_ had come among them at
+times, and once the renowned Father Lacombe, the Jesuit priest, had
+stayed with them three months; but never to this day had they seen a
+Protestant mikonaree, though once a factor, noted for his furious temper,
+his powers of running, and his generosity, had preached to them. These
+men, however, were both over fifty years old. The Athabascas did not
+hunger for the Christian religion, but a courier from Edmonton had
+brought them word that a mikonaree was coming to their country to stay,
+and they put off their stoical manner and allowed themselves the luxury of
+curiosity. That was why even the squaws and papooses came up the river
+with the braves, all wondering if the stranger had brought gifts with
+him, all eager for their shares; for it had been said by the courier of
+the tribe that "Oshondonto," their name for the newcomer, was bringing
+mysterious loads of well-wrapped bales and skins. Upon a point below the
+first rapids of the Little Manitou they waited with their camp-fires
+burning and their pipe of peace.
+
+When the canoes bearing Oshondonto and his _voyageurs_ shot the rapids to
+the song of the river,
+
+              "En roulant, ma boule roulant,[[y:italic]]
+              En roulant, ma boule!"[[y:italic]]
+
+with the shrill voices of the boatmen rising to meet the cry of the
+startled water-fowl, the Athabascas crowded to the high banks. They
+grunted "How!" in greeting, as the foremost canoe made for the shore.
+
+But if surprise could have changed the countenances of Indians, these
+Athabascas would not have known one another when the missionary stepped
+out upon the shore. They had looked to see a gray-bearded man like the
+chief factor who quarrelled and prayed; but they found instead a
+round-faced, clean-shaven youth, with big, good-natured eyes, yellow hair,
+and a roundness of body like that of a month-old bear's cub. They expected
+to find a man who, like the factor, could speak their language, and they
+found a cherub sort of youth who talked only English, French, and
+Chinook--that common language of the North--and a few words of their own
+language which he had learned on the way.
+
+Besides, Oshondonto was so absent-minded at the moment, so absorbed in
+admiration of the garish scene before him, that he addressed the chief in
+French, of which Knife-in-the-Wind knew but one word, _cache_, which all
+the North knows.
+
+But presently William Rufus Holly recovered himself, and in stumbling
+Chinook made himself understood. Opening a bale, he brought out beads and
+tobacco and some bright red flannel, and two hundred Indians sat round him
+and grunted "How!" and received his gifts with little comment. Then the
+pipe of peace went round, and Oshondonto smoked it becomingly.
+
+But he saw that the Indians despised him for his youth, his fatness, his
+yellow hair as soft as a girl's, his cherub face, browned though it was by
+the sun and weather.
+
+As he handed the pipe to Knife-in-the-Wind, an Indian called Silver
+Tassel, with a cruel face, said, grimly:
+
+"Why does Oshondonto travel to us?"
+
+William Rufus Holly's eyes steadied on those of the Indian as he replied
+in Chinook: "To teach the way to Manitou the Mighty, to tell the
+Athabascas of the Great Chief who died to save the world."
+
+"The story is told in many ways; which is right? There was the factor,
+Word of Thunder. There is the song they sing at Edmonton--I have heard."
+
+"The Great Chief is the same Chief," answered the missionary. "If you tell
+of Fort O'Call, and Knife-in-the-Wind tells of Fort O'Call, he and you
+will speak different words, and one will put in one thing and one will
+leave out another; men's tongues are different. But Fort O'Call is the
+same, and the Great Chief is the same."
+
+"It was a long time ago," said Knife-in-the-Wind, sourly, "many thousand
+moon, as the pebbles in the river, the years."
+
+"It is the same world, and it is the same Chief, and it was to save us,"
+answered William Rufus Holly, smiling, yet with a fluttering heart, for
+the first test of his life had come.
+
+In anger Knife-in-the-Wind thrust an arrow into the ground and said:
+
+"How can the white man who died thousands of moons ago in a far country
+save the red man of to-day?"
+
+"A strong man should bear so weak a tale," broke in Silver Tassel,
+ruthlessly. "Are we children, that the Great Chief sends a child as
+messenger?"
+
+For a moment Billy Rufus did not know how to reply, and in the pause
+Knife-in-the-Wind broke in two pieces the arrow he had thrust in the
+ground in token of displeasure.
+
+Suddenly, as Oshondonto was about to speak, Silver Tassel sprang to his
+feet, seized in his arms a lad of twelve who was standing near, and,
+running to the bank, dropped him into the swift current.
+
+"If Oshondonto be not a child, let him save the lad," said Silver Tassel,
+standing on the brink.
+
+Instantly William Rufus Holly was on his feet. His coat was off before
+Silver Tassel's words were out of his mouth, and, crying, "In the name of
+the Great White Chief!" he jumped into the rushing current. "In the name
+of your Manitou, come on, Silver Tassel!" he called up from the water, and
+struck out for the lad.
+
+Not pausing an instant, Silver Tassel sprang into the flood, into the
+whirling eddies and dangerous current below the first rapids and above the
+second.
+
+II
+
+Then came the struggle for Wingo of the Cree tribe, a waif among the
+Athabascas, whose father had been slain as they travelled, by a wandering
+tribe of Blackfeet. Never was there a braver rivalry, although the odds
+were with the Indian--in lightness, in brutal strength. With the
+mikonaree, however, were skill, and that sort of strength which the world
+calls "moral," the strength of a good and desperate purpose. Oshondonto
+knew that on the issue of this shameless business--this cruel sport of
+Silver Tassel--would depend his future on the Peace River. As he shot
+forward with strong strokes in the whirling torrent after the helpless
+lad, who, only able to keep himself afloat, was being swept down toward
+the rapids below, he glanced up to the bank along which the Athabascas
+were running. He saw the garish colors of their dresses; he saw the
+ignorant medicine-man, with his mysterious bag, making incantations, he
+saw the _tepee_ of the chief, with its barbarous pennant above; he saw the
+idle, naked children tearing at the entrails of a calf; and he realized
+that this was a deadly tournament between civilization and barbarism.
+
+Silver Tassel was gaining on him; they were both overhauling the boy; it
+was now to see which should reach Wingo first, which should take him to
+shore. That is, if both were not carried under before they reached him;
+that is, if, having reached him, they and he would ever get to shore; for,
+lower down, before it reached the rapids, the current ran horribly smooth
+and strong, and here and there were jagged rocks just beneath the
+surface.
+
+Still Silver Tassel gained on him, as they both gained on the boy.
+Oshondonto swam strong and hard, but he swam with his eyes on the struggle
+for the shore also; he was not putting forth his utmost strength, for he
+knew it would be bitterly needed, perhaps to save his own life by a last
+effort.
+
+Silver Tassel passed him when they were about fifty feet from the boy.
+Shooting by on his side, with a long stroke and a plunge of his body like
+a projectile, the dark face with the long, black hair plastering it turned
+toward his own, in fierce triumph Silver Tassel cried "How!" in derision.
+
+Billy Rufus set his teeth and lay down to his work like a sportsman. His
+face had lost its roses, and it was set and determined, but there was no
+look of fear upon it, nor did his heart sink when a cry of triumph went up
+from the crowd on the banks. The white man knew by old experience in the
+cricket-field and in many a boat-race that it is well not to halloo till
+you are out of the woods. His mettle was up, he was not the Reverend
+William Rufus Holly, missionary, but Billy Rufus, the champion cricketer,
+the sportsman playing a long game.
+
+Silver Tassel reached the boy, who was bruised and bleeding and at his
+last gasp, and, throwing an arm round him, struck out for the shore. The
+current was very strong, and he battled fiercely as Billy Rufus, not far
+above, moved down toward them at an angle. For a few yards Silver Tassel
+was going strong, then his pace slackened, he seemed to sink lower in the
+water, and his stroke became splashing and irregular. Suddenly he struck a
+rock, which bruised him badly, and, swerving from his course, he lost his
+stroke and let go the boy.
+
+By this time the mikonaree had swept beyond them, and he caught the boy by
+his long hair as he was being swept below. Striking out for the shore, he
+swam with bold, strong strokes, his judgment guiding him well past rocks
+beneath the surface. Ten feet from shore he heard a cry of alarm from
+above. It concerned Silver Tassel, he knew, but he could not look round
+yet.
+
+In another moment the boy was dragged up the bank by strong hands, and
+Billy Rufus swung round in the water toward Silver Tassel, who, in his
+confused energy, had struck another rock, and, exhausted now, was being
+swept toward the rapids. Silver Tassel's shoulder scarcely showed--his
+strength was gone. In a flash Billy Rufus saw there was but one thing to
+do. He must run the rapids with Silver Tassel--there was no other way. It
+would be a fight through the jaws of death; but no Indian's eyes had a
+better sense for river-life than William Rufus Holly's.
+
+How he reached Silver Tassel, and drew the Indian's arm over his own
+shoulder; how they drove down into the boiling flood; how Billy Rufus' fat
+body was battered and torn and ran red with blood from twenty flesh
+wounds; but how by luck beyond the telling he brought Silver Tassel
+through safely into the quiet water a quarter of a mile below the rapids,
+and was hauled out, both more dead than alive, is a tale still told by the
+Athabascas around their camp-fire. The rapids are known to-day as the
+Mikonaree Rapids.
+
+The end of this beginning of the young man's career was that Silver Tassel
+gave him the word of eternal friendship, Knife-in-the-Wind took him into
+the tribe, and the boy Wingo became his very own, to share his home and
+his travels, no longer a waif among the Athabascas.
+
+After three days' feasting, at the end of which the missionary held his
+first service and preached his first sermon, to the accompaniment of
+grunts of satisfaction from the whole tribe of Athabascas, William Rufus
+Holly began his work in the Far North.
+
+The journey to Fort O'Call was a procession of triumph, for, as it was
+summer, there was plenty of food, the missionary had been a success, and
+he had distributed many gifts of beads and flannel.
+
+All went well for many moons, although converts were uncertain and
+baptisms few, and the work was hard and the loneliness at times terrible.
+But at last came dark days.
+
+One summer and autumn there had been poor fishing and shooting, the
+_caches_ of meat were fewer on the plains, and almost nothing had come up
+to Fort O'Call from Edmonton, far below. The yearly supplies for the
+missionary, paid for out of his private income--the bacon, beans, tea,
+coffee, and flour--had been raided by a band of hostile Indians, and he
+viewed with deep concern the progress of the severe winter. Although three
+years of hard, frugal life had made his muscles like iron, they had only
+mellowed his temper, increased his flesh, and rounded his face; nor did he
+look an hour older than on the day when he had won Wingo for his willing
+slave and devoted friend.
+
+He never resented the frequent ingratitude of the Indians; he said little
+when they quarrelled over the small comforts his little income brought
+them yearly from the South. He had been doctor, lawyer, judge among them,
+although he interfered little in the larger disputes, and was forced to
+shut his eyes to intertribal enmities. He had no deep faith that he could
+quite civilize them; he knew that their conversion was only on the
+surface, and he fell back on his personal influence with them. By this he
+could check even the excesses of the worst man in the tribe, his old
+enemy, Silver Tassel of the bad heart, who yet was ready always to give a
+tooth for a tooth, and accepted the fact that he owed Oshondonto his
+life.
+
+When famine crawled across the plains to the doors of the settlement and
+housed itself at Fort O'Call, Silver Tassel acted badly, however, and
+sowed fault-finding among the thoughtless of the tribe.
+
+"What manner of Great Spirit is it who lets the food of his chief
+Oshondonto fall into the hands of the Blackfeet?" he said. "Oshondonto
+says the Great Spirit hears. What has the Great Spirit to say? Let
+Oshondonto ask."
+
+Again, when they were all hungrier, he went among them with complaining
+words. "If the white man's Great Spirit can do all things, let him give
+Oshondonto and the Athabascas food."
+
+The missionary did not know of Silver Tassel's foolish words, but he saw
+the downcast face of Knife-in-the-Wind, the sullen looks of the people;
+and he unpacked the box he had reserved jealously for the darkest days
+that might come. For meal after meal he divided these delicacies among
+them--morsels of biscuit, and tinned meats, and dried fruits. But his eyes
+meanwhile were turned again and again to the storm raging without, as it
+had raged for this the longest week he had ever spent. If it would but
+slacken, a boat could go out to the nets set in the lake near by some days
+before, when the sun of spring had melted the ice. From the hour the nets
+had been set the storm had raged. On the day when the last morsel of meat
+and biscuit had been given away the storm had not abated, and he saw with
+misgiving the gloomy, stolid faces of the Indians round him. One man, two
+children, and three women had died in a fortnight. He dreaded to think
+what might happen, his heart ached at the looks of gaunt suffering in the
+faces of all; he saw, for the first time, how black and bitter
+Knife-in-the-Wind looked as Silver Tassel whispered to him.
+
+With the color all gone from his cheeks, he left the post and made his way
+to the edge of the lake where his canoe was kept. Making it ready for the
+launch, he came back to the fort. Assembling the Indians, who had watched
+his movements closely, he told them that he was going through the storm to
+the nets on the lake, and asked for a volunteer to go with him.
+
+No one replied. He pleaded--for the sake of the women and children.
+
+Then Knife-in-the-Wind spoke. "Oshondonto will die if he goes. It is a
+fool's journey--does the wolverine walk into an empty trap?"
+
+Billy Rufus spoke passionately now. His genial spirit fled; he reproached
+them.
+
+Silver Tassel spoke up loudly: "Let Oshondonto's Great Spirit carry him to
+the nets alone, and back again with fish for the heathen the Great Chief
+died to save."
+
+"You have a wicked heart, Silver Tassel. You know well that one man can't
+handle the boat and the nets also. Is there no one of you--?"
+
+A figure shot forward from a corner. "I will go with Oshondonto," came the
+voice of Wingo, the waif of the Crees.
+
+The eye of the mikonaree flashed round in contempt on the tribe. Then
+suddenly it softened, and he said to the lad, "We will go together,
+Wingo."
+
+Taking the boy by the hand, he ran with him through the rough wind to the
+shore, launched the canoe on the tossing lake, and paddled away through
+the tempest.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+The bitter winds of an angry spring, the sleet and wet snow of a belated
+winter, the floating blocks of ice crushing against the side of the boat,
+the black water swishing over man and boy, the harsh, inclement world near
+and far.... The passage made at last to the nets; the brave Wingo
+steadying the canoe--a skilful hand sufficing where the strength of a
+Samson would not have availed; the nets half full, and the breaking cry of
+joy from the lips of the waif--a cry that pierced the storm and brought
+back an answering cry from the crowd of Indians on the far shore.... The
+quarter-hour of danger in the tossing canoe; the nets too heavy to be
+dragged, and fastened to the thwarts instead; the canoe going shoreward
+jerkily, a cork on the waves with an anchor behind; heavier seas and winds
+roaring down on them as they slowly near the shore; and at last, in one
+awful moment, the canoe upset, and the man and the boy in the water....
+Then both clinging to the upturned canoe as it is driven near and nearer
+shore.... The boy washed off once, twice, and the man with his arm round
+clinging--clinging, as the shrieking storm answers to the calling of the
+Athabascas on the shore, and drives craft and fish and man and boy down
+upon the banks; no savage bold enough to plunge in to their rescue.... At
+last a rope thrown, a drowning man's wrists wound round it, his teeth set
+in it--and now, at last, a man and a heathen boy, both insensible, being
+carried to the mikonaree's hut and laid upon two beds, one on either side
+of the small room, as the red sun goes slowly down.... The two still
+bodies on bearskins in the hut, and a hundred superstitious Indians flying
+from the face of death.... The two alone in the light of the flickering
+fire; the many gone to feast on fish, the price of lives.
+
+But the price was not yet paid, for the man waked from
+insensibility--waked to see himself with the body of the boy beside him
+in the red light of the fires.
+
+For a moment his heart stopped beating, he turned sick and faint. Deserted
+by those for whom he risked his life!... How long had he lain there? What
+time was it? When was it that he had fought his way to the nets and back
+again--hours, maybe? And the dead boy there, Wingo, who had risked his
+life, also dead--how long? His heart leaped--ah, not hours, only minutes,
+maybe. It was sundown as unconsciousness came on him--Indians would not
+stay with the dead after sundown. Maybe it was only ten minutes--five
+minutes--one minute ago since they left him!...
+
+His watch! Shaking fingers drew it out, wild eyes scanned it. It was not
+stopped. Then it could have only been minutes ago. Trembling to his feet,
+he staggered over to Wingo, he felt the body, he held a mirror to the
+lips. Yes, surely there was light moisture on the glass.
+
+Then began another fight with death--William Rufus Holly struggling to
+bring to life again Wingo, the waif of of the Crees.
+
+The blood came back to his own heart with a rush as the mad desire to save
+this life came on him. He talked to the dumb face, he prayed in a kind of
+delirium, as he moved the arms up and down, as he tilted the body, as he
+rubbed, chafed, and strove. He forgot he was a missionary, he almost
+cursed himself. "For them--for cowards, I risked his life, the brave lad
+with no home! Oh, God! give him back to me!" he sobbed. "What right had I
+to risk his life for theirs? I should have shot the first man that refused
+to go.... Wingo, speak! Wake up! Come back!"
+
+The sweat poured from him in his desperation and weakness. He said to
+himself that he had put this young life into the hazard without cause. Had
+he, then, saved the lad from the rapids and Silver Tassel's brutality only
+to have him drag fish out of the jaws of death for Silver Tassel's meal?
+
+It seemed to him that he had been working for hours, though it was in fact
+only a short time, when the eyes of the lad slowly opened and closed
+again, and he began to breathe spasmodically. A cry of joy came from the
+lips of the missionary, and he worked harder still. At last the eyes
+opened wide, stayed open, saw the figure bent over him, and the lips
+whispered, "Oshondonto--my master!" as a cup of brandy was held to his
+lips.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Billy Rufus the cricketer had won the game, and somehow the Reverend
+William Rufus Holly the missionary never repented the strong language he
+used against the Athabascas as he was bringing Wingo back to life, though
+it was not what is called "strictly canonical."
+
+He had conquered the Athabascas forever. Even Silver Tassel acknowledged
+his power, and he as industriously spread abroad the report that the
+mikonaree had raised Wingo from the dead, as he had sown dissension during
+the famine. But the result was that the missionary had power in the land,
+and the belief in him was so great that, when Knife-in-the-Wind died, the
+tribe came to him to raise their chief from the dead. They never quite
+believed that he could not--not even Silver Tassel, who now rules the
+Athabascas and is ruled in turn by William Rufus Holly: which is a very
+good thing for the Athabascas.
+
+
+
+
+THE HEALING SPRINGS AND THE PIONEERS
+
+
+He came out of the mysterious South one summer day, driving before him a
+few sheep, a cow, and a long-eared mule which carried his tent and other
+necessaries, and camped outside the town on a knoll, at the base of which
+was a thicket of close shrub. During the first day no one in Jansen
+thought anything of it, for it was a land of pilgrimage, and hundreds came
+and went on their journeys in search of free homesteads and good water and
+pasturage. But when, after three days, he was still there, Nicolle
+Terasse, who had little to do and an insatiable curiosity, went out to see
+him. He found a new sensation for Jansen. This is what he said when he
+came back:
+
+"You want know 'bout him, _bagosh_! Dat is somet'ing to see, dat
+man--Ingles is his name. Sooch hair--mooch long an' brown, and a leetla
+beard not so brown, an' a leather sole onto his feet, and a gray coat to
+his ankles--_oui_, so like dat. An' his voice--_voila_, it is like water
+in a cave. He is a great man--I dunno not; but he spik at me like dis, 'Is
+dere sick, and cripple, and stay-in-bed people here dat can't get up?' he
+say. An' I say, 'Not plenty, but some--_bagosh_! Dere is dat Miss Greet,
+an' ole Ma'am Drouchy, an' dat young Pete Hayes--an' so on.' 'Well, if
+they have faith I will heal them,' he spik at me. 'From de Healing Springs
+dey shall rise to walk,' he say. _Bagosh_, you not t'ink dat true? Den you
+go see."
+
+So Jansen turned out to see, and besides the man they found a curious
+thing. At the foot of the knoll, in a space which he had cleared, was a
+hot spring that bubbled and rose and sank, and drained away into the
+thirsty ground. Luck had been with Ingles the Faith Healer. Whether he
+knew of the existence of this spring, or whether he chanced upon it, he
+did not say; but while he held Jansen in the palm of his hand, in the
+feverish days that followed, there were many who attached mysterious
+significance to it, who claimed for it supernatural origin. In any case,
+the one man who had known of the existence of this spring was far away
+from Jansen, and he did not return till a day of reckoning came for the
+Faith Healer.
+
+Meanwhile, Jansen made pilgrimage to the Springs of Healing, and at
+unexpected times Ingles suddenly appeared in the town, and stood at street
+corners; and in his "Patmian voice," as Flood Rawley the lawyer called it,
+warned the people to flee their sins, and, purifying their hearts, learn
+to cure all ills of mind and body, the weaknesses of the sinful flesh and
+the "ancient evil" in their souls, by faith that saves.
+
+"'_Is not the life more than meat?_'" he asked them. "And if,
+peradventure, there be those among you who have true belief in hearts all
+purged of evil, and yet are maimed, or sick of body, come to me, and I
+will lay my hands upon you, and I will heal you." Thus he cried.
+
+There were those so wrought upon by his strange eloquence and spiritual
+passion, so hypnotized by his physical and mental exaltation, that they
+rose up from the hand-laying and the prayer eased of their ailments.
+Others he called upon to lie in the hot spring at the foot of the hill for
+varying periods, before the laying-on of hands, and these also, crippled
+or rigid with troubles of the bone, announced that they were healed.
+
+People flocked from other towns, and though, to some who had been cured,
+their pains and sickness returned, there were a few who bore perfect
+evidence to his teaching and healing, and followed him, "converted and
+consecrated," as though he were a new Messiah. In this corner of the West
+was such a revival as none could remember--not even those who had been to
+camp-meetings in the East in their youth, and had seen the Spirit descend
+upon hundreds and draw them to the anxious seat.
+
+Then came the great sensation--the Faith Healer converted Laura Sloly.
+Upon which Jansen drew its breath painfully; for, while it was willing to
+bend to the inspiration of the moment, and to be swept on a tide of
+excitement into that enchanted field called Imagination, it wanted to
+preserve its institutions--and Laura Sloly had come to be an institution.
+Jansen had always plumed itself, and smiled, when she passed; and even now
+the most sentimentally religious of them inwardly anticipated the time
+when the town would return to its normal condition; and that condition
+would not be normal if there were any change in Laura Sloly. It mattered
+little whether most people were changed or not, because one state of their
+minds could not be less or more interesting than another; but a change in
+Laura Sloly could not be for the better.
+
+Her father had come to the West in the early days, and had prospered by
+degrees until a town grew up beside his ranch; and though he did not
+acquire as much permanent wealth from this golden chance as might have
+been expected, and lost much he did make by speculation, still he had his
+rich ranch left, and it and he and Laura were part of the history of
+Jansen. Laura had been born at Jansen before even it had a name. Next to
+her father she was the oldest inhabitant, and she had a prestige which was
+given to no one else.
+
+[Illustration: THE FAITH HEALER]
+
+Everything had conspired to make her a figure of moment and interest. She
+was handsome in almost a mannish sort of way, being of such height and
+straightness, and her brown eyes had a depth and fire in which more than a
+few men had drowned themselves. Also, once she had saved a settlement by
+riding ahead of a marauding Indian band to warn their intended victims,
+and had averted another tragedy of pioneer life. Pioneers proudly told
+strangers to Jansen of the girl of thirteen who rode a hundred and twenty
+miles without food, and sank inside the palisade of the Hudson Bay
+Company's fort, as the gates closed upon the settlers taking refuge, the
+victim of brain fever at last. _Cerebro-spinal meningitis_, the doctor
+from Winnipeg called it, and the memory of that time when men and women
+would not sleep till her crisis was past was still fresh on the tongues of
+all.
+
+Then she had married at seventeen, and, within a year, had lost both her
+husband and her baby, a child bereaved of her Playmates--for her husband
+had been but twenty years old and was younger far than she in everything.
+And since then, twelve years before, she had seen generations of lovers
+pass into the land they thought delectable; and their children flocked to
+her, hung about her, were carried off by her to the ranch, and kept for
+days, against the laughing protests of their parents. Flood Rawley called
+her the Pied Piper of Jansen, and, indeed, she had a voice that fluted and
+piped, and yet had so whimsical a note that the hardest faces softened at
+the sound of it; and she did not keep its best notes for the few. She was
+impartial, almost impersonal; no woman was her enemy, and every man was
+her friend--and nothing more. She had never had an accepted lover since
+the day her Playmates left her. Every man except one had given up hope
+that he might win her; and though he had been gone from Jansen for two
+years, and had loved her since the days before the Playmates came and
+went, he never gave up hope, and was now to return and say again what he
+had mutely said for years--what she understood, and he knew she
+understood.
+
+Tim Denton had been a wild sort in his brief day. He was a rough diamond,
+but he was a diamond, and was typical of the West--its heart, its courage,
+its freedom, and its force; capable of exquisite gentleness strenuous to
+exaggeration, with a very primitive religion, and the only religion Tim
+knew was that of human nature. Jansen did not think Tim good enough--not
+within a comet shot--for Laura Sloly; but they thought him better than any
+one else.
+
+But now Laura was a convert to the prophet of the Healing Springs, and
+those people who still retained their heads in the eddy of religious
+emotion were in despair. They dreaded to meet Laura; they kept away from
+the "protracted meetings," but were eager to hear about her and what she
+said and did. What they heard allayed their worst fears. She still smiled,
+and seemed as cheerful as before, they heard, and she neither spoke nor
+prayed in public, but she led the singing always. Now the anxious and the
+sceptical and the reactionary ventured out to see and hear; and seeing and
+hearing gave them a satisfaction they hardly dared express. She was more
+handsome than ever, and if her eyes glistened with a light they had never
+seen before, and awed them, her lips still smiled, and the old laugh came
+when she spoke to them. Their awe increased. This was "getting religion"
+with a difference.
+
+But presently they received a shock. A whisper grew that Laura was in love
+with the Faith Healer. Some woman's instinct drove straight to the centre
+of a disconcerting possibility, and in consternation she told her husband;
+and Jansen husbands had a freemasonry of gossip. An hour, and all Jansen
+knew, or thought they knew; and the "saved" rejoiced; and the rest of the
+population, represented by Nicolle Terasse at one end and Flood Rawley at
+the other, flew to arms. No vigilance committee was ever more determined
+and secret and organized than the unconverted civic patriots who were
+determined to restore Jansen to its old-time condition. They pointed out
+cold-bloodedly that the Faith Healer had failed three times where he had
+succeeded once; and that, admitting the successes, there was no proof that
+his religion was their cause. There were such things as hypnotism and
+magnetism and will-power, and abnormal mental stimulus on the part of the
+healed--to say nothing of the Healing Springs.
+
+Carefully laying their plans, they quietly spread the rumor that Ingles
+had promised to restore to health old Mary Jewell, who had been bedridden
+ten years, and had sent word and prayed to have him lay his hands upon
+her--Catholic though she was. The Faith Healer, face to face with this
+supreme and definite test, would have retreated from it but for Laura
+Sloly. She expected him to do it, believed that he could, said that he
+would, herself arranged the day and the hour, and sang so much exaltation
+into him that at last a spurious power seemed to possess him. He felt that
+there had entered into him something that could be depended on, not the
+mere flow of natural magnetism fed by an out-door life and a temperament
+of great emotional force and chance and suggestion--and other things. If,
+at first, he had influenced Laura, some ill-controlled, latent idealism in
+him, working on a latent poetry and spirituality in her, somehow bringing
+her into nearer touch with her lost Playmates than she had been in the
+long years that had passed; she, in turn, had made his unrationalized
+brain reel; had caught him up into a higher air, on no wings of his own;
+had added another lover to her company of lovers--and the first impostor
+she had ever had. She who had known only honest men as friends, in one
+blind moment lost her perspicuous sense; her instinct seemed asleep. She
+believed in the man and in his healing. Was there anything more than
+that?
+
+The day of the great test came, hot, brilliant, vivid. The air was of a
+delicate sharpness, and, as it came toward evening, the glamour of an
+August when the reapers reap was upon Jansen; and its people gathered
+round the house of Mary Jewell to await the miracle of faith. Apart from
+the emotional many who sang hymns and spiritual songs were a few
+determined men, bent on doing justice to Jansen though the heavens might
+fall. Whether or no Laura Sloly was in love with the Faith Healer, Jansen
+must look to its own honor--and hers. In any case, this peripatetic saint
+at Sloly's Ranch--the idea was intolerable; women must be saved in spite
+of themselves.
+
+Laura was now in the house by the side of the bedridden Mary Jewell,
+waiting, confident, smiling, as she held the wasted hand on the coverlet.
+With her was a minister of the Baptist persuasion, who was swimming with
+the tide, and who approved of the Faith Healer's immersions in the hot
+Healing Springs; also a medical student who had pretended belief in
+Ingles, and two women weeping with unnecessary remorse for human failings
+of no dire kind. The windows were open, and those outside could see.
+Presently, in a lull of the singing, there was a stir in the crowd, and
+then sudden loud greetings--
+
+"My, if it ain't Tim Denton! Jerusalem! You back, Tim!"
+
+These and other phrases caught the ear of Laura Sloly in the sick-room. A
+strange look flashed across her face, and the depth of her eyes was
+troubled for a moment, as to the face of the old comes a tremor at the
+note of some long-forgotten song. Then she steadied herself and waited,
+catching bits of the loud talk which still floated toward her from
+without.
+
+"What's up? Some one getting married--or a legacy, or a saw-off? Why, what
+a lot of Sunday-go-to-meeting folks _to_ be sure!" Tim laughed loudly.
+
+After which the quick tongue of Nicolle Terasse: "You want know? _Tiens_,
+be quiet; here he come. He cure you body and soul, ver' queeck--yes."
+
+The crowd swayed and parted, and slowly, bare head uplifted, face looking
+to neither right nor left, the Faith Healer made his way to the door of
+the little house. The crowd hushed. Some were awed, some were
+overpoweringly interested, some were cruelly patient. Nicolle Terasse and
+others were whispering loudly to Tim Denton. That was the only sound,
+until the Healer got to the door. Then, on the steps, he turned to the
+multitude.
+
+"Peace be to you all, and upon this house," he said, and stepped through
+the doorway.
+
+Tim Denton, who had been staring at the face of the Healer, stood for an
+instant like one with all his senses arrested. Then he gasped and
+exclaimed, "Well, I'm eternally--!" and broke off with a low laugh, which
+was at first mirthful, and then became ominous and hard.
+
+"Oh, magnificent!--magnificent!--jerickety!" he said into the sky above
+him.
+
+His friends who were not "saved" closed in on him to find the meaning of
+his words, but he pulled himself together, looked blankly at them, and
+asked them questions. They told him so much more than he cared to hear
+that his face flushed a deep red--the bronze of it most like the color of
+Laura Sloly's hair; then he turned pale. Men saw that he was roused beyond
+any feeling in themselves.
+
+"'Sh!" he said. "Let's see what he can do." With the many who were
+silently praying, as they had been bidden to do, the invincible ones
+leaned forward, watching the little room where healing--or tragedy--was
+afoot. As in a picture, framed by the window, they saw the kneeling
+figures, the Healer standing with outstretched arms. They heard his voice,
+sonorous and appealing, then commanding--and yet Mary Jewell did not rise
+from her bed and walk. Again, and yet again, the voice rang out, and still
+the woman lay motionless. Then he laid his hands upon her, and again he
+commanded her to rise.
+
+There was a faint movement, a desperate struggle to obey, but Nature and
+Time and Disease had their way.
+
+Yet again there was the call. An agony stirred the bed. Then another great
+Healer came between and mercifully dealt the sufferer a blow--Death has a
+gentle hand sometimes. Mary Jewell was bedridden still--and forever.
+
+Like a wind from the mountains the chill knowledge of death wailed through
+the window and over the heads of the crowd. All the figures were upright
+now in the little room. Then those outside saw Laura Sloly lean over and
+close the sightless eyes. This done, she came to the door and opened it,
+and motioned for the Healer to leave. He hesitated, hearing the harsh
+murmur from the outskirts of the crowd. Once again she motioned, and he
+came. With a face deadly pale she surveyed the people before her silently
+for a moment, her eyes all huge and staring. Presently she turned to
+Ingles and spoke to him quickly in a low voice; then, descending the
+steps, passed out through the lane made for her by the crowd, he following
+with shaking limbs and bowed head.
+
+Warning words had passed among the few invincible ones who waited where
+the Healer must pass into the open, and there was absolute stillness as
+Laura advanced. Their work was to come--quiet and swift and sure; but not
+yet.
+
+Only one face Laura saw as she led the way to the moment's safety--Tim
+Denton's; and it was as stricken as her own. She passed, then turned and
+looked at him again. He understood; she wanted him.
+
+He waited till she sprang into her wagon, after the Healer had mounted his
+mule and ridden away with ever-quickening pace into the prairie. Then he
+turned to the set, fierce men beside him.
+
+"Leave him alone," he said--"leave him to me. I know him. You hear? Ain't
+I no rights? I tell you I knew him--South. You leave him to me."
+
+They nodded, and he sprang into his saddle and rode away. They watched the
+figure of the Healer growing smaller in the dusty distance.
+
+"Tim'll go to her," one said, "and perhaps they'll let the snake get off.
+Hadn't we best make sure?"
+
+"Perhaps you'd better let him vamoose," said Flood Rawley, anxiously.
+"Jansen is a law-abiding place."
+
+The reply was decisive. Jansen had its honor to keep. It was the home of
+the Pioneers--Laura Sloly was a Pioneer.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Tim Denton was a Pioneer, with all the comradeship which lay in the word,
+and he was that sort of lover who has seen one woman and can never see
+another--not the product of the most modern civilization. Before Laura had
+had Playmates he had given all he had to give; he had waited and hoped
+ever since; and when the ruthless gossips had said to him before Mary
+Jewell's house that she was in love with the Faith Healer, nothing changed
+in him. For the man--for Ingles--Tim belonged to a primitive breed, and
+love was not in his heart. As he rode out to Sloly's Ranch, he ground his
+teeth in rage. But Laura had called him to her, and--
+
+"Well, what you say goes, Laura," he muttered at the end of a long hour of
+human passion and its repression. "If he's to go scot-free, then he's got
+to go; but the boys yonder'll drop on me if he gets away. Can't you see
+what a swab he is, Laura?"
+
+The brown eyes of the girl looked at him gently. The struggle between them
+was over; she had had her way--to save the preacher, impostor though he
+was; and now she felt, as she had never felt before in the same fashion,
+that this man was a man of men.
+
+"Tim, you do not understand," she urged. "You say he was a landsharp in
+the South, and that he had to leave--"
+
+"He had to vamoose, or take tar and feathers."
+
+"But he had to leave. And he came here preaching and healing; and he is a
+hypocrite and a fraud--I know that now, my eyes are opened. He didn't do
+what he said he could do, and it killed Mary Jewell--the shock; and there
+were other things he said he could do, and didn't do them. Perhaps he is
+all bad, as you say--I don't think so. But he did some good things, and
+through him I've felt as I've never felt before about God and life, and
+about Walt and the baby--as though I'll see them again, sure. I've never
+felt that before. It was all as if they were lost in the hills, and no
+trail home, or out to where they are. Like as not God was working in him
+all the time, Tim; and he failed because he counted too much on the little
+he had, and made up for what he hadn't by what he pretended."
+
+"He can pretend to himself, or God Almighty, or that lot down there"--he
+jerked a finger toward the town--"but to you, a girl, and a Pioneer--"
+
+A flash of humor shot into her eyes at his last words, then they filled
+with tears, through which the smile shone. To pretend to "a Pioneer"--the
+splendid vanity and egotism of the West!
+
+"He didn't pretend to me, Tim. People don't usually have to _pretend_ to
+like me."
+
+"You know what I'm driving at."
+
+"Oh yes, I know. And whatever he is, you've said that you will save him.
+I'm straight, you know that. Somehow, what I felt from his
+preaching--well, everything got sort of mixed up with him, and he was--was
+different. It was like the long dream of Walt and the baby, and he a part
+of it. I don't know what I felt, or what I might have felt for him. I'm a
+woman--I can't understand. But I know what I feel now. I never want to see
+him again on earth--or in heaven. It needn't be necessary even in heaven;
+but what happened between God and me through him stays, Tim; and so you
+must help him get away safe. It's in your hands--you say they left it to
+you."
+
+"I don't trust that too much."
+
+Suddenly he pointed out of the window toward the town. "See, I'm right;
+there they are, a dozen of 'em mounted. They're off, to run him down."
+
+Her face paled; she glanced toward the Hill of Healing. "He's got an
+hour's start," she said; "he'll get into the mountains and be safe."
+
+"If they don't catch him 'fore that."
+
+"Or if you don't get to him first," she said, with nervous insistence.
+
+He turned to her with a hard look; then, as he met her soft, fearless,
+beautiful eyes, his own grew gentle.
+
+"It takes a lot of doing. Yet I'll do it for you, Laura," he said. "But
+it's hard on the Pioneers."
+
+Once more her humor flashed, and it seemed to him that "getting religion"
+was not so depressing after all--wouldn't be, anyhow, when this nasty job
+was over.
+
+"The Pioneers will get over it, Tim," she rejoined. "They've swallowed a
+lot in their time. Heaven's gate will have to be pretty wide to let in a
+real Pioneer," she added. "He takes up so much room--ah, Timothy Denton!"
+she added, with an outburst of whimsical merriment.
+
+"It hasn't spoiled you--being converted--has it?" he said, and gave a
+quick little laugh, which somehow did more for his ancient cause with her
+than all he had ever said or done. Then he stepped outside and swung into
+his saddle.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+It had been a hard and anxious ride, but Tim had won, and was keeping his
+promise. The night had fallen before he got to the mountains, which he and
+the Pioneers had seen the Faith Healer enter. They had had four miles'
+start of Tim, and had ridden fiercely, and they entered the gulch into
+which the refugee had disappeared still two miles ahead.
+
+The invincibles had seen Tim coming, but they had determined to make a
+sure thing of it, and would themselves do what was necessary with the
+impostor, and take no chances. So they pressed their horses, and he saw
+them swallowed by the trees as darkness gathered. Changing his course, he
+entered the familiar hills, which he knew better than any Pioneer of
+Jansen, and rode a diagonal course over the trail they would take. But
+night fell suddenly, and there was nothing to do but to wait till morning.
+There was comfort in this--the others must also wait, and the refugee
+could not go far. In any case, he must make for settlement or perish,
+since he had left behind his sheep and his cow.
+
+It fell out better than Tim hoped. The Pioneers were as good hunters as
+was he, their instinct was as sure, their scouts and trackers were many,
+and he was but one. They found the Faith Healer by a little stream, eating
+bread and honey, and, like an ancient woodlander, drinking from a
+horn--relic of his rank imposture. He made no resistance. They tried him,
+formally if perfunctorily; he admitted his imposture, and begged for his
+life. Then they stripped him naked, tied a bit of canvas round his waist,
+fastened him to a tree, and were about to complete his punishment when Tim
+Denton burst upon them.
+
+Whether the rage Tim showed was all real or not; whether his accusations
+of bad faith came from so deeply wounded a spirit as he would have them
+believe, he was not likely to tell; but he claimed the prisoner as his
+own, and declined to say what he meant to do. When, however, they saw the
+abject terror of the Faith Healer as he begged not to be left alone with
+Tim--for they had not meant death, and Ingles thought he read death in
+Tim's ferocious eyes--they laughed cynically, and left it to Tim to uphold
+the honor of Jansen and the Pioneers.
+
+As they disappeared, the last thing they saw was Tim with his back to
+them, his hands on his hips, and a knife clasped in his fingers.
+
+"He'll lift his scalp and make a monk of him," chuckled the oldest and
+hardest of them.
+
+"Dat Tim will cut his heart out, I t'ink--_bagosh_!" said Nicolle Terasse,
+and took a drink of white whiskey.
+
+For a long time Tim stood looking at the other, until no sound came from
+the woods whither the Pioneers had gone. Then at last, slowly and with no
+roughness, as the terror-stricken impostor shrank and withered, he cut the
+cords.
+
+"Dress yourself," he said, shortly, and sat down beside the stream, and
+washed his face and hands as though to cleanse them from contamination. He
+appeared to take no notice of the other, though his ears keenly noted
+every movement.
+
+The impostor dressed nervously, yet slowly; he scarce comprehended
+anything, except that he was not in immediate danger. When he had
+finished, he stood looking at Tim, who was still seated on a log plunged
+in meditation.
+
+It seemed hours before Tim turned round, and now his face was quiet, if
+set and determined. He walked slowly over, and stood looking at his victim
+for some time without speaking. The other's eyes dropped, and a grayness
+stole over his features. This steely calm was even more frightening than
+the ferocity which had previously been in his captor's face. At length the
+tense silence was broken:
+
+"Wasn't the old game good enough? Was it played out? Why did you take to
+this? Why did you do it, Scranton?"
+
+The voice quavered a little in reply: "I don't know. Something sort of
+pushed me into it."
+
+"How did you come to start it?"
+
+There was a long silence, then the husky reply came:
+
+"I got a sickener last time--"
+
+"Yes, I remember, at Waywing."
+
+"I got into the desert, and had hard times--awful for a while. I hadn't
+enough to eat, and I didn't know whether I'd die by hunger or fever or
+Indians--or snakes."
+
+"Oh, you were seeing snakes!" said Tim, grimly.
+
+"Not the kind you mean; I hadn't anything to drink--"
+
+"No, you never did drink, I remember--just was crooked, and slopped over
+women. Well, about the snakes?"
+
+"I caught them to eat, and they were poison-snakes often. And I wasn't
+quick at first to get them safe by the neck--they're quick, too."
+
+Tim laughed inwardly. "Getting your food by the sweat of your brow--and a
+snake in it, same as Adam! Well, was it in the desert you got your taste
+for honey, too, same as John the Baptist--that was his name, if I
+recomember?" He looked at the tin of honey on the ground.
+
+"Not in the desert, but when I got to the grass-country."
+
+"How long were you in the desert?"
+
+"Close to a year."
+
+Tim's eyes opened wider. He saw that the man was speaking the truth.
+
+"Got to thinking in the desert, and sort of willing things to come to
+pass, and mooning along, you and the sky and the vultures and the hot
+hills and the snakes and the flowers--eh?"
+
+"There weren't any flowers till I got to the grass-country."
+
+"Oh, cuss me, if you ain't simple for your kind! I know all about that.
+And when you got to the grass-country you just picked up the honey and the
+flowers, and a calf and a lamb and a mule here and there, 'without money
+and without price,' and walked on--that it?"
+
+The other shrank before the steel in the voice, and nodded his head.
+
+"But you kept thinking in the grass-country of what you'd felt and said
+and done--and willed, in the desert, I suppose?"
+
+Again the other nodded.
+
+"It seemed to you in the desert as if you'd saved your own life a hundred
+times, as if you'd just willed food and drink and safety to come; as if
+Providence had been at your elbow?"
+
+"It was like a dream, and it stayed with me. I had to think in the desert
+things I'd never thought before," was the half-abstracted answer.
+
+"You _felt_ good in the desert?"
+
+The other hung his head in shame.
+
+"Makes you seem pretty small, doesn't it? You didn't stay long enough, I
+guess, to get what you were feeling for; you started in on the new racket
+too soon. You never got really possessed that you was a sinner. I expect
+that's it."
+
+The other made no reply.
+
+"Well, I don't know much about such things. I was loose brought up; but
+I've a friend"--Laura was before his eyes--"that says religion's all
+right, and long ago as I can remember my mother used to pray three times a
+day--with grace at meals, too. I know there's a lot in it for them that
+need it; and there seems to be a lot of folks needing it, if I'm to judge
+by folks down there at Jansen, 'specially when there's the laying-on of
+hands and the Healing Springs. Oh, that was a pigsty game, Scranton, that
+about God giving you the Healing Springs, like Moses and the rock! Why, I
+discovered them springs myself two years ago, before I went South, and I
+guess God wasn't helping me any--not after I've kept out of His way as I
+have. But, anyhow, religion's real; that's my sense of it; and you can get
+it, I bet, if you try. I've seen it got. A friend of mine got it--got it
+under your preaching; not from you; but you was the accident that brought
+it about, I expect. It's funny--it's merakilous, but it's so. Kneel down!"
+he added, with peremptory suddenness. "Kneel, Scranton!"
+
+In fear the other knelt.
+
+"You're going to get religion now--here. You're going to pray for what you
+didn't get--and almost got--in the desert. You're going to ask forgiveness
+for all your damn tricks, and pray like a fanning-mill for the Spirit to
+come down. You ain't a scoundrel at heart--a friend of mine says so.
+You're a weak vessel--cracked, perhaps. You've got to be saved, and start
+right over again--and 'Praise God from whom all blessings flow!'
+Pray--pray, Scranton, and tell the whole truth, and get it--get religion.
+Pray like blazes. You go on, and pray out loud. Remember the desert, and
+Mary Jewell, and your mother--did you have a mother, Scranton?--say, did
+you have a mother, lad?"
+
+Tim's voice suddenly lowered before the last word, for the Faith Healer
+had broken down in a torrent of tears.
+
+"Oh, my mother--O God!" he groaned.
+
+"Say, that's right--that's right--go on," said the other and drew back a
+little, and sat down on a log.
+
+The man on his knees was convulsed with misery. Denton, the world,
+disappeared. He prayed in agony.
+
+Presently Tim moved uneasily, then got up and walked about; and at last,
+with a strange, awed look, when an hour was past, he stole back into the
+shadow of the trees while still the wounded soul poured out its misery and
+repentance.
+
+Time moved on. A curious shyness possessed Tim now, a thing which he had
+never felt in his life. He moved about self-consciously, awkwardly, until
+at last there was a sudden silence over by the brook.
+
+Tim looked, and saw the face of the kneeling man cleared and quiet and
+shining. He hesitated, then stepped out, and came over.
+
+"Have you got it?" he asked, quietly. "It's noon now."
+
+"May God help me to redeem my past," answered the other, in a new voice.
+
+"You've got it--sure?" Tim's voice was meditative.
+
+"God has spoken to me," was the simple answer.
+
+"I've got a friend'll be glad to hear that," he said; and once more, in
+imagination, he saw Laura Sloly standing at the door of her home, with a
+light in her eyes he had never seen before.
+
+"You'll want some money for your journey?" Tim asked.
+
+"I want nothing but to go away--far away," was the low reply.
+
+"Well, you've lived in the desert--I guess you can live in the
+grass-country," came the dry response, "Good-bye--and good-luck,
+Scranton."
+
+Tim turned to go, moved on a few steps, then looked back.
+
+"Don't be afraid--they'll not follow," he said. "I'll fix it for you all
+right."
+
+But the man appeared not to hear; he was still on his knees.
+
+Tim faced the woods once more.
+
+He was about to mount his horse when he heard a step behind him. He turned
+sharply--and faced Laura.
+
+"I couldn't rest. I came out this morning. I've seen everything," she
+said.
+
+"You didn't trust me," he said, heavily.
+
+"I never did anything else," she answered.
+
+He gazed half-fearfully into her eyes. "Well?" he asked. "I've done my
+best, as I said I would."
+
+"Tim," she said, and slipped a hand in his, "would you mind the
+religion--if you had me?"
+
+
+
+
+THE LITTLE WIDOW OF JANSEN
+
+
+Her advent to Jansen was propitious. Smallpox in its most virulent form
+had broken out in the French-Canadian portion of the town, and, coming
+with some professional nurses from the East, herself an amateur, to attend
+the sufferers, she worked with such skill and devotion that the official
+thanks of the Corporation were offered her, together with a tiny gold
+watch, the gift of grateful citizens. But she still remained on at Jansen,
+saying always, however, that she was "going East in the spring."
+
+Five years had passed, and still she had not gone East, but remained
+perched in the rooms she had first taken, over the Imperial Bank, while
+the town grew up swiftly round her. And even when the young bank manager
+married, and wished to take over the rooms, she sent him to the
+right-about from his own premises in her gay, masterful way. The young
+manager behaved well in the circumstances, because he had asked her to
+marry him, and she had dismissed him with a warning against challenging
+his own happiness--that was the way she had put it. Perhaps he was galled
+the less because others had striven for the same prize, and had been
+thrust back, with an almost tender misgiving as to their sense of
+self-preservation and sanity. Some of them were eligible enough, and all
+were of some position in the West. Yet she smiled them firmly away, to the
+wonder of Jansen, and to its satisfaction, for was it not a tribute to all
+that she would distinguish no particular unit by her permanent favor? But
+for one so sprightly and almost frivolous in manner at times, the
+self-denial seemed incongruous. She was unconventional enough to sit on
+the sidewalk with a half-dozen children round her blowing bubbles, or to
+romp in any garden, or in the street, playing Puss-in-the-ring; yet this
+only made her more popular. Jansen's admiration was at its highest,
+however, when she rode in the annual steeplechase with the best horsemen
+of the province. She had the gift of doing as well as of being.
+
+"'Tis the light heart she has, and slippin' in and out of things like a
+hummin'-bird, no easier to ketch and no longer to stay," said Finden, the
+rich Irish landbroker, suggestively to Father Bourassa, the huge
+French-Canadian priest who had worked with her through all the dark weeks
+of the smallpox epidemic, and who knew what lay beneath the outer gayety.
+She had been buoyant of spirit beside the beds of the sick, and her words
+were full of raillery and humor, yet there was ever a gentle note behind
+all; and the priest had seen her eyes shining with tears as she bent over
+some stricken sufferer bound upon an interminable journey.
+
+"Bedad! as bright a little spark as ever struck off the steel," added
+Finden to the priest, with a sidelong, inquisitive look, "but a heart no
+bigger than a marrowfat pea--selfishness, all self. Keepin' herself for
+herself when there's many a good man needin' her. Mother o' Moses, how
+many! From Terry O'Ryan, brother of a peer, at Latouche, to Bernard Bapty,
+son of a millionaire, at Vancouver, there's a string o' them. All pride
+and self; and as fair a lot they've been as ever entered for the Marriage
+Cup. Now isn't that so, father?"
+
+Finden's brogue did not come from a plebeian origin. It was part of his
+commercial equipment, an asset of his boyhood spent among the peasants on
+the family estate in Galway.
+
+Father Bourassa fanned himself with the black broadbrim hat he wore, and
+looked benignly but quizzically on the wiry, sharp-faced Irishman.
+
+"You t'ink her heart is leetla. But perhaps it is your mind is not so
+big enough to see--_hien_?" The priest laughed noiselessly, showing
+white teeth. "Was it so selfish in Madame to refuse the name of
+Finden--_n'est-ce pas_?"
+
+Finden flushed, then burst into a laugh. "I'd almost forgotten I was one
+of them--the first almost. Blessed be he that expects nothing, for he'll
+get it sure. It was my duty, and I did it. Was she to feel that Jansen did
+not price her high? Bedad, father, I rose betimes and did it, before anny
+man should say he set me the lead. Before the carpet in the parlor was
+down, and with the bare boards soundin' to my words, I offered her the
+name of Finden."
+
+"And so--the first of the long line! _Bien_, it is an honor." The priest
+paused a moment, looked at Finden with a curious reflective look, and then
+said, "And so you t'ink there is no one; that she will say yes not at
+all--no?"
+
+They were sitting on Father Bourassa's verandah, on the outskirts of the
+town, above the great river, along which had travelled millions of bygone
+people, fighting, roaming, hunting, trapping; and they could hear it
+rushing past, see the swirling eddies, the impetuous currents, the
+occasional rafts moving majestically down the stream. They were facing the
+wild North, while civilization was hacking and hewing and ploughing its
+way to newer and newer cities, in an empire ever spreading to the Pole.
+
+Finden's glance loitered on this scene before he replied. At length,
+screwing up one eye, and with a suggestive smile, he answered: "Sure, it's
+all a matter of time, to the selfishest woman. 'Tis not the same with
+women as with men; you see, they don't get younger--that's a point.
+But"--he gave a meaning glance at the priest--"but perhaps she's not going
+to wait for that, after all. And there he rides, a fine figure of a man,
+too, if I have to say it!"
+
+"M'sieu' Varley?" the priest responded, and watched a galloping horseman
+to whom Finden had pointed till he rounded a corner of a little wood.
+
+"Varley, the great London surgeon, sure! Say, father, it's a hundred to
+one she'd take him if--"
+
+There was a curious look in Father Bourassa's face, a cloud in his eyes.
+He sighed. "London, it is ver' far away," he remarked, obliquely.
+
+"What's to that? If she is with the right man, near or far is nothing."
+
+"So far--from home," said the priest, reflectively, but his eyes furtively
+watched the other's face.
+
+"But home's where man and wife are."
+
+The priest now looked him straight in the eyes. "Then, as you say, she
+will not marry M'sieu' Varley--_hein_?"
+
+The humor died out of Finden's face. His eyes met the priest's eyes
+steadily. "Did I say that? Then my tongue wasn't making a fool of me,
+after all. How did you guess I knew--everything, father?"
+
+"A priest knows many t'ings--so."
+
+There was a moment of gloom, then the Irishman brightened. He came
+straight to the heart of the mystery around which they had been
+manoeuvring. "Have you seen her husband--Meydon--this year? It isn't his
+usual time to come yet."
+
+Father Bourassa's eyes drew those of his friend into the light of a new
+understanding and revelation. They understood and trusted each other.
+
+[Illustration: "AS PURTY A WOMAN, TOO--AS PURTY AND AS STRAIGHT BEWHILES"]
+
+"_Helas!_ He is there in the hospital," he answered, and nodded toward a
+building not far away, which had been part of an old Hudson Bay Company's
+fort. It had been hastily adapted as a hospital for the smallpox victims.
+
+"Oh, it's Meydon, is it, that bad case I heard of to-day?"
+
+The priest nodded again and pointed. "_Voila_, Madame Meydon, she is
+coming. She has seen him--her hoosban'."
+
+Finden's eyes followed the gesture. The little widow of Jansen was coming
+from the hospital, walking slowly toward the river.
+
+"As purty a woman, too--as purty and as straight bewhiles. What is the
+matter with him--with Meydon?" Finden asked, after a moment.
+
+"An accident in the woods--so. He arrive, it is las' night, from Great
+Slave Lake."
+
+Finden sighed. "Ten years ago he was a man to look at twice--before he did
+_It_ and got away. Now his own mother wouldn't know him--bad 'cess to him!
+I knew him from the cradle almost. I spotted him here by a knife-cut I
+gave him in the hand when we were lads together. A divil of a timper
+always both of us had, but the good-nature was with me, and I didn't drink
+and gamble and carry a pistol. It's ten years since he did the killing,
+down in Quebec, and I don't suppose the police will get him now. He's been
+counted dead. I recognized him here the night after I asked her how she
+liked the name of Finden. She doesn't know that I ever knew him. And he
+didn't recognize me--twenty-five years since we met before! It would be
+better if he went under the sod. Is he pretty sick, father?"
+
+"He will die unless the surgeon's knife it cure him before twenty-four
+hours, and--"
+
+"And Doctor Brydon is sick, and Doctor Hadley away at Winnipeg, and this
+is two hundred miles from nowhere! It looks as if the police'll never get
+him, eh?"
+
+"You have not tell any one--never?"
+
+Finden laughed. "Though I'm not a priest, I can lock myself up as tight as
+anny. There's no tongue that's so tied, when tying's needed, as the one
+that babbles most bewhiles. Babbling covers a lot of secrets."
+
+"So you t'ink it better Meydon should die, as Hadley is away and Brydon is
+sick--_hein_?"
+
+"Oh, I think--"
+
+Finden stopped short, for a horse's hoofs sounded on the turf beside the
+house, and presently Varley, the great London surgeon, rounded the corner
+and stopped his horse in front of the veranda.
+
+He lifted his hat to the priest. "I hear there's a bad case at the
+hospital," he said.
+
+"It is ver' dangerous," answered Father Bourassa; "but, _voila_, come in!
+There is something cool to drink. Ah, yes, he is ver' bad, that man from
+the Great Slave Lake."
+
+Inside the house, with the cooling drinks, Varley pressed his questions,
+and presently, much interested, told at some length of singular cases
+which had passed through his hands--one a man with his neck broken, who
+had lived for six months afterward.
+
+"Broken as a man's neck is broken by hanging--dislocation, really--the
+disjointing of the _medulla oblongata_, if you don't mind technicalities,"
+he said. "But I kept him living just the same. Time enough for him to
+repent in and get ready to go. A most interesting case. He was a criminal,
+too, and wanted to die; but you have to keep life going if you can, to the
+last inch of resistance."
+
+The priest looked thoughtfully out of the window; Finden's eyes were
+screwed up in a questioning way, but neither made any response to Varley's
+remarks. There was a long minute's silence. They were all three roused by
+hearing a light footstep on the veranda.
+
+Father Bourassa put down his glass and hastened into the hallway. Finden
+caught a glimpse of a woman's figure, and, without a word, passed abruptly
+from the dining-room, where they were, into the priest's study, leaving
+Varley alone. Varley turned to look after him, stared, and shrugged his
+shoulders.
+
+"The manners of the West," he said, good-humoredly, and turned again to
+the hallway, from whence came the sound of the priest's voice. Presently
+there was another voice--a woman's. He flushed slightly and involuntarily
+straightened himself.
+
+"Valerie," he murmured.
+
+An instant afterward she entered the room with the priest. She was dressed
+in a severely simple suit of gray, which set off to advantage her slim,
+graceful figure. There seemed no reason why she should have been called
+the little widow of Jansen, for she was not small, but she was very finely
+and delicately made, and the name had been but an expression of Jansen's
+paternal feeling for her. She had always had a good deal of fresh color,
+but to-day she seemed pale, though her eyes had a strange disturbing
+light. It was not that they brightened on seeing this man before her; they
+had been brighter, burningly bright, when she left the hospital, where,
+since it had been built, she had been the one visitor of authority--Jansen
+had given her that honor. She had a gift of smiling, and she smiled now,
+but it came from grace of mind rather than from humor. As Finden had said,
+"She was forever acting, and never doin' any harm by it."
+
+Certainly she was doing no harm by it now; nevertheless, it was acting.
+Could it be otherwise, with what was behind her life--a husband who had
+ruined her youth, had committed homicide, had escaped capture, but who had
+not subsequently died, as the world believed he had done, so
+circumstantial was the evidence. He was not man enough to make the
+accepted belief in his death a fact. What could she do but act, since the
+day she got a letter from the Far North, which took her out to Jansen,
+nominally to nurse those stricken with smallpox under Father Bourassa's
+care, actually to be where her wretched husband could come to her once a
+year, as he had asked with an impossible selfishness?
+
+Each year she had seen him for an hour or less, giving him money, speaking
+to him over a gulf so wide that it seemed sometimes as though her voice
+could not be heard across it; each year opening a grave to look at the
+embalmed face of one who had long since died in shame, which only brought
+back the cruellest of all memories, that which one would give one's best
+years to forget. With a fortitude beyond description she had faced it,
+gently, quietly, but firmly faced it--firmly, because she had to be firm
+in keeping him within those bounds the invasion of which would have killed
+her. And after the first struggle with his unchangeable brutality it had
+been easier: for into his degenerate brain there had come a faint
+understanding of the real situation and of her. He had kept his side of
+the gulf, but gloating on this touch between the old luxurious, indulgent
+life, with its refined vices, and this present coarse, hard life, where
+pleasures were few and gross. The free Northern life of toil and hardship
+had not refined him. He greedily hung over this treasure, which was not
+for his spending, yet was his own--as though in a bank he had hoards of
+money which he might not withdraw.
+
+So the years had gone on, with their recurrent dreaded anniversaries,
+carrying misery almost too great to be borne by this woman mated to the
+loathed phantom of a sad, dead life; and when this black day of each year
+was over, for a few days afterwards she went nowhere, was seen by none.
+Yet, when she did appear again, it was with her old laughing manner, her
+cheerful and teasing words, her quick response to the emotions of others.
+
+So it had gone till Varley had come to follow the open-air life for four
+months, after a heavy illness due to blood-poisoning got in his surgical
+work in London. She had been able to live her life without too great a
+struggle till he came. Other men had flattered her vanity, had given her a
+sense of power, had made her understand her possibilities, but nothing
+more--nothing of what Varley brought with him. And before three months had
+gone, she knew that no man had ever interested her as Varley had done. Ten
+years before, she would not have appreciated or understood him, this
+intellectual, clean-shaven, rigidly abstemious man, whose pleasures
+belonged to the fishing-rod and the gun and the horse, and who had come to
+be so great a friend of him who had been her best friend--Father Bourassa.
+Father Bourassa had come to know the truth--not from her, for she had ever
+been a Protestant, but from her husband, who, Catholic by birth and a
+renegade from all religion, had had a moment of spurious emotion, when he
+went and confessed to Father Bourassa and got absolution, pleading for the
+priest's care of his wife. Afterward Father Bourassa made up his mind that
+the confession had a purpose behind it other than repentance, and he
+deeply resented the use to which he thought he was being put--a kind of
+spy upon the beautiful woman whom Jansen loved, and who, in spite of any
+outward flippancy, was above reproach.
+
+In vital things the instinct becomes abnormally acute, and, one day, when
+the priest looked at her commiseratingly, she had divined what moved him.
+However it was, she drove him into a corner with a question to which he
+dare not answer yes, but to which he might not answer no, and did not; and
+she realized that he knew the truth, and she was the better for his
+knowing, though her secret was no longer a secret. She was not aware that
+Finden also knew. Then Varley came, bringing a new joy and interest in her
+life, and a new suffering also, for she realized that if she were free,
+and Varley asked her to marry him, she would consent.
+
+But when he did ask her, she said no with a pang that cut her heart in
+two. He had stayed his four months, and it was now six months, and he
+was going at last--to-morrow. He had stayed to give her time to learn to
+say yes, and to take her back with him to London; and she knew that he
+would speak again to-day, and that she must say no again; but she had
+kept him from saying the words till now. And the man who had ruined
+her life and had poisoned her true spirit was come back broken and
+battered. He was hanging between life and death; and now--for he was
+going to-morrow--Varley would speak again.
+
+The half-hour she had just spent in the hospital with Meydon had tried her
+cruelly. She had left the building in a vortex of conflicting emotions,
+with the call of duty and of honor ringing through a thousand other voices
+of temptation and desire, the inner pleadings for a little happiness while
+yet she was young. After she married Meydon, there had only been a few
+short weeks of joy before her black disillusion came, and she had realized
+how bitter must be her martyrdom.
+
+When she left the hospital, she seemed moving in a dream, as one
+intoxicated by some elixir might move unheeding among event and accident
+and vexing life and roaring multitudes. And all the while the river
+flowing through the endless prairies, high-banked, ennobled by living
+woods, lipped with green, kept surging in her ears, inviting her, alluring
+her--alluring her with a force too deep and powerful for weak human nature
+to bear for long. It would ease her pain, it said; it would still the
+tumult and the storm; it would solve her problem, it would give her peace.
+But as she moved along the river-bank among the trees, she met the little
+niece of the priest, who lived in his house, singing, as though she was
+born but to sing, a song which Finden had written and Father Bourassa had
+set to music. Did not the distant West know Father Bourassa's gift, and
+did not Protestants attend Mass to hear him play the organ afterward? The
+fresh, clear voice of the child rang through the trees, stealing the
+stricken heart away from the lure of the river:
+
+"Will you come back home, where the young larks are singin'?
+The door is open wide, and the bells of Lynn are ringin';
+      There's a little lake I know,
+      And a boat you used to row
+To the shore beyond that's quiet--will you come back home?
+
+"Will you come back, darlin'? Never heed the pain and blightin',
+Never trouble that you're wounded, that you bear the scars of fightin';
+      Here's the luck o' Heaven to you,
+      Here's the hand of love will brew you
+The cup of peace--ah, darlin', will you come back home?"
+
+She stood listening for a few moments, and, under the spell of the fresh,
+young voice, the homely, heart-searching words, and the intimate sweetness
+of the woods, the despairing apathy lifted slowly away. She started
+forward again with a new understanding, her footsteps quickened. She would
+go to Father Bourassa. He would understand. She would tell him all. He
+would help her to do what now she knew she must do, ask Leonard Varley to
+save her husband's life--Leonard Varley to save her husband's life!
+
+When she stepped upon the veranda of the priest's house, she did not know
+that Varley was inside. She had no time to think. She was ushered into the
+room where he was, with the confusing fact of his presence fresh upon her.
+She had had but a word or two with the priest, but enough for him to know
+what she meant to do, and that it must be done at once.
+
+Varley advanced to meet her. She shuddered inwardly to think what a
+difference there was between the fallen creature she had left behind in
+the hospital and this tall, dark, self-contained man, whose name was
+familiar in the surgeries of Europe, who had climbed from being the son of
+a clockmaker to his present distinguished place.
+
+"Have you come for absolution, also?" he asked, with a smile; "or is it to
+get a bill of excommunication against your only enemy--there couldn't be
+more than one?"
+
+Cheerful as his words were, he was shrewdly observing her, for her
+paleness and the strange light in her eyes gave him a sense of anxiety. He
+wondered what trouble was on her.
+
+"Excommunication?" he repeated.
+
+The unintended truth went home. She winced, even as she responded with
+that quaint note in her voice which gave humor to her speech. "Yes,
+excommunication," she replied; "but why an enemy? Do we not need to
+excommunicate our friends sometimes?"
+
+"That is a hard saying," he answered, soberly.
+
+Tears sprang to her eyes, but she mastered herself, and brought the crisis
+abruptly.
+
+"I want you to save a man's life," she said, with her eyes looking
+straight into his. "Will you do it?"
+
+His face grew grave and eager. "I want you to save a man's happiness," he
+answered. "Will you do it?"
+
+"That man yonder will die unless your skill saves him," she urged.
+
+"This man here will go away unhappy and alone, unless your heart befriends
+him," he replied, coming closer to her. "At sunrise to-morrow he goes." He
+tried to take her hand.
+
+"Oh, please, please," she pleaded, with a quick, protesting gesture.
+"Sunrise is far off, but the man's fate is near, and you must save him.
+You only can do so, for Doctor Hadley is away, and Doctor Brydon is sick,
+and in any case Doctor Brydon dare not attempt the operation alone. It is
+too critical and difficult, he says."
+
+"So I have heard," he answered, with a new note in his voice, his
+professional instinct roused in spite of himself. "Who is this man? What
+interests you in him?"
+
+"To how many unknown people have you given your skill for nothing--your
+skill and all your experience to utter strangers, no matter how low or
+poor! Is it not so? Well, I cannot give to strangers what you have given
+to so many, but I can help in my own way."
+
+"You want me to see the man at once?"
+
+"If you will."
+
+"What is his name? I know of his accident and the circumstances."
+
+She hesitated for an instant, then said, "He is called Draper--a trapper
+and a woodsman."
+
+"But I was going away to-morrow at sunrise. All my arrangements are made,"
+he urged, his eyes holding hers, his passion swimming in his eyes again.
+
+"But you will not see a man die, if you can save him?" she pleaded, unable
+now to meet his look, its mastery and its depth.
+
+Her heart had almost leaped with joy at the suggestion that he could not
+stay; but as suddenly self-reproach and shame filled her mind, and she had
+challenged him so. But yet, what right had she to sacrifice this man she
+loved to the perverted criminal who had spoiled her youth and taken away
+from her every dear illusion of her life and heart? By every right of
+justice and humanity she was no more the wife of Henry Meydon than if she
+had never seen him. He had forfeited every claim upon her, dragged in the
+mire her unspotted life--unspotted, for in all temptation, in her
+defenceless position, she had kept the whole commandment; she had, while
+at the mercy of her own temperament, fought her way through all, with a
+weeping heart and laughing lips. Had she not longed for a little home with
+a great love, and a strong, true man? Ah, it had been lonely, bitterly
+lonely! Yet she had remained true to the scoundrel, from whom she could
+not free herself without putting him in the grasp of the law to atone for
+his crime. She was punished for his crimes; she was denied the exercise of
+her womanhood in order to shield him. Still she remembered that once she
+had loved him, those years ago, when he first won her heart from those so
+much better than he, who loved her so much more honestly; and this memory
+had helped her in a way. She had tried to be true to it, that dead, lost
+thing, of which this man who came once a year to see her, and now, lying
+with his life at stake in the hospital, was the repellent ghost.
+
+"Ah, you will not see him die?" she urged.
+
+"It seems to move you greatly what happens to this man," he said, his
+determined dark eyes searching hers, for she baffled him. If she could
+feel so much for a "casual," why not a little more feeling for him?
+Suddenly, as he drew her eyes to him again, there came the conviction that
+they were full of feeling for him. They were sending a message, an
+appealing, passionate message, which told him more than he had ever heard
+from her or seen in her face before. Yes, she was his! Without a word
+spoken she had told him so. What, then, held her back? But women were a
+race by themselves, and he knew that he must wait till she chose to have
+him know what she had unintentionally conveyed but now.
+
+"Yes, I am moved," she continued, slowly. "Who can tell what this man
+might do with his life if it is saved! Don't you think of that? It isn't
+the importance of a life that's at stake; it's the importance of living;
+and we do not live alone, do we?"
+
+His mind was made up. "I will not, cannot promise anything till I have
+seen him. But I will go and see him, and I'll send you word later what I
+can do or not do. Will that satisfy you? If I cannot do it, I will come to
+say good-bye."
+
+Her face was set with suppressed feeling. She held out her hand to him
+impulsively, and was about to speak, but suddenly caught the hand away
+again from his thrilling grasp and, turning hurriedly, left the room. In
+the hall she met Father Bourassa.
+
+"Go with him to the hospital," she whispered, and disappeared through the
+doorway.
+
+Immediately after she had gone, a man came driving hard to bring Father
+Bourassa to visit a dying Catholic in the prairie, and it was Finden who
+accompanied Varley to the hospital, waited for him till his examination of
+the "casual" was concluded, and met him outside.
+
+"Can it be done?" he asked of Varley. "I'll take word to Father
+Bourassa."
+
+"It can be done--it will be done," answered Varley, absently. "I do not
+understand the man. He has been in a different sphere of life. He tried to
+hide it, but the speech--occasionally! I wonder."
+
+"You wonder if he's worth saving?"
+
+Varley shrugged his shoulders impatiently. "No; that's not what I meant."
+
+Finden smiled to himself. "Is it a difficult case?" he asked.
+
+"Critical and delicate; but it has been my specialty."
+
+"One of the local doctors couldn't do it, I suppose?"
+
+"They would be foolish to try."
+
+"And you are going away at sunrise to-morrow?"
+
+"Who told you that?" Varley's voice was abrupt, impatient.
+
+"I heard you say so--everybody knows it.... That's a bad man yonder,
+Varley." He jerked his thumb toward the hospital. "A terrible bad man,
+he's been. A gentleman once, and fell down--fell down hard. He's done more
+harm than most men. He's broken a woman's heart and spoiled her life, and,
+if he lives, there's no chance for her, none at all. He killed a man, and
+the law wants him; and she can't free herself without ruining him; and she
+can't marry the man she loves because of that villain yonder, crying for
+his life to be saved. By Josh and by Joan, but it's a shame, a dirty
+shame, it is!"
+
+Suddenly Varley turned and gripped his arm with fingers of steel.
+
+"His name--his real name?"
+
+"His name's Meydon--and a dirty shame it is, Varley."
+
+Varley was white. He had been leading his horse and talking to Finden. He
+mounted quickly now, and was about to ride away, but stopped short again.
+"Who knows--who knows the truth?" he asked.
+
+"Father Bourassa and me--no others," he answered. "I knew Meydon thirty
+years ago."
+
+There was a moment's hesitation, then Varley said, hoarsely, "Tell
+me--tell me all."
+
+When all was told, he turned his horse toward the wide waste of the
+prairie, and galloped away. Finden watched him till he was lost to view
+beyond the bluff.
+
+"Now, a man like that, you can't guess what he'll do," he said,
+reflectively. "He's a high-stepper, and there's no telling what
+foolishness will get hold of him. It'd be safer if he got lost on the
+prairie for twenty-four hours. He said that Meydon's only got twenty-four
+hours, if the trick isn't done! Well--"
+
+He took a penny from his pocket. "I'll toss for it. Heads he does it, and
+tails he doesn't."
+
+He tossed. It came down heads. "Well, there's one more fool in the world
+than I thought," he said, philosophically, as though he had settled the
+question; as though the man riding away into the prairie with a dark
+problem to be solved had told the penny what he meant to do.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Mrs. Meydon, Father Bourassa, and Finden stood in the little waiting-room
+of the hospital at Jansen, one at each window, and watched the wild
+thunderstorm which had broken over the prairie. The white heliographs of
+the elements flashed their warnings across the black sky, and the roaring
+artillery of the thunder came after, making the circle of prairie and tree
+and stream a theatre of anger and conflict. The streets of Jansen were
+washed with flood, and the green and gold things of garden and field and
+harvest crumbled beneath the sheets of rain.
+
+The faces at the window of the little room of the hospital, however, were
+but half-conscious of the storm; it seemed only an accompaniment of their
+thoughts, to typify the elements of tragedy surrounding them.
+
+For Varley there had been but one thing to do. A life might be saved, and
+it was his duty to save it. He had ridden back from the prairie as the sun
+was setting the night before, and had made all arrangements at the
+hospital, giving orders that Meydon should have no food whatever till the
+operation was performed the next afternoon, and nothing to drink except a
+little brandy-and-water.
+
+The operation was performed successfully, and Varley had issued from the
+operating-room with the look of a man who had gone through an ordeal which
+had taxed his nerve to the utmost, to find Valerie Meydon waiting, with a
+piteous, dazed look in her eyes. But this look passed when she heard him
+say, "All right!"
+
+The words brought a sense of relief, for if he had failed, it would have
+seemed almost unbearable in the circumstances--the cup of trembling must
+be drunk to the dregs.
+
+Few words had passed between them, and he had gone, while she remained
+behind with Father Bourassa, till the patient should wake from the sleep
+into which he had fallen when Varley left.
+
+But within two hours they sent for Varley again, for Meydon was in evident
+danger. Varley had come, and had now been with the patient for some time.
+
+At last the door opened and Varley came in quickly. He beckoned to Mrs.
+Meydon and to Father Bourassa. "He wishes to speak with you," he said to
+her. "There is little time."
+
+Her eyes scarcely saw him, as she left the room and passed to where Meydon
+lay nerveless, but with wide-open eyes, waiting for her. The eyes closed,
+however, before she reached the bed. Presently they opened again, but the
+lids remained fixed. He did not hear what she said.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+In the little waiting-room, Finden said to Varley, "What happened?"
+
+"Food was absolutely forbidden, but he got it from another patient early
+this morning while the nurse was out for a moment. It has killed him."
+
+"'Twas the least he could do, but no credit's due him. It was to be. I'm
+not envying Father Bourassa nor her there with him."
+
+Varley made no reply. He was watching the receding storm with eyes which
+told nothing.
+
+Finden spoke once more, but Varley did not hear him. Presently the door
+opened and Father Bourassa entered. He made a gesture of the hand to
+signify that all was over.
+
+Outside, the sun was breaking through the clouds upon the Western prairie,
+and there floated through the evening air the sound of a child's voice
+singing beneath the trees that fringed the river:
+
+"Will you come back, darlin'? Never heed the pain and blightin',
+Never trouble that you're wounded, that you bear the scars of fightin';
+      Here's the luck o' Heaven to you,
+      Here's the hand of love will brew you
+The cup of peace--ah, darlin', will you come back home?"
+
+
+
+
+WATCHING THE RISE OF ORION
+
+
+"In all the wide border his steed was the best," and the name and fame of
+Terence O'Ryan were known from Strathcona to Qu'appelle. He had ambition
+of several kinds, and he had the virtue of not caring who knew of it. He
+had no guile, and little money; but never a day's work was too hard for
+him, and he took bad luck, when it came, with a jerk of the shoulder and a
+good-natured surprise on his clean-shaven face that suited well his wide
+gray eyes and large, luxurious mouth. He had an estate, half ranch, half
+farm, with a French-Canadian manager named Vigon, an old prospector who
+viewed every foot of land in the world with the eye of the discoverer.
+Gold, coal, iron, oil, he searched for them everywhere, making sure that
+sooner or later he would find them. Once Vigon had found coal. That was
+when he worked for a man called Constantine Jopp, and had given him great
+profit; but he, the discoverer, had been put off with a horse and a
+hundred dollars. He was now as devoted to Terence O'Ryan as he had been
+faithful to Constantine Jopp, whom he cursed waking and sleeping.
+
+In his time O'Ryan had speculated, and lost; he had floated a coal-mine,
+and "been had"; he had run for the local legislature, had been elected,
+and then unseated for bribery committed by an agent; he had run races at
+Regina, and won--he had won for three years in succession; and this had
+kept him going and restored his finances when they were at their worst. He
+was, in truth, the best rider in the country, and, so far, was the owner
+also of the best three-year-old that the West had produced. He achieved
+popularity without effort. The West laughed at his enterprises and loved
+him; he was at once a public moral and a hero. It was a legend of the West
+that his forebears had been kings in Ireland like Brian Boroihme. He did
+not contradict this; he never contradicted anything. His challenge to all
+fun and satire and misrepresentation was, "What'll be the differ a hundred
+years from now!"
+
+He did not use this phrase, however, toward one experience--the advent of
+Miss Molly Mackinder, the heiress, and the challenge that reverberated
+through the West after her arrival. Philosophy deserted him then; he fell
+back on the primary emotions of mankind.
+
+A month after Miss Mackinder's arrival at La Touche a dramatic performance
+was given at the old fort, in which the officers of the Mounted Police
+took part, together with many civilians who fancied themselves. By that
+time the district had realized that Terry O'Ryan had surrendered to what
+they called "the laying on of hands" by Molly Mackinder. It was not
+certain, however, that the surrender was complete, because O'Ryan had been
+wounded before, and yet had not been taken captive altogether. His
+complete surrender seemed now more certain to the public because the lady
+had a fortune of two hundred thousand dollars, and that amount of money
+would be useful to an ambitious man in the growing West. It would, as Gow
+Johnson said, "Let him sit back and view the landscape o'er before he puts
+his ploughshare in the mud."
+
+There was an out-door scene in the play produced by the impetuous
+amateurs, and dialogue had been interpolated by three "imps of fame" at
+the suggestion of Constantine Jopp, one of the three, who bore malice
+toward O'Ryan, though this his colleagues did not know distinctly. The
+scene was a camp-fire--a starlit night, a colloquy between the three, upon
+which the hero of the drama, played by Terry O'Ryan, should break, after
+having, unknown to them, but in sight of the audience, overheard their
+kind intentions toward himself.
+
+The night came. When the curtain rose for the third act there was exposed
+a star-sown sky, in which the galaxy of Orion was shown with distinctness,
+each star sharply twinkling from the electric power behind--a pretty
+scene, evoking great applause. O'Ryan had never seen this back
+curtain--they had taken care that he should not--and, standing in the
+wings awaiting his cue, he was unprepared for the laughter of the
+audience, first low and uncertain, then growing, then insistent, and now a
+peal of ungovernable mirth, as one by one they understood the significance
+of the stars of Orion on the back curtain.
+
+O'Ryan got his cue, and came on to an outburst of applause which shook the
+walls. La Touche rose at him, among them Miss Molly Mackinder in the front
+row with the notables.
+
+He did not see the back curtain, or Orion blazing in the ultramarine blue.
+According to the stage directions, he was to steal along the trees at the
+wings, and listen to the talk of the men at the fire plotting against him,
+who were presently to pretend good comradeship to his face. It was a
+vigorous melodrama, with some touches of true Western feeling. After
+listening for a moment, O'Ryan was to creep up the stage again toward the
+back curtain, giving a cue for his appearance.
+
+When the hilarious applause at his entrance had somewhat subsided, the
+three took up their parable, but it was not the parable of the play. They
+used dialogue not in the original. It had a significance which the
+audience were not slow to appreciate, and went far to turn _The Sunburst
+Trail_ at this point into a comedy-farce. When this new dialogue began,
+O'Ryan could scarcely trust his ears or realize what was happening.
+
+"Ah, look," said Dicky Fergus at the fire, "as fine a night as I ever saw
+in the West! The sky's a picture. You could almost hand the stars down,
+they're so near."
+
+"What's that clump together on the right--what are they called in
+astronomy?" asked Constantine Jopp, with a leer.
+
+"Orion is the name--a beauty, ain't it?" answered Fergus.
+
+"I've been watching Orion rise," said the third--Holden was his name.
+"Many's the time I've watched Orion rising. Orion's the star for me. Say,
+he wipes 'em all out--right out. Watch him rising now."
+
+By a manipulation of the lights Orion moved up the back curtain slowly and
+blazed with light nearer the zenith. And La Touche had more than the worth
+of its money in this opening to the third act of the play. O'Ryan was a
+favorite, at whom La Touche loved to jeer, and the parable of the stars
+convulsed them.
+
+At the first words O'Ryan put a hand on himself and tried to grasp the
+meaning of it all, but his entrance and the subsequent applause had
+confused him. Presently, however, he turned to the back curtain, as Orion
+moved slowly up the heavens, and found the key to the situation. He
+gasped. Then he listened to the dialogue, which had nothing to do with
+"_The Sunburst Trail_."
+
+"What did Orion do, and why does he rise? Has he got to rise? Why was the
+gent called Orion in them far-off days?" asked Holden.
+
+"He did some hunting in his time--with a club," Fergus replied. "He kept
+making hits, he did. Orion was a spoiler. When he took the field there was
+no room for the rest of the race. Why does he rise? Because it is a habit.
+They could always get a rise out of Orion. The Athens _Eirenicon_ said
+that yeast might fail to rise, but touch the button and Orion would rise
+like a bird."
+
+At that instant the galaxy jerked up the back curtain again, and, when the
+audience could control itself, Constantine Jopp, grinning meanly, asked:
+
+"Why does he wear the girdle?"
+
+"It is not a girdle--it is a belt," was Dicky Fergus' reply. "The gods
+gave it to him because he was a favorite. There was a lady called
+Artemis--she was the last of them. But he went visiting with Eos, another
+lady of previous acquaintance, down at a place called Ortygia, and Artemis
+shot him dead with a shaft Apollo had given her; but she didn't marry
+Apollo neither. She laid Orion out on the sky, with his glittering belt
+around him. And Orion keeps on rising."
+
+"Will he ever stop rising?" asked Holden.
+
+Followed for the conspirators a disconcerting moment; for, when the
+laughter had subsided, a lazy voice came from the back of the hall, "He'll
+stop long enough to play with Apollo a little, I guess."
+
+It was Gow Johnson who had spoken, and no man knew Terry O'Ryan better, or
+could gauge more truly the course he would take. He had been in many an
+enterprise, many a brush with O'Ryan, and his friendship would bear any
+strain.
+
+O'Ryan recovered himself from the moment he saw the back curtain, and he
+did not find any fun in the thing. It took a hold on him out of all
+proportion to its importance. He realized that he had come to the parting
+of the ways in his life. It suddenly came upon him that something had been
+lacking in him in the past, and that his want of success in many things
+had not been wholly due to bad luck. He had been eager, enterprising, a
+genius almost at seeing good things; and yet others had reaped where he
+had sown. He had believed too much in his fellow-man. For the first time
+in his life he resented the friendly, almost affectionate satire of his
+many friends. It was amusing, it was delightful; but down beneath it all
+there was a little touch of ridicule. He had more brains than any of them,
+and he had known it in a way; he had led them sometimes, too, as on raids
+against cattle-stealers, and in a brush with half-breeds and Indians; as
+when he stood for the legislature; but he felt now for the first time that
+he had not made the most of himself, that there was something hurting to
+self-respect in this prank played upon him. When he came to that point his
+resentment went higher. He thought of Molly Mackinder, and he heard all
+too acutely the vague veiled references to her in their satire. By the
+time Gow Johnson spoke he had mastered himself, however, and had made up
+his mind. He stood still for a moment.
+
+"Now, please, my cue," he said, quietly and satirically from the trees
+near the wings.
+
+He was smiling, but Gow Johnson's prognostication was right; and ere long
+the audience realized that he was right. There was standing before them
+not the Terry O'Ryan they had known, but another. He threw himself fully
+into his part--a young rancher made deputy-sheriff, who by the occasional
+exercise of his duty had incurred the hatred of a small floating
+population that lived by fraud, violence, and cattle-stealing. The
+conspiracy was to raid his cattle, to lure him to pursuit, to ambush him,
+and kill him. Terry now played the part with a naturalness and force which
+soon lifted the play away from the farcical element introduced into it by
+those who had interpolated the gibes at himself. They had gone a step too
+far.
+
+"He's going large," said Gow Johnson, as the act drew near its close and
+the climax neared where O'Ryan was to enter upon a physical struggle with
+his assailants. "His blood's up. There'll be hell to pay."
+
+To Gow Johnson the play had instantly become real, and O'Ryan an injured
+man at bay, the victim of the act--not of the fictitious characters of the
+play, but of the three men, Fergus, Holden, and Constantine Jopp, who had
+planned the discomfiture of O'Ryan; and he felt that the victim's
+resentment would fall heaviest on Constantine Jopp, the bully, an old
+schoolmate of Terry's.
+
+Jopp was older than O'Ryan by three years, which in men is little, but in
+boys, at a certain time of life, is much. It means, generally, weight and
+height, an advantage in a scrimmage. Constantine Jopp had been the plague
+and tyrant of O'Ryan's boyhood. He was now a big, leering fellow, with
+much money of his own, got chiefly from the coal discovered on his place
+by Vigon, the half-breed French-Canadian. He had a sense of dark and
+malicious humor, a long, horse-like face, with little, beady eyes, and a
+huge frame.
+
+Again and again had Terry fought him as a boy at school, and often he had
+been badly whipped, but he had never refused the challenge of an insult
+when he was twelve and Jopp fifteen. The climax to their enmity at school
+had come one day when Terry was seized with a cramp while bathing, and
+after having gone down twice was rescued by Jopp, who dragged him out by
+the hair of the head. He had been restored to consciousness on the bank
+and carried to his home, where he lay ill for days. During the course of
+the slight fever which followed the accident his hair was cut close to his
+head. Impetuous always, his first thought was to go and thank Constantine
+Jopp for having saved his life. As soon as he was able he went forth to
+find his rescuer, and met him suddenly on turning a corner of the street.
+Before he could stammer out the gratitude that was in his heart, Jopp,
+eying him with a sneering smile, said, drawlingly:
+
+"If you'd had your hair cut like that I couldn't have got you out, could
+I? Holy, what a sight! Next time I'll take you by the scruff, putty
+face--bah!"
+
+That was enough for Terry. He had swallowed the insult, stuttered his
+thanks to the jeering laugh of the lank bully, and had gone home and cried
+in shame and rage.
+
+It was the one real shadow in his life. Ill-luck and good luck had been
+taken with an equable mind; but the fact that he must, while he lived, own
+the supreme debt of his life to a boy and afterward to a man whom he hated
+by instinct was a constant cloud on him. Jopp owned him. For some years
+they did not meet, and then at last they again were thrown together in the
+West, when Jopp settled at La Touche. It was gall and wormwood to Terry,
+but he steeled himself to be friendly, although the man was as great a
+bully as the boy, as offensive in mind and character; but withal acute and
+able in his way, and with a reputation for commercial sharpness which
+would be called by another name in a different civilization. They met
+constantly, and O'Ryan always put a hand on himself, and forced himself to
+be friendly. Once when Jopp became desperately ill there had been--though
+he fought it down, and condemned himself in every term of reproach--a
+sense of relief in the thought that perhaps his ancient debt would now be
+cancelled. It had gone on so long. And Constantine Jopp had never lost an
+opportunity of vexing him, of turturing him, of giving veiled thrusts,
+which he knew O'Ryan could not resent. It was the constant pin-prick of a
+mean soul, who had an advantage of which he could never be
+dispossessed--unless the ledger was balanced in some inscrutable way.
+
+Apparently bent on amusement only, and hiding his hatred from his
+colleagues, Jopp had been the instigator and begetter of the huge joke of
+the play; but it was the brains of Dick Fergus which had carried it out,
+written the dialogue, and planned the electric appliances of the back
+curtain--for he was an engineer and electrician. Neither he nor Holden had
+known the old antipathy of Terry and Constantine Jopp. There was only one
+man who knew the whole truth, and that was Gow Johnson, to whom Terry had
+once told all. At the last moment Fergus had interpolated certain points
+in the dialogue which were not even included at rehearsal. These referred
+to Apollo. He had a shrewd notion that Jopp had an idea of marrying Molly
+Mackinder if he could, cousins though they were; and he was also aware
+that Jopp, knowing Molly's liking for Terry, had tried to poison her mind
+against him, through suggestive gossip about a little widow at Jansen,
+thirty miles away. He had in so far succeeded that, on the very day of the
+performance, Molly had declined to be driven home from the race-course by
+Terry, despite the fact that Terry had won the chief race and owned the
+only dog-cart in the West.
+
+As the day went on, Fergus realized, as had Gow Johnson, that Jopp had
+raised a demon. The air was electric. The play was drawing near to its
+climax--an attempt to capture the deputy-sheriff, tie him to a tree, and
+leave him bound and gagged alone in the waste. There was a glitter in
+Terry's eyes, belying the lips which smiled in keeping with the character
+he presented. A look of harshness was stamped on his face, and the
+outlines of the temples were as sharp as the chin was set and the voice
+slow and penetrating.
+
+Molly Mackinder's eyes were riveted on him. She sat very still, her hands
+clasped in her lap, watching his every move. Instinct told her that Terry
+was holding himself in; that some latent fierceness and iron force in him
+had emerged into life; and that he meant to have revenge on Constantine
+Jopp one way or another, and that soon; for she had heard the rumor flying
+through the hall that her cousin was the cause of the practical joke just
+played. From hints she had had from Constantine that very day she knew
+that the rumor was the truth; and she recalled now with shrinking dislike
+the grimace accompanying the suggestion. She had not resented it then,
+being herself angry with Terry because of the little widow at Jansen.
+
+Presently the silence in the hall became acute; the senses of the audience
+were strained to the utmost. The acting before them was more realistic
+than anything they had ever seen, or were ever likely to see again in La
+Touche. All three conspirators, Fergus, Holden, and Jopp, realized that
+O'Ryan's acting had behind it an animal anger which transformed him. When
+he looked into their eyes it was with a steely directness harder and
+fiercer than was observed by the audience. Once there was an occasion for
+O'Ryan to catch Fergus by the arm, and Fergus winced from the grip. When
+standing in the wings with Terry he ventured to apologize playfully for
+the joke, but Terry made no answer; and once again he had whispered
+good-naturedly as they stood together on the stage; but the reply had been
+a low, scornful laugh. Fergus realized that a critical moment was at hand.
+The play provided for some dialogue between Jopp and Terry, and he
+observed with anxiety that Terry now interpolated certain phrases meant to
+warn Constantine, and to excite him to anger also.
+
+The moment came upon them sooner than the text of the play warranted.
+O'Ryan deliberately left out several sentences, and gave a later cue, and
+the struggle for his capture was precipitated. Terry meant to make the
+struggle real. So thrilling had been the scene that to an extent the
+audience was prepared for what followed; but they did not grasp the full
+reality--that the play was now only a vehicle for a personal issue of a
+desperate character. No one had ever seen O'Ryan angry; and now that the
+demon of rage was on him, directed by a will suddenly grown to its full
+height, they saw not only a powerful character in a powerful melodrama,
+but a man of wild force. When the three desperadoes closed in on O'Ryan,
+and, with a blow from the shoulder which was not a pretence, he sent
+Holden into a far corner gasping for breath and moaning with pain, the
+audience broke out into wild cheering. It was superb acting, they thought.
+As most of them had never seen the play, they were not surprised when
+Holden did not again join the attack on the deputy-sheriff. Those who did
+know the drama--among them Molly Mackinder--became dismayed, then
+anxious.
+
+Fergus and Jopp knew well from the blow O'Ryan had given that, unless they
+could drag him down, the end must be disaster to some one. They were
+struggling with him for personal safety now. The play was forgotten,
+though mechanically O'Ryan and Fergus repeated the exclamations and the
+few phrases belonging to the part. Jopp was silent, fighting with a malice
+which belongs to only half-breed, or half-bred, natures; and from far back
+in his own nature the distant Indian strain in him was working in savage
+hatred. The two were desperately hanging onto O'Ryan like pumas on a
+grizzly, when suddenly, with a twist he had learned from Ogami the Jap on
+the Smoky River, the slim Fergus was slung backward to the ground with the
+tendons of his arm strained and the arm itself useless for further work.
+There remained now Constantine Jopp, heavier and more powerful than
+O'Ryan.
+
+For O'Ryan the theatre, the people, disappeared. He was a boy again on the
+village-green, with the bully before him who had tortured his young days.
+He forgot the old debt to the foe who saved his life; he forgot everything
+except that once again, as of old, Constantine Jopp was fighting him, with
+long, strong arms trying to bring him to the ground. Jopp's superior
+height gave him an advantage in a close grip; the strength of his
+gorilla-like arms was difficult to withstand. Both were forgetful of the
+world, and the two other injured men, silent and awed, were watching the
+fight, in which one of them, at least, was powerless to take part.
+
+The audience was breathless. Most now saw the grim reality of the scene
+before them; and when at last O'Ryan's powerful right hand got a grip upon
+the throat of Jopp, and they saw the grip tighten, tighten, and Jopp's
+face go from red to purple, a hundred people gasped. Excited men made as
+though to move toward the stage; but the majority still believed that it
+all belonged to the play, and shouted, "Sit down!"
+
+Suddenly the voice of Gow Johnson was heard: "Don't kill him--let go,
+boy!"
+
+The voice rang out with sharp anxiety, and pierced the fog of passion and
+rage in which O'Ryan was moving. He realized what he was doing, the real
+sense of it came upon him. Suddenly he let go the lank throat of his
+enemy, and, by a supreme effort, flung him across the stage, where Jopp
+lay resting on his hands, his bleared eyes looking at Terry with the fear
+and horror still in them which had come with that tightening grip on his
+throat.
+
+Silence fell suddenly on the theatre. The audience was standing. A woman
+sobbed somewhere in a far corner, but the rest were dismayed and
+speechless. A few steps before them all was Molly Mackinder, white and
+frightened, but in her eyes was a look of understanding as she gazed at
+Terry. Breathing hard, Terry stood still in the middle of the stage, the
+red fog not yet gone out of his eyes, his hands clasped at his side,
+vaguely realizing the audience again. Behind him was the back curtain, in
+which the lights of Orion twinkled aggressively. The three men who had
+attacked him were still where he had thrown them.
+
+The silence was intense, the strain oppressive. But now a drawling voice
+came from the back of the hall.
+
+"Are you watching the rise of Orion?" it said. It was the voice of Gow
+Johnson.
+
+The strain was broken; the audience dissolved in laughter; but it was not
+hilarious; it was the nervous laughter of relief, touched off by a native
+humor always present in the dweller of the prairie.
+
+"I beg your pardon," said Terry, quietly and abstractedly, to the
+audience.
+
+And the scene-shifter bethought himself and let down the curtain.
+
+The fourth act was not played that night. The people had had more than the
+worth of their money. In a few moments the stage was crowded with people
+from the audience, but both Jopp and O'Ryan had disappeared.
+
+Among the visitors to the stage was Molly Mackinder. There was a meaning
+smile upon her face as she said to Dicky Fergus:
+
+"It was quite wonderful, wasn't it--like a scene out of the classics--the
+gladiators or something?"
+
+Fergus gave a wary smile as he answered: "Yes. I felt like saying '_Ave,
+Caesar, ave!_' and I watched to see Artemis drop her handkerchief."
+
+"She dropped it, but you were too busy to pick it up. It would have been a
+useful sling for your arm," she added, with thoughtful malice. "It seemed
+so real--you all acted so well, so appropriately. And how you keep it up!"
+she added, as he cringed when some one knocked against his elbow, hurting
+the injured tendons.
+
+Fergus looked at her meditatively before he answered. "Oh, I think we'll
+likely keep it up for some time," he rejoined, ironically.
+
+"Then the play isn't finished?" she added. "There is another act? Yes, I
+thought there was; the programme said four."
+
+"Oh yes, there's another act," he answered, "but it isn't to be played
+now; and I'm not in it."
+
+"No, I suppose you are not in it. You really weren't in the last act. Who
+will be in it?"
+
+Fergus suddenly laughed outright as he looked at Holden expostulating
+intently to a crowd of people round him. "Well, honor bright, I don't
+think there'll be anybody in it except little Conny Jopp and gentle Terry
+O'Ryan; and Conny mayn't be in it very long. But he'll be in it for a
+while, I guess. You see, the curtain came down in the middle of a
+situation, not at the end of it. The curtain has to rise again."
+
+"Perhaps Orion will rise again--you think so?" She laughed in satire; for
+Dicky Fergus had made love to her during the last three months with
+unsuppressed activity, and she knew him in his sentimental moments; which
+is fatal. It is fatal if, in a duet, one breathes fire and the other
+frost.
+
+"If you want my opinion," he said, in a lower voice, as they moved toward
+the door, while people tried to listen to them--"if you want it straight,
+I think Orion has risen--right up where shines the evening star--Oh, say,
+now," he broke off, "haven't you had enough fun out of me? I tell you, it
+was touch and go. He nearly broke my arm--would have done it, if I hadn't
+gone limp to him; and your cousin Conny Jopp, little Conny Jopp, was as
+near Kingdom Come as a man wants at his age. I saw an elephant go _must_
+once in India, and it was as like O'Ryan as putty is to dough. It isn't
+all over, either, for O'Ryan will forget and forgive, and Jopp won't. He's
+your cousin, but he's a sulker. If he has to sit up nights to do it, he'll
+try to get back on O'Ryan. He'll sit up nights, but he'll do it, if he
+can. And, whatever it is, it won't be pretty."
+
+Outside the door they met Gow Johnson, excitement in his eyes. He heard
+Fergus' last words.
+
+"He'll see Orion rising if he sits up nights," Gow Johnson said. "The game
+is with Terry--at last."
+
+Then he called to the dispersing, gossiping crowd: "Hold on--hold on, you
+people! I've got news for you. Folks, this is O'Ryan's night. It's his in
+the starry firmament. Look at him shine!" he cried, stretching out his arm
+toward the heavens, where the glittering galaxy hung near the zenith.
+"Terry O'Ryan--our O'Ryan--he's struck oil--on his ranch it's been struck.
+Old Vigon found it. Terry's got his own at last. O'Ryan's in it--in it
+alone. Now, let's hear the prairie-whisper!" he shouted, in a great,
+raucous voice. "Let's hear the prairie-whisper! What is it?"
+
+The crowd responded in a hoarse shout for O'Ryan and his fortune. Even the
+women shouted--all except Molly Mackinder. She was wondering if O'Ryan
+risen would be the same to her as O'Ryan rising. She got into her carriage
+with a sigh, though she said to the few friends with her:
+
+"If it's true, it's splendid. He deserves it, too. Oh, I'm glad--I'm so
+glad!" She laughed; but the laugh was a little hysterical.
+
+She was both glad and sorry. Yet as she drove home over the prairie she
+was silent. Far off in the east was a bright light. It was a bonfire built
+on O'Ryan's ranch, near where he had struck oil--struck it rich. The light
+grew and grew, and the prairie was alive with people hurrying toward it.
+La Touche should have had the news hours earlier, but the half-breed
+French-Canadian, Vigon, who had made the discovery, and had started for La
+Touche with the news, went suddenly off his head with excitement, and had
+ridden away into the prairie fiercely shouting his joy to an invisible
+world. The news had been brought in later by a farm-hand.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Terry O'Ryan had really struck oil, and his ranch was a scene of decent
+revelry, of which Gow Johnson was master. But the central figure of it
+all, the man who had, in truth, risen like a star, had become to La Touche
+all at once its notoriety as well as its favorite, its great man as well
+as its friend, he was nowhere to be found. He had been seen riding full
+speed into the prairie toward the Kourmash Wood, and the starlit night had
+swallowed him. Constantine Jopp had also disappeared; but at first no one
+gave that thought or consideration.
+
+As the night went on, however, a feeling began to stir which it is not
+good to rouse in frontier lands. It is sure to exhibit itself in forms
+more objective than are found in great populations where methods of
+punishment are various, and even when deadly are often refined. But
+society in new places has only limited resources, and is thrown back on
+primary ways and means. La Touche was no exception, and the keener
+spirits, to whom O'Ryan had ever been "a white man," and who so rejoiced
+in his good-luck now that they drank his health a hundred times in his own
+whiskey and cider, were simmering with desire for a public reproval of
+Constantine Jopp's conduct. Though it was pointed out to them by the
+astute Gow Johnson that Fergus and Holden had participated in the colossal
+joke of the play, they had learned indirectly also the whole truth
+concerning the past of the two men. They realized that Fergus and Holden
+had been duped by Jopp into the escapade. Their primitive sense of justice
+exonerated the humorists and arraigned the one malicious man. As the night
+wore on they decided on the punishment to be meted out by La Touche to the
+man who had not "acted on the square."
+
+Gow Johnson saw, too late, that he had roused a spirit as hard to appease
+as the demon roused in O'Ryan earlier in the evening. He would have
+enjoyed the _battue_ of punishment under ordinary circumstances; but he
+knew that Miss Molly Mackinder would be humiliated and indignant at the
+half-savage penalty they meant to exact. He had determined that O'Ryan
+should marry her; and this might be an obstruction in the path. It was
+true that O'Ryan now would be a rich man--one of the richest in the West,
+unless all signs failed; but, meanwhile, a union of fortunes would only be
+an added benefit. Besides, he had seen that O'Ryan was in earnest, and
+what O'Ryan wanted he himself wanted even more strongly. He was not
+concerned greatly for O'Ryan's absence. He guessed that Terry had ridden
+away into the night to work off the dark spirit that was on him, to have
+it out with himself. Gow Johnson was a philosopher. He was twenty years
+older than O'Ryan, and he had studied his friend as a pious monk his
+missal.
+
+He was right in his judgment. When Terry left the theatre he was like one
+in a dream, every nerve in his body at tension, his head aflame, his
+pulses throbbing. For miles he rode away into the waste along the northern
+trail, ever away from La Touche and his own home. He did not know of the
+great good-fortune that had come to him; and if, in this hour, he had
+known, he would not have cared. As he rode on and on remorse drew him into
+its grasp. Shame seized him that he had let passion be his master, that he
+had lost his self-control, had taken a revenge out of all proportion to
+the injury and insult to himself. It did not ease his mind that he knew
+Constantine Jopp had done the thing out of meanness and malice; for he was
+alive to-night in the light of the stars, with the sweet, crisp air
+blowing in his face, because of an act of courage on the part of his
+school-days' foe. He remembered now that, when he was drowning, he had
+clung to Jopp with frenzied arms and had endangered the bully's life also.
+The long torture of owing this debt to so mean a soul was on him still,
+was rooted in him; but suddenly, in the silent, searching night, some
+spirit whispered in his ear that this was the price which he must pay for
+his life saved to the world, a compromise with the Inexorable Thing. On
+the verge of oblivion and the end, he had been snatched back by relenting
+Fate, which requires something for something given when laws are overriden
+and doom defeated. Yes, the price he was meant to pay was gratitude to one
+of shrivelled soul and innate antipathy; and he had not been man enough to
+see the trial through to the end! With a little increased strain put upon
+his vanity and pride, he had run amuck. Like some heathen gladiator, he
+had ravaged in the ring. He had gone down into the basements of human life
+and there made a cockpit for his animal rage, till, in the contest, brain
+and intellect had been saturated by the fumes and sweat of fleshly fury.
+
+How quiet the night was, how soothing to the fevered mind and body, how
+the cool air laved the heated head and flushed the lungs of the rheum of
+passion! He rode on and on, farther and farther away from home, his back
+upon the scenes where his daily deeds were done. It was long past midnight
+before he turned his horse's head again homeward.
+
+Buried in his thoughts, now calm and determined, with a new life grown up
+in him, a new strength different from the mastering force which gave him a
+strength in the theatre like one in a delirium, he noticed nothing. He was
+only conscious of the omniscient night and its warm, penetrating
+friendliness; as, in a great trouble, when no words can be spoken, a cool,
+kind palm steals into the trembling hand of misery and stills it, gives it
+strength and life and an even pulse. He was now master in the house of his
+soul, and had no fear or doubt as to the future or as to his course.
+
+His first duty was to go to Constantine Jopp and speak his regret like a
+man. And after that it would be his duty to carry a double debt his life
+long for the life saved, for the wrong done. He owed an apology to La
+Touche, and he was scarcely aware that the native gentlemanliness in him
+had said through his fever of passion over the footlights, "I beg your
+pardon." In his heart he felt that he had offered a mean affront to every
+person present, to the town where his interests lay, where his heart lay.
+
+Where his heart lay--Molly Mackinder! He knew now that vanity had
+something to do, if not all to do, with his violent acts, and though there
+suddenly shot through his mind, as he rode back, a savage thrill at the
+remembrance of how he had handled the three, it was only a passing
+emotion. He was bent on putting himself right with Jopp and with La
+Touche. With the former his way was clear; he did not yet see his way as
+to La Touche. How would he be able to make the _amende honorable_ to La
+Touche?
+
+By-and-by he became somewhat less absorbed and enveloped by the comforting
+night. He saw the glimmer of red light afar, and vaguely wondered what it
+was. It was in the direction of O'Ryan's Ranch, but he thought nothing of
+it, because it burned steadily. It was probably a fire lighted by settlers
+trailing to the farther North. While the night wore on he rode as slowly
+back to the town as he had galloped from it like a centaur with a
+captive.
+
+Again and again Molly Mackinder's face came before him, but he resolutely
+shut it out of his thoughts. He felt that he had no right to think of her
+until he had "done the right thing" by Jopp and by La Touche. Yet the look
+in her face as the curtain came down, it was not that of one indifferent
+to him or to what he did. He neared the town half-way between midnight and
+morning. Almost unconsciously avoiding the main streets, he rode a
+roundabout way toward the little house where Constantine Jopp lived. He
+could hear loud noises in the streets, singing, and hoarse shouts. Then
+silence came, then shouts, and silence again. It was all quiet as he rode
+up to Jopp's house, standing on the outskirts of the town. There was a
+bright light in the window of a room.
+
+Jopp, then, was still up. He would not wait till to-morrow. He would do
+the right thing now. He would put things straight with his foe before he
+slept; he would do it at any sacrifice to his pride. He had conquered his
+pride.
+
+He dismounted, threw the bridle over a post, and, going into the garden,
+knocked gently at the door. There was no response. He knocked again, and
+listened intently. Now he heard a sound--like a smothered cry or groan. He
+opened the door quickly and entered. It was dark. In another room beyond
+was a light. From it came the same sound he had heard before, but louder;
+also there was a shuffling footstep. Springing forward to the half-open
+door, he pushed it wide, and met the terror-stricken eyes of Constantine
+Jopp--the same look that he had seen at the theatre when his hands were on
+Jopp's throat, but more ghastly.
+
+Jopp was bound to a chair by a lasso. Both arms were fastened to the
+chair-arm, and beneath them, on the floor, were bowls into which blood
+dropped from his punctured wrists.
+
+He had hardly taken it all in--the work of an instant--when he saw
+crouched in a corner, madness in his eyes, his half-breed Vigon. He
+grasped the situation in a flash. Vigon had gone mad, had lain in wait in
+Jopp's house, and, when the man he hated had seated himself in the chair,
+had lassoed him, bound him, and was slowly bleeding him to death.
+
+He had no time to think. Before he could act Vigon was upon him also,
+frenzy in his eyes, a knife clutched in his hand. Reason had fled, and he
+only saw in O'Ryan the frustrator of his revenge. He had watched the drip,
+drip from his victim's wrists with a dreadful joy.
+
+They were man and man, but O'Ryan found in this grisly contest a vaster
+trial of strength than in the fight upon the stage a few hours ago. The
+first lunge that Vigon made struck him on the tip of the shoulder and drew
+blood; but he caught the hand holding the knife in an iron grasp, while
+the half-breed, with superhuman strength, tried in vain for the long,
+brown throat of the man for whom he had struck oil. As they struggled and
+twisted, the eyes of the victim in the chair watched them with agonized
+emotions. For him it was life or death. He could not cry out--his mouth
+was gagged; but to O'Ryan his groans were like a distant echo of his own
+hoarse gasps as he fought his desperate fight. Terry was as one in an
+awful dream battling with vague, impersonal powers which slowly strangled
+his life, yet held him back in torture from the final surrender.
+
+For minutes they struggled. At last O'Ryan's strength came to a point of
+breaking, for Vigon was a powerful man, and to this was added a madman's
+energy. He felt that the end was coming. But all at once, through the
+groans of the victim in the chair, Terry became conscious of noises
+outside--such noises as he had heard before he entered the house, only
+nearer and louder. At the same time he heard a horse's hoofs, then a knock
+at the door, and a voice calling, "Jopp! Jopp!"
+
+He made a last desperate struggle, and shouted hoarsely.
+
+An instant later there were footsteps in the room, followed by a cry of
+fright and amazement.
+
+It was Gow Johnson. He had come to warn Constantine Jopp that a crowd were
+come to tar and feather him, and to get him away on his own horse.
+
+Now he sprang to the front door, called to the approaching crowd for help,
+then ran back to help O'Ryan. A moment later a dozen men had Vigon secure,
+and had released Constantine Jopp, now almost dead from loss of blood.
+
+As they took the gag from his mouth and tied their handkerchiefs round his
+bleeding wrists, Jopp sobbed aloud. His eyes were fixed on Terry O'Ryan.
+Terry met the look, and grasped the limp hand lying on the chair-arm.
+
+"I'm sorry, O'Ryan, I'm sorry for all I've done to you," Jopp sobbed. "I
+was a sneak, but I want to own it. I want to be square now. You can tar
+and feather me, if you like. I deserve it." He looked at the others. "I
+deserve it," he repeated.
+
+"That's what the boys had thought would be appropriate," said Gow Johnson,
+with a dry chuckle, and the crowd looked at one another and winked. The
+wink was kindly, however. "To own up and take your gruel!" was the easiest
+way to touch the men of the prairie.
+
+A half-hour later the roisterers, who had meant to carry Constantine Jopp
+on a rail, carried Terry O'Ryan on their shoulders through the town,
+against his will. As they passed the house where Miss Mackinder lived,
+some one shouted:
+
+"Are you watching the rise of Orion?"
+
+Many a time thereafter Terry O'Ryan and Molly Mackinder looked at the
+galaxy in the evening sky with laughter and with pride. It had played its
+part with Fate against Constantine Jopp and the little widow at Jansen. It
+had never shone so brightly as on the night when Vigon struck oil on
+O'Ryan's ranch. But Vigon had no memory of that. Such is the irony of
+life.
+
+
+
+
+THE ERROR OF THE DAY
+
+
+  The "Error of the Day" may be defined as the "The difference between
+  the distance or range which must be put upon the sights in order to
+  hit the target and the actual distance from the gun to the
+  target."--_Admiralty Note._
+
+  A great naval gun never fires twice alike. It varies from day to day,
+  and expert allowance has to be made in sighting every time it is
+  fired. Variations in atmosphere, condition of ammunition, and the
+  wear of the gun are the contributory causes to the ever-varying
+  "Error of the Day."
+
+"Say, ain't he pretty?"
+
+"A Jim-dandy--oh, my!"
+
+"What's his price in the open market?"
+
+"Thirty millions--I think not."
+
+Then was heard the voice of Billy Goat--his name was William Goatry----
+
+              "Out in the cold world, out in the street,
+              Nothing to wear and nothing to eat,
+              Fatherless, motherless, sadly I roam,
+              Child of misfortune, I'm driven from home."
+
+A loud laugh followed, for Billy Goat was a popular person at Kowatin, in
+the Saskatchewan country. He had an inimitable drollery, heightened by a
+cast in his eye, a very large mouth, and a round, good-humored face; also
+he had a hand and arm like iron, and was altogether a great man on a
+"spree."
+
+There had been a two days' spree at Kowatin, for no other reason than that
+there had been great excitement over the capture and subsequent escape of
+a prairie-rover who had robbed the contractor's money-chest at the
+rail-head on the Canadian Pacific Railroad. Forty miles from Kowatin he
+had been caught by, and escaped from, the tall, brown-eyed man with the
+hard-bitten face who leaned against the open window of the tavern, looking
+indifferently at the jeering crowd before him. For a police officer, he
+was not unpopular with them, but he had been a failure for once, and, as
+Billy Goat had said, "It tickled us to death to see a rider of the plains
+off his trolley--on the cold, cold ground, same as you and me."
+
+They did not undervalue him. If he had been less a man than he was, they
+would not have taken the trouble to cover him with their drunken ribaldry.
+He had scored off them in the past in just such sprees as this, when he
+had the power to do so, and used the power good-naturedly and quietly--but
+used it.
+
+Then he was Sergeant Foyle, of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police, on duty
+in a district as large as the United Kingdom. And he had no greater
+admirer than Billy Goat, who now reviled him. Not without cause, in a way,
+for he had reviled himself to this extent that, when the prairie-rover,
+Halbeck, escaped on the way to Prince Albert, after six months' hunt for
+him and a final capture in the Kowatin district, Foyle resigned the Force
+before the Commissioner could reproach him or call him to account. Usually
+so exact, so certain of his target, some care had not been taken, he had
+miscalculated, and there had been the Error of the Day. Whatever it was,
+it had seemed to him fatal; and he had turned his face from the
+barrack-yard.
+
+Then he had made his way to the Happy Land Hotel at Kowatin, to begin life
+as "a free and independent gent on the loose," as Billy Goat had said. To
+resign had seemed extreme; because, though the Commissioner was vexed at
+Halbeck's escape, Foyle was the best non-commissioned officer in the
+Force. He had frightened horse-thieves and bogus land-agents and
+speculators out of the country; had fearlessly tracked down a criminal or
+a band of criminals when the odds were heavy against him. He carried on
+his cheek the scars of two bullets, and there was one white lock in his
+brown hair where an arrow had torn the scalp away as, alone, he drove into
+the Post a score of Indians, fresh from raiding the cattle of an immigrant
+trailing north.
+
+Now he was out of work, or so it seemed; he had stepped down from his
+scarlet-coated dignity, from the place of guardian and guide to
+civilization, into the idleness of a tavern stoop.
+
+As the little group swayed round him, and Billy Goat started another song,
+Foyle roused himself as though to move away--he was waiting for the
+mail-stage to take him south--
+
+           "Oh, father, dear father, come home with me now,
+             The clock in the steeple strikes one;
+           You said you were coming right home from the shop
+             As soon as your day's work was done.
+                 Come home--come home--"
+
+The song arrested him, and he leaned back against the window again. A
+curious look came into his eyes, a look that had nothing to do with the
+acts of the people before him. It was searching into a scene beyond this
+bright sunlight and the far green-brown grass, and the little oasis of
+trees in the distance marking a homestead, and the dust of the
+wagon-wheels out on the trail beyond the grain-elevator--beyond the blue
+horizon's rim, quivering in the heat, and into regions where this crisp,
+clear, life-giving, life-saving air never blew.
+
+           "You said you were coming right home from the shop
+             As soon as your day's work was done.
+                 Come home--come home--"
+
+He remembered when he had first heard this song in a play called _Ten
+Nights in a Bar-Room_, many years before, and how it had wrenched his
+heart and soul, and covered him with a sudden cloud of shame and anger.
+For his father had been a drunkard, and his brother had grown up a
+drunkard, that brother whom he had not seen for ten years until--until--
+
+He shuddered, closed his eyes, as though to shut out something that the
+mind saw. He had had a rough life, he had become inured to the seamy side
+of things--there was a seamy side even in this clean, free, wide land; and
+he had no sentimentality; though something seemed to hurt and shame him
+now.
+
+                 "As soon as your day's work was done.
+                       Come home--come home--"
+
+The crowd was uproarious. The exhilaration had become a kind of delirium.
+Men were losing their heads; there was an element of irresponsibility in
+the new outbreak likely to breed some violent act, which every man of them
+would lament when sober again.
+
+Nettlewood Foyle watched the dust rising from the wheels of the stage,
+which had passed the elevator and was nearing the Prairie Home Hotel, far
+down the street. He would soon leave behind him this noisy ribaldry of
+which he was the centre. He tossed his cheroot away. Suddenly he heard a
+low voice behind him.
+
+"Why don't you hit out, sergeant?" it said.
+
+He started almost violently, and turned round. Then his face flushed, his
+eyes blurred with feeling and deep surprise, and his lips parted in a
+whispered exclamation and greeting.
+
+A girl's face from the shade of the sitting-room was looking out at him,
+half smiling, but with heightened color and a suppressed agitation. The
+girl was not more than twenty-five, graceful, supple, and strong. Her chin
+was dimpled; across her right temple was a slight scar. She had eyes of a
+wonderful deep blue; they seemed to swim with light. As Foyle gazed at her
+for a moment dumfounded, with a quizzical suggestion and smiling still a
+little more, she said:
+
+"You used to be a little quicker, Nett." The voice appeared to attempt
+unconcern; but it quivered from a force of feeling underneath. It was so
+long since she had seen him.
+
+He was about to reply, but, at the instant, a reveller pushed him with a
+foot behind the knees so that they were sprung forward. The crowd
+laughed--all save Billy Goat, who knew his man.
+
+Like lightning, and with cold fury in his eyes, Foyle caught the tall
+cattleman by the forearm, and, with a swift, dexterous twist, had the
+fellow in his power.
+
+"Down--down to your knees, you skunk!" he said, in a low, fierce voice.
+
+The knees of the big man bent--Foyle had not taken lessons of Ogami, the
+Jap, for nothing--they bent, and the cattleman squealed, so intense was
+the pain. It was break or bend; and he bent--to the ground and lay there.
+Foyle stood over him for a moment, a hard light in his eyes, and then, as
+if bethinking himself, he looked at the other roisterers and said:
+
+"There's a limit, and he reached it. Your mouths are your own, and you can
+blow off to suit your fancy, but if any one thinks I'm a tame coyote to be
+poked with a stick--!" He broke off, stooped over, and helped the man
+before him to his feet. The arm had been strained, and the big fellow
+nursed it.
+
+"Hell, but you're a twister!" the cattleman said, with a grimace of pain.
+
+Billy Goat was a gentleman, after his kind, and he liked Sergeant Foyle
+with a great liking. He turned to the crowd and spoke.
+
+"Say, boys, this mine's worked out. Let's leave the Happy Land to Foyle.
+Boys, what is he--what--is--he? What--is--Sergeant Foyle--boys?"
+
+The roar of the song they all knew came in reply, as Billy Goat waved his
+arms about like the wild leader of a wild orchestra:
+
+    "Sergeant Foyle, oh, he's a knocker from the West,
+      He's a chase-me-Charley, come-and-kiss-me tiger from the zoo;
+    He's a dandy on the pinch, and he's got a double cinch
+      On the gent that's going careless, and he'll soon cinch you:
+      And he'll soon--and he'll soon--cinch you!"
+
+Foyle watched them go, dancing, stumbling, calling back at him, as they
+moved toward the Prairie Home Hotel:
+
+              "And he'll soon--and he'll soon--cinch you!"
+
+His under-lip came out, his eyes half closed, as he watched them. "I've
+done my last cinch. I've done my last cinch," he murmured.
+
+Then, suddenly, the look in his face changed, the eyes swam as they had
+done a minute before at the sight of the girl in the room behind. Whatever
+his trouble was, that face had obscured it in a flash, and the pools of
+feeling far down in the depths of a lonely nature had been stirred.
+Recognition, memory, tenderness, desire swam in his face, made generous
+and kind the hard lines of the strong mouth. In an instant he had swung
+himself over the window-sill. The girl had drawn away now into a more
+shaded corner of the room, and she regarded him with a mingled anxiety and
+eagerness. Was she afraid of something? Did she fear that--she knew not
+quite what, but it had to do with a long ago?
+
+"It was time you hit out, Nett," she said, half shyly. "You're more
+patient than you used to be, but you're surer. My, that was a twist you
+gave him, Nett. Aren't you glad to see me?" she added, hastily and with an
+effort to hide her agitation.
+
+He reached out and took her hand with a strange shyness and a
+self-consciousness which was alien to his nature. The touch of her hand
+thrilled him. Their eyes met. She dropped hers. Then he gathered himself
+together. "Glad to see you? Of course, of course, I'm glad. You stunned
+me, Jo. Why, do you know where you are? You're a thousand miles from home.
+I can't get it through my head, not really. What brings you here? It's ten
+years--ten years since I saw you, and you were only fifteen, but a fifteen
+that was as good as twenty."
+
+He scanned her face closely. "What's that scar on your forehead, Jo? You
+hadn't that--then."
+
+"I ran up against something," she said, evasively, her eyes glittering,
+"and it left that scar. Does it look so bad?"
+
+"No, you'd never notice it, if you weren't looking close as I am. You see,
+I knew your face so well ten years ago."
+
+He shook his head with a forced kind of smile. It became him, however, for
+he smiled rarely; and the smile was like a lantern turned on his face; it
+gave light and warmth to its quiet strength--or hardness.
+
+"You were always quizzing," she said, with an attempt at a laugh--"always
+trying to find things out. That's why you made them reckon with you out
+here. You always could see behind things; always would have your own way;
+always were meant to be a success."
+
+She was beginning to get control of herself again, was trying hard to keep
+things on the surface. "You were meant to succeed--you had to," she
+added.
+
+"I've been a failure--a dead failure," he answered, slowly. "So they say.
+So they said. You heard them, Jo."
+
+He jerked his head toward the open window.
+
+"Oh, those drunken fools!" she exclaimed, indignantly, and her face
+hardened. "How I hate drink! It spoils everything."
+
+There was silence for a moment. They were both thinking of the same
+thing--_of the same man_. He repeated a question.
+
+"What brings you out here, Jo?" he asked, gently.
+
+"Dorland," she answered, her face setting into determination and anxiety.
+
+His face became pinched. "Dorl!" he said, heavily. "What for, Jo? What do
+you want with Dorl?"
+
+"When Cynthy died she left her five hundred dollars a year to the baby,
+and--"
+
+"Yes, yes, I know. Well, Jo?"
+
+"Well, it was all right for five years--Dorland paid it in; but for five
+years he hasn't paid anything. He's taken it, stolen it from his own child
+by his own honest wife. I've come to get it--anyway, to stop him from
+doing it any more. His own child--it puts murder in my heart, Nett! I
+could kill him."
+
+He nodded grimly. "That's likely. And you've kept Dorl's child with your
+own money all these years?"
+
+"I've got four hundred dollars a year, Nett, you know; and I've been
+dressmaking--they say I've got taste," she added, with a whimsical smile.
+
+Nett nodded his head. "Five years. That's twenty-five hundred dollars he's
+stolen from his own child. It's eight years old now, isn't it?"
+
+"Bobby is eight and a half," she answered.
+
+"And his schooling, and his clothing, and everything; and you have to pay
+for it all?"
+
+"Oh, I don't mind, Nett; it isn't that. Bobby is Cynthy's child, and I
+love him--love him; but I want him to have his rights. Dorl must give up
+his hold on that money--or--"
+
+He nodded gravely. "Or you'll set the law on him?"
+
+"It's one thing or the other. Better to do it now when Bobby is young and
+can't understand."
+
+"Or read the newspapers," he commented, thoughtfully.
+
+"I don't think I've a hard heart," she continued, "but I'd like to punish
+him, if it wasn't that he's your brother, Nett, and if it wasn't for
+Bobby. Dorland was dreadfully cruel, even to Cynthy."
+
+"How did you know he was up here?" he asked.
+
+"From the lawyer that pays over the money. Dorland has had it sent out
+here to Kowatin this two years. And he sent word to the lawyer a month ago
+that he wanted it to get here as usual. The letter left the same day as I
+did, and it got here yesterday with me, I suppose. He'll be after
+it--perhaps to-day. He wouldn't let it wait long, Dorl wouldn't."
+
+Foyle started. "To-day--to-day--"
+
+There was a gleam in his eyes, a setting of the lips, a line sinking into
+the forehead between the eyes.
+
+"I've been watching for him all day, and I'll watch till he comes. I'm
+going to say some things to him that he won't forget. I'm going to get
+Bobby's money, or have the law to do it--unless you think I'm a brute,
+Nett." She looked at him wistfully.
+
+"That's all right. Don't worry about me, Jo. He's my brother, but I know
+him--I know him through and through. He's done everything that a man can
+do and not be hanged. A thief, a drunkard, and a brute--and he killed a
+man out here," he added, hoarsely. "I found it out myself--myself. It was
+murder."
+
+Suddenly, as he looked at her, an idea seemed to flash into his mind. He
+came very near and looked at her closely. Then he reached over and almost
+touched the scar on her forehead.
+
+"Did he do that, Jo?"
+
+For an instant she was silent and looked down at the floor. Presently she
+raised her eyes, her face suffused. Once or twice she tried to speak, but
+failed. At last she gained courage, and said:
+
+"After Cynthy's death I kept house for him for a year, taking care of
+little Bobby. I loved Bobby so--he has Cynthy's eyes. One day Dorland--oh,
+Nett, of course I oughtn't to have stayed there--I know it now; but I was
+only sixteen, and what did I understand! And my mother was dead. One
+day--oh, please, Nett, you can guess. He said something to me. I made him
+leave the house. Before I could make plans what to do, he came back mad
+with drink. I went for Bobby, to get out of the house, but he caught hold
+of me. I struck him in the face, and he threw me against the edge of the
+open door. It made the scar."
+
+Foyle's face was white. "Why did you never write and tell me that, Jo? You
+know that I--" He stopped suddenly.
+
+"You had gone out of our lives down there. I didn't know where you were
+for a long time; and then--then it was all right about Bobby and me,
+except that Bobby didn't get the money that was his. But now--"
+
+Foyle's voice was hoarse and low. "He made that scar, and he--and you only
+sixteen--Oh, my God!"
+
+Suddenly his face reddened, and he choked with shame and anger. "And he's
+my brother!" was all that he could say.
+
+"Do you see him up here ever?" she asked, pityingly.
+
+"I never saw him till a week ago." A moment, then he added, "The letter
+wasn't to be sent here in his own name, was it?"
+
+She nodded. "Yes, in his own name, Dorland W. Foyle. Didn't he go by that
+name when you saw him?"
+
+There was an oppressive silence, in which she saw that something moved him
+strangely, and then he answered, "No, he was going by the name of
+Halbeck--Hiram Halbeck."
+
+The girl gasped. Then the whole thing burst upon her. "Hiram Halbeck!
+Hiram Halbeck, the thief--I read it all in the papers--the thief that you
+caught, and that got away. And you've left the Mounted Police because of
+it--oh, Nett!" Her eyes were full of tears, her face was drawn and gray.
+
+He nodded. "I didn't know who he was till I arrested him," he said. "Then,
+afterward, I thought of his child, and let him get away; and for my poor
+old mother's sake. She never knew how bad he was, even as a boy. But I
+remember how he used to steal and drink the brandy from her bedside, when
+she had the fever. She never knew the worst of him. But I let him away in
+the night, Jo, and I resigned, and they thought that Halbeck had beaten
+me, had escaped. Of course I couldn't stay in the Force, having done that.
+But, by the heaven above us, if I had him here now I'd do the thing--do
+it, so help me God!"
+
+"Why should you ruin your life for him?" she said, with an outburst of
+indignation. All that was in her heart welled up in her eyes at the
+thought of what Foyle was. "You must not do it. You shall not do it. _He_
+must pay for his wickedness, not you. It would be a sin. You and what
+becomes of you mean so much." Suddenly, with a flash of purpose, she
+added, "He will come for that letter, Nett. He would run any kind of risk
+to get a dollar. He will come here for that letter--perhaps to-day."
+
+He shook his head moodily, oppressed by the trouble that was on him. "He's
+not likely to venture here, after what's happened."
+
+"You don't know him as well as I do, Nett. He is so vain he'd do it, just
+to show that he could. He'd probably come in the evening. Does any one
+know him here? So many people pass through Kowatin every day. Has any one
+seen him?"
+
+"Only Billy Goatry," he answered, working his way to a solution of the
+dark problem. "Only Billy Goatry knows him. The fellow that led the
+singing--that was Goatry."
+
+"There he is now," he added, as Billy Goat passed the window.
+
+She came and laid a hand on his arm. "We've got to settle things with
+him," she said. "If Dorl comes, Nett--"
+
+There was silence for a moment, then he caught her hand in his and held
+it. "If he comes, leave him to me, Jo. You will leave him to me?" he
+added, anxiously.
+
+"Yes," she answered. "You'll do what's right--by Bobby?"
+
+"And by Dorl, too," he replied, strangely.
+
+There were loud footsteps without.
+
+"It's Goatry," said Foyle. "You stay here. I'll tell him everything. He's
+all right; he's a true friend. He'll not interfere."
+
+The handle of the door turned slowly. "You keep watch on the post-office,
+Jo," he added.
+
+Goatry came round the opening door with a grin.
+
+"Hope I don't intrude," he said, stealing a half-leering look at the girl.
+As soon as he saw her face, however, he straightened himself up and took
+on different manners. He had not been so intoxicated as he had made out,
+and he seemed only "mellow" as he stood before them, with his corrugated
+face and queer, quaint look, the eye with the cast in it blinking faster
+than the other.
+
+"It's all right, Goatry," said Foyle. "This lady is one of my family from
+the East."
+
+"Goin' on by stage?" Goatry said, vaguely, as they shook hands.
+
+She did not reply, for she was looking down the street, and presently she
+started as she gazed. She laid a hand suddenly on Foyle's arm.
+
+"See--he's come," she said, in a whisper, and as though not realizing
+Goatry's presence. "He's come."
+
+Goatry looked, as well as Foyle. "Halbeck--the devil!" he said.
+
+Foyle turned to him. "Stand by, Goatry. I want you to keep a shut mouth.
+I've work to do."
+
+Goatry held out his hand. "I'm with you. If you get him this time, clamp
+him, clamp him like a tooth in a harrow."
+
+Halbeck had stopped his horse at the post-office door. Dismounting, he
+looked quickly round, then drew the reins over the horse's head, letting
+them trail, as is the custom of the West.
+
+A few swift words passed between Goatry and Foyle.
+
+"I'll do this myself, Jo," he whispered to the girl presently. "Go into
+another room. I'll bring him here."
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+In another minute Goatry was leading the horse away from the post-office,
+while Foyle stood waiting quietly at the door. The departing footsteps of
+the horse brought Halbeck swiftly to the doorway, with a letter in his
+hand.
+
+"Hi, there, you damned sucker!" he called after Goatry, and then saw Foyle
+waiting.
+
+"What the hell--!" he said, fiercely, his hand on something in his
+hip-pocket.
+
+"Keep quiet, Dorl. I want to have a little talk with you. Take your hand
+away from that gun--take it away!" he added, with a meaning not to be
+misunderstood.
+
+Halbeck knew that one shout would have the town on him, and he did not
+know what card his brother was going to play. He let his arm drop to his
+side. "What's your game? What do you want?" he asked, surlily.
+
+"Come over to the Happy Land Hotel," Foyle answered, and in the light of
+what was in his mind his words had a grim irony.
+
+With a snarl Halbeck stepped out. Goatry, who had handed the horse over to
+the hostler, watched them coming.
+
+"Why did I never notice the likeness before?" Goatry said to himself.
+"But, gosh! what a difference in the men. Foyle's going to double cinch
+him this time, I guess."
+
+He followed them inside the hall of the Happy Land. When they stepped into
+the sitting-room, he stood at the door waiting. The hotel was entirely
+empty, the roisterers at the Prairie Home having drawn off the idlers and
+spectators. The barman was nodding behind the bar, the proprietor was
+moving about in the backyard inspecting a horse. There was a cheerful
+warmth everywhere; the air was like an elixir; the pungent smell of a
+pine-tree at the door gave a kind of medicament to the indrawn breath. And
+to Billy Goat, who sometimes sang in the choir of a church not a hundred
+miles away--for the people agreed to forget his occasional sprees--there
+came, he knew not why, the words of a hymn he had sung only the preceding
+Sunday:
+
+                "As pants the hart for cooling streams,
+                  When heated in the chase--"
+
+The words kept ringing in his ears as he listened to the conversation
+inside the room--the partition was thin, the door thinner, and he heard
+much. Foyle had asked him not to intervene, but only to stand by and await
+the issue of this final conference. He meant, however, to take a hand in
+if he thought he was needed, and he kept his ear glued to the door. If he
+thought Foyle needed him--his fingers were on the handle of the door.
+
+"Now, hurry up! What do you want with me?" asked Halbeck of his brother.
+
+"Take your time," said ex-Sergeant Foyle, as he drew the blind
+three-quarters down, so that they could not be seen from the street.
+
+"I'm in a hurry, I tell you. I've got my plans. I'm going South. I've only
+just time to catch the Canadian Pacific three days from now, riding
+hard."
+
+"You're not going South, Dorl."
+
+"Where am I going, then?" was the sneering reply.
+
+"Not farther than the Happy Land."
+
+"What the devil's all this? You don't mean you're trying to arrest me
+again, after letting me go?"
+
+"You don't need to ask. You're my prisoner. You're my prisoner," he said,
+in a louder voice--"_until you free yourself_."
+
+"I'll do that damn quick, then," said the other, his hand flying to his
+hip.
+
+"Sit down," was the sharp rejoinder, and a pistol was in his face before
+he could draw his own weapon.
+
+"Put your gun on the table," Foyle said, quietly. Halbeck did so. There
+was no other way.
+
+Foyle drew it over to himself. His brother made a motion to rise.
+
+"Sit still, Dorl," came the warning voice.
+
+White with rage, the freebooter sat still, his dissipated face and heavy
+angry lips, looking like a debauched and villanous caricature of his
+brother before him.
+
+"Yes, I suppose you'd have potted me, Dorl," said the ex-sergeant. "You'd
+have thought no more of doing that than you did of killing Linley, the
+ranchman; than you did of trying to ruin Jo Byndon, your wife's sister,
+when she was sixteen years old, when she was caring for your child--giving
+her life for the child you brought into the world."
+
+"What in the name of hell--it's a lie!"
+
+"Don't bluster. I know the truth."
+
+"Who told you--the truth?"
+
+"She did--to-day--an hour ago."
+
+"She here--out here?" There was a new, cowed note in the voice.
+
+"She is in the next room."
+
+"What did she come here for?"
+
+"To make you do right by your own child. I wonder what a jury of decent
+men would think about a man who robbed his child for five years, and let
+that child be fed and clothed and cared for by the girl he tried to
+destroy, the girl he taught what sin there was in the world."
+
+"She put you up to this. She was always in love with you, and you know
+it."
+
+There was a dangerous look in Foyle's eyes, and his jaw set hard. "There
+would be no shame in a decent woman caring for me, even if it was true. I
+haven't put myself outside the boundary as you have. You're my brother,
+but you're the worst scoundrel in the country--the worst unhanged. Put on
+the table there the letter in your pocket. It holds five hundred dollars
+belonging to your child. There's twenty-five hundred dollars more to be
+accounted for."
+
+The other hesitated, then with an oath threw the letter on the table.
+"I'll pay the rest as soon as I can, if you'll stop this damned
+tomfoolery," he said, sullenly, for he saw that he was in a hole.
+
+"You'll pay it, I suppose, out of what you stole from the C. P. R.
+contractor's chest. No, I don't think that will do."
+
+"You want me to go to prison, then?"
+
+"I think not. The truth would come out at the trial--the whole truth--the
+murder and all. There's your child, Bobby. You've done him enough wrong
+already. Do you want him--but it doesn't matter whether you do or not--do
+you want him to carry through life the fact that his father was a
+jail-bird and a murderer, just as Jo Byndon carries the scar you made when
+you threw her against the door?"
+
+"What do you want with me, then?" The man sank slowly and heavily back
+into the chair.
+
+"There is a way--have you never thought of it? When you threatened others
+as you did me, and life seemed such a little thing in others--can't you
+think?"
+
+Bewildered, the man looked around helplessly. In the silence which
+followed Foyle's words his brain was struggling to see a way out. Foyle's
+further words seemed to come from a great distance.
+
+"It's not too late to do the decent thing. You'll never repent of all
+you've done; you'll never do different."
+
+The old, reckless, irresponsible spirit revived in the man; he had both
+courage and bravado; he was not hopeless yet of finding an escape from the
+net. He would not beg, he would struggle.
+
+"I've lived as I meant to, and I'm not going to snivel or repent now. It's
+all a rotten business, anyhow," he rejoined.
+
+With a sudden resolution the ex-sergeant put his own pistol in his pocket,
+then pushed Halbeck's pistol over toward him on the table. Halbeck's eyes
+lighted eagerly, grew red with excitement, then a change passed over them.
+They now settled on the pistol, and stayed.
+
+He heard Foyle's voice. "It's with you to do what you ought to do. Of
+course you can kill me. My pistol's in my pocket. But I don't think you
+will. You've murdered one man. You won't load your soul up with another.
+Besides, if you kill me, you will never get away from Kowatin alive. But
+it's with you--take your choice. It's me or you."
+
+Halbeck's fingers crept out and found the pistol.
+
+"Do your duty, Dorl," said the ex-sergeant, as he turned his back on his
+brother.
+
+The door of the room opened, and Goatry stepped inside softly. He had work
+to do, if need be, and his face showed it. Halbeck did not see him.
+
+There was a demon in Halbeck's eyes, as his brother stood, his back
+turned, taking his chances. A large mirror hung on the wall opposite
+Halbeck. Goatry was watching Halbeck's face in the glass, and saw the
+danger. He measured his distance.
+
+All at once Halbeck caught Goatry's face in the mirror. The dark devilry
+faded out of his eyes. His lips moved in a whispered oath. Every way was
+blocked.
+
+With a sudden wild resolution he raised the pistol to his head. It
+cracked, and he fell back heavily in the chair. There was a red trickle at
+the temple.
+
+He had chosen the best way out.
+
+"He had the pluck," said Goatry, as Foyle swung round with a face of
+misery.
+
+A moment afterward came a rush of people. Goatry kept them back.
+
+"Sergeant Foyle arrested Halbeck, and Halbeck's shot himself," Goatry
+explained to them.
+
+A white-faced girl with a scar on her temple made her way into the room.
+
+[Illustration: "IF YOU KILL ME, YOU WILL NEVER GET AWAY
+FROM KOWATIN ALIVE"]
+
+"Come away--come away, Jo," said the voice of the man she loved; and he
+did not let her see the lifeless figure in the chair.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Three days later the plains swallowed them, as they made their way with
+Billy Goatry to the headquarters of the Riders of the Plains, where
+Sergeant Foyle was asked to reconsider his resignation: which he did.
+
+
+
+
+THE WHISPERER
+
+
+  "And thou shalt be brought down and shalt speak out of the ground,
+  and thy speech shall be low out of the dust, and thy voice shall be
+  as of one that hath a familiar spirit out of the ground, and thy
+  speech shall whisper out of the dust."
+
+The harvest was all in, and, as far as eye could observe, nothing remained
+of the golden sea of wheat which had covered the wide prairie save the
+yellow stubble, the bed of an ocean of wealth which had been gathered.
+Here the yellow level was broken by a dark patch of fallow land, there by
+a covert of trees also tinged with yellow, or deepening to crimson and
+mauve--the harbinger of autumn. The sun had not the insistent and
+intensive strength of more southerly climes; it was buoyant, confident,
+and heartening, and it shone in a turquoise vault which covered and
+endeared the wide, even world beneath. Now and then a flock of wild ducks
+whirred past, making for the marshes or the innumerable lakes that
+vitalized the expanse, or buzzards hunched heavily along, frightened from
+some far resort by eager sportsmen.
+
+That was above; but beneath, on a level with the unlifted eye, were houses
+here and there, looking in the vastness like dolls' habitations. Many of
+the houses stood blank and staring in the expanse, but some had trees, and
+others little oases of green. Everywhere prosperity, everywhere the
+strings of life pulled taut, signs that energy had been straining on the
+leash.
+
+Yet there was one spot where it seemed that deadness made encampment. It
+could not be seen in the sweep of the eye, you must have travelled and
+looked vigilantly to find it; but it was there--a lake shimmering in the
+eager sun, washing against a reedy shore, a little river running into the
+reedy lake at one end and out at the other, a small, dilapidated house
+half hid in a wood that stretched for half a mile or so upon a rising
+ground. In front of the house, not far from the lake, a man was lying
+asleep upon the ground, a rough felt hat drawn over his eyes.
+
+Like the house, the man seemed dilapidated also: a slovenly, ill-dressed,
+demoralized figure he looked, even with his face covered. He seemed in a
+deep sleep. Wild ducks settled on the lake not far from him with a swish
+and flutter; a coyote ran past, veering as it saw the recumbent figure; a
+prairie hen rustled by with a shrill cluck, but he seemed oblivious to
+all. If asleep, he was evidently dreaming, for now and then he started, or
+his body twitched and a muttering came from beneath the hat.
+
+The battered house, the absence of barn or stable or garden, or any token
+of thrift or energy, marked the man as an excrescence in this theatre of
+hope and fruitful toil. It all belonged to some degenerate land, some
+exhausted civilization, not to this field of vigor where life rang like
+silver.
+
+So the man lay for hour upon hour. He slept as though he had been upon a
+long journey in which the body was worn to helplessness. Or was it that
+sleep of the worn-out spirit which, tortured by remembrance and remorse,
+at last sinks into the depths where the conscious vexes the unconscious--a
+little of fire, a little of ice, and now and then the turn of the screw?
+
+The day marched nobly on toward evening, growing out of its blue and
+silver into a pervasive golden gleam; the bare, grayish houses on the
+prairie were transformed into miniature palaces of light. Presently a girl
+came out of the woods behind, looking at the neglected house with a
+half-pitying curiosity. She carried in one hand a fishing-rod which had
+been telescoped till it was no bigger than a cane; in the other she
+carried a small fishing-basket. Her father's shooting and fishing camp was
+a few miles away by a lake of greater size than this which she approached.
+She had tired of the gay company in camp, brought up for sport from beyond
+the American border where she also belonged, and she had come to explore
+the river running into this reedy lake. She turned from the house and came
+nearer to the lake, shaking her head, as though compassionating the poor
+folk who lived there. She was beautiful. Her hair was brown, going to
+tawny, but in this soft light which enwrapped her she was in a sort of
+topaz flame. As she came on, suddenly she stopped as though transfixed.
+She saw the man--and saw also a tragedy afoot.
+
+The man stirred violently in his sleep, cried out, and started up. As he
+did so, a snake, disturbed in its travel past him, suddenly raised itself
+in anger. Startled out of sleep by some inner torture, the man heard the
+sinister rattle he knew so well, and gazed paralyzed.
+
+The girl had been but a few feet away when she first saw the man and his
+angry foe. An instant, then, with the instinct of the woods and the
+plains, and the courage that has habitation everywhere, dropping her
+basket she sprang forward noiselessly. The short, telescoped fishing-rod
+she carried swung round her head and completed its next half-circle at the
+head of the reptile, even as it was about to strike. The blow was sure,
+and with half-severed head the snake fell dead upon the ground beside the
+man.
+
+He was like one who has been projected from one world to another, dazed,
+stricken, fearful. Presently the look of agonized dismay gave way to such
+an expression of relief as might come upon the face of a reprieved victim
+about to be given to the fire or to the knife that flays. The place of
+dreams from which he had emerged was like hell, and this was some world of
+peace that he had not known these many years. Always one had been at his
+elbow--"a familiar spirit out of the ground"--whispering in his ear. He
+had been down in the abysses of life.
+
+He glanced again at the girl, and realized what she had done: she had
+saved his life. Whether it had been worth saving was another question; but
+he had been near to the brink, had looked in, and the animal in him had
+shrunk back from the precipice in a confused agony of fear. He staggered
+to his feet.
+
+"Where do you come from?" he said, pulling his coat closer to hide the
+ragged waistcoat underneath, and adjusting his worn and dirty hat--in his
+youth he had been vain and ambitious, and good-looking also.
+
+He asked his question in no impertinent tone, but in the low voice of one
+who "shall whisper out of the dust." He had not yet recovered from the
+first impression of his awakening, that the world in which he now stood
+was not a real world.
+
+She understood, and half in pity and half in conquered repugnance said:
+
+"I come from a camp beyond"--she indicated the direction by a gesture. "I
+had been fishing"--she took up the basket--"and chanced on you--then." She
+glanced at the snake significantly.
+
+"You killed it in the nick of time," he said, in a voice that still spoke
+of the ground, but with a note of half-shamed gratitude. "I want to thank
+you," he added. "You were brave. It would have turned on you if you had
+missed. I know them. I've killed five." He spoke very slowly, huskily.
+
+"Well, you are safe--that is the chief thing," she rejoined, making as
+though to depart. But presently she turned back. "Why are you so
+dreadfully poor--and everything?" she asked, gently.
+
+His eye wandered over the lake and back again before he answered her, in a
+dull, heavy tone, "I've had bad luck, and, when you get down, there are
+plenty to kick you farther."
+
+"You weren't always poor as you are now--I mean long ago, when you were
+young."
+
+"I'm not so old," he rejoined, sluggishly--"only thirty-four."
+
+She could not suppress her astonishment. She looked at the hair already
+gray, the hard, pinched face, the lustreless eyes.
+
+"Yet it must seem long to you," she said, with meaning.
+
+Now he laughed--a laugh sodden and mirthless. He was thinking of his
+boyhood. Everything, save one or two spots all fire or all darkness, was
+dim in his debilitated mind.
+
+"Too far to go back," he said, with a gleam of the intelligence which had
+been strong in him once.
+
+She caught the gleam. She had wisdom beyond her years. It was the greater
+because her mother was dead, and she had had so much wealth to dispense,
+for her father was rich beyond counting, and she controlled his household
+and helped to regulate his charities. She saw that he was not of the
+laboring classes, that he had known better days; his speech, if abrupt and
+cheerless, was grammatical.
+
+"If you cannot go back, you can go forward," she said, firmly. "Why should
+you be the only man in this beautiful land who lives like this, who is
+idle when there is so much to do, who sleeps in the daytime when there is
+so much time to sleep at night?"
+
+A faint flush came on the grayish, colorless face. "I don't sleep at
+night," he returned, moodily.
+
+"Why don't you sleep?" she asked.
+
+He did not answer, but stirred the body of the snake with his foot. The
+tail moved; he stamped upon the head with almost frenzied violence, out of
+keeping with his sluggishness.
+
+She turned away, yet looked back once more--she felt tragedy around her.
+"It is never too late to mend," she said, and moved on, but stopped, for a
+young man came running from the woods toward her.
+
+"I've had a hunt--such a hunt for you!" the young man said, eagerly, then
+stopped short when he saw to whom she had been talking. A look of disgust
+came upon his face as he drew her away, his hand on her arm.
+
+"In Heaven's name, why did you talk to that man?" he said. "You ought not
+to have trusted yourself near him."
+
+"What has he done?" she asked. "Is he so bad?"
+
+"I've heard about him. I inquired the other day. He was once in a better
+position as a ranchman--ten years ago; but he came into some money one
+day, and he changed at once. He never had a good character; even before he
+got his money he used to gamble, and was getting a bad name. Afterward he
+began drinking, and he took to gambling harder than ever. Presently his
+money all went and he had to work; but his bad habits had fastened on him,
+and now he lives from hand to mouth, sometimes working for a month,
+sometimes idle for months. There's something sinister about him, there's
+some mystery; for poverty, or drink even--and he doesn't drink much
+now--couldn't make him what he is. He doesn't seek company, and he walks
+sometimes endless miles talking to himself, going as hard as he can. How
+did you come to speak to him, Grace?"
+
+She told him all, with a curious abstraction in her voice, for she was
+thinking of the man from a standpoint which her companion could not
+realize. She was also trying to verify something in her memory. Ten years
+ago, so her lover had just said, the poor wretch behind them had been a
+different man; and there had shot into her mind the face of a ranchman she
+had seen with her father, the railway king, one evening when his "special"
+had stopped at a railway station on his tour through Montana--ten years
+ago. Why did the face of the ranchman which had fixed itself on her memory
+then, because he had come on the evening of her birthday and had spoiled
+it for her, having taken her father away from her for an hour--why did his
+face come to her now? What had it to do with the face of this outcast she
+had just left?
+
+"What is his name?" she asked at last.
+
+"Roger Lygon," he answered.
+
+"Roger Lygon," she repeated, mechanically. Something in the man chained
+her thought--his face that moment when her hand saved him and the awful
+fear left him and a glimmer of light came into his eyes.
+
+But her lover beside her broke into song. He was happy with her.
+Everything was before him, her beauty, her wealth, herself. He could not
+dwell upon dismal things; his voice rang out on the sharp, sweet, evening
+air:
+
+     "Oh, where did you get them, the bonny, bonny roses
+       That blossom in your cheeks, and the morning in your eyes?'
+     'I got them on the North Trail, the road that never closes,
+       That widens to the seven gold gates of paradise.'
+     'Oh, come, let us camp in the North Trail together,
+       With the night-fires lit and the tent-pegs down.'"
+
+Left alone, the man by the reedy lake stood watching them until they were
+out of view. The song came back to him, echoing across the waters:
+
+          "'Oh, come, let us camp on the North Trail together,
+            With the night-fires lit and the tent-pegs down.'"
+
+The sunset glow, the girl's presence, had given him a moment's illusion,
+had absorbed him for a moment, acting on his deadened nature like a
+narcotic at once soothing and stimulating. As some wild animal in a
+forgotten land, coming upon ruins of a vast civilization, towers, temples
+and palaces, in the golden glow of an Eastern evening, stands abashed and
+vaguely wondering, having neither reason to understand nor feeling to
+enjoy, yet is arrested and abashed, so he stood. He had lived the last
+three years so much alone, had been cut off so completely from his
+kind--had lived so much alone. Yet to-night, at last, he would not be
+alone.
+
+Some one was coming to-night, some one whom he had not seen for a long
+time. Letters had passed, the object of the visit had been defined, and he
+had spent the intervening days since the last letter had arrived, now
+agitated, now apathetic and sullen, now struggling with some invisible
+being that kept whispering in his ear, saying to him: "It was the price of
+fire and blood and shame. You did it--you--you--you! You are down, and you
+will never get up. You can only go lower still--fire and blood and
+shame!"
+
+Criminal as he was, he had never become hardened, he had only become
+degraded. Crime was not his vocation. He had no gift for it; still, the
+crime he had committed had never been discovered--the crime that he did
+with others. There were himself and Dupont and another. Dupont was coming
+to-night--Dupont, who had profited by the crime, and had not spent his
+profits, but had built upon them to further profit; for Dupont was
+avaricious and prudent, and a born criminal. Dupont had never had any
+compunctions or remorse, had never lost a night's sleep because of what
+they two had done, instigated thereto by the other, who had paid them so
+well for the dark thing.
+
+The other was Henderley, the financier. He was worse perhaps than Dupont,
+for he was in a different sphere of life, was rich beyond counting, and
+had been early nurtured in quiet Christian surroundings. The spirit of
+ambition, rivalry, and the methods of a degenerate and cruel finance had
+seized him, mastered him; so that, under the cloak of power--as a toreador
+hides the blade under the red cloth before his enemy the _toro_--he held a
+sword of capital which did cruel and vicious things, at last becoming
+criminal also. Henderley had incited and paid; the others, Dupont and
+Lygon, had acted and received. Henderley had had no remorse, none at any
+rate that weighed upon him, for he had got used to ruining rivals and
+seeing strong men go down, and those who had fought him come to beg or
+borrow of him in the end. He had seen more than one commit suicide, and
+those they loved go down and farther down, and he had helped these up a
+little, but not near enough to put them near his own plane again; and he
+could not see--it never occurred to him--that he had done any evil to
+them. Dupont thought upon his crimes now and then, and his heart hardened,
+for he had no moral feeling; Henderley did not think at all. It was left
+to the man of the reedy lake to pay the penalty of apprehension, to suffer
+the effects of crime upon a nature not naturally criminal.
+
+Again and again, how many hundreds of times, had Roger Lygon seen in his
+sleep--had even seen awake, so did hallucination possess him--the new
+cattle trail he had fired for scores of miles. The fire had destroyed the
+grass over millions of acres, two houses had been burned and three people
+had lost their lives; all to satisfy the savage desire of one man, to
+destroy the chance of a cattle trade over a great section of country for
+the railway which was to compete with his own--an act which, in the end,
+was futile, failed of its purpose. Dupont and Lygon had been paid their
+price, and had disappeared and been forgotten--they were but pawns in his
+game--and there was no proof against Henderley. Henderley had forgotten.
+Lygon wished to forget, but Dupont remembered, and meant now to reap fresh
+profit by the remembrance.
+
+Dupont was coming to-night, and the hatchet of crime was to be dug up
+again. So it had been planned.
+
+As the shadows fell, Lygon roused himself from his trance with a shiver.
+It was not cold, but in him there was a nervous agitation, making him cold
+from head to foot; his body seemed as impoverished as his mind. Looking
+with heavy-lidded eyes across the prairie, he saw in the distance the
+barracks of the Riders of the Plains and the jail near by, and his
+shuddering ceased. There was where he belonged, within four stone walls;
+yet here he was free to go where he willed, to live as he willed, with no
+eye upon him. With no eye upon him? There was no eye, but there was the
+Whisperer whom he could never drive away. Morning and night he heard the
+words: "You--you--you! Fire and blood and shame!" He had snatched sleep
+when he could find it, after long, long hours of tramping over the plains,
+ostensibly to shoot wild fowl, but in truth to bring on a great bodily
+fatigue--and sleep. His sleep only came then in the first watches of the
+night. As the night wore on the Whisperer began again, as the cloud of
+weariness lifted a little from him and the senses were released from the
+heavy sedative of unnatural exertion.
+
+The dusk deepened. The moon slowly rose. He cooked his scanty meal and
+took a deep draught from a horn of whiskey from beneath a board in the
+flooring. He had not the courage to face Dupont without it, nor yet to
+forget what he must forget if he was to do the work Dupont came to
+arrange--he must forget the girl who had saved his life and the influence
+of those strange moments in which she had spoken down to him, in the abyss
+where he had been lying.
+
+He sat in the doorway, a fire gleaming behind him; he drank in the good
+air as though his lungs were thirsty for it, and saw the silver glitter of
+the moon upon the water. Not a breath of wind stirred, and the shining
+path the moon made upon the reedy lake fascinated his eye. Everything was
+so still except that whisper, louder in his ear than it had ever been
+before.
+
+Suddenly, upon the silver path upon the lake there shot a silent canoe,
+with a figure as silently paddling toward him. He gazed for a moment
+dismayed, and then got to his feet with a jerk.
+
+"Dupont," he said, mechanically.
+
+The canoe swished among the reeds and rushes, scraped on the shore, and a
+tall, burly figure sprang from it and stood still, looking at the house.
+
+"_Qui reste la_--Lygon?" he asked.
+
+"Dupont," was the nervous, hesitating reply.
+
+Dupont came forward quickly. "_Ah_, _ben_, here we are again--so," he
+grunted, cheerily.
+
+Entering the house, they sat before the fire, holding their hands to the
+warmth from force of habit, though the night was not cold.
+
+"_Ben_, you will do it to-night--then?" Dupont said. "_Sacre_, it is
+time!"
+
+"Do what?" rejoined the other, heavily.
+
+An angry light leaped into Dupont's eyes. "You not unnerstan' my
+letters--bah! You know it all right, so queeck."
+
+The other remained silent, staring into the fire with wide, searching
+eyes.
+
+Dupont put a hand on him. "You ketch my idee queeck. We mus' have more
+money from that Henderley--certainlee. It is ten years, and he t'ink it is
+all right. He t'ink we come no more becos' he give five t'ousand dollars
+to us each. That was to do the t'ing, to fire the country. Now we want
+another ten t'ousan' to us each, to forget we do it for him--_hein_?"
+
+Still there was no reply. Dupont went on, watching the other furtively,
+for he did not like this silence. But he would not resent it till he was
+sure there was good cause.
+
+"It comes to suit us. He is over there at the Old Man Lak', where you can
+get at him easy, not like in the city where he lif'. Over in the States,
+he laugh mebbe, becos' he is at home, an' can buy off the law. But
+here--it is Canadaw, an' they not care eef he have hunder' meellion
+dollar. He know that--sure. Eef you say you not care a dam to go to jail,
+so you can put him there, too, becos' you have not'ing, an' so dam seeck
+of everyt'ing, he will t'ink ten t'ousan' dollar same as one cent to Nic
+Dupont--_ben sur_!"
+
+Lygon nodded his head, still holding his hands to the blaze. With ten
+thousand dollars he could get away into--into another world somewhere,
+some world where he could forget, as he forgot for a moment this afternoon
+when the girl said to him, "It is never too late to mend."
+
+Now, as he thought of her, he pulled his coat together and arranged the
+rough scarf at his neck involuntarily. Ten thousand dollars--but ten
+thousand dollars by blackmail, hush-money, the reward of fire and blood
+and shame! Was it to go on? Was he to commit a new crime?
+
+He stirred, as though to shake off the net that he felt twisting round
+him, in the hands of the robust and powerful Dupont, on whom crime sat so
+lightly, who had flourished while he, Lygon, had gone lower and lower. Ten
+years ago he had been the better man, had taken the lead, was the master,
+Dupont the obedient confederate, the tool. Now, Dupont, once the rough
+river-driver, grown prosperous in a large way for him--who might yet be
+mayor of his town in Quebec--he held the rod of rule. Lygon was conscious
+that the fifty dollars sent him every New Year for five years by Dupont
+had been sent with a purpose, and that he was now Dupont's tool.
+Debilitated, demoralized, how could he, even if he wished, struggle
+against this powerful confederate, as powerful in will as in body? Yet if
+he had his own way he would not go to Henderley. He had lived with a
+"familiar spirit" so long, he feared the issue of this next excursion into
+the fens of crime.
+
+Dupont was on his feet now. "He will be here only three days more--I haf
+find it so. To-night it mus' be done. As we go I will tell you what to
+say. I will wait at the Forks, an' we will come back togedder. His check
+will do. Eef he gif at all, the check is all right. He will not stop it.
+Eef he have the money, it is better--_sacre_--yes. Eef he not gif--well, I
+will tell you, there is the other railway man he try to hurt, how would he
+like--But I will tell you on the river. _Maint'nant_--queeck, we go."
+
+Without a word Lygon took down another coat and put it on. Doing so he
+concealed a weapon quickly, as Dupont stooped to pick a coal for his pipe
+from the blaze. Lygon had no fixed purpose in taking a weapon with him; it
+was only a vague instinct of caution that moved him.
+
+In the canoe on the river, in an almost speechless apathy, he heard
+Dupont's voice giving him instructions.
+
+Henderley, the financier, had just finished his game of whist and
+dismissed his friends--it was equivalent to dismissal, rough yet genial as
+he seemed to be, so did immense wealth and its accompanying power affect
+his relations with those about him. In everything he was "considered." He
+was in good-humor, for he had won all the evening, and with a smile he
+rubbed his hands among the notes--three thousand dollars it was. It was
+like a man with a pocketful of money chuckling over a coin he had found in
+the street. Presently he heard a rustle of the inner tent-curtain and
+swung round. He faced the man from the reedy lake.
+
+Instinctively he glanced round for a weapon, mechanically his hands firmly
+grasped the chair in front of him. He had been in danger of his life many
+times, and he had no fear. He had been threatened with assassination more
+than once, and he had got used to the idea of danger; life to him was only
+a game.
+
+He kept his nerve; he did not call out; he looked his visitor in the
+eyes.
+
+"What are you doing here? Who are you?" he said.
+
+"Don't you know me?" answered Lygon, gazing intently at him.
+
+Face to face with the man who had tempted him to crime, Lygon had a new
+sense of boldness, a sudden feeling of reprisal, a rushing desire to put
+the screw upon him. At sight of this millionaire with the pile of notes
+before him there vanished the sickening hesitation of the afternoon, of
+the journey with Dupont. The look of the robust, healthy financier was
+like acid in a wound; it maddened him.
+
+"You will know me better soon," Lygon added, his head twitching with
+excitement.
+
+Henderley recognized him now. He gripped the armchair spasmodically, but
+presently regained a complete composure. He knew the game that was forward
+here, and he also thought that if once he yielded to blackmail there would
+never be an end to it. He made no pretence, but came straight to the
+point.
+
+"You can do nothing; there is no proof," he said, with firm assurance.
+
+"There is Dupont," answered Lygon, doggedly.
+
+"Who is Dupont?"
+
+"The French Canadian who helped me--I divided with him."
+
+"You said the man who helped you died. You wrote that to me. I suppose you
+are lying now."
+
+Henderley coolly straightened the notes on the table, smoothing out the
+wrinkles, arranging them according to their denominations with an
+apparently interested eye; yet he was vigilantly watching the outcast
+before him. To yield to blackmail would be fatal; not to yield to it--he
+could not see his way. He had long ago forgotten the fire and blood and
+shame. No Whisperer reminded him of that black page in the history of his
+life; he had been immune of conscience. He could not understand this man
+before him. It was as bad a case of human degradation as ever he had
+seen--he remembered the stalwart, if dissipated, ranchman who had acted on
+his instigation. He knew now that he had made a foolish blunder then, that
+the scheme had been one of his failures; but he had never looked on it as
+with eyes reproving crime. As a hundred thoughts tending toward the
+solution of the problem by which he was faced flashed through his mind,
+and he rejected them all, he repeated mechanically the phrase "I suppose
+you are lying now."
+
+"Dupont is here--not a mile away," was the reply. "He will give proof. He
+would go to jail or to the gallows to put you there, if you do not pay. He
+is a devil--Dupont."
+
+Still the great man could not see his way out. He must temporize for a
+little longer, for rashness might bring scandal or noise; and near by was
+his daughter, the apple of his eye.
+
+"What do you want? How much did you figure you could get out of me, if I
+let you bleed me?" he asked, sneeringly and coolly. "Come now, how much?"
+
+Lygon, in whom a blind hatred of the man still raged, was about to reply,
+when he heard a voice calling, "Daddy, Daddy!"
+
+Suddenly the red, half-insane light died down in Lygon's eyes. He saw the
+snake upon the ground by the reedy lake, the girl standing over it--the
+girl with the tawny hair. This was her voice.
+
+Henderley had made a step toward a curtain opening into another room of
+the great tent, but before he could reach it the curtain was pushed back
+and the girl entered with a smile.
+
+"May I come in?" she said; then stood still, astonished, seeing Lygon.
+
+"Oh!" she exclaimed. "Oh--you!"
+
+All at once a look came into her face which stirred it as a flying insect
+stirs the water of a pool. On the instant she remembered that she had seen
+the man before.
+
+It was ten years ago in Montana, on the night of her birthday. Her father
+had been called away to talk with this man, and she had seen him from the
+steps of the "special." It was only the caricature of the once strong,
+erect ranchman that she saw; but there was no mistake, she recognized him
+now.
+
+Lygon, dumfounded, looked from her to her father, and he saw now in
+Henderley's eyes a fear that was not to be misunderstood.
+
+Here was where Henderley could be smitten, could be brought to his knees.
+It was the vulnerable part of him. Lygon could see that he was stunned.
+The great financier was in his power. He looked back again to the girl,
+and her face was full of trouble.
+
+A sharp suspicion was in her heart that somehow or other her father was
+responsible for this man's degradation and ruin. She looked Lygon in the
+eyes.
+
+"Did you want to see me?" she asked.
+
+She scarcely knew why she said it; but she was sensible of trouble, maybe
+of tragedy, somewhere; and she had a vague dread of she knew not what,
+for, hide it, avoid it, as she had done so often, there was in her heart
+an unhappy doubt concerning her father.
+
+A great change had come over Lygon. Her presence had altered him. He was
+again where she had left him in the afternoon.
+
+He heard her say to her father: "This was the man I told you of--at the
+reedy lake. Did you come to see me?" she repeated.
+
+"I did not know you were here," he answered. "I came"--he was conscious of
+Henderley's staring eyes fixed upon his helplessly--"I came to ask your
+father if he would not buy my shack. There is good shooting at the lake;
+the ducks come plenty, sometimes. I want to get away, to start again
+somewhere. I've been a failure. I want to get away, right away south. If
+he would buy it, I could start again. I've had no luck."
+
+He had invented it on the moment, but the girl understood better than
+Lygon or Henderley could have dreamed. She had seen the change pass over
+Lygon.
+
+Henderley had a hand on himself again, and the startled look went out of
+his eyes.
+
+"What do you want for your shack and the lake?" he asked, with restored
+confidence. The fellow no doubt was grateful that his daughter had saved
+his life, he thought.
+
+"Five hundred dollars," answered Lygon, quickly.
+
+Henderley would have handed over all that lay on the table before him,
+but he thought it better not to do so. "I'll buy it," he said. "You seem
+to have been hit hard. Here is the money. Bring me the deed
+to-morrow--to-morrow."
+
+"I'll not take the money till I give you the deed," said Lygon. "It will
+do to-morrow. It's doing me a good turn. I'll get away and start again
+somewhere. I've done no good up here. Thank you, sir--thank you."
+
+Before they realized it, the tent-curtain rose and fell, and he was gone
+into the night.
+
+The trouble was still deep in the girl's eyes as she kissed her father,
+and he, with an overdone cheerfulness, wished her a good-night.
+
+The man of iron had been changed into a man of straw once at least in his
+lifetime.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Lygon found Dupont at the Forks.
+
+"_Eh_, _ben_, it is all right--yes?" Dupont asked, eagerly, as Lygon
+joined him.
+
+"Yes, it is all right," answered Lygon.
+
+With an exulting laugh and an obscene oath, Dupont pushed out the canoe,
+and they got away into the moonlight. No word was spoken for some
+distance, but Dupont kept giving grunts of satisfaction.
+
+"You got the ten t'ousan' each--in cash or check, eh? The check or the
+money--_hein_?"
+
+"I've got nothing," answered Lygon.
+
+Dupont dropped his paddle with a curse.
+
+"You got not'ing! You said eet was all right!" he growled.
+
+"It is all right. I got nothing. I asked for nothing. I have had enough. I
+have finished."
+
+With a roar of rage Dupont sprang on him, and caught him by the throat as
+the canoe swayed and dipped. He was blind with fury.
+
+Lygon tried with one hand for his knife, and got it, but the pressure on
+his throat was growing terrible.
+
+For minutes the struggle continued, for Lygon was fighting with the
+desperation of one who makes his last awful onset against fate and doom.
+
+Dupont also had his knife at work. At last it drank blood, but as he got
+it home he suddenly reeled blindly, lost his balance, and lurched into the
+water with a groan.
+
+Lygon, weapon in hand and bleeding freely, waited for him to rise and make
+for the canoe again.
+
+Ten, twenty, fifty seconds passed. Dupont did not rise. A minute went by,
+and still there was no stir, no sign. Dupont would never rise again. In
+his wild rage he had burst a blood-vessel on the brain.
+
+Lygon bound up his reeking wound as best he could. He did it calmly,
+whispering to himself the while.
+
+"I must do it. I must get there if I can. I will not be afraid to die
+then," he muttered to himself.
+
+Presently he grasped an oar and paddled feebly.
+
+A slight wind had risen, and, as he turned the boat in to face the Forks
+again, it helped to carry the canoe to the landing-place.
+
+Lygon dragged himself out. He did not try to draw the canoe up, but began
+this journey of a mile back to the tent he had left so recently. First,
+step by step, leaning against trees, drawing himself forward, a journey as
+long to his determined mind as from youth to age. Would it never end? It
+seemed a terrible climbing-up the sides of a cliff, and, as he struggled
+fainting on, all sorts of sounds were in his ears, but he realized that
+the Whisperer was no longer there. The sounds he heard did not torture,
+they helped his stumbling feet. They were like the murmur of waters, like
+the sounds of the forest and soft, booming bells. But the bells were only
+the beatings of his heart--so loud, so swift.
+
+[Illustration: FOR MINUTES THE STRUGGLE CONTINUED]
+
+He was on his knees now, crawling on--on--on. At last there came a light,
+suddenly bursting on him from a tent he was so near. Then he called, and
+called again, and fell forward on his face. But now he heard a voice above
+him. It was _her_ voice. He had blindly struggled on to die near her, near
+where she was, she was so pitiful and good.
+
+He had accomplished his journey, and her voice was speaking above him.
+There were other voices, but it was only hers that he heard.
+
+"God help him--oh, God help him!" she was saying.
+
+He drew a long, quiet breath. "I will sleep now," he said, clearly.
+
+He would hear the Whisperer no more.
+
+
+
+
+AS DEEP AS THE SEA
+
+
+"What can I do, Dan? I'm broke, too. My last dollar went to pay my last
+debt to-day. I've nothing but what I stand in. I've got prospects, but I
+can't discount prospects at the banks." The speaker laughed bitterly.
+"I've reaped and I'm sowing, the same as you, Dan."
+
+The other made a nervous motion of protest. "No; not the same as me,
+Flood--not the same. It's sink or swim with me, and if you can't help
+me--oh, I'd take my gruel without whining, if it wasn't for Di! It's that
+that knocks me over. It's the shame to her. Oh, what a cursed ass and
+fool--and thief, I've been!"
+
+"Thief?--thief?"
+
+Flood Rawley dropped the flaming match with which he was about to light a
+cheroot, and stood staring, his dark-blue eyes growing wider, his worn,
+handsome face becoming drawn, as swift conviction mastered him. He felt
+that the black words which had fallen from his friend's lips--from the
+lips of Diana Welldon's brother--were the truth. He looked at the plump
+face, the full, amiable eyes, now misty with fright, at the characterless
+hand nervously feeling the golden mustache, at the well-fed, inert body;
+and he knew that, whatever the trouble or the peril, Dan Welldon could not
+surmount it alone.
+
+"What is it?" Rawley asked, rather sharply, his fingers running through
+his slightly grizzled black hair, but not excitedly, for he wanted no
+scenes; and if this thing could hurt Di Welldon, and action was necessary,
+he must remain cool. What she was to do, Heaven and he only knew; what she
+had done for him, perhaps neither understood fully as yet. "What is
+it--quick?" he added, and his words were like a sharp grip upon Dan
+Welldon's shoulder. "Racing?--cards?"
+
+Dan nodded. "Yes, over at Askatoon; five hundred on Jibway, the
+favorite--he fell at the last fence; five hundred at poker with Nick
+Fison; and a thousand in land speculation at Edmonton, on margin.
+Everything went wrong."
+
+"And so you put your hand in the railway company's money-chest?"
+
+"It seemed such a dead certainty--Jibway; and the Edmonton corner-blocks,
+too. I'd had luck with Nick before; but--well, there it is, Flood."
+
+"They know--the railway people--Shaughnessy knows?"
+
+"Yes, the president knows. He's at Calgary now. They telegraphed him, and
+he wired to give me till midnight to pay up or go to jail. They're
+watching me now. I can't stir. There's no escape, and there's no one I can
+ask for help but you. That's why I've come, Flood."
+
+"Lord, what a fool! Couldn't you see what the end would be if your
+plunging didn't come off? You--you oughtn't to bet, or speculate, or play
+cards, you're not clever enough. You've got blind rashness, and so you
+think you're bold. And Di--oh, you idiot! And on a salary of a thousand
+dollars a year!"
+
+"I suppose Di would help me; but I couldn't explain." The weak face
+puckered, a lifeless kind of tear gathered in the ox-like eyes.
+
+"Yes, she probably would help you. She'd probably give you all she's saved
+to go to Europe with and study, saved from her pictures sold at twenty per
+cent. of their value; and she'd mortgage the little income she's got to
+keep her brother out of jail. Of course she would, and of course you ought
+to be ashamed of yourself for thinking of it." Rawley lighted his cigar
+and smoked fiercely.
+
+"It would be better for her than my going to jail," stubbornly replied the
+other. "But I don't want to tell her, or to ask her for money. That's why
+I've come to you. You needn't be so hard, Flood; you've not been a saint;
+and Di knows it."
+
+Rawley took the cheroot from his mouth, threw back his head, and laughed
+mirthlessly, ironically. Then suddenly he stopped and looked round the
+room till his eyes rested on a portrait-drawing which hung on the wall
+opposite the window, through which the sun poured. It was the face of a
+girl with beautiful bronzed hair, and full, fine, beautifully modelled
+face, with brown eyes deep and brooding, which seemed to have time and
+space behind them--not before them. The lips were delicate and full, and
+had the look suggesting a smile which the inward thought has stayed. It
+was like one of the Titian women--like a Titian that hangs on the wall of
+the Gallery at Munich. The head and neck, the whole personality, had an
+air of distinction and destiny. The drawing had been done by a wandering
+duchess who had seen the girl sketching in the foothills when on a visit
+to that "Wild West" which has such power to refine and inspire minds not
+superior to Nature. Its replica was carried to a castle in Scotland. It
+had been the gift of Diana Welldon on a certain day not long ago, when
+Flood Rawley had made a pledge to her, which was as vital to him and to
+his future as two thousand dollars were vital to Dan Welldon now.
+
+"You've not been a saint, and Di knows it," repeated the weak brother of a
+girl whose fame belonged to the West; whose name was a signal for cheerful
+looks; whose buoyant humor and impartial friendliness gained her
+innumerable friends; and whose talent, understood by few, gave her a
+certain protection, lifting her a little away from the outwardly crude and
+provincial life around her.
+
+When Rawley spoke, it was with quiet deliberation, and even gentleness. "I
+haven't been a saint, and she knows it, as you say, Dan; but the law is on
+my side as yet, it isn't on yours. There's the difference."
+
+"You used to gamble yourself; you were pretty tough, and you oughtn't to
+walk up my back with hobnailed boots."
+
+"Yes, I gambled, Dan, and I drank, and I raised a dust out here. My record
+was writ pretty big. But I didn't lay my hands on the ark of the social
+covenant, whose inscription is, _Thou shalt not steal_; and that's why I'm
+poor but proud, and no one's watching for me round the corner, same as
+you."
+
+Welldon's half-defiant petulance disappeared. "What's done can't be
+undone." Then, with a sudden burst of anguish, "Oh, get me out of this
+somehow!"
+
+"How? I've got no money. By speaking to your sister?"
+
+The other was silent.
+
+"Shall I do it?" Rawley peered anxiously into the other's face, and he
+knew that there was no real security against the shameful trouble being
+laid bare to her.
+
+"I want a chance to start straight again."
+
+The voice was fluttered, almost whining; it carried no conviction; but the
+words had in them a reminder of words that Rawley himself had said to
+Diana Welldon but a few months ago, and a new spirit stirred in him. He
+stepped forward and, gripping Dan's shoulder with a hand of steel, said,
+fiercely:
+
+"No, Dan. I'd rather take you to her in your coffin. She's never known
+you, never seen what most of us have seen, that all you have--or nearly
+all--is your lovely looks and what they call a kind heart. There's only
+you two in your family, and she's got to live with you--awhile, anyhow.
+She couldn't stand this business. She mustn't stand it. She's had enough
+to put up with in me; but at the worst she could pass me by on the other
+side, and there would be an end. It would have been said that Flood Rawley
+had got his deserts. It's different with you." His voice changed,
+softened. "Dan, I made a pledge to her that I'd never play cards again for
+money while I lived, and it wasn't a thing to take on without some
+cogitation. But I cogitated, and took it on, and started life over
+again--me! Began practising law again--barrister, solicitor, notary
+public--at forty. And at last I've got my chance in a big case against the
+Canadian Pacific. It'll make me or break me, Dan.... There, I wanted you
+to see where I stand with Di; and now I want you to promise me that you'll
+not leave these rooms till I see you again. I'll get you clear; I'll save
+you, Dan."
+
+"Flood! Oh, my God, Flood!" The voice was broken.
+
+"You've got to stay here, and you're to remember not to get the funk, even
+if I don't come before midnight. I'll be here then, if I'm alive. If you
+don't keep your word--but, there, you will." Both hands gripped the
+graceful shoulders of the miscreant like a vise.
+
+"So help me, Flood," was the frightened, whispered reply. "I'll make it up
+to you somehow, some day. I'll pay you back."
+
+Rawley caught up his cap from the table.
+
+"Steady!--steady! Don't go at a fence till you're sure of your seat, Dan,"
+he said. Then, with a long look at the portrait on the wall and an
+exclamation which the other did not hear, he left the room with a set,
+determined face.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Who told you? What brought you, Flood?" the girl asked, her chin in her
+long, white hands, her head turned from the easel to him, a book in her
+lap, the sun breaking through the leaves upon her hat, touching the Titian
+hair with splendor.
+
+"Fate brought me, and didn't tell me," he answered, with a whimsical quirk
+of the mouth and his trouble lurking behind the sea-deep eyes.
+
+"Wouldn't you have come if you knew I was here?" she urged, archly.
+
+"Not for two thousand dollars," he answered, the look of trouble deepening
+in his eyes, but his lips were smiling. He had a quaint sense of humor,
+and at his last gasp would have noted the ridiculous thing. And surely it
+was a droll malignity of Fate to bring him here to her whom, in this
+moment of all moments in his life, he wished far away. Fate meant to try
+him to the uttermost. This hurdle of trial was high, indeed.
+
+"Two thousand dollars--nothing less?" she inquired, gayly. "You are too
+specific for a real lover."
+
+"Fate fixed the amount," he added, dryly.
+
+"Fate--you talk so much of Fate," she replied, gravely, and her eyes
+looked into the distance. "You make me think of it, too, and I don't want
+to do so. I don't want to feel helpless, to be the child of Accident and
+Destiny."
+
+"Oh, you get the same thing in the 'fore-ordination' that old Minister
+M'Gregor preaches every Sunday. 'Be elect or be damned,' he says to us
+all. Names aren't important; but, anyhow, it was Fate that led me here."
+
+"Are you sure it wasn't me?" she asked, softly. "Are you sure I wasn't
+calling you, and you had to come?"
+
+"Well, it was _en route_, anyhow; and you are always calling, if I must
+tell you," he laughed. Suddenly he became grave. "I hear you call me in
+the night sometimes, and I start up and say 'Yes, Di!' out of my sleep.
+It's a queer hallucination. I've got you on the brain, certainly."
+
+"It seems to vex you--certainly," she said, opening the book that lay in
+her lap, "and your eyes trouble me to-day. They've got a look that used to
+be in them, Flood, before--before you promised; and another look I don't
+understand and don't like. I suppose it's always so. The real business of
+life is trying to understand each other."
+
+"You have wonderful thoughts for one that's had so little chance," he
+said. "That's because you're a genius, I suppose. Teaching can't give that
+sort of thing--the insight."
+
+"What is the matter, Flood?" she asked, suddenly, again, her breast
+heaving, her delicate, rounded fingers interlacing. "I heard a man say
+once that you were 'as deep as the sea.' He did not mean it kindly, but I
+do. You are in trouble, and I want to share it if I can. Where were you
+going when you came across me here?"
+
+"To see old Busby, the quack-doctor up there," he answered, nodding toward
+a shrubbed and wooded hillock behind them.
+
+"Old Busby!" she rejoined, in amazement. "What do you want with him--not
+medicine of that old quack, that dreadful man?"
+
+"He cures people sometimes. A good many out here owe him more than they'll
+ever pay him."
+
+"Is he as rich an old miser as they say?"
+
+"He doesn't look rich, does he?" was the enigmatical answer.
+
+"Does any one know his real history? He didn't come from nowhere. He must
+have had friends once. Some one must once have cared for him, though he
+seems such a monster now."
+
+"Yet he cures people sometimes," he rejoined, abstractedly. "Probably
+there's some good underneath. I'm going to try and see."
+
+"What is it? What is your business with him? Won't you tell me? Is it so
+secret?"
+
+"I want him to help me in a case I've got in hand. A client of mine is in
+trouble--you mustn't ask about it; and he can help, I think--I think so."
+He got to his feet. "I must be going, Di," he added. Suddenly a flush
+swept over his face, and he reached out and took both her hands. "Oh, you
+are a million times too good for me!" he said. "But if all goes well, I'll
+do my best to make you forget it."
+
+"Wait--wait one moment," she answered. "Before you go I want you to hear
+what I've been reading over and over to myself just now. It is from a book
+I got from Quebec, called _When Time Shall Pass_. It is a story of two
+like you and me. The man is writing to the woman, and it has things that
+you have said to me--in a different way."
+
+"No, I don't talk like a book, but I know a star in a dark night when I
+see it," he answered, with a catch in his throat.
+
+"Hush!" she said, catching his hand in hers as she read, while all around
+them the sounds of summer--the distant clack of a reaper, the crack of a
+whip, the locusts droning, the whir of a young partridge, the squeak of a
+chipmunk--were tuned to the harmony of the moment and her voice:
+
+  "'Night and the sombre silence, oh, my love, and one star shining!
+  First, warm, velvety sleep, and then this quick, quiet waking to your
+  voice which seems to call me. Is it--_is_ it you that calls? Do you
+  sometimes, even in your dreams, speak to me? Far beneath
+  unconsciousness is there the summons of your spirit to me?... I like
+  to think so. I like to think that this thing which has come to us is
+  deeper, greater than we are. Sometimes day and night there flash
+  before my eyes--my mind's eyes--pictures of you and me in places
+  unfamiliar, landscapes never before seen, activities uncomprehended
+  and unknown, bright, alluring glimpses of some second being, some
+  possible, maybe never-to-be-realized future, alas! Yet these
+  swift-moving shutters of the soul, or imagination, _or_ reality--who
+  shall say which?--give me a joy never before felt in life. If I am
+  not a better man for this love of mine for you, I am _more_ than I
+  was, and shall be more than I am. Much of my life in the past was
+  mean and small, so much that I have said and done has been
+  unworthy--my love for you is too sharp a light for my gross
+  imperfections of the past! Come what will, be what must, I stake my
+  life, my heart, my soul on you--that beautiful, beloved face; those
+  deep eyes in which my being is drowned; those lucid, perfect hands
+  that have bound me to the mast of your destiny. I cannot go back, I
+  must go forward: now I must keep on loving you or be shipwrecked. I
+  did not know that this was in me, this tide of love, this current of
+  devotion. Destiny plays me beyond my ken, beyond my dreams. "_O
+  Cithoeron!_" Turn from me now--or never, O my love! Loose me from the
+  mast, and let the storm and wave wash me out into the sea of your
+  forgetfulness now--or never!... But keep me, keep me, if your love is
+  great enough, if I bring you any light or joy; for I am yours to my
+  uttermost note of life.'"
+
+"He knew!--he knew!" Rawley said, catching her wrists in his hands and
+drawing her to him. "If I could write, that's what I should have said to
+you, beautiful and beloved. How mean and small and ugly my life was till
+you made me over! I was a bad lot."
+
+"So much hung on one little promise," she said, and drew closer to him.
+"You were never bad," she added; then, with an arm sweeping the universe,
+"Oh, isn't it all good, and isn't it all worth living?"
+
+[Illustration: "OH, ISN'T IT ALL WORTH LIVING?" SHE SAID]
+
+His face lost its glow. Over in the town her brother faced a ruined life,
+and the girl beside him a dark humiliation and a shame which would poison
+her life hereafter, unless--his look turned to the little house where the
+quack-doctor lived. He loosed her hands.
+
+"Now for Caliban," he said.
+
+"I shall be Ariel and follow you--in my heart," she said. "Be sure and
+make him tell you the story of his life," she added, with a laugh, as his
+lips swept the hair behind her ears.
+
+As he moved swiftly away, watching his long strides, she said, proudly,
+"As deep as the sea."
+
+After a moment she added: "And he was once a gambler, until, until"
+she--glanced at the open book, then with sweet mockery looked at her
+hands--"until 'those lucid, perfect hands bound me to the mast of your
+destiny.' O vain Diana! But they are rather beautiful," she added, softly,
+"and I am rather happy." There was something like a gay little chuckle in
+her throat.
+
+"O vain Diana!" she repeated.
+
+                   *       *       *       *       *
+
+Rawley entered the door of the hut on the hill without ceremony. There was
+no need for courtesy, and the work he had come to do could be easier done
+without it.
+
+Old Busby was crouched over a table, his mouth lapping milk from a full
+bowl on the table. He scarcely raised his head when Rawley
+entered--through the open door he had seen his visitor coming. He sipped
+on, his straggling beard dripping. There was silence for a time.
+
+"What do you want?" he growled at last.
+
+"Finish your swill, and then we can talk," said Rawley, carelessly. He
+took a chair near the door, lighted a cheroot and smoked, watching the old
+man, as he tipped the great bowl toward his face, as though it were some
+wild animal feeding. The clothes were patched and worn, the coat-front was
+spattered with stains of all kinds, the hair and beard were unkempt and
+long, giving him what would have been the look of a mangy lion but that
+the face had the expression of some beast less honorable. The eyes,
+however, were malignantly intelligent; the hands, ill-cared for, were
+long, well-shaped, and capable, but of a hateful yellow color like the
+face. And through all was a sense of power, dark and almost mediaeval.
+Secret, evilly wise, and inhuman, he looked a being apart, whom men might
+seek for help in dark purposes.
+
+"What do you want--medicine?" he muttered at last, wiping his beard and
+mouth with the palm of his hand, and the palm on his knees.
+
+Rawley looked at the ominous-looking bottles on the shelves above the old
+man's head, at the forceps, knives, and other surgical instruments on the
+walls--they at least were bright and clean--and, taking the cheroot slowly
+from his mouth, he said:
+
+"Shin-plasters are what I want. A friend of mine has caught his leg in a
+trap."
+
+The old man gave an evil chuckle at the joke, for a "shin-plaster" was a
+money-note worth a quarter of a dollar.
+
+"I've got some," he growled in reply, "but they cost twenty-five cents
+each. You can have them for your friend at the price."
+
+"I want eight thousand of them from you. He's hurt pretty bad," was the
+dogged, dry answer.
+
+The shaggy eyebrows of the quack drew together, and the eyes peered out
+sharply through half-closed lids. "There's plenty of wanting and not much
+getting in this world," he rejoined, with a leer of contempt, and spat on
+the floor, while yet the furtive watchfulness of the eyes indicated a mind
+ill at ease.
+
+Smoke came in placid puffs from the cheroot--Rawley was smoking very hard,
+but with a judicial meditation, as it seemed.
+
+"Yes, but if you want a thing so bad that, to get it, you'll face the
+devil or the Beast of Revelations, it's likely to come to you."
+
+"You call me a beast?" The reddish-brown face grew black like that of a
+Bedouin in his rage.
+
+"I said the Beast of Revelations--don't you know the Scriptures?"
+
+"I know that a fool is to be answered according to his folly," was the
+hoarse reply, and the great head wagged to and fro in its smarting rage.
+
+"Well, I'm doing my best; and perhaps when the folly is all out we'll come
+to the revelations of the Beast."
+
+There was a silence, in which the gross impostor shifted heavily in his
+seat, while a hand twitched across the mouth and then caught at the breast
+of the threadbare black coat abstractedly.
+
+Rawley leaned forward, one elbow on a knee, the cheroot in his fingers. He
+spoke almost confidentially, as to some ignorant and misguided savage--as
+he had talked to Indian chiefs in his time when searching for the truth
+regarding some crime.
+
+"I've had a lot of revelations in my time. A lawyer and a doctor always
+do. And though there are folks who say I'm no lawyer, as there are those
+who say with greater truth that you're no doctor, speaking technically,
+we've both had 'revelations.' You've seen a lot that's seamy, and so have
+I. You're pretty seamy yourself. In fact, you're as bad a man as ever
+saved lives--and lost them. You've had a long tether, and you've swung on
+it--swung wide. But you've had a lot of luck that you haven't swung high,
+too."
+
+He paused and flicked away the ash from his cheroot, while the figure
+before him swayed animal-like from side to side, muttering.
+
+"You've got brains, a great lot of brains of a kind--however you came by
+them," Rawley continued; "and you've kept a lot of people in the West from
+passing in their checks before their time. You've rooked 'em, chiselled
+'em out of a lot of cash, too. There was old Lamson--fifteen hundred for
+the goitre on his neck; and Mrs. Gilligan for the cancer--two thousand,
+wasn't it? 'Tincture of Lebanon Leaves' you called the medicine, didn't
+you? You must have made fifty thousand or so in the last ten years."
+
+"What I've made I'll keep," was the guttural answer, and the talon-like
+fingers clawed the table.
+
+"You've made people pay high for curing them, saving them sometimes; but
+you haven't paid me high for saving you in the courts; and there's one
+case that you haven't paid me for at all. That was when the patient
+died--and you didn't."
+
+The face of the old man became mottled with a sudden fear, but he jerked
+it forward once or twice with an effort at self-control. Presently he
+steadied to the ordeal of suspense, while he kept saying to himself, "What
+does he know--what--which?"
+
+"Malpractice resulting in death--that was poor Jimmy Tearle; and something
+else resulting in death--that was the switchman's wife. And the law is
+hard in the West where a woman's in the case--quick and hard. Yes, you've
+swung wide on your tether; look out that you don't swing high, old man."
+
+"You can prove nothing; it's bluff!" came the reply in a tone of malice
+and of fear.
+
+"You forget. I was your lawyer in Jimmy Tearle's case, and a letter's been
+found written by the switchman's wife to her husband. It reached me the
+night he was killed by the avalanche. It was handed over to me by the
+post-office, as the lawyer acting for the relatives. I've read it. I've
+got it. It gives you away."
+
+"I wasn't alone." Fear had now disappeared, and the old man was fighting.
+
+"No, you weren't alone; and if the switchman and the switchman's wife
+weren't dead and out of it all, and if the other man that didn't matter
+any more than you wasn't alive and hadn't a family that does matter, I
+wouldn't be asking you peaceably for two thousand dollars as my fee for
+getting you off two cases that might have sent you to prison for twenty
+years, or, maybe, hung you to the nearest tree."
+
+The heavy body pulled itself together, the hands clinched. "Blackmail--you
+think I'll stand it?"
+
+"Yes, I think you will. I want two thousand dollars to help a friend in a
+hole, and I mean to have it, if you think your neck's worth it."
+
+Teeth, wonderfully white, showed through the shaggy beard. "If I had to go
+to prison--or swing, as you say--do you think I'd go with my mouth shut?
+I'd not pay up alone. The West would crack--holy Heaven, I know enough to
+make it sick. Go on and see! I've got the West in my hand." He opened and
+shut his fingers with a grimace of cruelty which shook Rawley in spite of
+himself.
+
+Rawley had trusted to the inspiration of the moment; he had had no clearly
+defined plan; he had believed that he could frighten the old man, and by
+force of will bend him to his purposes. It had all been more difficult
+than he had expected. He kept cool, imperturbable, and determined,
+however. He knew that what the old quack said was true--the West might
+shake with scandal concerning a few who, no doubt, in remorse and secret
+fear, had more than paid the penalty of their offences. But he thought of
+Di Welldon and of her criminal brother, and every nerve, every faculty,
+was screwed to its utmost limit of endurance and capacity.
+
+Suddenly the old man gave a new turn to the event. He got up and,
+rummaging in an old box, drew out a dice-box. Rattling the dice, he threw
+them out on the table before him, a strange, excited look crossing his
+face.
+
+"Play for it," he said, in a harsh, croaking voice. "Play for the two
+thousand. Win it, if you can. You want it bad. I want to keep it bad. It's
+nice to have; it makes a man feel warm--money does. I'd sleep in
+ten-dollar bills, I'd have my clothes made of them, if I could; I'd have
+my house papered with them; I'd eat 'em. Oh, I know, I know about you--and
+her--Diana Welldon! You've sworn off gambling, and you've kept your pledge
+for near a year. Well, it's twenty years since I gambled--twenty years. I
+gambled with these then." He shook the dice in the box. "I gambled
+everything I had away--more than two thousand dollars--more than two
+thousand dollars." He laughed a raw, mirthless laugh. "Well, you're the
+greatest gambler in the West. So was I--in the East. It pulverized me at
+last, when I'd nothing left--and drink, drink, drink. I gave up both one
+night and came out West. I started doctoring here. I've got money, plenty
+of money--medicine, mines, land got it for me. I've been lucky. Now you
+come to bluff me--me! You don't know old Busby." He spat on the floor.
+"I'm not to be bluffed. I know too much. Before they could lynch me I'd
+talk. But to play you, the greatest gambler in the West, for two thousand
+dollars--yes, I'd like the sting of it again. Twos, fours,
+double-sixes--the gentleman's game!" He rattled the dice and threw them
+with a flourish out on the table, his evil face lighting up. "Come! You
+can't have something for nothing!" he growled.
+
+As he spoke, a change came over Rawley's face. It lost its cool
+imperturbability, it grew paler, the veins on the fine forehead stood out,
+a new, flaring light came into the eyes. The old gambler's spirit was
+alive. But even as it rose, sweeping him into that area of fiery
+abstraction where every nerve is strung to a fine tension and the
+surrounding world disappears, he saw the face of Diana Welldon, he
+remembered her words to him not an hour before, and the issue of the
+conflict, other considerations apart, was without doubt. But there was her
+brother and his certain fate if the two thousand dollars were not paid in
+by midnight. He was desperate. It was in reality for Diana's sake. He
+approached the table, and his old calm returned.
+
+"I have no money to play with," he said, quietly.
+
+With a gasp of satisfaction, the old man fumbled in the inside of his coat
+and drew out layers of ten, fifty, and hundred dollar bills. It was lined
+with them. He passed a pile over to Rawley--two thousand dollars. He
+placed a similar pile before himself.
+
+As Rawley laid his hand on the bills, the thought rushed through his mind,
+"You have it--keep it!" but he put it away from him. With a gentleman he
+might have done it, with this man before him it was impossible. He must
+take his chances; and it was the only chance in which he had hope now,
+unless he appealed for humanity's sake, for the girl's sake, and told the
+real truth. It might avail. Well, that would be the last resort.
+
+"For small stakes?" said the grimy quack, in a gloating voice.
+
+Rawley nodded, and then added: "We stop at eleven o'clock, unless I've
+lost or won all before that."
+
+"And stake what's left on the last throw?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+There was silence for a moment, in which Rawley seemed to grow older, and
+a set look came to his mouth--a broken pledge, no matter what the cause,
+brings heavy penalties to the honest mind. He shut his eyes for an
+instant, and, when he opened them, he saw that his fellow-gambler was
+watching him with an enigmatical and furtive smile. Did this Caliban have
+some understanding of what was at stake in his heart and soul?
+
+"Play!" Rawley said, sharply, and was himself again.
+
+For hour after hour there was scarce a sound, save the rattle of the dice
+and an occasional exclamation from the old man as he threw a double-six.
+As dusk fell, the door had been shut and a lighted lantern was hung over
+their heads.
+
+Fortune had fluctuated. Once the old man's pile had diminished to two
+notes, then the luck had changed and his pile grew larger; then fell
+again; but, as the hands of the clock on the wall above the blue medicine
+bottles reached a quarter to eleven, it increased steadily throw after
+throw.
+
+Now the player's fever was in Rawley's eyes. His face was deadly pale, but
+his hand threw steadily, calmly, almost negligently, as it might seem. All
+at once, at eight minutes to eleven, the luck turned in his favor, and his
+pile mounted again. Time after time he dropped double-sixes. It was almost
+uncanny. He seemed to see the dice in the box, and his hand threw them out
+with the precision of a machine. Long afterward he had this vivid illusion
+that he could see the dice in the box. As the clock was about to strike
+eleven he had before him three thousand eight hundred dollars. It was his
+throw.
+
+"Two hundred," he said, in a whisper, and threw. He won.
+
+With a gasp of relief, he got to his feet, the money in his hand. He
+stepped backward from the table, then staggered, and a faintness passed
+over him. He had sat so long without moving that his legs bent under him.
+There was a pail of water with a dipper in it on a bench. He caught up a
+dipperful of water, drank it empty, and let it fall in the pail again with
+a clatter.
+
+"Dan," he said, abstractedly--"Dan, you're all safe now."
+
+Then he seemed to wake, as from a dream, and looked at the man at the
+table. Busby was leaning on it with both hands, and staring at Rawley like
+some animal jaded and beaten from pursuit. Rawley walked back to the table
+and laid down two thousand dollars.
+
+"I only wanted two thousand," he said, and put the other two thousand in
+his pocket.
+
+The evil eyes gloated, the long fingers clutched the pile and swept it
+into a great inside pocket. Then the shaggy head bent forward.
+
+"You said it was for Dan," he said--"Dan Welldon?"
+
+Rawley hesitated. "What is that to you?" he replied, at last.
+
+With a sudden impulse the old impostor lurched round, opened a box, drew
+out a roll, and threw it on the table.
+
+"It's got to be known sometime," he said, "and you'll be my lawyer when
+I'm put into the ground--you're clever. They call me a quack.
+Malpractice--bah! There's my diploma--James Clifton Welldon. Right enough,
+isn't it?"
+
+Rawley was petrified. He knew the forgotten story of James Clifton
+Welldon, the specialist, turned gambler, who had almost ruined his own
+brother--the father of Dan and Diana--at cards and dice, and had then
+ruined himself and disappeared. Here, where his brother had died, he had
+come years ago and practised medicine as a quack.
+
+"Oh, there's plenty of proof, if it's wanted!" he said. "I've got it
+here." He tapped the box behind him. "Why did I do it? Because it's my
+way. And you're going to marry my niece, and'll have it all some day. But
+not till I've finished with it--not unless you win it from me at dice or
+cards.... But no"--something human came into the old, degenerate face--"no
+more gambling for the man that's to marry Diana. There's a wonder and a
+beauty!" He chuckled to himself. "She'll be rich when I've done with it.
+You're a lucky man--ay, you're lucky."
+
+Rawley was about to tell the old man what the two thousand dollars was
+for, but a fresh wave of repugnance passed over him, and, hastily drinking
+another dipperful of water, he opened the door. He looked back. The old
+man was crouching forward, lapping milk from the great bowl, his beard
+dripping. In disgust he swung round again. The fresh, clear air caught his
+face.
+
+With a gasp of relief he stepped out into the night, closing the door
+behind him.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Northern Lights, by Gilbert Parker
+
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