CHAPTER XXXIX
A CREE RUNNER BRINGS NEWS
"Don't you worry about that lad, Jessie. He's got as many lives as acat--and then some. I've knew him ever since he was knee-high to agrasshopper."
Brad Stearns was talking. He sat in the big family room at the McRaehouse and puffed clouds of tobacco, smoke to the rafters.
"Meaning Mr. Beresford?" asked Jessie demurely. She was patching apair of leather trousers for Fergus and she did not raise her eyesfrom the work.
"Meanin' Tom Morse," the old-timer said. "Not but what Beresford's agood lad too. Sand in his craw an' a kick like a mule in his fist. Buthe was brought up somewheres in the East, an' o' course he's a leetlemite less tough than Tom. No, sir. Tom'll bob up one o' these heredays good as ever. Don't you worry none about that. Why, he ain't beengone but--lemme see, a week or so better'n four months. When a man'sgot to go to the North Pole an' back, four months--"
Beneath her long lashes the girl slanted a swift look at Brad. "Thatmakes twice you've told me in two minutes not to worry about Mr.Morse. Do I look peaked? Am I lying awake nights thinking about him,do you think?" She held up the renewed trousers and surveyed herhandiwork critically.
Brad gazed at her through narrowed lids. "I'll be doggoned if I knowwhether you are or you ain't. I'd bet a pair o' red-topped boots it'sone of them lads. 'Course Beresford's got a red coat an' spurs thatjingle an' a fine line o' talk. Tom he ain't got ary one o' the three.But if it's a man you're lookin' for, a two-fisted man who--"
A wave of mirth crossed Jessie's face like a ripple on still water.Her voice mimicked his. "Why do you want to saw off an old maid onthat two-fisted man you've knew ever since he was knee-high to agrasshopper? What did he ever do to you that was so doggoned mean?"
"Now looky here, you can laugh at me all you've a mind to. All I'msayin' is--"
"Oh, I'm not laughing at you," she interposed hurriedly with anassumption of anxiety her bubbling eyes belied. "If you could show mehow to get your two-fisted man when he comes back--or even the onewith the red coat and the spurs and the fine line of talk--"
"I ain't sayin' he ain't a man from the ground up too," Brad broke in."Considerin' his opportunities he's a right hefty young fellow. ButTom Morse he--"
"That's it exactly. Tom Morse he--"
"Keep right on makin' fun o' me. Tom Morse he's a man outa tenthousand, an' I don't know as I'm coverin' enough population at that."
"And you're willing to make a squaw-man of him. Oh, Mr. Stearns!"
He looked at her severely. "You got no license to talk thataway,Jessie McRae. You're Angus McRae's daughter an' you been to Winnipegto school. Anyways, after what Lemoine found out--"
"What did he find out? Pierre Roubideaux couldn't tell him anythingabout the locket and the ring. Makoye-kin said he got it from hisbrother who was one of a party that massacred an American outfit oftrappers headed for Peace River. He doesn't know whether the pictureof the woman in the locket was that of one of the women in the camp.All we've learned is that I look like a picture of a white woman foundin a locket nearly twenty years ago. That doesn't take us very far,does it?"
"Well, Stokimatis may know something. When Onistah comes back withher, we'll get the facts straight."
McRae came into the room. "News, lass," he cried, and his voice rang."A Cree runner's just down frae Northern Lights. He says the lads werepicked up by some trappers near Desolation. One o' them's been badlyhurt, but he's on the mend. Which yin I dinna ken. What wi' starvationan' blizzards an' battles they've had a tough time. But the word isthey're doing fine noo."
"West?" asked Brad. "Did they get him?"
"They got him. Dragged him back to Desolation with a rope round hisneck. Hung on to him while they were slam-bangin' through blizzardsan' runnin' a race wi' death to get back before they starved. Foundhim up i' the Barrens somewhere, the story is. He'll be hangit at theproper time an' place. It's in the Word. 'They that take the swordshall perish with the sword.' Matthew 26:52."
Brad let out the exultant rebel yell he had learned years before inthe Confederate army. "What'd I tell you about that boy? Ain't Iknowed him since he was a li'l' bit of a tad? He's a go-getter, Tomis. Y'betcha!"
Jessie's heart was singing too, but she could not forbear a friendlygibe at him. "I suppose Win Beresford wasn't there at all. He hadn't athing to do with it, had he?"
The old cowpuncher raised a protesting hand. "I ain't said a wordagainst him. Now have I, McRae? Nothin' a-tall. All I done said wasthat I been tellin' everybody Tom would sure enough bring back BullyWest with him."
The girl laughed. "You're daffy about that boy you brought up by hand.I'll not argue with you."
"They're both good lads," the Scotchman summed up, and passed to hissecond bit of news. "Onistah and Stokimatis are in frae the Blackfootcountry. They stoppit at the store, but they'll be alang presently. Ihad a word wi' Onistah. We'll wait for him here."
"Did he say what he'd found out?" Jessie cried.
"Only that he had brought back the truth. That'll be the lad knockin'at the door."
Jessie opened, to let in Onistah and his mother. Stokimatis and thegirl gravitated into each other's arms, as is the way with women whoare fond of each other. The Indian is stolid, but Jessie had the habitof impetuosity, of letting her feelings sweep her into demonstration.Even the native women she loved were not proof against it.
McRae questioned Stokimatis.
Without waste of words the mother of Onistah told the story she hadtraveled hundreds of miles to tell.
Sleeping Dawn was not the child of her sister. When the attack hadbeen made on the white trappers bound for Peace River, the mother of ababy had slipped the infant under an iron kettle. After the massacreher sister had found the wailing little atom of humanity. The Indianwoman had recently lost her own child. She hid the babe and afterwardwas permitted to adopt it. When a few months later she died ofsmallpox, Stokimatis had inherited the care of the little one. She hadnamed it Sleeping Dawn. Later, when the famine year came, she had soldthe child to Angus McRae.
That was all she knew. But it was enough for Jessie. She did not knowwho her parents had been. She never would know, beyond the fact thatthey were Americans and that her mother had been a beautiful girlwhose eyes laughed and danced. But this knowledge made a tremendousdifference to her. She belonged to the ruling race and not to themetis, just as much as Win Beresford and Tom Morse did.
She tried to hide her joy, was indeed ashamed of it. For anyexpression of it seemed like a reproach to Matapi-Koma and Onistah andStokimatis, to her brother Fergus and in a sense even to her father.None the less her blood beat fast. What she had just found out meantthat she could aspire to the civilization of the whites, that shehad before her an outlook, was not to be hampered by the limitationsimposed upon her by race.
The heart in the girl sang a song of sunshine dancing on grass, ofmeadowlarks flinging out their carefree notes of joy. Through it likea golden thread ran for a motif little melodies that had to do with aman who had staggered into Fort Desolation out of the frozen North,sick and starved and perhaps wounded, but still indomitably captain ofhis soul.
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