And he would glance back with shouts of droll laughter. "Get epp! We mustn't disturb them! Get epp!" This to his own horse and off he would go, humming some ditty to the lazy hobble of his nag.
"Old angel!" said I, under my breath, and I fell to wondering what earthly reason any man had for becoming a priest.
He was right. Talk no longer lagged, whatever our bronchos did; but, indeed, all we said was better heard by two than three. Why that was, I cannot tell, for like beads of a rosary our words were strung together on things commonplace enough; and fond hearts, as well as mystics, have a key to unlock a world of meaning from meaningless words. Tufts of poplars, wood islands on the prairie, skulking coyotes, that prowled to the top of some earth mound and uttered their weird cries, mud-colored badgers, hulking clumsily away to their treacherous holes, gophers, sly fellows, propped on midget tails pointing fore-paws at us—these and other common things stole the hours away. The sun, dipping close to the sky-line, shone distorted through the warm haze like a huge blood shield. Far ahead our scouts were pitching tents on ground well back from the river to avoid the mosquitoes swarming above the water. It was time to encamp for the night.
Those long June nights in the far north with fire glowing in the track of a vanished sun and stillness brooding over infinite space—have a glory, that is peculiarly their own. Only a sort of half-darkness lies between the lingering sunset and the early sun-dawn. At nine o'clock the sun-rim is still above the western prairie. At ten, one may read by daylight, and, if the sky is clear, forget for another hour that night has begun. After supper, Father Holland sat at a distance from the tents with his back carefully turned towards us, a precaution on his part for which I was not ungrateful. Frances Sutherland was throned on the boxes of our quondam table, and I was reclining against saddle-blankets at her feet.
"Oh! To be so forever," she exclaimed, gazing at the globe of solid gold against the opal-green sky. "To have the light always clear, just ahead, nothing between us and the light, peace all about, no care, no weariness, just quiet and beauty like this forever."
"Like this forever! I ask nothing better," said I with great heartiness; but neither her eyes nor her thoughts were for me. Would the eyes looking so intently at the sinking sun, I wondered, condescend to look at a spot against the sun. In desperation I meditated standing up. 'Tis all very well to talk of storming the citadel of a closed heart, but unless telepathic implements of war are perfected to the same extent as modern armaments, permitting attack at long range, one must first get within shooting distance. Apparently I was so far outside the defences, even my design was unknown.
"I think," she began in low, hesitating words, so clear and thrilling, they set my heart beating wildly with a vague expectation, "I think heaven must be very, very near on nights like this, don't—you—Rufus?"
I wasn't thinking of heaven at all, at least, not the heaven she had in mind; but if there is one thing to make a man swear white is black and black white and to bring him to instantaneous agreement with any statement whatsoever, it is to hear his Christian name so spoken for the first time. I sat up in an electrified way that brought the fringe of lashes down to hide those gray eyes.
"Very near? Well rather! I've been in heaven all day," I vowed. "I've been getting glimpses of paradise all the way from Fort William——"
"Don't," she interrupted with a flash of the imperious nature, which I knew. "Please don't, Mr. Gillespie."
"Please don't Mister Gillespie me," said I, piqued by a return to the formal. "If you picked up Rufus by mistake from the priest, he sets a good example. Don't drop a good habit!"
That was my first step inside the outworks.
"Rufus," she answered so gently I felt she might disarm and slay me if she would, "Rufus Gillespie"—that was a return of the old spirit, a compromise between her will and mine—"please don't begin saying that sort of thing—there's a whole day before us——"
"And you think I can't keep it up?"
"You haven't given any sign of failing. You know, Rufus," she added consolingly, "you really must not say those things, or something will be hurt! You'll make me hurt it."
"Something is hurt and needs mending, Miss Sutherland——"
"Don't Miss Sutherland me," she broke in with a laugh, "call me Frances; and if something is hurt and needs mending, I'm not a tinker, though my father and the priest—yes and you, too—sometimes think so. But sisters do mending, don't they?" and she laughed my earnestness off as one would puff out a candle.
"No—no—no—not sisters—not that," I protested. "I have no sisters, Little Statue. I wouldn't know how to act with a sister, unless she were somebody else's sister, you know. I can't stand the sisterly business, Frances——"
"Have you suffered much from the sisterly?" she asked with a merry twinkle.
"No," I hastened to explain, "I don't know how to play the sisterly touch-and-go at all, but the men tell me it doesn't work—dead failure, always ends the same. Sister proposes, or is proposed to——"
"Oh!" cried the Little Statue with the faintest note of alarm, and she moved back from me on the boxes. "I think we'd better play at being very matter-of-fact friends for the rest of the trip."
"No, thank you, Miss Sutherland—Frances, I mean," said I. "I'm not the fool to pretend that——"
"Then pretend anything you like," and there was a sudden coldness in her voice, which showed me she regarded my refusal and the slip in her name as a rebuff. "Pretend anything you like, only don't say things."
That was a throwing down of armor which I had not expected.
"Then pretend that a pilgrim was lost in the dark, lost where men's souls slip down steep places to hell, and that one as radiant as an angel from heaven shone through the blackness and guided him back to safe ground," I cried, taking quick advantage of my fair antagonist's sudden abandon and casting aside all banter.
"Children! children!" cried the priest. "Children! Sun's down! Time to go to your trundles, my babes!"
"Yes, yes," I shouted. "Wait till I hear the rest of this story."
At my words she had started up with a little gasp of fright. A look of awe came into her gray eyes, which I have seen on the faces of those who find themselves for the first time beside the abyss of a precipice. And I have climbed many lofty peaks, but never one without passing these places with the fearful possibilities of destruction. Always the novice has looked with the same unspeakable fear into the yawning depths, with the same unspeakable yearning towards the jewel-crowned heights beyond. This, or something of this, was in the startled attitude of the trembling figure, whose eyes met mine without flinching or favor.
"Or pretend that a traveler had lost his compass, and though he was without merit, God gave him a star."
"Is it a pretty story, Rufus?" called the priest.
"Very," I cried out impatiently. "Don't interrupt."
"Or pretend that a poor fool with no merit but his love of purity and truth and honor lost his way to paradise, and God gave him an angel for a guide."
"Is it a long story, Rufus?" called the priest.
"It's to be continued," I shouted, leaping to my feet and approaching her.
"And pretend that the pilgrim and the traveler and the fool, asked no other privilege but to give each his heart's love, his life's devotion to her who had come between him and the darkness——"
"Rufus!" roared the priest. "I declare I'll take a stick to you. Come away! D' y' hear? She's tired."
"Good-night," she answered, in a broken whisper, so cold it stabbed me like steel; and she put out her hand in the mechanical way of the well-bred woman in every land.
"Is that all?" I asked, holding the hand as if it had been a galvanic battery, though the priest was coming straight towards us.
"All?" she returned, the lashes falling over the misty, gray eyes. "Ah, Rufus! Are we playing jest is earnest, or earnest is jest?" and she turned quickly and went to her tent.
How long I stood in reverie, I do
not know. The priest's broad hand presently came down on my shoulder with a savage thud.
"Ye blunder-busticus, ye, what have ye been doing?" he asked. "The Little Statue was crying when she went to her tent."
"Crying?"
"Yes, ye idiot. I'll stay by her to-morrow."
And he did. Nor could he have contrived severer punishment for the unfortunate effect of my words. Fool, that I was! I should keep myself in hand henceforth. How many men have made that vow regarding the woman they love? Those that have kept it, I trow, could be counted easily enough. But I had no opportunity to break my vow; for the priest rode with Frances Sutherland the whole of the second day, and not once did he let loose his scorpion wit. She had breakfast alone in her tent next morning, the priest carrying tea and toast to her; and when she came out, she leaped to her saddle so quickly I lost the expected favor of placing that imperious foot in the stirrup. We set out three abreast, and I had no courage to read my fate from the cold, marble face. The ground became rougher. We were forced to follow long detours round sloughs, and I gladly fell to the rear where I was unobserved. Clumps of willows alone broke the endless dip of the plain. Glassy creeks glittered silver through the green, and ever the trail, like a narrow ribbon of many loops, fled before us to the dim sky-line.
When we halted for our nooning, Frances Sutherland had slipped from her saddle and gone off picking prairie roses before either the priest or I noticed her absence.
"If you go off, you nuisance, you," said the priest rubbing his bald pate, and gazing after her in a puzzled way, when we had the meal ready, "I think she'll come back and eat."
I promptly took myself off and had the glum pleasure of hearing her chat in high spirits over the dinner table of packing boxes; but she was on her cayuse and off with the scouts long before Father Holland and I had mounted.
"Rufus," said the priest with a comical, quizzical look, as we set off together. "Rufus, I think y'r a fool."
"I've thought that several hundred thousand times myself, this morning."
"Have ye as much as got a glint of her eye to-day?"
"No. I can't compete against the Church with women. Any fool knows that, even as big a fool as I."
"Tush, youngster! Don't take to licking your raw tongue up and down the cynic's saw edge! Put a spur to your broncho there and ride ahead with her."
"Having offended a goddess, I don't wish to be struck dead by inviting her wrath."
"Pah! I've no patience with y'r ramrod independence! Bend a stiff neck, or you'll break a sore heart! Ride ahead, I tell you, you young mule!" and he brought a smart flick across my broncho.
"Father Holland," I made answer with the dignity of a bishop and my nose mighty high in the air, "will you permit me to suggest that people know their own affairs best——"
"Tush, no! I'll permit you to do nothing of the kind," said he, driving a fly from his horse's ear. "Don't you know, you young idiot, that between a man surrendering his love, and a woman surrendering hers, there's difference enough to account for tears? A man gives his and gets it back with compound interest in coin that's pure gold compared to his copper. A woman gives hers and gets back——" the priest stopped.
"What?" I asked, interest getting the better of wounded pride.
"Not much that's worth having from idiots like you," said he; by which the priest proved he could deal honestly by a friend, without any mincing palliatives.
His answer set me thinking for the best part of the afternoon; and I warrant if any man sets out with the priest's premises and thinks hard for an afternoon he will come to the same conclusion that I did.
"Let's both poke along a little faster," said I, after long silence.
"Oho! With all my heart!" And we caught up with Frances Sutherland and for the first time that day I dared to look at her face. If there were tear marks about the wondrous eyes, they were the marks of the shower after a sun-burst, the laughing gladness of life in golden light, the joyous calm of washed air when a storm has cleared away turbulence. Why did she evade me and turn altogether to the priest at her right? Had I been of an analytical turn of mind, I might, perhaps, have made a very careful study of an emotion commonly called jealousy; but, when one's heart beats fast, one's thoughts throng too swiftly for introspection. Was I a part of the new happiness? I did not understand human nature then as I understand it now, else would I have known that fair eyes turn away to hide what they dare not reveal. I prided myself that I was now well in hand. I should take the first opportunity to undo my folly of the night before.
* * *
It was after supper. Father Holland had gone to his tent. Frances Sutherland was arranging a bunch of flowers in her lap; and I took my place directly behind her lest my face should tell truth while my tongue uttered lies.
"Speaking of stars, you know Miss Sutherland," I began, remembering that I had said something about stars that must be unsaid.
"Don't call me Miss Sutherland, Rufus," she said, and that gentle answer knocked my grand resolution clean to the four winds.
"I beg your pardon, Frances——" Chaos and I were one. Whatever was it I was to say about stars?
"Well?" There was a waiting in the voice.
"Yes—you know—Frances." I tried to call up something coherent; but somehow the thumping of my heart set up a rattling in my head.
"No—Rufus. As a matter of fact, I don't know. You were going to tell me something."
"Bother my stupidity, Miss—Miss—Frances, but the mastiff's forgotten what it was going to bow-wow about!"
"Not the moon this time," she laughed. "Speaking of stars," and she gave me back my own words.
"Oh! Yes! Speaking of stars! Do you know I think a lot of the men coming up from Fort William got to regarding the star above the leading canoe as their own particular star."
I thought that speech a masterpiece. It would convince her she was the star of all the men, not mine particularly. That was true enough to appease conscience, a half-truth like Louis Laplante's words. So I would rob my foolish avowal of its personal element. A flush suffused the snowy white below her hair.
"Oh! I didn't notice any particular star above the leading canoe. There were so very, very many splendid stars, I used to watch them half the night!"
That answer threw me as far down as her manner had elated me.
"Well! What of the stars?" asked the silvery voice.
I was dumb. She flung the flowers aside as though she would leave; but Father Holland suddenly emerged from the tent fanning himself with his hat.
"Babes!" said he. "You're a pair of fools! Oh! To be young and throw our opportunities helter-skelter like flowers of which we're tired," and he looked at the upset lapful. "Children! children! Carpe Diem! Carpe Diem! Pluck the flowers; for the days are swifter than arrows," and he walked away from us engrossed in his own thoughts, muttering over and over the advice of the Latin poet, "Carpe Diem! Carpe Diem!"
"What is Carpe Diem?" asked Frances Sutherland, gazing after the priest in sheer wonder.
"I wasn't strong on classics at Laval and I haven't my crib."
"Go on!" she commanded. "You're only apologizing for my ignorance. You know very well."
"It means just what he says—as if each day were a flower, you know, had its joys to be plucked, that can never come again."
"Flowers! Oh! I know! The kind you all picked for me coming up from Fort William. And do you know, Rufus, I never could thank you all? Were those Carpe Diem flowers?"
"No—not exactly the kind Father Holland means we should pick."
"What then?" and she turned suddenly to find her face not a hand's length from mine.
"This kind," I whispered, bending in terrified joy over her shoulder; and I plucked a blossom straight from her lips and another and yet another, till there came into the deep, gray eyes what I cannot transcribe, but what sent me away the king of all men—for had I not found my Queen?
And that was the way I carried out my grand resolution and kept
myself in hand.
* * *
CHAPTER XIII
THE BUFFALO HUNT
I question if Norse heroes of the sea could boast more thrilling adventure than the wild buffalo hunts of American plain-rangers. A cavalcade of six hundred men mounted on mettlesome horses eager for the furious dash through a forest of tossing buffalo-horns was quite as imposing as any clash between warring Vikings. Squaws, children and a horde of ragged camp-followers straggled in long lines far to the hunters' rear. Altogether, the host behind the flag numbered not less than two thousand souls. Like any martial column, our squad had captain, color-bearer and chaplain. Luckily, all three were known to me, as I discovered when I reached Pembina. The truce, patched up between Hudson's Bay and Nor'-Westers after Governor McDonell's surrender, left Cuthbert Grant free to join the buffalo hunt. Pursuing big game across the prairie was more to his taste than leading the half-breeds during peace. The warden of the plains came hot-foot after us, and was promptly elected captain of the chase. Father Holland was with us too. Our course lay directly on his way to the Missouri and a jolly chaplain he made. In Grant's company came Pierre, the rhymster, bubbling over with jingling minstrelsy, that was the delight of every half-breed camp on the plains. Bareheaded, with a red handkerchief banding back his lank hair, and clad in fringed buckskin from the bright neck-cloth to the beaded moccasins, he was as wild a figure as any one of the savage rabble. Yet this was the poet of the plain-rangers, who caught the song of bird, the burr of cataract through the rocks, the throb of stampeding buffalo, the moan of the wind across the prairie, and tuned his rude minstrelsy to wild nature's fugitive music. Viking heroes, I know, chanted their deeds in songs that have come down to us; but with the exception of the Eskimo, descendants of North American races have never been credited with a taste for harmony. Once I asked Pierre how he acquired his art of verse-making. With a laugh of scorn, he demanded if the wind and the waterfalls and the birds learned music from beardless boys and draggle-coated dominies with armfuls of books. However, it may have been with his Pegasus, his mount for the hunt was no laggard. He rode a knob-jointed, muscular brute, that carried him like poetic inspiration wherever it pleased. Though Pierre's right hand was busied upholding the hunters' flag, and he had but one arm to bow-string the broncho's arching neck, the half-breed poet kept his seat with the easy grace of the plainsman born and bred in the saddle.
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