Lords of the North

by Laut, Agnes C

  "Bed!" he exclaimed with indignation. "Bed! You're a madman, Sir! I'm to meet Miriam on the St. Foye road." (It was here that Miriam lived in Quebec, before they were married.) "On the St. Foye road! See the lights glitter, dearest, in Lower Town," and he laughed aloud. Then followed such an outpouring of wild ravings I wept from very pity and helplessness.

  "Rufus! Rufus, lad!" he cried, staring at me and clutching at his forehead as lucid intervals broke the current of his madness. "Gillespie, man, what's wrong? I don't seem able to think. Who—are—you? Who—in the world—are you? Gillespie! O Gillespie! I'm going mad! Am I going mad? Help me, Rufus! Why can't you help me? It's coming after me! See it! The hideous thing!" Tears started from his burning eyes and his brow was knotted hard as whipcord.

  "Look! It's there!" he screamed, pointing to the fire, and he darted to the door, where I caught him. He fought off my grasp with maniacal strength, and succeeded in flinging open the door. Then I forgot this man was more than brother to me, and threw myself upon him as against an enemy, determined to have the mastery. The bleak wind roared through the open blackness of the doorway, and on the ground outside were shadows of two struggling, furious men. I saw the terrified faces of Little Fellow and La Robe Noire peering through the dark, and felt wet beads start from every pore in my body. Both of us were panting like fagged racers. One of us was fighting blindly, raining down aimless blows, I know not which, but I think it must have been Hamilton, for he presently sank in my arms, limp and helpless as a sick child.

  Somehow I got him between the robes of my floor mattress. Drawing a box to the bedside I again took his hands between mine and prepared for a night's watch.

  He raved in a low, indistinct tone, muttering Miriam's name again and again, and tossing his head restlessly from side to side. Then he fell into a troubled sleep. The supper lay untouched. Torches had burned black out. One tallow candle, that I had extravagantly put among some evergreens—our poor decorations for Christmas Eve—sputtered low and threw ghostly, branching shadows across the lodge. I slipped from the sick man's side, heaped more logs on the fire and stretched out between robes before the hearth. In the play of the flame Hamilton's face seemed suddenly and strangely calm. Was it the dim light, I wonder. The furrowed lines of sorrow seemed to fade, leaving the peaceful, transparent purity of the dead. I could not but associate the branched shadows on the wall with legends of death keeping guard over the dying. The shadow by his pillow gradually assumed vague, awesome shape. I sat up and rubbed my eyes. Was this an illusion, or was I, too, going mad? The filmy thing distinctly wavered and receded a little into the dark.

  An unspeakable fear chilled my veins. Then I could have laughed defiance and challenged death. Death! Curse death! What had we to fear from dying? Had we not more to fear from living? At that came thought of my love and the tumult against life was quieted. I, too, like other mortals, had reason, the best of reason, to fear death. What matter if a lonely one like myself went out alone to the great dark? But when thought of my love came, a desolating sense of separation—separation not to be bridged by love or reason—overwhelmed me, and I, too, shrank back.

  Again I peered forward. The shadow fluttered, moved, and came out of the gloom, a tender presence with massy, golden hair, white-veined brow, and gray eyes, speaking unutterable things.

  "My beloved!" I cried. "Oh, my beloved!" and I sprang towards her; but she had glided back among the spectral branches.

  The candle tumbled to the floor, extinguishing all light, and I was alone with the sick man breathing heavily in the darkness. A log broke over the fire. The flames burst up again; but I was still alone. Had I, too, lost grip of reality; or was she in distress calling for me? Neither suggestion satisfied; for the mean lodge was suddenly filled with a great calm, and my whole being was flooded and thrilled with the trancing ecstasy of an ethereal presence.

  If I remember rightly—and to be perfectly frank, I do—though I was in as desperate straits as a man could be, I lay before the hearth that Christmas Eve filled with gratitude to heaven—God knows such a gift must have come from heaven!—for the love with which I had been dowered.

  How it might have been with other men I know not. For myself, I could not have come through that dreary winter unscathed without the influence of her, who would have been the first to disclaim such power. Among the velvet cushions of the east one may criticise the lapse of white man to barbarity; but in the wilderness human voice is as grateful to the ear as rain patter in a drouth. There, men deal with facts, not arguments. Natives break the loneliness of an isolated life by not unwelcomed visits. Comes a time when they tarry over long in the white man's lodge. Other men, who have scouted the possibility of sinking to savagery, have forsaken the ways of their youth. Who can say that I might not have departed from the path called rectitude?

  Religion may keep a holy man upright in slippery places; but for common mortals, devotion to a being, whom, in one period of their worship men rank with angels, does much to steady wavering feet. Hers was the influence that aroused loathing for the drunken debauches, the cheating, the depraved living of the Indian lodges: hers, the influence that kept the loathing from slipping into indifference, the indifference from becoming participation. Indeed, I could wish a young man no better talisman against the world, the flesh and the devil, than love for a pure woman.

  How we dragged through the hours of that night, of Christmas and the days that followed, I do not attempt to set down here. Hamilton's illness lasted a month. What with trading and keeping our scouts on the search for Miriam and waiting on the sick man, I had enough to busy me without brooding over my own woes. Hard as my life was, it was fortunate I had no time for thoughts of self and so escaped the melancholy apathy that so often benumbs the lonely man's activities. And when Eric became convalescent, I had enough to do finding diversion for his mind. Keeping record of our doings on birch-bark sheets, playing quoits with the Mandanes and polo with a few fearless riders, helped to pass the long weary days.

  So the dismal winter wore away and spring was drizzling into summer. Within a few weeks we should be turning our faces northward for the forks of the Red and Assiniboine. The prospect of movement after long stagnation cheered Hamilton and fanned what neither of us would acknowledge—a faint hope that Miriam might yet be alive in the north. I verily believe Eric would have started northward with restored courage had not our plans been thwarted by the sinister handiwork of Le Grand Diable.

  * * *

  CHAPTER XV

  THE GOOD WHITE FATHER

  For a week Hamilton and I had been busy in our respective lodges getting peltries and personal belongings into shape for return to Red River. On Saturday night, at least I counted it Saturday from the notches on my doorpost, though Eric, grown morose and contradictory, maintained that it was Sunday—we sat talking before the fire of my lodge. A dreary raindrip pattered through the leaky roof and the soaked parchment tacked across the window opening flapped monotonously against the pine logs.

  Unfastening the moon-shaped medallion, which my uncle had given me, I slowly spelled out the Nor'-Westers' motto—"Fortitude in Distress."

  "For-ti-tude in Dis-tress," I repeated idly. "By Jove, Hamilton, we need it, don't we?"

  Eric's lips curled in scorn. Without answering, he impatiently kicked a fallen brand back to the live coals. I know old saws are poor comfort to people in distress, being chiefly applicable when they are not needed.

  "What in the world can be keeping Father Holland?" I asked, leading off on another tack. "Here we are almost into the summer, and never a sight of him."

  "Did you really expect him back alive from the Bloods?" sneered Hamilton. He had unconsciously acquired a habit of expecting the worst.

  "Certainly," I returned. "He's been among them before."

  "Then all I have to say is, you're a fool!"

  Poor Eric! He had informed me I was a fool so often in his ravings I had grown quite used to the insult. He glared savagely at the fi
re, and if I had not understood this bitterness towards the missionary, the next remark was of a nature to enlighten me.

  "I don't see why any man in his senses wants to save the soul of an Indian," he broke out. "Let them go where they belong! Souls! They haven't any souls, or if they have, it's the soul of a fiend——"

  "By the bye, Eric," I interrupted, for this petulant ill-humor, that saw naught but evil in everything, was becoming too frequent and always ended in the same way—a night of semi-delirium, "by the bye, did you see those fellows turning up soil for corn with a buffalo shoulder-blade as a hoe?"

  "I wish every damn Red a thousand feet under the soil, deeper than that, if the temperature increases."

  It was impossible to talk to Hamilton without provoking a quarrel. Leaning back with hands clasped behind my head, I watched through half-closed eyes his sad face darkling under stormy moods.

  At last the rain succeeded in soaking through the parchment across the window and the wind drove through a great split in chilling gusts that added to the cabin's discomfort. I got up and jammed an old hat into the hole. At the window I heard the shouting of Indians having a hilarious night among the lodges and was amazed at the sound of discharging firearms above the huzzas, for ammunition was scarce among the Mandanes. The hubbub seemed to be coming towards our hut. I could see nothing through the window slit, and lighting a pine fagot, shot back the latch-bolt and threw open the door. A multitude of tawny, joyous, upturned faces thronged to the steps. The crowd was surging about some newcomer, and Chief Black Cat was prancing around in an ecstasy of delight, firing away all his gunpowder in joyous demonstration. I lifted my torch. The Indians fell back and forth strode Father Holland, his face shining wet and abeam with pleasure. The Indians had been welcoming "their good white father." As he dismissed his Mandane children we drew him in and placed his soaked over-garments before the fire. Then we proffered him all the delicacies of bachelors' quarters, and filled and refilled his bowl with soup, and did not stop pouring out our lye-black tea till he had drained the dregs of it.

  Having satisfied his inner-man, we gave him the best stump-tree seat in the cabin and sat back to listen. There was the awkward pause of reunion, when friends have not had time to gather up the loose threads of a parted past and weave them anew into stronger bands of comradeship. Hamilton and the priest were strangers; but if the latter were as overcome by the meeting after half a year's isolation as I was, the silence was not surprising. To me it seemed the genial face was unusually grave, and I noticed a long, horizontal scar across his forehead.

  "What's that, Father?" I asked, indicating the mark on his brow.

  "Tush, youngster! Nothing! Nothing at all! Sampled scalping-knife on me; thought better of it, kept me out of the martyr's crown."

  "And left you your own!" cried Hamilton astonished at the priest's careless stoicism.

  "Left me my own," responded Father Holland.

  "Do you mean to say the murderous——" I began.

  "Tush, youngster! Be quiet!" said he. "Haven't many brethren come from the same tribe more like warped branches than men? What am I, that I should escape? Never speak of it again," and he continued his silent study of the flames' play.

  "Where are your Indians?" he asked abruptly.

  "In the lodges. Shall I whistle for them?"

  He did not answer, but leaned forward with elbows on his knees, rubbing his chin vigorously first with one hand, then the other, still studying the fire.

  "How strong are the Mandanes?" he asked.

  "Weak, weak," I answered. "Few hundred. It hasn't been worth while for traders to come here for years."

  "Was it worth while this year?"

  "Not for trade."

  "For anything else?" and he looked at Eric's dejected face.

  "Nothing else," I put in hastily, fearing one of Hamilton's outbreaks. "We've been completely off the track, might better have stayed in the north——"

  "No, you mightn't, not by any means," was his sharp retort. "I've been in the Sioux lodges for three weeks."

  With an inarticulate cry, Hamilton sprang to his feet. He was trembling from head to foot and caught Father Holland roughly by the shoulder.

  "Speak out, Sir! What of Miriam?" he demanded in dry, hard, rasping tones.

  "Well, well, safe and inviolate. So's the boy, a big boy now! May ye have them both in y'r arms soon—soon—soon!" and again he fell to studying the fire with an unhurried deliberation, that was torture to Hamilton.

  "Are they with you? Are they with you?" shouted Hamilton, hope bounding up elastically to the wildest heights after his long depression. "Don't keep me in suspense! I cannot bear it. Tell me where they are," he pleaded. "Are they with you?" and his eyes burned into the priest's like live coals. "Are—they—with—you?"

  "No—Lord—no!" roared Father Holland, alarmed at Hamilton's violent condition. "But," he added, seeing Eric reel dizzily, "but they're all right! Now you keep quiet and don't scare the wits out of a body! They're all right, I tell you, and I've come straight from them for the ransom price."

  "Get it, Rufus, get it!" shouted Hamilton to me, throwing his hands distractedly to his head, a habit too common with him of late. "Get it! Get it!" he kept calling, utterly beside himself.

  "Sit down, will you?" thundered the priest, as if Eric's sitting down would calm all agitation. "Sit down! Behave! Keep quiet, both of you, or my tongue'll forget holy orders and give ye some good Irish eloquence! What d' y' mane, scarin' the breath out of a body and blowing his ideas to limbo? Keep quiet, now, and listen!"

  "And did they," I cried, in spite of the injunction, "did they do that to you?" pointing to the scar on his brow.

  "Yes, they did."

  "Because they saw you with me?"

  "No, that's a brand for the faith, you conceited whelp, you—they stopped their tortures because they saw you with me. Now, swell out, Rufus, and gloat over your importance! I tell you it was the devil, himself, snatched my martyr's crown."

  "Le Grand Diable?"

  "Le Grand Diable's own minion. I saw his devilish eyes leering from the back o' the crowd, when I was tied to a stake. 'Bring that Indian to me,' sez I, transfixing him with my gaze; for—you understand—I couldn't point, my hands being tied. Troth! But ye should 'a' seen their looks of amazement at me boldness! There was I, roped to that tree, like a pig for the boiling pot, and sez I, 'Bring—that Indian—to me!' just as though I was managing the execution," and the priest paused to enjoy the recollection of the effects of his boldness.

  "A squaw up with an old clout," he continued, "and slashed it across my face, saying, 'Take that, pale face! Take that, man with a woman's skirts on!' and 'Take that!' howled a young buck, fetching the flat of his dagger across me forehead, close-cropped hair giving no grip for scalping, not to mention a pate as bald as mine," and the priest roared at his own joke, patting his bare crown affectionately.

  "Though the blood was boilin' in me enraged veins and dribblin' down my face like the rain to-night, by the help o' the Lord, I felt no pain. Never flinchin' nor takin' heed o' that bold baste of a squaw, I bawled like a bull of Bashan, 'Bring—that Indian—to me, coward-hearted Sioux—d' y' fear an Iroquois? Bring him to me and I'll make him enrich your tribe!'

  "Faith! Their eyes grew big as a harvest moon and they brought Le Grand Diable to me. Knowing his covetous heart, I told him if he still had the woman and the child, I'd get him a big ransom. At that they all jangled a bit, the old squaw clouting me with her filthy rag as if she wanted to slap me to a peak. At length they let Le Grand Diable unfasten the bands. With my hands tied behind my back, I was taken to his lodge. Miriam and the boy were kept in a place behind the Sioux squaw's hut. Once when the skin tied between blew up, I caught a glimpse of her poor white face. The boy was playing round her feet. I was in a corner of the lodge but was so grimed with grease and dirt, if she saw me she thought I was some Indian captive and turned away her head. I told Le Grand Diable in habitant French—which the
rascal understands—that I could obtain a good ransom for his prisoners. He left me alone in the lodge for some hours, I think to spy upon me and learn if I tried to speak to Miriam; but I lay still as a log and pretended to sleep. When he came back, he began bartering for the price; but I could make him no promises as to the amount or time of payment, for I was not sure you were here, and would not have him know where you are.

  "He kept me hanging on for his answer during the whole week, and many a time Miriam brushed past so close her skirts touched me; but that she-male devil of his—may the Lord give them both a warm, front seat!—was always watching and I could not speak. Miriam's face was hidden under her shawl and she looked neither to the right, nor to the left. I don't think she ever saw me. On condition you stay in your camp and don't go to meet her, but send your two Indians alone for her with your offer, he let me go. Here I am! Now, Rufus, where are your men? Off with them bearing more gifts than the Queen of Sheba carried to Solomon!"

  * * *

  From the hour that La Robe Noire and Little Fellow, laden with gaudy trinkets and hunting outfits, departed for the Sioux lodges, Hamilton was positively a madman. In the first place, he had been determined to disguise himself as an Indian and go instead of La Robe Noire, whose figure he resembled. To this, we would not listen. Le Grand Diable was not the man to be tricked and there was no sense in ransoming Miriam for a captive husband. Then, he persisted in riding part of the way with our messengers, which necessitated my doing likewise. I had to snatch his horse's bridle, wheel both our horses round and head homeward at a gallop, before he would listen to reason and come back.

  Round the lodges he was a ramping tiger. Twenty times a day he went from our hut to the height of land commanding the north country, keeping me on the run at his heels; and all night he beat around the cramped shack as if it had been a cage. On the fourth day from the messengers' departure, chains could not bind him. If all went well, they should be with us at night. In defiance of Le Grand Diable's conditions, which an arrow from an unseen marksman might enforce, Eric saddled his mare and rode out to meet the men.