Northern Lights, Complete - Gilbert Parker
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"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 labour-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, agonised 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 realised 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 favour 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 forwards 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 millions of
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 labour, and get the fruits of your labour,
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, harken! 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 for ever, 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's Bay
Company's post and safety; and through ten hours had the two struggled
towards 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 agonised 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 greyer 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--give it me! 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
greyer and greyer; 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 colour 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 declared.
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."