Northern Lights, Complete - Gilbert Parker
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Lablache shook back his long hair, and rolled about in his pride. "I give
him cash for his share to-night someone is behin' me, share, 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 you 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 subtilty 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, gaily 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," Dingan 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 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.
"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 Nove 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 appetising 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 favourite 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-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--it is 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 horse-shoe.
"Be good Medicine to me," she said. Then she prayed. "O Sun, pity me that
it may be as I have said to him. O 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 horse-shoe, 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 for
ever. 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-wackers and muleskinners 'whooping it up'; no more
Blackfeet and Piegans drinking alcohol and water, and cutting each
others' 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's 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 aplenty, 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 odour 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 towards you." He laughed eagerly, and lifted
a tin cup of whiskey standing on a table near. "I'm lookin' towards 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 realising 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 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 forwards. "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.
Honour among rogues. We're all in it. How goes it--all right?" he added
carelessly to Hawley, and took a step forwards, 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--"
"Nancy--" 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 someone 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, Nancy," 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 anyone 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 someone to look after him.
This was the first real stirring of the maternal and protective spirit in
her towards 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
outdoor 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.