Northern Lights, Complete - Gilbert Parker
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Two months ago he had left this girl with her mind full of memories of
what he had said to her, and there was something in the sound of the
slight cough following his farewell words which had haunted her ever
since. Her tremendous health and energy, the fire of life burning so
brightly in her, reached out towards this man living on so narrow a
margin of force, with no reserve for any extra strain, with just enough
for each day's use and no more. Four hours before he had come again with
his team of four mules and an Indian youth, having covered forty miles
since his last stage. She was at the door and saw him coming while he was
yet along distance off. Some instinct had told her to watch that
afternoon, for she knew of his intended return and of his dangerous
enterprise. The Indians had trailed south and east, the traders had
disappeared with them, her brother Bantry had gone up and over to
Dingan's Drive, and, save for a few loiterers and last hangers-on, she
was alone with what must soon be a deserted post; its walls, its great
enclosed yard, and its gun-platforms (for it had been fortified) left for
law and order to enter upon, in the persons of the red-coated watchmen of
the law.
Out of the South, from over the border, bringing the last great smuggled
load of whiskey which was to be handed over at Dingan's Drive, and then
floated on Red Man's River to settlements up North, came the "college
pup," Kelly Lambton, worn out, dazed with fatigue, but smiling too, for a
woman's face was ever a tonic to his blood since he was big enough to
move in life for himself. It needed courage--or recklessness--to run the
border now; for, as Abe Hawley had said, the American marshals were on
the pounce, the red-coated mounted police were coming west from Ottawa,
and word had winged its way along the prairie that these redcoats were
only a few score miles away, and might be at Fort Fair Desire at any
moment. The trail to Dingan's Drive lay past it. Through Barfleur Coulee,
athwart a great open stretch of country, along a wooded belt, and then,
suddenly, over a ridge, Dingan's Drive and Red Man's River would be
reached.
The Government had a mind to make an example, if necessary, by killing
some smugglers in conflict, and the United States marshals had been
goaded by vanity and anger at one or two escapes "to have something for
their money," as they said. That, in their language, meant, "to let the
red run," and Kelly Lambton had none too much blood to lose.
He looked very pale and beaten as he held Nance Machell's hands now, and
called her a prairie-flower, as he had done when he left her two months
before. On his arrival but now he had said little, for he saw that she
was glad to see him, and he was dead for sleep, after thirty-six hours of
ceaseless travel and watching and danger. Now, with the most perilous
part of his journey still before him, and worn physically as he was, his
blood was running faster as he looked into the girl's face, and something
in her abundant force and bounding life drew him to her. Such vitality in
a man like Abe Hawley would have angered him almost, as it did a little
time ago, when Abe was there; but possessed by the girl, it roused in him
a hunger to draw from the well of her perfect health, from the unused
vigour of her being, something for himself. The touch of her hands warmed
him, in the fulness of her life, in the strong eloquence of face and
form, he forgot she was not beautiful. The lightness passed from his
words, and his face became eager.
"Flower, yes, the flower of the life of the West--that's what I mean," he
said. "You are like an army marching. When I look at you, my blood runs
faster. I want to march too. When I hold your hand I feel that life's
worth living--I want to do things."
She drew her hand away rather awkwardly. She had not now that command of
herself which had ever been easy with the men of the West, except,
perhaps, with Abe Hawley when--
But with an attempt, only half-meant, to turn the topic, she said: "You
must be starting if you want to get through to-night. If the redcoats
catch you this side of Barfleur Coulee, or in the Coulee itself, you'll
stand no chance. I heard they was only thirty miles north this afternoon.
Maybe they'll come straight on here to-night, instead of camping. If they
have news of your coming, they might. You can't tell."
"You're right." He caught her hand again. "I've got to be going now. But
Nance--Nance--Nancy, I want to stay here, here with you; or to take you
with me."
She drew back. "What do you mean?" she asked. "Take me with
you--me--where?"
"East--away down East."
Her brain throbbed, her pulses beat so hard. She scarcely knew what to
say, did not know what she said. "Why do you do this kind of thing? Why
do you smuggle?" she asked. "You wasn't brought up to this."
"To get this load of stuff through is life and death to me," he answered.
"I've made six thousand dollars out here. That's enough to start me again
in the East, where I lost everything. But I've got to have six hundred
dollars clear for the travel--railways and things; and I'm having this
last run to get it. Then I've finished with the West, I guess. My
health's better; the lung is closed up, I've only got a little cough now
and again; and I'm off East. I don't want to go alone." He suddenly
caught her in his arms. "I want you--you, to go with me, Nancy--Nance!"
Her brain swam. To leave the West behind, to go East to a new life full
of pleasant things, as this man's wife! Her great heart rose, and
suddenly the mother in her as well as the woman in her was captured by
his wooing. She had never known what it was to be wooed like this.
She was about to answer, when there came a sharp knock at the door
leading from the backyard, and Lambton's Indian lad entered. "The
soldier--he come--many. I go over the ridge; I see. They come quick
here," he said.
Nance gave a startled cry, and Lambton turned to the other room for his
pistols, overcoat, and cap, when there was the sound of horses' hoofs,
the door suddenly opened, and an officer stepped inside.
"You're wanted for smuggling, Lambton," he said brusquely. "Don't stir!"
In his hand was a revolver.
"Oh, bosh! Prove it," answered the young man, pale and startled, but cool
in speech and action. "We'll prove it all right. The stuff is
hereabouts." The girl said something to the officer in the Chinook
language. She saw he did not understand. Then she spoke quickly to
Lambton in the same tongue.
"Keep him here a bit," she said. "His men haven't come yet. Your outfit
is well hid. I'll see if I can get away with it before they find it.
They'll follow, and bring you with them, that's sure. So if I have luck
and get through, we'll meet at Dingan's Drive."
Lambton's face brightened. He quickly gave her a few directions in
Chinook, and told her what to do at Dingan's if she got there first. Then
she was gone. The officer did not understand what Nance had said, but he
realised that, whatever she intended to do, she had an advantage over
him. With an unnecessary courage he had ridden on alone to make his
capture, and, as it proved, without prudence. He had got his man, but he
had not got the smuggled whiskey and alcohol he had come to seize. There
was no time to be lost. The girl had gone before he realised it. What had
she said to the prisoner? He was foolish enough to ask Lambton, and
Lambton replied coolly: "She said she'd get you some supper, but she
guessed it would have to be cold--What's your name? Are you a colonel, or
a captain, or only a principal private?"
"I am Captain MacFee, Lambton. And you'll now bring me where your outfit
is. March!"
The pistol was still in his hand, and he had a determined look in his
eye. Lambton saw it. He was aware of how much power lay in the
threatening face before him, and how eager that power was to make itself
felt, and provide "Examples"; but he took his chances.
"I'll march all right," he answered, "but I'll march to where you tell
me. You can't have it both ways. You can take me, because you've found
me, and you can take my outfit too when you've found it; but I'm not
doing your work, not if I know it."
There was a blaze of anger in the eyes of the officer, and it looked for
an instant as though something of the lawlessness of the border was going
to mark the first step of the Law in the Wilderness, but he bethought
himself in time, and said quietly, yet in a voice which Lambton knew he
must heed:
"Put on your things-quick."
When this was accomplished, and MacFee had secured the smuggler's
pistols, he said again, "March, Lambton."
Lambton marched through the moonlit night towards the troop of men who
had come to set up the flag of order in the plains and hills, and as he
went his keen ear heard his own mules galloping away down towards the
Barfleur Coulee. His heart thumped in his breast. This girl, this
prairie-flower, was doing this for him, was risking her life, was
breaking the law for him. If she got through, and handed over the whiskey
to those who were waiting for it, and it got bundled into the boats going
North before the redcoats reached Dingan's Drive, it would be as fine a
performance as the West had ever seen; and he would be six hundred
dollars to the good. He listened to the mules galloping, till the sounds
had died into the distance, but he saw now that his captor had heard too,
and that the pursuit would be desperate.
A half-hour later it began, with MacFee at the head, and a dozen troopers
pounding behind, weary, hungry, bad-tempered, ready to exact payment for
their hardships and discouragement.
They had not gone a dozen miles when a shouting horseman rode furiously
on them from behind. They turned with carbines cocked, but it was Abe
Hawley who cursed them, flung his fingers in their faces, and rode on
harder and harder. Abe had got the news from one of Nancy's half-breeds,
and, with the devil raging in his heart, had entered on the chase. His
spirit was up against them all; against the Law represented by the
troopers camped at Fort Fair Desire, against the troopers and their
captain speeding after Nancy Machell--his Nonce, who was risking her life
and freedom for the hated, pale-faced smuggler riding between the
troopers; and his spirit was up against Nance herself.
Nance had said to him, "Come back in an hour," and he had come back to
find her gone. She had broken her word. She had deceived him. She had
thrown the four years of his waiting to the winds, and a savage lust was
in his heart, which would not be appeased till he had done some evil
thing to someone.
The girl and the Indian lad were pounding through the night with ears
strained to listen for hoof-beats coming after, with eyes searching
forward into the trail for swollen creeks and direful obstructions.
Through Barfleur Coulee it was a terrible march, for there was no road,
and again and again they were nearly overturned, while wolves hovered in
their path, ready to reap a midnight harvest. But once in the open again,
with the full moonlight on their trail, the girl's spirits rose. If she
could do this thing for the man who had looked into her eyes as no one
had ever done, what a finish to her days in the West! For they were
finished, finished for ever, and she was going--she was going East; not
West with Bantry, nor South with Nick Pringle, nor North with Abe Hawley,
ah, Abe Hawley, he had been a good friend, he had a great heart, he was
the best man of all the western men she had known; but another man had
come from the East, a man who had roused something in her never felt
before, a man who had said she was wonderful; and he needed someone to
take good care of him, to make him love life again. Abe would have been
all right if Lambton had never come, and she had meant to marry Abe in
the end; but it was different now, and Abe must get over it. Yet she had
told Abe to come back in an hour. He was sure to do it; and, when he had
done it, and found her gone on this errand, what would he do? She knew
what he would do. He would hurt someone. He would follow too. But at
Dingan's Drive, if she reached it before the troopers and before Abe, and
did the thing she had set out to do; and, because no whiskey could be
found, Lambton must go free; and they all stood there together, what
would be the end? Abe would be terrible; but she was going East, not
North, and when the time came she would face it and put things right
somehow.
The night seemed endless to her fixed and anxious eyes and mind, yet dawn
came, and there had fallen no sound of hoof-beats on her ear. The ridge
above Dingan's Drive was reached and covered, but yet there was no sign
of her pursuers. At Red Man's River she delivered her load of contraband
to the traders waiting for it, and saw it loaded into the boats and
disappear beyond the wooded bend above Dingan's.
Then she collapsed into the arms of her brother Bantry, and was carried,
fainting, into Dingan's Lodge. A half-hour later MacFee and his troopers
and Lambton came. MacFee grimly searched the post and the shore, but he
saw by the looks of all that he had been foiled. He had no proof of
anything, and Lambton must go free.
"You've fooled us," he said to Nance sourly, yet with a kind of
admiration too. "Through you they got away with it. But I wouldn't try it
again, if I were you."
"Once is enough," answered the girl laconically, as Lambton, set free,
caught both her hands in his and whispered in her ear.
MacFee turned to the others. "You'd better drop this kind of thing," he
said. "I mean business." They saw the troopers by the horses, and nodded.
"Well, we was about quit of it anyhow," said Bantry. "We've had all we
want out here."
A loud laugh went up, and it was still ringing when there burst into the
group, out of the trail, Abe Hawley, on foot.
He looked round the group savagely till his eyes rested on Nance and
Lambton. "I'm last in," he said in a hoarse voice. "My horse broke its
leg cutting across to get here before her--" He waved a hand towards
Nance. "It's best stickin' to old trails, not tryin' new ones." His eyes
were full of hate as he looked at Lambton. "I'm keeping to old trails.
I'm for goin' North, far up, where these two-dollar-a-day and
hash-and-clothes people ain't come yet." He made a contemptuous gesture
toward MacFee and his troopers. "I'm goin' North--" He took a step
forward and fixed his bloodshot eyes on Nance. "I say I'm goin' North.
You comin' with me, Nance?" He took off his cap to her.
He was haggard, his buckskins were torn, his hair was dishevelled, and he
limped a little; but he was a massive and striking figure, and MacFee
watched him closely, for there was that in his eyes which meant trouble.
"You said, 'Come back in an hour,' Nance, and I come back, as I said I
would," he went on. "You didn't stand to your word. I've come to git it.
I'm goin' North, Nance, and I bin waitin' for four years for you to go
with me. Are you comin'?"
His voice was quiet, but it had a choking kind of sound, and it struck
strangely in the ears of all. MacFee came nearer.
"Are you comin' with me, Nance, dear?"
She reached a hand towards Lambton, and he took it, but she did not
speak. Something in Abe's eyes overwhelmed her--something she had never
seen before, and it seemed to stifle speech in her. Lambton spoke
instead.
"She's going East with me," he said. "That's settled."
MacFee started. Then he caught Abe's arm. "Wait!" he said peremptorily.
"Wait one minute." There was something in his voice which held Abe back
for the instant.
"You say she is going East with you," MacFee said sharply to Lambton.
"What for?" He fastened Lambton with his eyes, and Lambton quailed. "Have
you told her you've got a wife--down East? I've got your history,
Lambton. Have you told her that you've got a wife you married when you
were at college--and as good a girl as ever lived?"
It had come with terrible suddenness even to Lambton, and he was too
dazed to make any reply. With a cry of shame and anger Nancy started
back. Growling with rage and hate, Abe Hawley sprang toward Lambton, but
the master of the troopers stepped between.
No one could tell who moved first, or who first made the suggestion, for
the minds of all were the same, and the general purpose was
instantaneous; but in the fraction of a minute Lambton, under menace, was
on his hands and knees crawling to the riverside. Watchful, but not
interfering, the master of the troopers saw him set adrift in a canoe
without a paddle, while he was pelted with mud from the shore.
The next morning at sunrise Abe Hawley and the girl he had waited for so
long started on the North trail together, MacFee, master of the troopers
and justice of the peace, handing over the marriage lines.
THE STROBE OF THE HOUR
"They won't come to-night--sure."
The girl looked again towards the west, where, here and there, bare
poles, or branches of trees, or slips of underbrush marked a road made
across the plains through the snow. The sun was going down golden red,
folding up the sky a wide soft curtain of pink and mauve and deep purple
merging into the fathomless blue, where already the stars were beginning
to quiver. The house stood on the edge of a little forest, which had
boldly asserted itself in the wide flatness. At this point in the west
the prairie merged into an undulating territory, where hill and wood
rolled away from the banks of the Saskatchewan, making another England in
beauty. The forest was a sort of advance-post of that land of beauty.
Yet there was beauty too on this prairie, though there was nothing to the
east but snow and the forest so far as eye could see. Nobility and peace
and power brooded over the white world.
As the girl looked, it seemed as though the bosom of the land rose and
fell. She had felt this vibrating life beat beneath the frozen surface.
Now, as she gazed, she smiled sadly to herself, with drooping eyelids
looking out from beneath strong brows.
"I know you--I know you," she said aloud. "You've got to take your toll.
And when you're lying asleep like that, or pretending to, you reach
up-and kill. And yet you can be kind-ah, but you can be kind and
beautiful! But you must have your toll one way or t'other." She sighed
and paused; then, after a moment, looking along the trail--"I don't
expect they'll come to-night, and mebbe not to-morrow, if--if they stay
for THAT."
Her eyes closed, she shivered a little. Her lips drew tight, and her face
seemed suddenly to get thinner. "But dad wouldn't--no, he couldn't, not
considerin'--" Again she shut her eyes in pain.
Her face was now turned from the western road by which she had expected
her travellers, and towards the east, where already the snow was taking
on a faint bluish tint, a reflection of the sky deepening nightwards in
that half-circle of the horizon. Distant and a little bleak and cheerless
the half-circle was looking now.
"No one--not for two weeks," she said, in comment on the eastern trail,
which was so little frequented in winter, and this year had been less
travelled than ever. "It would be nice to have a neighbour," she added,
as she faced the west and the sinking sun again. "I get so lonely--just
minutes I get lonely. But it's them minutes that seem to count more than
all the rest when they come. I expect that's it--we don't live in months
and years, but just in minutes. It doesn't take long for an earthquake to
do its work--it's seconds then. . . . P'r'aps dad won't even come
to-morrow," she added, as she laid her hand on the latch. "It never
seemed so long before, not even when he's been away a week." She laughed
bitterly. "Even bad company's better than no company at all. Sure. And
Mickey has been here always when dad's been away past times. Mickey was a
fool, but he was company; and mebbe he'd have been better company if he'd
been more of a scamp and less a fool. I dunno, but I really think he
would. Bad company doesn't put you off so."
There was a scratching at the inside of the door. "My, if I didn't forget
Shako," she said, "and he dying for a run!"
She opened the door quickly, and out jumped a Russian dog of almost full
breed, with big, soft eyes like those of his mistress, and with the air
of the north in every motion--like his mistress also.
"Come, Shako, a run--a run!"
An instant after she was flying off on a path towards the woods, her
short skirts flying and showing limbs as graceful and shapely as those of
any woman of that world of social grace which she had never seen; for she
was a prairie girl through and through, born on the plains and fed on its
scanty fare--scanty as to variety, at least. Backwards and forwards they
ran, the girl shouting like a child of ten,--she was twenty-three, her
eyes flashing, her fine white teeth showing, her hands thrown up in sheer
excess of animal life, her hair blowing about her face-brown, strong
hair, wavy and plentiful.
Fine creature as she was, her finest features were her eyes and her
hands. The eyes might have been found in the most savage places; the
hands, however, only could have come through breeding. She had got them
honestly; for her mother was descended from an old family of the French
province. That was why she had the name of Loisette--and had a touch of
distinction. It was the strain of the patrician in the full blood of the
peasant; but it gave her something which made her what she was--what she
had been since a child, noticeable and besought, sometimes beloved. It
was too strong a nature to compel love often, but it never failed to
compel admiration. Not greatly a creature of words, she had become moody
of late; and even now, alive with light and feeling and animal life, she
suddenly stopped her romp and run, and called the dog to her.
"Heel, Shako!" she said, and made for the door of the little house, which
looked so snug and home-like. She paused before she came to the door, to
watch the smoke curling up from the chimney straight as a column, for
there was not a breath of air stirring. The sun was almost gone and the
strong bluish light was settling on everything, giving even the green
spruce trees a curious burnished tone.
Swish! Thud! She faced the woods quickly. It was only a sound that she
had heard how many hundreds of times! It was the snow slipping from some
broad branch of the fir trees to the ground. Yet she started now.
Something was on her mind, agitating her senses, affecting her
self-control.
"I'll be jumping out of my boots when the fire snaps, or the frost cracks
the ice, next," she said aloud contemptuously. "I dunno what's the matter
with me. I feel as if someone was hiding somewhere ready to pop out on
me. I haven't never felt like that before."
She had formed the habit of talking to herself, for it had seemed at
first, as she was left alone when her father went trapping or upon
journeys for the Government, that by and by she would start at the sound
of her own voice, if she didn't think aloud. So she was given to
soliloquy, defying the old belief that people who talked to themselves
were going mad. She laughed at that. She said that birds sang to
themselves and didn't go mad, and crickets chirruped, and frogs croaked,
and owls hooted, and she would talk and not go crazy either. So she
talked to herself and to Shako when she was alone.
How quiet it was inside when her light supper was eaten, bread and beans
and pea-soup--she had got this from her French mother. Now she sat, her
elbows on her knees, her chin on her hands, looking into the fire. Shako
was at her feet upon the great musk-ox rug, which her father had got on
one of his hunting trips in the Athabasca country years ago. It belonged
as she belonged. It breathed of the life of the north-land, for the
timbers of the hut were hewn cedar; the rough chimney, the seats, and the
shelves on which a few books made a fair show beside the bright tins and
the scanty crockery, were of pine; and the horned heads of deer and
wapiti made pegs for coats and caps, and rests for guns and rifles. It
was a place of comfort; it had an air of well-to-do thrift, even as the
girl's dress, though plain, was made of good sound stuff, grey, with a
touch of dark red to match the auburn of her hair.
A book lay open in her lap, but she had scarcely tried to read it. She
had put it down after a few moments fixed upon it. It had sent her
thoughts off into a world where her life had played a part too big for
books, too deep for the plummet of any save those who had lived through
the storm of life's trials; and life when it is bitter to the young is
bitter with an agony the old never know. At last she spoke to herself.
"She knows now. Now she knows what it is, how it feels--your heart like
red-hot coals, and something in your head that's like a turnscrew, and
you want to die and can't, for you've got to live and suffer."
Again she was quiet, and only the dog's heavy breathing, the snap of the
fire, or the crack of a timber in the deadly frost broke the silence.
Inside it was warm and bright and home-like; outside it was twenty
degrees below zero, and like some vast tomb where life itself was
congealed, and only the white stars, low, twinkling, and quizzical,
lived-a life of sharp corrosion, not of fire.