Pierre And His People, [Tales of the Far North], Complete - Gilbert Parker
At length one night they camped in a vast pine grove wrapped in coverlets
of snow and silent as death. Here again Pierre became moody and alert and
took no part in the careless chat at the camp-fire led by Shon McGann.
The man brooded and looked mysterious. Mystery was not pleasing to
Trafford. He had his own secrets, but in the ordinary affairs of life he
preferred simplicity. In one of the silences that fell between Shon's
attempts to give hilarity to the occasion, there came a rumbling far-off
sound, a sound that increased in volume till the earth beneath them
responded gently to the vibration. Trafford looked up inquiringly at
Pierre, and then at the Indian, who, after a moment, said slowly: "Above
us are the hills of the Mighty Men, beneath us is the White Valley. It is
the tramp of buffalo that we hear. A storm is coming, and they go to
shelter in the mountains."
The information had come somewhat suddenly, and McGann was the first to
recover from the pleasant shock: "It's divil a wink of sleep I'll get
this night, with the thought of them below there ripe for slaughter, and
the tumble of fight in their beards."
Pierre, with a meaning glance from his half-closed eyes, added: "But it
is the old saying of the prairies that you do not shout dinner till you
have your knife in the loaf. Your knife is not yet in the loaf, Shon
McGann."
The boom of the trampling ceased, and now there was a stirring in the
snow-clad tree tops, and a sound as if all the birds of the North were
flying overhead. The weather began to moan and the boles of the pines to
quake. And then there came war,--a trouble out of the north, a wave of
the breath of God to show inconsequent man that he who seeks to live by
slaughter hath slaughter for his master.
They hung over the fire while the forest cracked round them, and the
flame smarted with the flying snow. And now the trees, as if the elements
were closing in on them, began to break close by, and one lurched forward
towards them. Trafford, to avoid its stroke, stepped quickly aside right
into the line of another which he did not see. Pierre sprang forward and
swung him clear, but was himself struck senseless by an outreaching
branch.
As if satisfied with this achievement, the storm began to subside. When
Pierre recovered consciousness Trafford clasped his hand and
said,--"You've a sharp eye, a quick thought, and a deft arm, comrade."
"Ah, it was in the game. It is good play to assist your partner," the
half-breed replied sententiously. Through all, the Indian had remained
stoical. But McGann, who swore by Trafford--as he had once sworn by
another of the Trafford race--had his heart on his lips, and said:
"There's a swate little cherub that sits up aloft,
Who cares for the soul of poor Jack!"
It was long after midnight ere they settled down again, with the wreck of
the forest round them. Only the Indian slept; the others were alert and
restless. They were up at daybreak, and on their way before sunrise,
filled with desire for prey. They had not travelled far before they
emerged upon a plateau. Around them were the hills of the Mighty
Men--austere, majestic; at their feet was a vast valley on which the
light newly-fallen snow had not hidden all the grass. Lonely and lofty,
it was a world waiting chastely to be peopled! And now it was peopled,
for there came from a cleft of the hills an army of buffaloes lounging
slowly down the waste, with tossing manes and hoofs stirring the snow
into a feathery scud.
The eyes of Trafford and McGann swam; Pierre's face was troubled, and
strangely enough he made the sign of the cross.
At that instant Trafford saw smoke issuing from a spot on the mountain
opposite. He turned to the Indian: "Someone lives there"? he said.
"It is the home of the dead, but life is also there."
"White man, or Indian?"
But no reply came. The Indian pointed instead to the buffalo rumbling
down the valley. Trafford forgot the smoke, forgot everything except that
splendid quarry. Shon was excited. "Sarpints alive," he said, "look at
the troops of thim! Is it standin' here we are with our tongues in our
cheeks, whin there's bastes to be killed, and mate to be got, and the
call to war on the ground below! Clap spurs with your heels, sez I, and
down the side of the turf together and give 'em the teeth of our guns!"
The Irishman dashed down the slope. In an instant, all followed, or at
least Trafford thought all followed, swinging their guns across their
saddles to be ready for this excellent foray. But while Pierre rode hard,
it was at first without the fret of battle in him, and he smiled
strangely, for he knew that the Indian had disappeared as they rode down
the slope, though how and why he could not tell. There ran through his
head tales chanted at camp-fires when he was not yet in stature so high
as the loins that bore him. They rode hard, and yet they came no nearer
to that flying herd straining on with white streaming breath and the surf
of snow rising to their quarters. Mile upon mile, and yet they could not
ride these monsters down!
Now Pierre was leading. There was a kind of fury in his face, and he
seemed at last to gain on them. But as the herd veered close to a wall of
stalwart pines, a horseman issued from the trees and joined the cattle.
The horseman was in scarlet from head to foot; and with his coming the
herd went faster, and ever faster, until they vanished into the
mountain-side; and they who pursued drew in their trembling horses and
stared at each other with wonder in their faces.
"In God's name what does it mean"? Trafford cried.
"Is it a trick of the eye or the hand of the devil"? added Shon.
"In the name of God we shall know perhaps. If it is the hand of the devil
it is not good for us," remarked Pierre.
"Who was the man in scarlet who came from the woods"? asked Trafford of
the half-breed.
"'Voila,' it is strange! There is an old story among the Indians! My
mother told many tales of the place and sang of it, as I sang to you. The
legend was this:--In the hills of the North which no white man, nor no
Injin of this time hath seen, the forefathers of the red men sleep; but
some day they will wake again and go forth and possess all the land; and
the buffalo are for them when that time shall come, that they may have
the fruits of the chase, and that it be as it was of old, when the cattle
were as clouds on the horizon. And it was ordained that one of these
mighty men who had never been vanquished in fight, nor done an evil
thing, and was the greatest of all the chiefs, should live and not die,
but be as a sentinel, as a lion watching, and preserve the White Valley
in peace until his brethren waked and came into their own again. And him
they called the Scarlet Hunter; and to this hour the red men pray to him
when they lose their way upon the plains, or Death draws aside the
curtains of the wigwam to call them forth."
"Repeat the verses you sang, Pierre," said Trafford. The half-breed did
so. When he came to the words, "Who loveth the beast of the field the
best," the Englishman looked round. "Where is Shangi"? he asked. McGann
shook his head in astonishment and negation. Pierre explained: "On the
mountain-side where we ride down he is not seen--he vanish . . . 'mon
Dieu,' look!"
On the slope of the mountain stood the Scarlet Hunter with drawn bow.
From it an arrow flew over their heads with a sorrowful twang, and fell
where the smoke rose among the pines; then the mystic figure disappeared.
McGann shuddered, and drew himself together. "It is the place of
spirits," he said; "and it's little I like it, God knows; but I'll follow
that Scarlet Hunter, or red devil, or whatever he is, till I drop, if the
Honourable gives the word. For flesh and blood I'm not afraid of; and the
other we come to, whether we will or not, one day."
But Trafford said: "No, we'll let it stand where it is for the present.
Something has played our eyes false, or we're brought here to do work
different from buffalo-hunting. Where that arrow fell among the smoke we
must go first. Then, as I read the riddle, we travel back the way we
came. There are points in connection with the Pipi Valley superior to the
hills of the Mighty Men."
They rode away across the glade, and through a grove of pines upon a
hill, till they stood before a log but with parchment windows.
Trafford knocked, but there was no response. He opened the door and
entered. He saw a figure rise painfully from a couch in a corner,--the
figure of a woman young and beautiful, but wan and worn. She seemed dazed
and inert with suffering, and spoke mournfully: "It is too late. Not you,
nor any of your race, nor anything on earth can save him. He is
dead--dead now."
At the first sound of her voice Trafford started. He drew near to her, as
pale as she was, and wonder and pity were in his face. "Hester," he said,
"Hester Orval!"
She stared at him like one that had been awakened from an evil dream,
then tottered towards him with the cry,--"Just, Just, have you come to
save me? O Just!" His distress was sad to see, for it was held in deep
repression, but he said calmly and with protecting gentleness: "Yes, I
have come to save you. Hester, how is it you are here in this strange
place--you?"
She sobbed so that at first she could not answer; but at last she cried:
"O Just, he is dead . . . in there, in there! . . . Last night, it was
last night; and he prayed that I might go with him. But I could not die
unforgiven, and I was right, for you have come out of the world to help
me, and to save me."
"Yes, to help you and to save you,--if I can," he added in a whisper to
himself, for he was full of foreboding. He was of the earth, earthy, and
things that had chanced to him this day were beyond the natural and
healthy movements of his mind. He had gone forth to slay, and had been
foiled by shadows; he had come with a tragic, if beautiful, memory
haunting him, and that memory had clothed itself in flesh and stood
before him, pitiful, solitary,--a woman. He had scorned all legend and
superstition, and here both were made manifest to him. He had thought of
this woman as one who was of this world no more, and here she mourned
before him and bade him go and look upon her dead, upon the man who had
wronged him, into whom, as he once declared, the soul of a cur had
entered,--and now what could he say? He had carried in his heart the
infinite something that is to men the utmost fulness of life, which,
losing, they must carry lead upon their shoulders where they thought the
gods had given pinions.
McGann and Pierre were nervous. This conjunction of unusual things was
easier to the intelligences of the dead than the quick. The outer air was
perhaps less charged with the unnatural, and with a glance towards the
room where death was quartered, they left the hut.
Trafford was alone with the woman through whom his life had been turned
awry. He looked at her searchingly; and as he looked the mere man in him
asserted itself for a moment. She was dressed in coarse garments; it
struck him that her grief had a touch of commonness about it; there was
something imperfect in the dramatic setting. His recent experiences had
had a kind of grandeur about them; it was not thus that he had remembered
her in the hour when he had called upon her in the plains, and the Indian
had heard his cry. He felt, and was ashamed in feeling, that there was a
grim humour in the situation. The fantastic, the melodramatic, the
emotional, were huddled here in too marked a prominence; it all seemed,
for an instant, like the tale of a woman's first novel. But immediately
again there was roused in him the latent force of loyalty to himself and
therefore to her; the story of her past, so far as he knew it, flashed
before him, and his eyes grew hot.
He remembered the time he had last seen her in an English country-house
among a gay party in which royalty smiled, and the subject was content
beneath the smile. But there was one rebellious subject, and her name was
Hester Orval. She was a wilful girl who had lived life selfishly within
the lines of that decorous yet pleasant convention to which she was born.
She was beautiful,--she knew that, and royalty had graciously admitted
it. She was warm-thoughted, and possessed the fatal strain of the
artistic temperament. She was not sure that she had a heart; and many
others, not of her sex, after varying and enthusiastic study of the
matter, were not more confident than she. But it had come at last that
she had listened with pensive pleasure to Trafford's tale of love; and
because to be worshipped by a man high in all men's, and in most women's,
esteem, ministered delicately to her sweet egotism, and because she was
proud of him, she gave him her hand in promise, and her cheek in
privilege, but denied him--though he knew this not--her heart and the
service of her life. But he was content to wait patiently for that
service, and he wholly trusted her, for there was in him some fine spirit
of the antique world.
There had come to Falkenstowe, this country-house and her father's home,
a man who bore a knightly name, but who had no knightly heart; and he
told Ulysses' tales, and covered a hazardous and cloudy past with that
fascinating colour which makes evil appear to be good, so that he roused
in her the pulse of art, which she believed was soul and life, and her
allegiance swerved. And when her mother pleaded with her, and when her
father said stern things, and even royalty, with uncommon use, rebuked
her gently, her heart grew hard; and almost on the eve of her wedding-day
she fled with her lover, and married him, and together they sailed away
over the seas.
The world was shocked and clamorous for a matter of nine days, and then
it forgot this foolish and awkward circumstance; but Just Trafford never
forgot it. He remembered all vividly until the hour, a year later, when
London journals announced that Hester Orval and her husband had gone down
with a vessel wrecked upon the Alaskan and Canadian coast. And there new
regret began, and his knowledge of her ended.
But she and her husband had not been drowned; with a sailor they had
reached the shore in safety. They had travelled inland from the coast
through the great mountains by unknown paths, and as they travelled, the
sailor died; and they came at last through innumerable hardships to the
Kimash Hills, the hills of the Mighty Men, and there they stayed. It was
not an evil land; it had neither deadly cold in winter nor wanton heat in
summer. But they never saw a human face, and everything was lonely and
spectral. For a time they strove to go eastwards or southwards but the
mountains were impassable, and in the north and west there was no hope.
Though the buffalo swept by them in the valley they could not slay them,
and they lived on forest fruits until in time the man sickened. The woman
nursed him faithfully, but still he failed; and when she could go forth
no more for food, some unseen dweller of the woods brought buffalo meat,
and prairie fowl, and water from the spring, and laid them beside her
door.
She had seen the mounds upon the hill, the wide couches of the sleepers,
and she remembered the things done in the days when God seemed nearer to
the sons of men than now; and she said that a spirit had done this thing,
and trembled and was thankful. But the man weakened and knew that he
should die, and one night when the pain was sharp upon him he prayed
bitterly that he might pass, or that help might come to snatch him from
the grave. And as they sobbed together, a form entered at the door,--a
form clothed in scarlet,--and he bade them tell the tale of their lives
as they would some time tell it unto heaven. And when the tale was told
he said that succour should come to them from the south by the hand of
the Scarlet Hunter, that the nation sleeping there should no more be
disturbed by their moaning. And then he had gone forth, and with his
going there was a storm such as that in which the man had died, the storm
that had assailed the hunters in the forest yesterday.
This was the second part of Hester Orval's life as she told it to Just
Trafford. And he, looking into her eyes, knew that she had suffered, and
that she had sounded her husband's unworthiness. Then he turned from her
and went into the room where the dead man lay. And there all hardness
passed from him, and he understood that in the great going forth man
reckons to the full with the deeds done in that brief pilgrimage called
life; and that in the bitter journey which this one took across the dread
spaces between Here and There, he had repented of his sins, because they,
and they only, went with him in mocking company; the good having gone
first to plead where evil is a debtor and hath a prison. And the woman
came and stood beside Trafford, and whispered, "At first--and at the
last--he was kind."
But he urged her gently from the room: "Go away," he said; "go away. We
cannot judge him. Leave me alone with him."
They buried him upon the hill-side, far from the mounds where the Mighty
Men waited for their summons to go forth and be the lords of the North
again. At night they buried him when the moon was at its full; and he had
the fragrant pines for his bed, and the warm darkness to cover him; and
though he is to those others resting there a heathen and an alien, it may
be that he sleeps peacefully.
When Trafford questioned Hester Orval more deeply of her life there, the
unearthly look quickened in her eyes, and she said: "Oh, nothing, nothing
is real here, but suffering; perhaps it is all a dream, but it has
changed me, changed me. To hear the tread of the flying herds, to see no
being save him, the Scarlet Hunter, to hear the voices calling in the
night! . . . Hush! There, do you not hear them? It is midnight--listen!"
He listened, and Pierre and Shon McGann looked at each other
apprehensively, while Shon's fingers felt hurriedly along the beads of a
rosary which he did not hold. Yes, they heard it, a deep sonorous sound:
"Is the daybreak come?" "It is still the night," came the reply as of one
clear voice. And then there floated through the hills more
softly: "We sleep--we sleep!" And the sounds echoed through the
valley--"Sleep--sleep!"
Yet though these things were full of awe, the spirit of the place held
them there, and the fever of the hunter descended on them hotly. In the
morning they went forth, and rode into the White Valley where the buffalo
were feeding, and sought to steal upon them; but the shots from their
guns only awoke the hills, and none were slain. And though they rode
swiftly, the wide surf of snow was ever between them and the chase, and
their striving availed nothing. Day after day they followed that flying
column, and night after night they heard the sleepers call from the
hills. The desire of the thing wasted them, and they forgot to eat and
ceased to talk among themselves. But one day Shon McGann, muttering aves
as he rode, gained on the cattle, until once again the Scarlet Hunter
came forth from a cleft of the mountains, and drove the herd forward with
swifter feet. But the Irishman had learned the power in this thing, and
had taught Trafford, who knew not those availing prayers, and with these
sacred conjurations on their lips they gained on the cattle length by
length, though the Scarlet Hunter rode abreast of the thundering horde.
Within easy range, Trafford swung his gun shoulder-wards to fire, but at
that instant a cloud of snow rose up between him and his quarry so that
they all were blinded. And when they came into the clear sun again the
buffalo were gone; but flaming arrows from some unseen hunter's bow came
singing over their heads towards the south; and they obeyed the sign, and
went back to where Hester wore her life out with anxiety for them,
because she knew the hopelessness of their quest. Women are nearer to the
heart of things. And now she begged Trafford to go southwards before
winter froze the plains impassably, and the snow made tombs of the
valleys. Thereupon he gave the word to go, and said that he had done
wrong--for now the spell was falling from him.
But she, seeing his regret, said: "Ah, Just, it could not have been
different. The passion of it was on you as it was on us, as if to teach
us that hunger for happiness is robbery, and that the covetous desire of
man is not the will of the gods. The herds are for the Mighty Men when
they awake, not for the stranger and the Philistine."
"You have grown wise, Hester," he replied.
"No, I am sick in brain and body; but it may be that in such sickness
there is wisdom."
"Ah," he said, "it has turned my head, I think. Once I laughed at all
such fanciful things as these. This Scarlet Hunter, how many times have
you seen him?"
"But once."
"What were his looks?"
"A face pale and strong, with noble eyes; and in his voice there was
something strange."
Trafford thought of Shangi, the Indian,--where had he gone? He had
disappeared as suddenly as he had come to their camp in the South.
As they sat silent in the growing night, the door opened and the Scarlet
Hunter stood before them. "There is food," he said, "on the
threshold--food for those who go upon a far journey to the South in the
morning. Unhappy are they who seek for gold at the rainbow's foot, who
chase the fire-fly in the night, who follow the herds in the White
Valley. Wise are they who anger not the gods, and who fly before the
rising storm. There is a path from the valley for the strangers, the path
by which they came; and when the sun stares forth again upon the world,
the way shall be open, and there shall be safety for you until your
travel ends in the quick world whither you go. You were foolish; now you
are wise. It is time to depart; seek not to return, that we may have
peace and you safety. When the world cometh to her spring again we shall
meet." Then he turned and was gone, with Trafford's voice ringing after
him,--"Shangi! Shangi!"
They ran out swiftly, but he had vanished. In the valley where the
moonlight fell in icy coldness a herd of cattle was moving, and their
breath rose like the spray from sea-beaten rocks, and the sound of their
breathing was borne upwards to the watchers.
At daybreak they rode down into the valley. All was still. Not a trace of
life remained; not a hoofmark in the snow, nor a bruised blade of grass.
And when they climbed to the plateau and looked back, it seemed to
Trafford and his companions, as it seemed in after years, that this thing
had been all a fantasy. But Hester's face was beside them, and it told of
strange and unsubstantial things. The shadows of the middle world were
upon her. And yet again when they turned at the last there was no token.
It was a northern valley, with sun and snow, and cold blue shadows, and
the high hills,--that was all.
Then Hester said: "O Just, I do not know if this is life or death--and
yet it must be death, for after death there is forgiveness to those who
repent, and your face is forgiving and kind."
And he--for he saw that she needed much human help and comfort--gently
laid his hand on hers and replied: "Hester, this is life, a new life for
both of us. Whatever has been was a dream; whatever is now"--and he
folded her hand in his--"is real; and there is no such thing as
forgiveness to be spoken of between us. There shall be happiness for us
yet, please God!"
"I want to go to Falkenstowe. Will--will my mother forgive me?"
"Mothers always forgive, Hester, else half the world had slain itself in
shame."
And then she smiled for the first time since he had seen her. This was in
the shadows of the scented pines; and a new life breathed upon her, as it
breathed upon them all, and they knew that the fever of the White Valley
had passed away from them forever.
After many hardships they came in safety to the regions of the south
country again; and the tale they told, though doubted by the race of
pale-faces, was believed by the heathen; because there was none among
them but, as he cradled at his mother's breasts, and from his youth up,
had heard the legend of the Scarlet Hunter.
For the romance of that journey, it concerned only the man and woman to
whom it was as wine and meat to the starving. Is not love more than
legend, and a human heart than all the beasts of the field or any joy of
slaughter?
THE STONE
The Stone hung on a jutting crag of Purple Hill. On one side of it, far
beneath, lay the village, huddled together as if, through being close
compacted, its handful of humanity should not be a mere dust in the
balance beside Nature's portentousness. Yet if one stood beside The
Stone, and looked down, the flimsy wooden huts looked like a barrier at
the end of a great flume. For the hill hollowed and narrowed from The
Stone to the village, as if giants had made this concave path by
trundling boulders to that point like a funnel where the miners' houses
now formed a cul-de-sac. On the other side of the crag was a valley also;
but it was lonely and untenanted; and at one flank of The Stone were
serried legions of trees.