Pierre And His People, [Tales of the Far North], Complete - Gilbert Parker
The Stone was a mighty and wonderful thing. Looked at from the village
direct, it had nothing but the sky for a background. At times, also, it
appeared to rest on nothing; and many declared that they could see clean
between it and the oval floor of the crag on which it rested. That was
generally in the evening, when the sun was setting behind it. Then the
light coiled round its base, between it and its pedestal, thus making it
appear to hover above the hill-point, or, planet-like, to be just
settling on it. At other times, when the light was perfectly clear and
not too strong, and the village side of the crag was brighter than the
other, more accurate relations of The Stone to its pedestal could be
discovered. Then one would say that it balanced on a tiny base, a toe of
granite. But if one looked long, especially in the summer, when the air
throbbed, it evidently rocked upon that toe; if steadily, and very long,
he grew tremulous, perhaps afraid. Once, a woman who was about to become
a mother went mad, because she thought The Stone would hurtle down the
hill at her great moment and destroy her and her child. Indians would not
live either on the village side of The Stone or in the valley beyond.
They had a legend that, some day, one, whom they called The Man Who
Sleeps, would rise from his hidden couch in the mountains, and, being
angry that any dared to cumber his playground, would hurl The Stone upon
them that dwelt at Purple Hill. But white men pay little heed to Indian
legends. At one time or another every person who had come to the village
visited The Stone. Colossal as it was, the real base on which its weight
rested was actually very small: the view from the village had not been
all deceitful. It is possible, indeed, that at one time it had really
rocked, and that the rocking had worn for it a shallow cup, or socket, in
which it poised. The first man who came to Purple Valley prospecting had
often stopped his work and looked at The Stone in a half-fear that it
would spring upon him unawares. And yet he had as often laughed at
himself for doing so, since, as he said, it must have been there hundreds
of thousands of years. Strangers, when they came to the village, went to
sleep somewhat timidly the first night of their stay, and not
infrequently left their beds to go and look at The Stone, as it hung
there ominously in the light of the moon; or listened towards it if it
was dark. When the moon rose late, and The Stone chanced to be directly
in front of it, a black sphere seemed to be rolling into the light to
blot it out.
But none who lived in the village looked upon The Stone in quite the same
fashion as did that first man who had come to the valley. He had seen it
through three changing seasons, with no human being near him, and only
occasionally a shy, wandering elk, or a cloud of wild ducks whirring down
the pass, to share his companionship with it. Once he had waked in the
early morning, and, possessed of a strange feeling, had gone out to look
a The Stone. There, perched upon it, was an eagle; and though he said to
himself that an eagle's weight was to The Stone as a feather upon the
world, he kept his face turned towards it all day; for all day the eagle
stayed. He was a man of great stature and immense strength. The thews of
his limbs stood out like soft unbreakable steel. Yet, as if to cast
derision on his strength and great proportions, God or Fate turned his
bread to ashes, gave failure into his hands where he hugely grasped at
fortune, and hung him about with misery. He discovered gold, but others
gathered it. It was his daughter that went mad, and gave birth to a dead
child in fearsome thought of The Stone. Once, when he had gone over the
hills to another mining field, and had been prevented from coming back by
unexpected and heavy snows, his wife was taken ill, and died alone of
starvation, because none in the village remembered of her and her needs.
Again, one wild night, long after, his only son was taken from his bed
and lynched for a crime that was none of his, as was discovered by his
murderers next day. Then they killed horribly the real criminal, and
offered the father such satisfaction as they could. They said that any
one of them was ready there to be killed by him; and they threw a weapon
at his feet. At this he stood looking upon them for a moment, his great
breast heaving, and his eyes glowering; but presently he reached out his
arms, and taking two of them by the throat, brought their heads together
heavily, breaking their skulls; and, with a cry in his throat like a
wounded animal, left them, and entered the village no more. But it became
known that he had built a rude but on Purple Hill, and that he had been
seen standing beside The Stone or sitting among the boulders below it,
with his face bent upon the village. Those who had come near to him said
that he had greatly changed; that his hair and beard had grown long and
strong, and, in effect, that he looked like some rugged fragment of an
antique world.
The time came when they associated The Man with The Stone: they grew to
speak of him simply as The Man. There was something natural and apt in
the association. Then they avoided these two singular dwellers on the
height. What had happened to The Man when he lived in the village became
almost as great a legend as the Indian fable concerning The Stone. In the
minds of the people one seemed as old as the other. Women who knew the
awful disasters which had befallen The Man brooded at times most timidly,
regarding him as they did at first--and even still--The Stone. Women who
carried life unborn about with them had a strange dread of both The Stone
and The Man. Time passed on, and the feeling grew that The Man's grief
must be a terrible thing, since he lived alone with The Stone and God.
But this did not prevent the men of the village from digging gold,
drinking liquor, and doing many kinds of evil. One day, again, they did
an unjust and cruel thing. They took Pierre, the gambler, whom they had
at first sought to vanquish at his own art, and, possessed suddenly of
the high duty of citizenship, carried him to the edge of a hill and
dropped him over, thinking thereby to give him a quick death, while the
vultures would provide him a tomb. But Pierre was not killed, though to
his grave--unprepared as yet--he would bear an arm which should never be
lifted higher than his shoulder. When he waked from the crashing gloom
which succeeded the fall, he was in the presence of a being whose
appearance was awesome and massive--an outlawed god: whose hair and beard
were white, whose eye was piercing, absorbing, painful, in the long
perspective of its woe. This being sat with his great hand clasped to the
side of his head. The beginning of his look was the village, and--though
the vision seemed infinite--the village was the end of it too. Pierre,
looking through the doorway beside which he lay, drew in his breath
sharply, for it seemed at first as if The Man was an unnatural fancy, and
not a thing. Behind The Man was The Stone, which was not more motionless
nor more full of age than this its comrade. Indeed, The Stone seemed more
a thing of life as it poised above the hill: The Man was sculptured rock.
His white hair was chiselled on his broad brow, his face was a solemn
pathos petrified, his lips were curled with an iron contempt, an
incalculable anger.
The sun went down, and darkness gathered about The Man. Pierre reached
out his hand, and drank the water and ate the coarse bread that had been
put near him. He guessed that trees or protruding ledges had broken his
fall, and that he had been rescued and brought here. As he lay thinking,
The Man entered the doorway, stooping much to do so. With flints he
lighted a wick which hung from a wooden bowl of bear's oil; then
kneeling, held it above his head, and looked at Pierre. And Pierre, who
had never feared anyone, shrank from the look in The Man's eyes. But when
the other saw that Pierre was awake, a distant kindness came upon his
face, and he nodded gravely; but he did not speak. Presently a great
tremor as of pain shook all his limbs, and he set the candle on the
ground, and with his stalwart hands arranged afresh the bandages about
Pierre's injured arm and leg. Pierre spoke at last.
"You are The Man"? he said. The other bowed his head.
"You saved me from those devils in the valley?" A look of impregnable
hardness came into The Man's face, but he pressed Pierre's hand for
answer; and though the pressure was meant to be gentle, Pierre winced
painfully. The candle spluttered, and the hut filled with a sickly smoke.
The Man brought some bear skins and covered the sufferer, for, the season
being autumn, the night was cold. Pierre, who had thus spent his first
sane and conscious hour in many days, fell asleep. What time it was when
he waked he was not sure, but it was to hear a metallic click-click come
to him through the clear air of night. It was a pleasant noise as of
steel and rock: the work of some lonely stone-cutter of the hills. The
sound reached him with strange, increasing distinctness. Was this Titan
that had saved him sculpturing some figure from the metal hill?
Click-click! it vibrated as regularly as the keen pulse of a watch. He
lay and wondered for a long time, but fell asleep again; and the steely
iteration went on in his dreams.
In the morning The Man came to him, and cared for his hurts, and gave him
food; but still would speak no word. He was gone nearly all day in the
hills; yet when evening came he sought the place where Pierre had seen
him the night before, and the same weird scene was re-enacted. And again
in the night the clicking sound went on; and every night it was renewed.
Pierre grew stronger, and could, with difficulty, stand upon his feet.
One night he crept out, and made his way softly, slowly towards the
sound. He saw The Man kneeling beside The Stone, he saw a hammer rise and
fall upon a chisel; and the chisel was at the base of The Stone. The
hammer rose and fell with perfect but dreadful precision. Pierre turned
and looked towards the village below, whose lights were burning like a
bunch of fire-flies in the gloom. Again he looked at The Stone and The
Man.
Then the thing came to him sharply. The Man was chiselling away the
socket of The Stone, bringing it to that point of balance where the touch
of a finger, the wing of a bird, or the whistle of a north-west wind,
would send it down upon the offending and unsuspecting village.
The thought held him paralysed. The Man had nursed his revenge long past
the thought of its probability by the people beneath. He had at first sat
and watched the village, hated, and mused dreadfully upon the thing he
had determined to do. Then he had worked a little, afterwards more, and
now, lastly, since he had seen what they had done to Pierre, with the hot
but firm eagerness of an avenging giant. Pierre had done some sad deeds
in his time, and had tasted some sweet revenges, but nothing like to this
had ever entered his brain. In that village were men who--as they
thought--had cast him to a death fit only for a coward or a cur. Well,
here was the most exquisite retaliation. Though his hand should not be in
the thing, he could still be the cynical and approving spectator.
But yet: had all those people hovering about those lights below done harm
to him? He thought there were a few--and they were women--who would not
have followed his tumbril to his death with cries of execration. The rest
would have done so,--most of them did so, not because he was a criminal,
but because he was a victim, and because human nature as it is thirsts
inordinately at times for blood and sacrifice--a living strain of the old
barbaric instinct. He remembered that most of these people were concerned
in having injured The Man. The few good women there had vile husbands;
the few pardonable men had hateful wives: the village of Purple Hill was
an ill affair.
He thought: now doubtfully, now savagely, now with irony.
The hammer and steel clicked on.
He looked at the lights of the village again. Suddenly there came to his
mind the words of a great man who sought to save a city manifold
centuries ago. He was not sure that he wished to save this village; but
there was a grim, almost grotesque, fitness in the thing that he now
intended. He spoke out clearly through the night:
"'Oh, let not the Lord be angry, and I will speak yet but this once:
Peradventure ten righteous shall be found there.'"
The hammer stopped. There was a silence, in which the pines sighed
lightly. Then, as if speaking was a labour, The Man replied in a deep,
harsh voice:
"I will not spare it for ten's sake."
Again there was a silence, in which Pierre felt his maimed body bend
beneath him; but presently the voice said,--"Now!"
At this the moon swung from behind a cloud. The Man stood behind The
Stone. His arm was raised to it. There was a moment's pause--it seemed
like years to Pierre; a wind came softly crying out of the west, the moon
hurried into the dark, and then a monster sprang from its pedestal upon
Purple Hill, and, with a sound of thunder and an awful speed, raced upon
the village below. The boulders of the hillside crumbled after it.
And Pierre saw the lights go out.
The moon shone out again for an instant, and Pierre saw that The Man
stood where The Stone had been; but when he reached the place The Man was
gone. Forever!
ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
At first--and at the last--he was kind
Courage; without which, men are as the standing straw
Evil is half-accidental, half-natural
Fascinating colour which makes evil appear to be good
Had the luck together, all kinds and all weathers
Hunger for happiness is robbery
If one remembers, why should the other forget
Instinct for detecting veracity, having practised on both sides
Mothers always forgive
The higher we go the faster we live
The Injin speaks the truth, perhaps--eye of red man multipies
The world is not so bad as is claimed for it
Whatever has been was a dream; whatever is now is real
You do not shout dinner till you have your knife in the loaf
PIERRE AND HIS PEOPLE
TALES OF THE FAR NORTH
By Gilbert Parker
Volume 4.
THE TALL MASTER
THE CRIMSON FLAG
THE FLOOD IN PIPI VALLEY
THE TALL MASTER
The story has been so much tossed about in the mouths of Indians, and
half-breeds, and men of the Hudson's Bay Company, that you are pretty
sure to hear only an apocryphal version of the thing as you now travel in
the North. But Pretty Pierre was at Fort Luke when the battle occurred,
and, before and after, he sifted the business thoroughly. For he had a
philosophical turn, and this may be said of him, that he never lied
except to save another from danger. In this matter he was cool and
impartial from first to last, and evil as his reputation was in many ways
there were those who believed and trusted him. Himself, as he travelled
here and there through the North, had heard of the Tall Master. Yet he
had never met anyone who had seen him; for the Master had dwelt, it was
said, chiefly among the strange tribes of the Far-Off Metal River whose
faces were almost white, and who held themselves aloof from the southern
races. The tales lost nothing by being retold, even when the historians
were the men of the H. B. C.;---Pierre knew what accomplished liars may
be found among that Company of Adventurers trading in Hudson's Bay, and
how their art had been none too delicately engrafted by his own people.
But he was, as became him, open to conviction, especially when,
journeying to Fort Luke, he heard what John Hybar, the Chief Factor--a
man of uncommon quality--had to say. Hybar had once lived long among
those Indians of the Bright Stone, and had seen many rare things among
them. He knew their legends of the White Valley and the Hills of the
Mighty Men, and how their distinctive character had imposed itself on the
whole Indian race of the North, so that there was none but believed, even
though vaguely, in a pleasant land not south but Arcticwards; and Pierre
himself, with Shon McGann and Just Trafford, had once had a strange
experience in the Kimash Hills. He did not share the opinion of Lazenby,
the Company's clerk at Fort Luke, who said, when the matter was talked of
before him, that it was all hanky-panky,--which was evidence that he had
lived in London town, before his anxious relatives, sending him forth
under the delusive flag of adventure and wild life, imprisoned him in the
Arctic regions with the H. B. C.
Lazenby admired Pierre; said he was good stuff, and voted him amusing,
with an ingenious emphasis of heathen oaths; but advised him, as only an
insolent young scoundrel can, to forswear securing, by the seductive game
of poker or euchre, larger interest on his capital than the H. B. C.;
whose record, he insisted, should never be rivalled by any single man in
any single lifetime. Then he incidentally remarked that he would like to
empty the Company's cash-box once--only once;--thus reconciling the
preacher and the sinner, as many another has done. Lazenby's morals were
not bad, however. He was simply fond of making them appear terrible; even
when in London he was more idle than wicked. He gravely suggested at
last, as a kind of climax, that he and Pierre should go out on the pad
together. This was a mere stroke of pleasantry on his part, because, the
most he could loot in that far North were furs and caches of buffalo
meat; and a man's capacity and use for them were limited. Even Pierre's
especial faculty and art seemed valueless so far Polewards; but he had
his beat throughout the land, and he kept it like a perfect patrolman. He
had not been at Fort Luke for years, and he would not be there again for
more years; but it was certain that he would go on reappearing till he
vanished utterly. At the end of the first week of this visit at Fort
Luke, so completely had he conquered the place, that he had won from the
Chief Factor the year's purchases of skins, the stores, and the Fort
itself; and every stitch of clothing owned by Lazenby: so that, if he had
insisted on the redemption of the debts, the H. B. C. and Lazenby had
been naked and hungry in the wilderness. But Pierre was not a hard
creditor. He instantly and nonchalantly said that the Fort would be
useless to him, and handed it back again with all therein, on a most
humorously constructed ninety-nine years' lease; while Lazenby was left
in pawn. Yet Lazenby's mind was not at certain ease; he had a wholesome
respect for Pierre's singularities, and dreaded being suddenly called
upon to pay his debt before he could get his new clothes made, maybe, in
the presence of Wind Driver, chief of the Golden Dogs, and his demure and
charming daughter, Wine Face, who looked upon him with the eye of
affection--a matter fully, but not ostentatiously, appreciated by
Lazenby. If he could have entirely forgotten a pretty girl in South
Kensington, who, at her parents' bidding, turned her shoulder on him, he
would have married Wine Face; and so he told Pierre. But the half-breed
had only a sardonic sympathy for such weakness. Things changed at once
when Shon McGann arrived. He should have come before, according to a
promise given Pierre, but there were reasons for the delay; and these
Shon elaborated in his finely picturesque style.
He said that he had lost his way after he left the Wapiti Woods, and
should never have found it again, had it not been for a strange being who
came upon him and took him to the camp of the White Hand Indians, and
cared for him there, and sent him safely on his way again to Fort Luke.
"Sorra wan did I ever see like him," said Shon, "with a face that was
divil this minute and saint the next; pale in the cheek, and black in the
eye, and grizzled hair flowin' long at his neck and lyin' like snakes on
his shoulders; and whin his fingers closed on yours, bedad! they didn't
seem human at all, for they clamped you so cold and strong."
"'For they clamped you so cold and strong,'" replied Pierre, mockingly,
yet greatly interested, as one could see by the upward range of his eye
towards Shon. "Well, what more?"
"Well, squeeze the acid from y'r voice, Pierre; for there's things that
better become you: and listen to me, for I've news for all here at the
Fort, before I've done, which'll open y'r eyes with a jerk."
"With a wonderful jerk, hold! let us prepare, messieurs, to be waked with
an Irish jerk!" and Pierre pensively trifled with the fringe on Shon's
buckskin jacket, which was whisked from his fingers with smothered anger.
For a few moments he was silent; but the eager looks of the Chief Factor
and Lazenby encouraged him to continue. Besides, it was only Pierre's
way--provoking Shon was the piquant sauce of his life.
"Lyin' awake I was," continued Shon, "in the middle of the night, not
bein' able to sleep for a pain in a shoulder I'd strained, whin I heard a
thing that drew me up standin'. It was the sound of a child laughin'; so
wonderful and bright, and at the very door of me tent it seemed. Then it
faded away till it was only a breath, lovely, and idle, and swingin'. I
wint to the door and looked out. There was nothin' there, av coorse."
"And why 'av coorse'"? rejoined Pierre. The Chief Factor was intent on
what Shon was saying, while Lazenby drummed his fingers on the table, his
nose in the air.
"Divils me darlin', but ye know as well as I, that there's things in the
world neither for havin' nor handlin'. And that's wan of thim, says I to
meself. . . . I wint back and lay down, and I heard the voice singin' now
and comin' nearer and nearer, and growin' louder and louder, and then
there came with it a patter of feet, till it was as a thousand children
were dancin' by me door. I was shy enough, I'll own; but I pulled aside
the curtain of the tent to see again: and there was nothin' beyand for
the eye. But the singin' was goin' past and recedin' as before, till it
died away along the waves of prairie grass. I wint back and give Grey
Nose, my Injin bed-fellow, a lift wid me fut. 'Come out of that,' says I,
'and tell me if dead or alive I am.' He got up, and there was the noise
soft and grand again, but with it now the voices of men, the flip of
birds' wings and the sighin' of tree tops, and behind all that the long
wash of a sea like none I ever heard. . . . 'Well,' says I to the Injin
grinnin' before me, 'what's that, in the name o' Moses?' 'That,' says he,
laughin' slow in me face, 'is the Tall Master--him that brought you to
the camp.' Thin I remimbered all the things that's been said of him, and
I knew it was music I'd been hearin' and not children's voices nor
anythin' else at all.
"'Come with me,' says Grey Nose; and he took me to the door of a big tent
standin' alone from the rest.
"'Wait a minute,' says he, and he put his hand on the tent curtain; and
at that there was a crash, as a million gold hammers were fallin' on
silver drums. And we both stood still; for it seemed an army, with swords
wranglin' and bridle-chains rattlin', was marchin' down on us. There was
the divil's own uproar, as a battle was comin' on; and a long line of
spears clashed. But just then there whistled through the larrup of sound
a clear voice callin', gentle and coaxin', yet commandin' too; and the
spears dropped, and the pounding of horsehoofs ceased, and then the army
marched away; far away; iver so far away, into--"
"Into Heaven!" flippantly interjected Lazenby. "Into Heaven, say I, and
be choked to you! for there's no other place for it; and I'll stand by
that, till I go there myself, and know the truth o' the thing." Pierre
here spoke. "Heaven gave you a fine trick with words, Shon McGann. I
sometimes think Irishmen have gifts for only two things--words and women.
. . . 'Bien,' what then?"
Shon was determined not to be angered. The occasion was too big. "Well,
Grey Nose lifted the curtain and wint in. In a minute he comes out. 'You
can go in,' says he. So in I wint, the Injin not comin', and there in the
middle of the tint stood the Tall Master, alone. He had his fiddle to his
chin, and the bow hoverin' above it. He looked at me for a long time
along the thing; then, all at once, from one string I heard the child
laughin' that pleasant and distant, though the bow seemed not to be
touchin'. Soon it thinned till it was the shadow of a laugh, and I didn't
know whin it stopped, he smilin' down at the fiddle bewhiles. Then he
said without lookin' at me,--'It is the spirit of the White Valley and
the Hills of the Mighty Men; of which all men shall know, for the North
will come to her spring again one day soon, at the remaking of the world.
They thought the song would never be found again, but I have given it a
home here.' And he bent and kissed the strings. After, he turned sharply
as if he'd been spoken to, and looked at someone beside him; someone that
I couldn't see. A cloud dropped upon his face, he caught the fiddle
hungrily to his breast, and came limpin' over to me--for there was
somethin' wrong with his fut--and lookin' down his hook-nose at me, says
he,--'I've a word for them at Fort Luke, where you're goin', and you'd
better be gone at once; and I'll put you on your way. There's to be a
great battle. The White Hands have an ancient feud with the Golden Dogs,
and they have come from where the soft Chinook wind ranges the Peace
River, to fight until no man of all the Golden Dogs be left, or till they
themselves be destroyed. It is the same north and south,' he wint on; 'I
have seen it all in Italy, in Greece, in--' but here he stopped and
smiled strangely. After a minute he wint on: 'The White Hands have no
quarrel with the Englishmen of the Fort, and I would warn them, for
Englishmen were once kind to me--and warn also the Golden Dogs. So come
with me at once,' says he. And I did. And he walked with me till mornin',
carryin' the fiddle under his arm, but wrapped in a beautiful velvet
cloth, havin' on it grand figures like the arms of a king or queen. And
just at the first whisk of sun he turned me into a trail and give me
good-bye, sayin' that maybe he'd follow me soon, and, at any rate, he'd
be there at the battle. Well, divils betide me! I got off the track
again; and lost a day; but here I am; and there's me story to take or
lave as you will."