Pierre And His People, [Tales of the Far North], Complete - Gilbert Parker
The young moose now had ceased its struggles, and came forward to the
dead bull with that hollow sound of mourning peculiar to its kind. Though
it afterwards struggled once or twice to be free, it became docile and
was easily taught, when its anger and fear were over.
And Gregory Thorne had his live moose. He had also, by that splendid
shot, achieved with one arm, saved Malbrouck from peril, perhaps from
death.
They drew up before the house at Marigold Lake on the afternoon of the
day before Christmas, a triumphal procession. The moose was driven, a
peaceful captive with a wreath of cedar leaves around its neck--the
humourous conception of Gregory Thorne. Malbrouck had announced their
coming by a blast from his horn, and Margaret was standing in the doorway
wrapped in furs, which may have come originally from Hudson's Bay, but
which had been deftly re-manufactured in Regent Street.
Astonishment, pleasure, beamed in her eyes. She clapped her hands gaily,
and cried: "Welcome, welcome, merry-men all!" She kissed her father; she
called to her mother to come and see; then she said to Gregory, with arch
raillery, as she held out her hand: "Oh, companion of hunters, comest
thou like Jacques in Arden from dropping the trustful tear upon the prey
of others, or bringest thou quarry of thine own? Art thou a warrior sated
with spoil, master of the sports, spectator of the fight, Prince, or
Pistol? Answer, what art thou?"
And he, with a touch of his old insolence, though with something of irony
too, for he had hoped for a different fashion of greeting, said:
"All, lady, all! The Olympian all! The player of many parts. I am
Touchstone, Jacques, and yet Orlando too."
"And yet Orlando too, my daughter," said Malbrouck, gravely. "He saved
your father from the hoofs of a moose bent on sacrifice. Had your father
his eye, his nerve, his power to shoot with one arm a bull moose at long
range, so!--he would not refuse to be called a great hunter, but wear the
title gladly."
Margaret Malbrouck's face became anxious instantly. "He saved you from
danger--from injury, father"? she slowly said, and looked earnestly at
Gregory; "but why to shoot with one arm only?"
"Because in a fight of his own with a moose--a hand-to-hand fight--he had
a bad moment with the hoofs of the beast."
And this young man, who had a reputation for insolence, blushed, so that
the paleness which the girl now noticed in his face was banished; and to
turn the subject he interposed:
"Here is the live moose that I said I should bring. Now say that he's a
beauty, please. Your father and I--"
But Malbrouck interrupted:
"He lassoed it with his one arm, Margaret. He was determined to do it
himself, because, being a superstitious gentleman, as well as a hunter,
he had some foolish notion that this capture would propitiate a goddess
whom he imagined required offerings of the kind."
"It is the privilege of the gods to be merciful," she said. "This
peace-offering should propitiate the angriest, cruellest goddess in the
universe; and for one who was neither angry nor really cruel--well, she
should be satisfied.... altogether satisfied," she added, as she put her
cheek against the warm fur of the captive's neck, and let it feel her
hand with its lips.
There was silence for a minute, and then with his old gay spirit all
returned, and as if to give an air not too serious to the situation,
Gregory, remembering his Euripides, said:
". . . . . . . .let the steer bleed,
And the rich altars, as they pay their vows,
Breathe incense to the gods: for me, I rise
To better life, and grateful own the blessing."
"A pagan thought for a Christmas Eve," she said to him, with her fingers
feeling for the folds of silken flesh in the throat of the moose; "but
wounded men must be humoured. And, mother dear, here are our Argonauts
returned; and--and now I think I will go."
With a quick kiss on her father's cheek--not so quick but he caught the
tear that ran through her happy smile--she vanished into the house.
That night there was gladness in this home. Mirth sprang to the lips of
the men like foam on a beaker of wine, so that the evening ran towards
midnight swiftly. All the tale of the hunt was given by Malbrouck to
joyful ears; for the mother lived again her youth in the sunrise of this
romance which was being sped before her eyes; and the father, knowing
that in this world there is nothing so good as courage, nothing so base
as the shifting eye, looked on the young man, and was satisfied, and told
his story well;--told it as a brave man would tell it, bluntly as to
deeds done, warmly as to the pleasures of good sport, directly as to all.
In the eye of the young man there had come the glance of larger life, of
a new-developed manhood. When he felt that dun body crashing on him, and
his life closing with its strength, and ran the good knife home, there
flashed through his mind how much life meant to the dying, how much it
ought to mean to the living; and then this girl, this Margaret, swam
before his eyes--and he had been graver since.
He knew, as truly as if she had told him, that she could never mate with
any man who was a loiterer on God's highway, who could live life without
some sincerity in his aims. It all came to him again in this room, so
austere in its appointments, yet so gracious, so full of the spirit of
humanity without a note of ennui, or the rust of careless deeds. As this
thought grew he looked at the face of the girl, then at the faces of the
father and mother, and the memory of his boast came back--that he would
win the stake he laid, to know the story of John and Audrey Malbrouck
before this coming Christmas morning. With a faint smile at his own past
insolent self, he glanced at the clock. It was eleven. "I have lost my
bet," he unconsciously said aloud.
He was roused by John Malbrouck remarking: "Yes, you have lost your bet?
Well, what was it? The youth, the childlike quality in him," flushed his
face deeply, and then, with a sudden burst of frankness, he said:
"I did not know that I had spoken. As for the bet, I deserve to be
thrashed for ever having made it; but, duffer as I am, I want you to know
that I'm something worse than duffer. The first time I met you I made a
bet that I should know your history before Christmas Day. I haven't a
word to say for myself. I'm contemptible. I beg your pardon; for your
history is none of my business. I was really interested; that's all; but
your lives, I believe it, as if it was in the Bible, have been
great--yes, that's the word! and I'm a better chap for having known you,
though, perhaps, I've known you all along, because, you see, I've--I've
been friends with your daughter--and-well, really I haven't anything else
to say, except that I hope you'll forgive me, and let me know you
always."
Malbrouck regarded him for a moment with a grave smile, and then looked
toward his wife. Both turned their glances quickly upon Margaret, whose
eyes were on the fire. The look upon her face was very gentle; something
new and beautiful had come to reign there.
A moment, and Malbrouck spoke: "You did what was youthful and curious,
but not wrong; and you shall not lose your hazard. I--"
"No, do not tell me," Gregory interrupted; "only let me be pardoned."
"As I said, lad, you shall not lose your hazard. I will tell you the
brief tale of two lives."
"But, I beg of you! For the instant I forgot. I have more to confess."
And Gregory told them in substance what Pretty Pierre had disclosed to
him in the Rocky Mountains.
When he had finished, Malbrouck said: "My tale then is briefer still: I
was a common soldier, English and humble by my mother, French and noble
through my father--noble, but poor. In Burmah, at an outbreak among the
natives, I rescued my colonel from immediate and horrible death, though
he died in my arms from the injuries he received. His daughter too, it
was my fortune, through God's Providence, to save from great danger. She
became my wife. You remember that song you sang the day we first met you?
"It brought her father back to mind painfully. When we came to England
her people--her mother--would not receive me. For myself I did not care;
for my wife, that was another matter. She loved me and preferred to go
with me anywhere; to a new country, preferably. We came to Canada.
"We were forgotten in England. Time moves so fast, even if the records in
red-books stand. Our daughter went to her grandmother to be brought up
and educated in England--though it was a sore trial to us both--that she
might fill nobly that place in life for which she is destined. With all
she learned she did not forget us. We were happy save in her absence. We
are happy now; not because she is mistress of Holwood and Marchurst--for
her grandmother and another is dead--but because such as she is our
daughter, and--"
He said no more. Margaret was beside him, and her fingers were on his
lips.
Gregory came to his feet suddenly, and with a troubled face.
"Mistress of Holwood and Marchurst!" he said; and his mind ran over his
own great deficiencies, and the list of eligible and anxious suitors that
Park Lane could muster. He had never thought of her in the light of a
great heiress.
But he looked down at her as she knelt at her father's knee, her eyes
upturned to his, and the tide of his fear retreated; for he saw in them
the same look she had given him when she leaned her cheek against the
moose's neck that afternoon.
When the clock struck twelve upon a moment's pleasant silence, John
Malbrouck said to Gregory Thorne:
"Yes, you have won your Christmas hazard, my boy."
But a softer voice than his whispered: "Are you--content--Gregory?"
The Spirits of Christmas-tide, whose paths lie north as well as south,
smiled as they wrote his answer on their tablets; for they knew, as the
man said, that he would always be content, and--which is more in the
sight of angels--that the woman would be content also.
ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
Awkward for your friends and gratifying to your enemies
Carrying with him the warm atmosphere of a good woman's love
Freedom is the first essential of the artistic mind
I was born insolent
Knowing that his face would never be turned from me
Likenesses between the perfectly human and the perfectly animal
Longed to touch, oftener than they did, the hands of children
Meditation is the enemy of action
My excuses were making bad infernally worse
Nothing so good as courage, nothing so base as the shifting eye
She wasn't young, but she seemed so
The Barracks of the Free
The gods made last to humble the pride of men--there was rum
The soul of goodness in things evil
Time is the test, and Time will have its way with me
Where I should never hear the voice of the social Thou must
PIERRE AND HIS PEOPLE
TALES OF THE FAR NORTH
By Gilbert Parker
Volume 2.
A PRAIRIE VAGABOND
SHE OF THE TRIPLE CHEVRON
THREE OUTLAWS
A PRAIRIE VAGABOND
Little Hammer was not a success. He was a disappointment to the
missionaries; the officials of the Hudson's Bay Company said he was "no
good;" the Mounted Police kept an eye on him; the Crees and Blackfeet
would have nothing to do with him; and the half-breeds were profane
regarding him. But Little Hammer was oblivious to any depreciation of his
merits, and would not be suppressed. He loved the Hudson's Bay Company's
Post at Yellow Quill with an unwavering love; he ranged the half-breed
hospitality of Red Deer River, regardless of it being thrown at him as he
in turn threw it at his dog; he saluted Sergeant Gellatly with a familiar
How! whenever he saw him; he borrowed tabac of the half-breed women, and,
strange to say, paid it back--with other tabac got by daily petition,
until his prayer was granted, at the H. B. C. Post. He knew neither shame
nor defeat, but where women were concerned he kept his word, and was
singularly humble. It was a woman that induced him to be baptised. The
day after the ceremony he begged "the loan of a dollar for the love of
God" from the missionary; and being refused, straightway, and for the
only time it was known of him, delivered a rumbling torrent of half-breed
profanity, mixed with the unusual oaths of the barracks. Then he walked
away with great humility. There was no swagger about Little Hammer. He
was simply unquenchable and continuous. He sometimes got drunk; but on
such occasions he sat down, or lay down, in the most convenient place,
and, like Caesar beside Pompey's statue, wrapped his mantle about his
face and forgot the world. He was a vagabond Indian, abandoned yet
self-contained, outcast yet gregarious. No social ostracism unnerved him,
no threats of the H. B. C. officials moved him; and when in the winter of
187 he was driven from one place to another, starving and homeless, and
came at last emaciated and nearly dead to the Post at Yellow Quill, he
asked for food and shelter as if it were his right, and not as a
mendicant.
One night, shortly after his reception and restoration, he was sitting in
the store silently smoking the Company's tabac. Sergeant Gellatly
entered. Little Hammer rose, offered his hand, and muttered, "How!"
The Sergeant thrust his hand aside, and said sharply: "Whin I take y'r
hand, Little Hammer, it'll be to put a grip an y'r wrists that'll stay
there till y'are in quarters out of which y'll come nayther winter nor
summer. Put that in y'r pipe and smoke it, y' scamp!"
Little Hammer had a bad time at the Post that night. Lounging half-breeds
reviled him; the H. B. C. officials rebuked him; and travellers who were
coming and going shared in the derision, as foolish people do where one
is brow-beaten by many. At last a trapper entered, whom seeing, Little
Hammer drew his blanket up about his head. The trapper sat down very near
Little Hammer, and began to smoke. He laid his plug-tabac and his knife
on the counter beside him. Little Hammer reached over and took the knife,
putting it swiftly within his blanket. The trapper saw the act, and,
turning sharply on the Indian, called him a thief. Little Hammer chuckled
strangely and said nothing; but his eyes peered sharply above the
blanket. A laugh went round the store. In an instant the trapper, with a
loud oath, caught at the Indian's throat; but as the blanket dropped back
he gave a startled cry. There was the flash of a knife, and he fell back
dead. Little Hammer stood above him, smiling, for a moment, and then,
turning to Sergeant Gellatly, held out his arms silently for the
handcuffs.
The next day two men were lost on the prairies. One was Sergeant
Gellatly; the other was Little Hammer. The horses they rode travelled so
close that the leg of the Indian crowded the leg of the white man; and
the wilder the storm grew, the closer still they rode. A 'poudre' day,
with its steely air and fatal frost, was an ill thing in the world; but
these entangling blasts, these wild curtains of snow, were desolating
even unto death. The sun above was smothered; the earth beneath was
trackless; the compass stood for loss all round.
What could Sergeant Gellatly expect, riding with a murderer on his left
hand: a heathen that had sent a knife through the heart of one of the
lords of the North? What should the gods do but frown, or the elements be
at, but howling on their path? What should one hope for but that
vengeance should be taken out of the hands of mortals, and be delivered
to the angry spirits?
But if the gods were angry at the Indian, why should Sergeant Gellatly
only sway to and fro, and now laugh recklessly, and now fall sleepily
forward on the neck of his horse; while the Indian rode straight, and
neither wavered nor wandered in mind, but at last slipped from his horse
and walked beside the other? It was at this moment that the soldier
heard, "Sergeant Gellatly, Sergeant Gellatly," called through the blast;
and he thought it came from the skies, or from some other world. "Me
darlin'," he said, "have y' come to me?" But the voice called again:
"Sergeant Gellatly, keep awake! keep awake! You sleep, you die; that's
it. Holy. Yes. How!" Then he knew that it was Little Hammer calling in
his ear, and shaking him; that the Indian was dragging him from his horse
. . . his revolver, where was it? he had forgotten . . . he nodded . . .
nodded. But Little Hammer said: "Walk, hell! you walk, yes;" and Little
Hammer struck him again and again; but one arm of the Indian was under
his shoulder and around him, and the voice was anxious and kind. Slowly
it came to him that Little Hammer was keeping him alive against the will
of the spirits--but why should they strike him instead of the Indian? Was
there any sun in the world? Had there ever been? or fire or heat
anywhere, or anything but wind and snow in all God's universe? . . . Yes,
there were bells ringing--soft bells of a village church; and there was
incense burning--most sweet it was! and the coals in the censer--how
beautiful, how comforting! He laughed with joy again, and he forgot how
cold, how maliciously cold, he had been; he forgot how dreadful that hour
was before he became warm; when he was pierced by myriad needles through
the body, and there was an incredible aching at his heart.
And yet something kept thundering on his body, and a harsh voice shrieked
at him, and there were many lights dancing over his shut eyes; and then
curtains of darkness were dropped, and centuries of oblivion came; and
then--then his eyes opened to a comforting silence, and some one was
putting brandy between his teeth, and after a time he heard a voice say:
"'Bien,' you see he was a murderer, but he save his captor. 'Voila,' such
a heathen! But you will, all the same, bring him to justice--you call it
that? But we shall see."
Then some one replied, and the words passed through an outer web of
darkness and an inner haze of dreams. "The feet of Little Hammer were
like wood on the floor when you brought the two in, Pretty Pierre--and
lucky for them you found them. . . . The thing would read right in a
book, but it's not according to the run of things up here, not by a
damned sight!"
"Private Bradshaw," said the first voice again, "you do not know Little
Hammer, nor that story of him. You wait for the trial. I have something
to say. You think Little Hammer care for the prison, the rope?--Ah, when
a man wait five years to kill--so! and it is done, he is glad sometimes
when it is all over. Sergeant Gellatly there will wish he went to sleep
forever in the snow, if Little Hammer come to the rope. Yes, I think."
And Sergeant Gellatly's brain was so numbed that he did not grasp the
meaning of the words, though he said them over and over again. . . . Was
he dead? No, for his body was beating, beating . . . well, it didn't
matter . . . nothing mattered . . . he was sinking to forgetfulness . . .
sinking.
So, for hours, for weeks--it might have been for years--and then he woke,
clear and knowing, to "the unnatural, intolerable day"--it was that to
him, with Little Hammer in prison. It was March when his memory and
vigour vanished; it was May when he grasped the full remembrance of
himself, and of that fight for life on the prairie: of the hands that
smote him that he should not sleep; of Little Hammer the slayer, who had
driven death back discomfited, and brought his captor safe to where his
own captivity and punishment awaited him.
When Sergeant Gellatly appeared in court at the trial he refused to bear
witness against Little Hammer. "D' ye think--does wan av y' think--that
I'll speak a word agin the man--haythen or no haythen--that pulled me out
of me tomb and put me betune the barrack quilts? Here's the stripes aff
me arm, and to gaol I'll go; but for what wint before I clapt the iron on
his wrists, good or avil, divil a word will I say. An' here's me left
hand, and there's me right fut, and an eye of me too, that I'd part with,
for the cause of him that's done a trick that your honour wouldn't
do--an' no shame to y' aither--an' y'd been where Little Hammer was with
me."
His honour did not reply immediately, but he looked meditatively at
Little Hammer before he said quietly,--"Perhaps not, perhaps not."
And Little Hammer, thinking he was expected to speak, drew his blanket up
closely about him and grunted, "How!"
Pretty Pierre, the notorious half-breed, was then called. He kissed the
Book, making the sign of the Cross swiftly as he did so, and unheeding
the ironical, if hesitating, laughter in the court. Then he said:
"'Bien,' I will tell you the story-the whole truth. I was in the Stony
Plains. Little Hammer was 'good Injin' then. . . . Yes, sacre! it is a
fool who smiles at that. I have kissed the Book. Dam! . . . He would be
chief soon when old Two Tails die. He was proud, then, Little Hammer. He
go not to the Post for drink; he sell not next year's furs for this
year's rations; he shoot straight."
Here Little Hammer stood up and said: "There is too much talk. Let me be.
It is all done. The sun is set--I care not--I have killed him;" and then
he drew his blanket about his face and sat down.
But Pierre continued: "Yes, you killed him-quick, after five years--that
is so; but you will not speak to say why. Then, I will speak. The Injins
say Little Hammer will be great man; he will bring the tribes together;
and all the time Little Hammer was strong and silent and wise. Then
Brigley the trapper--well, he was a thief and coward. He come to Little
Hammer and say, 'I am hungry and tired.' Little Hammer give him food and
sleep. He go away. 'Bien,' he come back and say,--'It is far to go; I
have no horse.' So Little Hammer give him a horse too. Then he come back
once again in the night when Little Hammer was away, and before morning
he go; but when Little Hammer return, there lay his bride--only an Injin
girl, but his bride-dead! You see? Eh? No? Well, the Captain at the Post
he says it was the same as Lucrece.--I say it was like hell. It is not
much to kill or to die--that is in the game; but that other, 'mon Dieu!'
Little Hammer, you see how he hide his head: not because he kill the
Tarquin, that Brigley, but because he is a poor 'vaurien' now, and he
once was happy and had a wife. . . . What would you do, judge honourable?
. . . Little Hammer, I shake your hand--so--How!"
But Little Hammer made no reply.
The judge sentenced Little Hammer to one month in gaol. He might have
made it one thousand months--it would have been the same; for when, on
the last morning of that month, they opened the door to set him free, he
was gone. That is, the Little Hammer whom the high gods knew was gone;
though an ill-nourished, self-strangled body was upright by the wall. The
vagabond had paid his penalty, but desired no more of earth.
Upon the door was scratched the one word: How!
SHE OF THE TRIPLE CHEVRON
Between Archangel's Rise and Pardon's Drive there was but one house. It
was a tavern, and it was known as Galbraith's Place. There was no man in
the Western Territories to whom it was not familiar. There was no
traveller who crossed the lonely waste but was glad of it, and would go
twenty miles out of his way to rest a night on a corn-husk bed which Jen
Galbraith's hands had filled, to eat a meal that she had prepared, and to
hear Peter Galbraith's tales of early days on the plains, when buffalo
were like clouds on the horizon, when Indians were many and hostile, and
when men called the great western prairie a wedge of the American desert.
It was night on the prairie. Jen Galbraith stood in the doorway of the
tavern sitting-room and watched a mighty beacon of flame rising before
her, a hundred yards away. Every night this beacon made a circle of light
on the prairie, and Galbraith's Place was in the centre of the circle.
Summer and winter it burned from dusk to daylight. No hand fed it but
that of Nature. It never failed; it was a cruse that was never empty.
Upon Jen Galbraith it had a weird influence. It grew to be to her a kind
of spiritual companion, though, perhaps, she would not so have named it.
This flaming gas, bubbling up from the depths of the earth on the lonely
plains, was to her a mysterious presence grateful to her; the receiver of
her thoughts, the daily necessity in her life. It filled her too with a
kind of awe; for, when it burned, she seemed not herself alone, but
another self of her whom she could not quite understand. Yet she was no
mere dreamer. Upon her practical strength of body and mind had come that
rugged poetical sense, which touches all who live the life of mountain
and prairie. She showed it in her speech; it had a measured cadence. She
expressed it in her body; it had a free and rhythmic movement. And not
Jen alone, but many another dweller on the prairie, looked upon it with a
superstitious reverence akin to worship. A blizzard could not quench it.
A gale of wind only fed its strength. A rain-storm made a mist about it,
in which it was enshrined like a god. Peter Galbraith could not fully
understand his daughter's fascination for this Prairie Star, as the
North-West people called it. It was not without its natural influence
upon him; but he regarded it most as a comfortable advertisement, and he
lamented every day that this never-failing gas well was not near a large
population, and he still its owner. He was one of that large family in
the earth who would turn the best things in their lives into merchandise.
As it was, it brought much grist to his mill; for he was not averse to
the exercise of the insinuating pleasures of euchre and poker in his
tavern; and the hospitality which ranchmen, cowboys, and travellers
sought at his hand was often prolonged, and also remunerative to him.