Romany of the Snows - Gilbert Parker
Halby looked over at Pierre astonished. Here was raillery and good advice
all in a piece.
"It isn't wise to go alone, for if there's trouble and I should go down,
who's to tell the truth? Two could do it; but one--no, it isn't wise,
though it would look smart enough."
"Who said to go alone?" asked Pierre, scrawling on the table with a burnt
match.
"I have no men."
Pierre looked up at the wall.
"Throng has a good Snider there," he said. "Bosh! Throng can't go."
The old man coughed and strained.
"If it wasn't--only-half a lung, and I could carry the boneset 'long with
us."
Pierre slid off the table, came to the old man, and, taking him by the
arms, pushed him gently into a chair. "Sit down; don't be a fool,
Throng," he said. Then he turned to Halby: "You're a magistrate--make me
a special constable; I'll go, monsieur le capitaine--of no company."
Halby stared. He knew Pierre's bravery, his ingenuity and daring. But
this was the last thing he expected: that the malicious, railing little
half-breed would work with him and the law. Pierre seemed to understand
his thoughts, for he said: "It is not for you. I am sick for adventure,
and then there is mademoiselle--such a finger she has for a ven'son
pudding."
Without a word Halby wrote on a leaf in his notebook, and presently
handed the slip to Pierre. "That's your commission as a special
constable," he said, "and here's the seal on it." He handed over a
pistol.
Pierre raised his eyebrows at it, but Halby continued: "It has the
Government mark. But you'd better bring Throng's rifle too."
Throng sat staring at the two men, his hands nervously shifting on his
knees. "Tell Liddy," he said, "that the last batch of bread was sour--Duc
ain't no good-an' that I ain't had no relish sence she left. Tell her the
cough gits lower down all the time. 'Member when she tended that felon o'
yourn, Pierre?"
Pierre looked at a sear on his finger and nodded. "She cut it too young;
but she had the nerve! When do you start, captain? It's an eighty-mile
ride."
"At once," was the reply. "We can sleep to-night in the Jim-a-long-Jo" (a
hut which the Company had built between two distant posts), "and get
there at dawn day after to-morrow. The snow is light and we can travel
quick. I have a good horse, and you--"
"I have my black Tophet. He'll travel with your roan as on one
snaffle-bar. That roan--you know where he come from?"
"From the Dolright stud, over the Border."
"That's wrong. He come from Greystop's paddock, where my Tophet was
foaled; they are brothers. Yours was stole and sold to the Gover'ment;
mine was bought by good hard money. The law the keeper of stolen goods,
eh? But these two will go cinch to cinch all the way, like two
brothers--like you and me."
He could not help the touch of irony in his last words: he saw the
amusing side of things, and all humour in him had a strain of the
sardonic.
"Brothers-in-law for a day or two," answered Halby drily.
Within two hours they were ready to start. Pierre had charged Duc the
incompetent upon matters for the old man's comfort, and had himself, with
a curious sort of kindness, steeped the boneset and camomile in whisky,
and set a cup of it near his chair. Then he had gone up to Throng's
bedroom and straightened out and shook and "made" the corn-husk bed,
which had gathered into lumps and rolls. Before he came down he opened a
door near by and entered another room, shutting the door, and sitting
down on a chair. A stovepipe ran through the room, and it was warm,
though the window was frosted and the world seemed shut out. He looked
round slowly, keenly interested. There was a dressing-table made of an
old box; it was covered with pink calico, with muslin over this. A cheap
looking-glass on it was draped with muslin and tied at the top with a bit
of pink ribbon. A common bone comb lay near the glass, and beside it a
beautiful brush with an ivory back and handle. This was the only
expensive thing in the room. He wondered, but did not go near it yet.
There was a little eight-day clock on a bracket which had been made by
hand--pasteboard darkened with umber and varnished; a tiny little set of
shelves made of the wood of cigar-boxes; and--alas, the shifts of poverty
to be gay!--an easy-chair made of the staves of a barrel and covered with
poor chintz. Then there was a photograph or two, in little frames made
from the red cedar of cigar-boxes, with decorations of putty, varnished,
and a long panel screen of birch-bark of Indian workmanship. Some dresses
hung behind the door. The bedstead was small, the frame was of hickory,
with no footboard, ropes making the support for the husk tick. Across the
foot lay a bedgown and a pair of stockings.
Pierre looked long, at first curiously; but after a little his forehead
gathered and his lips drew in a little, as if he had a twinge of pain. He
got up, went over near the bed, and picked up a hairpin. Then he came
back to the chair and sat down, turning it about in his fingers, still
looking abstractedly at the floor.
"Poor Lucy!" he said presently; "the poor child! Ah, what a devil I was
then--so long ago!"
This solitary room--Lydia's--had brought back the time he went to the
room of his own wife, dead by her own hand after an attempt to readjust
the broken pieces of life, and sat and looked at the place which had been
hers, remembering how he had left her with her wet face turned to the
wall, and never saw her again till she was set free for ever. Since that
time he had never sat in a room sacred to a woman alone.
"What a fool, what a fool, to think!" he said at last, standing up; "but
this girl must be saved. She must have her home here again."
Unconsciously he put the hairpin in his pocket, walked over to the
dressing-table and picked up the hair-brush. On its back was the legend,
"L. T. from C. H." He gave a whistle.
"So-so?" he said, "'C. H.' M'sieu' le capitaine, is it like that?"
A year before, Lydia had given Captain Halby a dollar to buy her a
hair-brush at Winnipeg, and he had brought her one worth ten dollars. She
had beautiful hair, and what pride she had in using this brush! Every
Sunday morning she spent a long time in washing, curling, and brushing
her hair, and every night she tended it lovingly, so that it was a
splendid rich brown like her eye, coiling nobly above her plain, strong
face with its good colour.
Pierre, glancing in the glass, saw Captain Halby's face looking over his
shoulder. It startled him, and he turned round. There was the face
looking out from a photograph that hung on the wall in the recess where
the bed was. He noted now that the likeness hung where the girl could see
it the last thing at night and the first thing in the morning.
"So far as that, eh!" he said. "And m'sieu' is a gentleman, too. We shall
see what he will do: he has his chance now, once for all."
He turned, came to the door, softly opened it, passed out, and shut it,
then descended the stairs, and in half an hour was at the door with
Captain Halby, ready to start. It was an exquisite winter day, even in
its bitter coldness. The sun was shining clear and strong, all the plains
glistened and shook like quicksilver, and the vast blue cup of sky seemed
deeper than it had ever been. But the frost ate the skin like an acid,
and when Throng came to the door Pierre drove him back instantly from the
air.
"I only-wanted--to say--to Liddy," hacked the old man, "that I'm
thinkin'--a little m'lasses 'd kinder help--the boneset an' camomile.
Tell her that the cattle 'll all be hers--an'--the house, an' I ain't got
no one but--"
But Pierre pushed him back and shut the door, saying: "I'll tell her what
a fool you are, Jimmy Throng." The old man, as he sat down awkwardly in
his chair, with Duc stolidly lighting his pipe and watching him, said to
himself: "Yes, I be a durn fool; I be, I be!" over and over again. And
when the dog got up from near the stove and came near to him, he added:
"I be, Touser; I be a durn fool, for I ought to ha' stole two or three,
an' then I'd not be alone, an' nothin' but sour bread an' pork to eat. I
ought to ha' stole three."
"Ah, Manette ought to have given you some of your own, it's true, that!"
said Duc stolidly. "You never was a real father, Jim."
"Liddy got to look like me; she got to look like Manette and me, I tell
ye!" said the old man hoarsely. Duc laughed in his stupid way. "Look like
you? Look like you, Jim, with a face to turn milk sour? Ho, ho!"
Throng rose, his face purple with anger, and made as if to catch Duc by
the throat, but a fit of coughing seized him, and presently blood showed
on his lips. Duc, with a rough gentleness, wiped off the blood and put
the whisky-and-herbs to the sick man's lips, saying, in a fatherly way:
"For why you do like that? You're a fool, Jimmy!"
"I be, I be," said the old man in a whisper, and let his hand rest on
Duc's shoulder.
"I'll fix the bread sweet next time, Jimmy."
"No, no," said the husky voice peevishly. "She'll do it--Liddy'll do it.
Liddy's comin'."
"All right, Jimmy. All right."
After a moment Throng shook his head feebly and said, scarcely above a
whisper:
"But I be a durn fool--when she's not here."
Duc nodded and gave him more whisky and herbs. "My feet's cold," said the
old man, and Duc wrapped a bearskin round his legs.
II
For miles Pierre and Halby rode without a word. Then they got down and
walked for a couple of miles, to bring the blood into their legs again.
"The old man goes to By-by bientot," said Pierre at last.
"You don't think he'll last long?"
"Maybe ten days; maybe one. If we don't get the girl, out goes his
torchlight straight."
"She's been very good to him."
"He's been on his knees to her all her life."
"There'll be trouble out of this, though."
"Pshaw! The girl is her own master."
"I mean, someone will probably get hurt over there." He nodded in the
direction of Fort O'Battle.
"That's in the game. The girl is worth fighting for, hein?"
"Of course, and the law must protect her. It's a free country."
"So true, my captain," murmured Pierre drily. "It is wonderful what a man
will do for the law."
The tone struck Halby. Pierre was scanning the horizon abstractedly.
"You are always hitting at the law," he said. "Why do you stand by it
now?"
"For the same reason as yourself."
"What is that?"
"She has your picture in her room, she has my lucky dollar in her
pocket."
Halby's face flushed, and then he turned and looked steadily into
Pierre's eyes.
"We'd better settle this thing at once. If you're going to Fort O'Battle
because you've set your fancy there, you'd better go back now. That's
straight. You and I can't sail in the same boat. I'll go alone, so give
me the pistol."
Pierre laughed softly, and waved the hand back. "T'sh! What a
high-cock-a-lorum! You want to do it all yourself--to fill the eye of the
girl alone, and be tucked away to By-by for your pains--mais, quelle
folie! See: you go for law and love; I go for fun and Jimmy Throng. The
girl? Pshaw! she would come out right in the end, without you or me. But
the old man with half a lung--that's different. He must have sweet bread
in his belly when he dies, and the girl must make it for him. She shall
brush her hair with the ivory brush by Sunday morning."
Halby turned sharply.
"You've been spying," he said. "You've been in her room--you--"
Pierre put out his hand and stopped the word on Halby's lips.
"Slow, slow," he said; "we are both--police to-day. Voila! we must not
fight. There is Throng and the girl to think of." Suddenly, with a soft
fierceness, he added: "If I looked in her room, what of that? In all the
North is there a woman to say I wrong her? No. Well, what if I carry her
room in my eye; does that hurt her or you?"
Perhaps something of the loneliness of the outlaw crept into Pierre's
voice for an instant, for Halby suddenly put a hand on his shoulder and
said: "Let's drop the thing, Pierre."
Pierre looked at him musingly.
"When Throng is put to By-by what will you do?" he asked.
"I will marry her, if she'll have me."
"But she is prairie-born, and you!"
"I'm a prairie-rider."
After a moment Pierre said, as if to himself: "So quiet and clean, and
the print calico and muslin, and the ivory brush!"
It is hard to say whether he was merely working on Halby that he be true
to the girl, or was himself softhearted for the moment. He had a curious
store of legend and chanson, and he had the Frenchman's power of applying
them, though he did it seldom. But now he said in a half monotone:
"Have you seen the way I have built my nest?
(O brave and tall is the Grand Seigneur!)
I have trailed the East, I have searched the West,
(O clear of eye is the Grand Seigneur!)
From South and North I have brought the best:
The feathers fine from an eagle's crest,
The silken threads from a prince's vest,
The warm rose-leaf from a maiden's breast
(O long he bideth, the Grand Seigneur!)."
They had gone scarce a mile farther when Pierre, chancing to turn round,
saw a horseman riding hard after them. They drew up, and soon the man--a
Rider of the Plains--was beside them. He had stopped at Throng's to find
Halby, and had followed them. Murder had been committed near the border,
and Halby was needed at once. Halby stood still, numb with distress, for
there was Lydia. He turned to Pierre in dismay. Pierre's face lighted up
with the spirit of fresh adventure. Desperate enterprises roused him; the
impossible had a charm for him.
"I will go to Fort O'Battle," he said. "Give me another pistol."
"You cannot do it alone," said Halby, hope, however, in his voice.
"I will do it, or it will do me, voila!" Pierre replied. Halby passed
over a pistol.
"I'll never forget it, on my honour, if you do it," he said.
Pierre mounted his horse and said, as if a thought had struck him: "If I
stand for the law in this, will you stand against it some time for me?"
Halby hesitated, then said, holding out his hand, "Yes, if it's nothing
dirty."
Pierre smiled. "Clean tit for clean tat," he said, touching Halby's
fingers, and then, with a gesture and an au revoir, put his horse to the
canter, and soon a surf of snow was rising at two points on the prairie,
as the Law trailed south and east.
That night Pierre camped in the Jim-a-long-Jo, finding there firewood in
plenty, and Tophet was made comfortable in the lean-to. Within another
thirty hours he was hid in the woods behind Fort O'Battle, having
travelled nearly all night. He saw the dawn break and the beginning of
sunrise as he watched the Fort, growing every moment colder, while his
horse trembled and whinnied softly, suffering also. At last he gave a
little grunt of satisfaction, for he saw two men come out of the Fort and
go to the corral. He hesitated a minute longer, then said: "I'll not
wait," patted his horse's neck, pulled the blanket closer round him, and
started for the Fort. He entered the yard--it was empty. He went to the
door of the Fort, opened it, entered, shut it, locked it softly, and put
the key in his pocket. Then he passed through into a room at the end of
the small hallway. Three men rose from seats by the fire as he did so,
and one said: "Hullo, who're you?" Another added: "It's Pretty Pierre."
Pierre looked at the table laid for breakfast, and said: "Where's Lydia
Throng?"
The elder of the three brothers replied: "There's no Lydia Throng here.
There's Lydia Bontoff, though, and in another week she'll be Lydia
something else."
"What does she say about it herself?"
"You've no call to know."
"You stole her, forced her from Throng's-her father's house."
"She wasn't Throng's; she was a Bontoff--sister of us.
"Well, she says Throng, and Throng it's got to be."
"What have you got to say about it?"
At that moment Lydia appeared at the door leading from the kitchen.
"Whatever she has to say," answered Pierre.
"Who're you talking for?"
"For her, for Throng, for the law."
"The law--by gosh, that's good! You, you darned gambler; you scum!" said
Caleb, the brother who knew him.
Pierre showed all the intelligent, resolute coolness of a trained officer
of the law. He heard a little cry behind him, and stepping sideways, and
yet not turning his back on the men, he saw Lydia.
"Pierre! Pierre!" she said in a half-frightened way, yet with a sort of
pleasure lighting up her face; and she stepped forward to him. One of the
brothers was about to pull her away, but Pierre whipped out his
commission. "Wait," he said. "That's enough. I'm for the law; I belong to
the mounted police. I have come for the girl you stole."
The elder brother snatched the paper and read. Then he laughed loud and
long. "So you've come to fetch her away," he said, "and this is how you
do it!"--he shook the paper. "Well, by--" Suddenly he stopped. "Come," he
said, "have a drink, and don't be a dam' fool. She's our sister,--old
Throng stole her, and she's goin' to marry our partner. Here, Caleb, fish
out the brandy-wine," he added to his younger brother, who went to a
cupboard and brought the bottle.
Pierre, waving the liquor away, said quietly to the girl: "You wish to go
back to your father, to Jimmy Throng?" He then gave her Throng's
message, and added: "He sits there rocking in the big chair and
coughing--coughing! And then there's the picture on the wall upstairs and
the little ivory brush--"
She put out her hands towards him. "I hate them all here," she said. "I
never knew them. They forced me away. I have no father but Jimmy Throng.
I will not stay," she flashed out in sudden anger to the others; "I'll
kill myself and all of you before I marry that Borotte."
Pierre could hear a man tramping about upstairs. Caleb knocked on the
stove-pipe, and called to him to come down. Pierre guessed it was
Borotte. This would add one more factor to the game. He must move at
once. He suddenly slipped a pistol into the girl's hand, and with a quick
word to her, stepped towards the door. The elder brother sprang
between--which was what he looked for. By this time every man had a
weapon showing, snatched from wall and shelf.
Pierre was cool. He said: "Remember, I am for the law. I am not one man.
You are thieves now; if you fight and kill, you will get the rope, every
one. Move from the door, or I'll fire. The girl comes with me." He had
heard a door open behind him, now there was an oath and a report, and a
bullet grazed his cheek and lodged in the wall beyond. He dared not turn
round, for the other men were facing him. He did not move, but the girl
did. "Coward!" she said, and raised her pistol at Borotte, standing with
her back against Pierre's.
There was a pause, in which no one stirred, and then the girl, slowly
walking up to Borotte, her pistol levelled, said: "You low coward--to
shoot a man from behind; and you want to be a decent girl's husband!
These men that say they're my brothers are brutes, but you're a sneak. If
you stir a step I'll fire."
The cowardice of Borotte was almost ridiculous. He dared not harm the
girl, and her brothers could not prevent her harming him. Here there came
a knocking at the front door. The other brothers had come, and found it
locked. Pierre saw the crisis, and acted instantly. "The girl and I--we
will fight you to the end," he said, "and then what's left of you the law
will fight to the end. Come," he added, "the old man can't live a week.
When he's gone then you can try again. She will have what he owns. Quick,
or I arrest you all, and then--"
"Let her go," said Borotte; "it ain't no use." Presently the elder
brother broke out laughing. "Damned if I thought the girl had the pluck,
an' damned if I thought Borotte was a crawler. Put an eye out of him,
Liddy, an' come to your brother's arms. Here," he added to the others,
"up with your popguns; this shindy's off; and the girl goes back till the
old man tucks up. Have a drink," he added to Pierre, as he stood his
rifle in a corner and came to the table.
In half an hour Pierre and the girl were on their way, leaving Borotte
quarrelling with the brothers, and all drinking heavily. The two arrived
at Throng's late the next afternoon. There had been a slight thaw during
the day, and the air was almost soft, water dripping from the eaves down
the long icicles.
When Lydia entered, the old man was dozing in his chair. The sound of an
axe out behind the house told where Duc was. The whisky-and-herbs was
beside the sick man's chair, and his feet were wrapped about with
bearskins. The girl made a little gesture of pain, and then stepped
softly over and, kneeling, looked into Throng's face. The lips were
moving.
"Dad," she said, "are you asleep?"
"I be a durn fool, I be," he said in a whisper, and then he began to
cough. She took his' hands. They were cold, and she rubbed them softly.
"I feel so a'mighty holler," he said, gasping, "an' that bread's sour
agin." He shook his head pitifully.
His eyes at last settled on her, and he recognised her. He broke into a
giggling laugh; the surprise was almost too much for his feeble mind and
body. His hands reached and clutched hers. "Liddy! Liddy!" he whispered,
then added peevishly, "the bread's sour, an' the boneset and camomile's
no good. . . . Ain't tomorrow bakin'-day?" he added.
"Yes, dad," she said, smoothing his hands.
"What damned--liars--they be--Liddy! You're my gel, ain't ye?"
"Yes, dad. I'll make some boneset liquor now."
"Yes, yes," he said, with childish eagerness and a weak, wild smile.
"That's it--that's it."
She was about to rise, but he caught her shoulder. "I bin a good dad to
ye, hain't I, Liddy?" he whispered.
"Always."
"Never had no ma but Manette, did ye?"
"Never, dad."
"What danged liars they be!" he said, chuckling. She kissed him, and
moved away to the fire to pour hot water and whisky on the herbs.
His eyes followed her proudly, shining like wet glass in the sun. He
laughed--such a wheezing, soundless laugh!
"He! he! he! I ain't no--durn--fool--bless--the Lord!" he said.
Then the shining look in his eyes became a grey film, and the girl turned
round suddenly, for the long, wheezy breathing had stopped. She ran to
him, and, lifting up his head, saw the look that makes even the fool seem
wise in his cold stillness. Then she sat down on the floor, laid her head
against the arm of his chair, and wept.
It was very quiet inside. From without there came the twang of an axe,
and a man's voice talking to his horse. When the man came in, he lifted
the girl up, and, to comfort her, bade her go look at a picture hanging
in her little room. After she was gone he lifted the body, put it on a
couch, and cared for it.
THE PLUNDERER
It was no use: men might come and go before her, but Kitty Cline had eyes
for only one man. Pierre made no show of liking her, and thought, at
first, that hers was a passing fancy. He soon saw differently. There was
that look in her eyes which burns conviction as deep as the furnace from
which it comes: the hot, shy, hungering look of desire; most childlike,
painfully infinite. He would rather have faced the cold mouth of a
pistol; for he felt how it would end. He might be beyond wish to play the
lover, but he knew that every man can endure being loved. He also knew
that some are possessed--a dream, a spell, what you will--for their life
long. Kitty Cline was one of these.
He thought he must go away, but he did not. From the hour he decided to
stay misfortune began. Willie Haslam, the clerk at the Company's Post,
had learned a trick or two at cards in the east, and imagined that he
could, as he said himself, "roast the cock o' the roost"--meaning Pierre.
He did so for one or two evenings, and then Pierre had a sudden increase
of luck (or design), and the lad, seeing no chance of redeeming the I O
U, representing two years' salary, went down to the house where Kitty
Cline lived, and shot himself on the door-step.
He had had the misfortune to prefer Kitty to the other girls at Guidon
Hill--though Nellie Sanger would have been as much to him, if Kitty had
been easier to win. The two things together told hard against Pierre.
Before, he might have gone; in the face of difficulty he certainly would
not go. Willie Haslam's funeral was a public function: he was young,
innocent-looking, handsome, and the people did not know what Pierre would
not tell now--that he had cheated grossly at cards. Pierre was sure,
before Liddall, the surveyor, told him, that a movement was apace to give
him trouble--possibly fatal.
"You had better go," said Liddall. "There's no use tempting Providence."
"They are tempting the devil," was the cool reply; "and that is not all
joy, as you shall see."
He stayed. For a time there was no demonstration on either side. He came
and went through the streets, and was found at his usual haunts, to
observers as cool and nonchalant as ever. He was a changed man, however.
He never got away from the look in Kitty Cline's eyes. He felt the thing
wearing on him, and he hesitated to speculate on the result; but he knew
vaguely that it would end in disaster. There is a kind of corrosion which
eats the granite out of the blood, and leaves fever.