Читать книгу The Snow-Burner - Henry Oyen - Страница 12

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When he awoke again to clear consciousness, it was morning. The sun which came in through the east window shone in his eyes and lighted up the room. Toppy lay still. He was quite content to lie so. An inexplicable feeling of peace and comfort ruled in every inch of his being. The bored, heavy feeling with which for a long time past he had been in the custom of facing a new day was absolutely gone. His tongue was cool; there was none of the old heavy blood-pressure in his head; his nerves were absolutely quiet. Something had happened to him. Toppy was quite conscious of the change, though he was too comfortable to do more than accept his peaceful condition as a fact.

“Ho, hum! I feel like a new man,” he murmured drowsily. “I wonder—ow!”

He had stretched himself leisurely and thus became conscious that his left ankle was bandaged and sore. His cry brought old Campbell into the room—Campbell solemnly arrayed in a long-tailed suit of black, white collar, black tie, spick and span, with beard and hair carefully washed and combed.

“Hello!” gasped Toppy sleepily. “Where you going—funeral?”

“ ’Tis the Sabbath,” said Campbell reverently, as he came to the side of the bunk. “And how do ye feel the day, lad?”

“Fine!” said Toppy. “Considering that I had my ankle sprained last evening.”

The Scot eyed him closely.

“So ’twas last evening ye broke your ankle, was it?” he asked cannily.

“Why, sure,” said Toppy. “Yesterday was Saturday, wasn’t it? We were cleaning up the week’s work. Why, what are you looking at me like that for?”

“Aye,” said Campbell, his Sunday solemnity forbidding the smile that strove to break through. “Yesterday was Saturday, but ’twas not the Saturday you sprained your leg. A week ago Saturday that was, lad, and ye’ve lain here in a fever, out of your head, ever since. Do you mind naught of the whole week?”

Toppy looked up at Campbell in silence for a long time.

“Scotty, if you have to play jokes——”

“Jokes!” spluttered Campbell, aghast. “Losh, mon! Didna I tell ye ’twas the Sabbath? No, ’tis no joke, I assure you. You did more than sprain your ankle when ye tripped that Saturday. You collapsed completely. Lad, you were in poor condition when you came to camp, and had I known it I would not have broken you in so hard. But you’re a good man, lad; the best man I ever saw, if you keep in condition. And do you really feel good again?”

“Why, I feel like a new man,” said Toppy. “I feel as if I’d had a course of baths at Hot Springs.”

Campbell nodded.

“The Snow-Burner said ye would. It’s Tilly he’s had doctoring ye. She’s been feeding you some Indian concoction and keeping ye heated till your blankets were wet through. Oh, you’ve had scandalous good care, lad; Reivers to set your ankle, Tilly to doctor ye Indian-wise, and Miss Pearson and Reivers to drop in together now and anon to see how ye were standing the gaff. No wonder ye came through all right!”

The room seemed suddenly to grow dark for Toppy. Reivers again—Reivers dropping in to look at him as he lay there helpless on his back. Reivers in the position of the master again; and the girl with him! Toppy impatiently threw off his covering.

“Gimme my clothes, Scotty,” he demanded, swinging himself to the edge of the bunk. “I’m tired of lying here on my back.”

Campbell silently handed over his clothing. Toppy was weak, but he succeeded in dressing himself and in tottering over to a chair.

“So Miss Pearson came over here, did she?” he asked thoughtfully. “And with Reivers?”

“Aye,” said Scotty drily. “With Reivers. He has a way with the women, the Snow-Burner has.”

Toppy debated a moment; then he broke out and told Campbell all about how Reivers had deceived Miss Pearson into coming to Hell Camp. The old man listened with tightly pursed lips. As Toppy concluded he shook his head sorrowfully.

“Poor lass, she’s got a hard path before her then,” he said. “If, as you say, she does not wish to care for Reivers.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well,” said Campbell slowly, “ye’ll be understanding by this time that the Snow-Burner is no ordinar’ man?”

“He’s a fiend—a savage with an Oxford education!” exploded Toppy.

“He is—the Snow-Burner,” said Campbell with finality. “You know what he is toward men. Toward women—he’s worse!”

“Good Heavens!”

“Not that he is a woman-chaser. No; ’tis not his way. But—yon man has the strongest will in him I’ve ever seen in mortal man, and ’tis the will women bow to.” He pulled his whiskers nervously and looked away. “I’ve known him four year now, and no woman in that time that he has set his will upon but in the end has—has followed him like a slave.”

Toppy’s fists clenched, and he joyed to find that in spite of his illness his muscles went hard.

“Ye’ve seen Tilly,” continued Scotty with averted eyes. “Ye’ll not be so blind that ye’ve not observed that she’s no ordinar’ squaw. Well, three years ago Tilly was teacher in the Chippewa Indian School—thin and straight—a Carlisle graduate and all. She met Reivers, and shunned him—at first. Reivers did not chase her. ’Tis not his way. But he bent his will upon her, and the poor girl left her life behind her and followed him, and kept following him, until ye see her as she is now. She would cut your throat or nurse ye as she did, no matter which, did he but command her. And she’s not been the only one, either.

“Nor have the rest of them been red.”

“The swine!” muttered Toppy.

“More wolf than swine, lad. Perhaps more tiger than wolf. I don’t think Reivers intends to break his word to yon lass. But I suspect that he won’t have to. No; as it looks now, he won’t. Given the opportunity to put his will upon her and she’ll change her mind—like the others.”

“He’s a beast, that’s what he is!” said Toppy angrily. “And any woman who would fall for him would get no more than she deserves, even if she’s treated like Tilly. Why, anybody can see that the man’s instincts are all wrong. Right in an animal perhaps, but wrong in a human being. The right kind of women would shun him like poison.”

“I dunno,” said Campbell, rubbing his chin. “Yon lass over in the office is as sweet and womanly a little lass as I’ve seen sin’ I was a lad. And yet—look ye but out of the window, lad!”

Toppy looked out of the window in the direction in which Campbell pointed. The window commanded a view of the gate to the stockade. Reivers was standing idly before the gate. Miss Pearson was coming toward him. As she approached he carelessly turned his head and looked her over from head to foot. From where he sat Toppy could see her smile. Then Reivers calmly turned his back upon her, and the smile on the girl’s face died out. She stood irresolute for a moment, then turned and went slowly back toward the office, glancing occasionally over her shoulder toward the gate. Reivers did not look, but when she was out of sight he began to walk slowly toward the blacksmith-shop.

“Bah!” Toppy turned his eyes from the window in mingled anger and disgust. He sat for a moment with a multitude of emotions working at his heart. Then he laughed bitterly.

“Well, well, well!” he mocked. “You’d expect that from a squaw, but not from a white woman.”

“Mr. Reivers is a remarkable man,” said Campbell, shaking his head.

“Sure,” said Toppy, “and it’s a mistake to look for a remarkable woman up here in the woods.”

“I dunno.” The smith looked a little hurt. “I dunno about that, lad. Yon lass seems remarkably sweet and ladylike to me.”

“Sure,” sneered Toppy, pointing his thumb toward the gate. “That looked like it, didn’t it?”

“As for that, you’ve heard what I’ve told you about the Snow-Burner and women,” said Campbell sorrowfully. “He has a masterful way with them.”

“A fine thing to be masterful over a little blonde fool like that!”

Campbell scowled.

“Even though you have no respect for the lass,” he said curtly, “I see no reason why you should put it in words.”

“Why not? Why shouldn’t I, or any one else, put it in words after that?” Toppy fairly shouted the words. “She’s made the thing public herself. She came creeping up to him right out where anybody who was looking could see her, and there won’t be a man in camp to-morrow but’ll have heard that she’s fallen for Reivers. Apparently she doesn’t care; so why should I, or you, or anybody else? Reivers has got a masterful way with women! Ha, ha! Let it go at that. It’s none of my business, that’s a cinch.”

“No,” agreed Campbell; “not if you talk that way, it’s none of your business; that’s sure.”

Toppy could have struck him for the emphatic manner in which he uttered the words. But Toppy was beginning to learn to control himself and he merely gritted his teeth. The sudden stab which he had felt in his heart at the sight of the girl and Reivers had passed. In one flash there had been overthrown the fine structure which he had built about her in his thoughts. He had placed her high above himself. For some unknown reason he had looked up to her from the first moment he had seen her. He had not considered himself worthy of her good opinion. And here she was flaunting her subservience to Reivers—to a cold, sneering brute—before the eyes of the whole camp!

The rage and pain at the sight of the pair had come and gone, and that was all over. And now Toppy to his surprise found that it didn’t make much difference. The girl, and what she was, what she thought of him, or of Reivers, no longer were of prime importance to him. He didn’t care enough about that now to give her room in his thoughts.

Reivers was what mattered now—Reivers, with his air of contemptuous dominance; Reivers, who had looked on and laughed when Toppy was tugging at the runner of the broken sleigh. That laugh seemed to ring in Toppy’s ears. It challenged him even as it contemned him. It said, “I am your master; doubt it if you dare”; even as Reivers’ cold smile had said the same to Rosky and the huddled bunch of Slavs.

The girl—that was past. But Reivers had roused something deeper, something older, something fiercer than the feelings which had begun to stir in Toppy at the sight of the girl. Man—raw, big-thewed, world-old and always new man—had challenged unto man. And man had answered. The petty considerations of life were stripped away. Only one thing was of importance. The world to Toppy Treplin had become merely a place for Reivers, the Snow-Burner, and himself to settle the question which had cried for settlement since the moment when they first looked into each other’s eyes: Which was the better man?

Toppy smiled as he stretched himself and noted the new life that seemed to have come into his body. He knew what it meant. That strenuous siege of work and a week of fevered sweating had driven the alcohol out of his system. He was making a fresh start. A few weeks at the anvil now, and he would be in better shape than at any time since leaving school. He set his jaw squarely and heaved his big arms high above his head.

“Well, Treplin,” came an unmistakable voice from the doorway, “you’re looking strenuous for a man just off the sickbed.”