Читать книгу Snowdrift - James B. Hendryx - Страница 4

V

Toward morning the storm wore itself out, and before the belated winter dawn had tinted the east MacFarlane set out for the Indian village. The cold was intense so that his snowshoes crunched on the surface of the flinty, wind-driven snow. Mile after mile he swung across the barrens that lay trackless, and white, and dead, skirting towering rock ledges and patches of scraggly timber. The sun came out and the barrens glared dazzling white. MacFarlane had left his snow-goggles back in the cabin, so he squinted his eyes and pushed on. Three times that day he stopped and built a fire at the edge of a thicket and heated thick caribou gruel which he fed by spoonfuls to the tiny robe-wrapped little girl that snuggled warm in his pack sack. Darkness had fallen before he reached the high hill from which he had seen the village. He scanned the sweep of waste that lay spread before him, its shapes and distances distorted and unreal in the feeble light of the glittering stars. He hardly expected a light to show from a village of windowless tepees in the dead of winter, and he strove to remember which of those vague splotchy outlines was the black spruce swamp against which he had seen the tepees. Suddenly the silence of the night was broken by the sharp jerky yelp of a stricken dog. The sound issued from one of the dark blotches of timber, and was followed by a rabble of growls and snarls. MacFarlane judged the distance that separated him from the vague outline of the swamp to be three or four miles, but the shrill sounds cut the frozen air so distinctly that they seemed to issue from the foot of the hill upon which he stood. A dull spot of light showed for a moment, rocketed through the air, and disappeared amid a chorus of yelps and howls. An Indian, disturbed by the fighting dogs, had thrown back the flap of his tepee and hurled a lighted brand among them.

Swiftly MacFarlane descended the slope and struck out for the black spruce swamp. An hour later he stood upon the snow-covered ice of the river while barking, snarling and growling, the Indian dog pack crowded about him. It seemed a long time that he stood there holding the dogs at bay with a stout spruce club. At length dark forms appeared in front of the tepees and several Indians advanced toward him, dispersing the dogs with blows and kicks and commands in hoarse gutterals. MacFarlane spoke to them in Cree, and getting no response, he tried several of the dialects from about the Bay. He had advanced until he stood among them peering from one to another of the flat expressionless faces for some sign of comprehension. But they returned his glances with owlish blinking of their smoke reddened eyes. MacFarlane's heart sank. These were the people in whose care he had intended to leave his little daughter! Suddenly, as a ray of starlight struck aslant one of the flat bestial faces, a flash of recognition lighted MacFarlane's eyes. The man was one of the four who had come to trade a year before at Lashing Water.

"Where is the squaw?" he cried in English, grasping the man by the shoulder and shaking him roughly, "Where is Wananebish?"

At the name, the Indian turned and pointed toward a tepee that stood slightly apart from the rest, and a moment later MacFarlane stood before its door. "Wananebish!" he called. And again, "Wananebish!"

"Yes," came the answer, "What does the white man want?"

"It is MacFarlane, the trader at Lashing Water. Do you remember a year ago you sold me a black fox skin?"

"I remember. Did I not say that Wananebish would not forget? Wait, and I will let you in, for it is cold." The walls of the tepee glowed faintly as the squaw struck a light. He could hear her moving about inside and a few minutes later she threw open the flap and motioned him to enter. MacFarlane blinked in surprise as she fastened the flap behind him. Instead of the filthy smoke-reeking interior he had expected, the tepee was warm and comfortable, its floor covered thickly with robes, and instead of the open fire in the center with its smoke vent at the apex of the tepee, he saw a little Yukon stove in which a fire burned brightly.

Without a word he removed his pack sack and tenderly lifting the sleeping baby from it laid her on the robes. Then, seating himself beside her he told her, simply and in few words what had befallen him. The squaw listened in silence and for a long time after he finished she sat staring at the flame of the candle.

"What would you have me do?" she asked at length.

"Keep the little one and care for her until I return," answered the man, "I will pay you well."

The Indian woman made a motion of dissent. "Where are you going?"

"To find gold."

Was it fancy, or did the shadow of a peculiar smile tremble for an instant upon the woman's lips? "And, if you do not return—what then?"

"If I do not return by the time of the breaking up of the rivers," answered the man, "You will take the baby to Lashing Water post to Molaire, the factor, who is the father of her mother." As he spoke MacFarlane drew from his pocket the leather notebook, and a packet wrapped in parchment deer skin and tied with buckskin thongs. He handed them to the squaw: "Take these," he said, "and deliver them to Molaire with the baby. In the book I have instructed him to pay you for her keep."

"But this Molaire is an old man. Suppose by the time of the breaking up of the rivers he is not to be found at Lashing Water? He may be dead, or he may have gone to the settlements."

"If he has gone to the settlements, you are to find him. If he is dead—" MacFarlane hesitated: "If Molaire is dead," he repeated, "You are to take care of the baby until she is old enough to enter the school at some mission. I'm Scotch, an' no Catholic—but, her mother was Catholic, an' if the priests an' the sisters make as good woman of her as they did of her mother, I could ask no more. Give them the notebook in which I have set down the story as I have told it to you. The packet you shall open and take out whatever is due you for her keep. It contains money. Keep some for yourself and give some to the priests to pay for her education."

The squaw nodded slowly: "It shall be as you say. And, if for any reason, we move from here before the breaking up of the rivers, I will write our direction and place it inside the caribou skull that hangs upon the great split stump beside the river."

MacFarlane rose; "May God use you as you use the little one," he said, "I'll be going now, before she wakes up. It will be better so." He stooped and gazed for a long time at the face of the sleeping baby. A hot tear splashed upon the back of his hand, and he brushed it away and faced the squaw in the door of the tepee: "Goodbye," he said, gruffly, "Until the rivers break up in the spring."

The Indian woman shook her head: "Do not say it like that," she answered, "For those were the words of my man when he, too, left to find gold. And when the river broke up in the spring he did not come back to me—for the grinding ice-cakes caught his canoe, and he was crushed to death in a rapids."

VI

For four long nights and four short days MacFarlane worked at the digging of a grave. It was a beautiful spot he chose to be the last resting place of his young wife—a high, spruce-covered promontory that jutted out into a lake. The cabin and its surroundings had grown intolerable to him, so that he worked furiously, attacking the iron-hard ground with fire, and ice-chisel, and spade. At last it was done and placing the body of his wife in the rough pole coffin, he placed it upon his sled and locking the dogs in the cabin, hauled it himself to the promontory and lowered it into the grave. Then he shoveled back the frozen earth, and erected a wooden cross upon which was burned deep her name, and returning to the cabin, slept the clock around.

If MacFarlane had been himself he would have heeded the signs of approaching storm. But he had become obsessed with desire to leave that place with its haunting memories, where every mute object seemed to whisper to him of his loved ones. He was talking and mumbling to himself as he harnessed his dogs and headed into the North at the breaking of a day.

Three hours after MacFarlane hit the trail he left the sparsely timbered country behind and struck into a vast treeless plain whose glaring white surface was cut here and there by rugged ridges of basalt which terminated abruptly in ledges of bare rock.

At noon he made a fireless camp, ate some pilot bread, and caribou meat. The air was still—ominously dead and motionless to one who knew the North. But MacFarlane gave no heed, nor did he even notice that though there were no clouds in the sky, the low-hung sun showed dull and coppery through a steel-blue fog. He bolted his food and pressed on. Before him was no guiding landmark. He laid his course by the compass and held straight North across the treeless rock-ribbed plain. The man's lean face looked pinched and drawn. For a week he had taken his sleep in short fitful snatches, in his chair beside the cabin stove, or with his back against a tree while he waited for the fire to bite a few inches deeper into the frozen ground as he toiled at the lonely grave. On and on he mushed at the head of his dogs, his eyes, glowing feverbright, stared fixedly from between red-rimmed lids straight into the steel blue fog bank that formed his northern horizon. And as he walked, he talked incessantly—now arguing with old Molaire, who predicted dire things, and refused to believe that there was gold in the North—now telling Margot of his hopes and planning his future—and again, telling stories to little Margot of Goldilocks and the three little bears, and of where the caribou got their horns.

The blue fog thickened. From somewhere far ahead sounded a low whispering roar—the roar of mightly wind, muffled by its burden of snow. When the first blast struck, MacFarlane tottered in his tracks, then lowering his head, leaned against it and pushed on. Following the gust was a moment of calm. Behind him the dogs whimpered uneasily. MacFarlane did not hear them, nor did he hear the roar of the onrushing wind.

Around a corner of a rock ledge a scant two hundred yards ahead of him, appeared a great grey shape, running low. The shape halted abruptly and circled wide. It was followed by other shapes—gaunt, and grey, and ugly, between whose back-curled lips white fangs gleamed. The wolf pack, forty strong, was running before the storm, heading southward for the timber. Whining with terror, MacFarlane's dogs crowded about his legs in a sudden rush. The man went down and struggled to his feet, cursing, and laying about him with clubbed rifle. Then the storm struck in all its fury. MacFarlane gasped for air, and sucked in great gulps of powdery snow that bit into his lungs and seared his throat with their stinging cold. He choked and coughed and jerking off his mitten, clawed with bare fingers at his throat and eyes. While behind him, down wind, the great grey caribou wolves, stopped in their wild flight by the scent of meat, crowded closer, and closer.

In a panic, MacFarlane's dogs whirled, and dragging the sled behind them bolted. MacFarlane staggered a few steps forward and fell, then, on hands and knees he crawled back, groping and pawing the snow for his mitten and rifle. The sharp frenzied yelps as the dog team plunged into the wolf-pack sounded faint and far. The man threw up his head. He pulled off his cap to listen and the wind whipped it from his numbed fingers—but MacFarlane did not know. Moments of silence followed during which the man strained his ears to catch a sound that eluded him.

When the last shred of flesh had been ripped from the bones of the dogs the gaunt grey leader of the pack raised his muzzle and sniffed the wind. He advanced a cautious step or two and sniffed again, then seating himself on his haunches he raised his long pointed muzzle to the sky and gave voice to the long drawn cry of the kill—and the shapes left the fang-scarred bits of bone and sniffed up-wind at the man-scent.

As the sound of the great wolf cry reached his ears above the roar of the wind, MacFarlane's face lighted with a smile of infinite gladness: "The bells," he muttered, "I heard them—d'you hear them, Margot—girl? It's for us—the booming of the bells of Ste. Anne's!" And with the words on his lips MacFarlane pillowed his head on the snow—and slept.

VII

Years afterward, after old Molaire had been gathered to his fathers and laid in the little cemetery within the sound of the bells of Ste. Anne's, Corporal Downey one day came upon a long deserted cabin far into the barren grounds upon the shore of a nameless lake. He closed the rotting door behind him, and methodically searching the ground, came at length upon the solitary grave upon the high promontory that jutted into the lake. Unconsciously he removed his hat as he read the simple inscription burned deep into the little wooden cross. His lips moved: "Margot—girl," he whispered, "if—if—" the whisper thickened and choked him. He squared his shoulders and cleared his throat roughly. "Aw hell!" he breathed, and turning, walked slowly back to his canoe and shoved out onto the water.

And during the interval of the years the little band of non-treaty Indians—the homeless and the restless ones—moved on—and on—and on——