During the evening meal, Chloe was unusually silent, answering Miss Penny's observations and queries in short, detached monosyllables. Later she stole out alone to a high, rocky headland that commanded a sweeping view of the river, and sat with her back against the broad trunk of a twisted banskian.
The long Northern twilight hung about her like a pall—seemed enveloping, smothering her. No faintest breath of air stirred the piny needles above her, nor ruffled the surface of the river, whose black waters, far below, flowed broad and deep and silent—smoothly—like a river of oil. Ominously hushed, secretive, it slipped out of the motionless dark. Silently portentous, it faded again into the dark, the mysterious half-dark, where the gradually deepening twilight blended the distance into the enshrouding pall of gloom. Involuntarily the girl shuddered and started nervously at the splash of an otter. A billion mosquitoes droned their unceasing monotone. The low sound was everywhere—among the branches of the gnarled banskian, above the surface of the river, and on and on and on, to whine thinly between the little stars.
It was not at all the woman who would conquer a wilderness, that huddled in a dejected little heap at the foot of the banskian; but a very miserable and depressed girl, who swallowed hard to keep down the growing lump in her throat, and bit her lip, and stared with wide eyes toward the southward. Hot tears—tears of bitter, heart-sickening loneliness—filled her eyes and trickled unheeded down her cheeks beneath the tightly drawn mosquito-net.
Darkness deepened, imperceptibly, surely, fore-shortening the horizon, and by just so much increasing the distance that separated her from her people.
"Poor fool moose-calf," she murmured, "you weren't satisfied to follow the beaten trails. You had to find a land of your own—a land that——"
The whispered words trailed into silence, and to her mind's eye appeared the face of the man who had spoken those words—the face of Brute MacNair. She saw him as he stood that day and faced her among the freshly chopped stumps of the clearing.
"He is rough and bearlike—boorish," she thought, as she remembered that the man had not removed his hat in her presence. "He called me names. He is uncouth, cynical, egotistical. He thinks he can scare me into leaving his Indians alone." Her lips trembled and tightened. "I am a woman, and I'll show him what a woman can do. He has lived among the Indians until he thinks he owns them. He is hard, and domineering, and uncompromising, and skeptical. And yet—" What gave her pause was so intangible, so chaotic, in her own mind as to form itself into no definite idea.
"He is brutish and brutal and bad!" she muttered aloud at the memory of Lapierre's battered face, and immediately fell to comparing the two men.
Each seemed exactly what the other was not. Lapierre was handsome, debonair, easy of speech, and graceful of movement; deferential, earnest, at times even pensive, and the possessor of ideals; generous and accommodating to a fault, if a trifle cynical; maligned, hated, discredited by the men who ruled the North, yet brave and infinitely capable—she remembered the swift fate of Vermilion.
His was nothing of the rugged candour of MacNair—the bluff straightforwardness that overrides opposition; ignores criticism. MacNair fitted the North—the big, brutal, insatiate North—the North of storms, of cold and fighting things; of foaming, roaring white-water and seething, blinding blizzards.
Chloe's glance strayed out over the river, where the farther bank showed only the serried sky-line of a wall of jet.
Lapierre was also of the North—the North as it is tonight; soft air, balmy with the incense of growing things; illusive dark, half concealing, half revealing, blurring distant outlines. A placid North, whose black waters flowed silent, smooth, deep. A benign and harmless North, upon its surface; and yet, withal, portentous of things unknown.
The girl shuddered and arose to her feet, and, as she did so, from up the river—from the direction of the Indian camp—came the sharp, quick sound of a shot. Then silence—a silence that seemed unending to the girl who waited breathlessly, one hand grasping the rough bark of the gnarled tree, and the other shading her eyes as thought to aid them in their effort to pierce the gloom.
A long time she stood thus, peering into the dark, and then, an indistinct form clove the black water of the river, and a long body slipped noiselessly toward her, followed by another, and another.
"The canoes!" she cried, as she watched the sparkling starlight play upon the long Y-shaped ripples that rolled back from their bows.
Once more the sense of loneliness almost overcame her. Pierre Lapierre was going out of the North.
She could see the figures of the paddlers, now—blurred, and indistinct, and unrecognizable—distinguishable more by the spaces that showed between them, than by their own outlines.
They were almost beneath her. Should she call out? One last bon voyage? The sound of a voice floated upward; a hard, rasping voice, unfamiliar, yet strangely familiar. In the leading canoe the Indians ceased paddling. The canoe lost momentum and drifted broadside to the current. The men were lifting something; something long and dark. There was a muffled splash, and the dark object disappeared. The canoemen picked up their paddles, and the canoe swung into its course and disappeared around a point. The other canoes followed; and the river rolled on as before—black—oily—sinister.
A broad cloud, pall-like, threatening, which had mounted unnoticed by the girl, blotted out the light of the stars, as if to hide from alien eyes some unlovely secret of the wilds.
The darkness was real, now; and Chloe, in a sudden panic of terror, dashed wildly for the clearing—stumbling—crashing through the bush as she ran; her way lighted at intervals by flashes of distant lightning. She paused upon the verge of the bank at the point where it entered the clearing; at the point where the wilderness crowded menacingly her little outpost of civilization. Panting, she stood and stared out over the smooth flowing, immutable river.
A lightning flash, nearer and more vivid than any preceding, lighted for an instant the whole landscape. Then, the mighty crash of thunder, and the long, hoarse moan of wind, and in the midst of it, that other sound—the horrible sound that once before had sent her dashing breathless from the night—the demoniacal, mocking laugh of the great loon.
With a low, choking sob, the girl fled toward the little square of light that glowed from the window of her cabin.
CHAPTER IX
ON SNARE LAKE
When Bob MacNair left Chloe Elliston's camp, he swung around by the way of Mackay Lake, a detour that required two weeks' time and added immeasurably to the discomfort of the journey. Day by day, upon lake, river, and portage, Old Elk and Wee Johnnie Tamarack wondered much at his silence and the unwonted hardness of his features.
These two Indians knew MacNair. For ten years, day and night, they had stood at his beck and call; had followed him through all the vast wilderness that lies between the railways and the frozen sea. They had slept with him, had feasted and starved with him, at his shoulder faced death in a hundred guises, and they loved him as men love their God. They had followed him during the lean years when, contrary to the wishes of his father, the stern-eyed factor at Fort Norman, he had refused the offers of the company and devoted his time, winter and summer, to the exploration of rivers and lakes, rock ridges and mountains, and the tundra that lay between, in search of the lost copper mines of the Indians; the mines that lured Hearne into the North in 1771, and which Hearne forgot in the discovery of a fur empire so vast as to stagger belief.
But, as the canoe forged northward, Old Elk and Wee Johnnie Tamarack held their peace, and when they arrived at the fort, MacNair growled an order, and sought his cabin beside the wall of the stockade.
A half hour later, when the Indians had gathered in response to the hurried word of Old Elk and Wee Johnnie Tamarack, MacNair stepped from his cabin and addressed them in their own language, or rather in the jargon—the compromise language of the North—by means of which the minds of white men and Indians meet on common ground. He warned them against Pierre Lapierre, the kultus breed of whom most of them already knew, and he told them of the girl and her school at the mouth of the Yellow Knife. And then, in no uncertain terms, he commanded them to have nothing whatever to do with the school, nor with Lapierre. Whereupon, Sotenah, a leader among the young men, arose, and after a long and flowery harangue in which he lauded and extolled the wisdom of MacNair and the benefits and advantages that accrued to the Indians by reason of his patronage, vociferously counselled a summary descent upon the fort of the Mesahchee Kloochman.
The proclamation was received with loud acclaim, and it was with no little difficulty that MacNair succeeded in quieting the turbulence and restoring order. After which he rebuked Sotenah severely and laid threat upon the Indians that if so much as a hair of the white kloochman was harmed he would kill, with his own hand, the man who wrought the harm.
As for Pierre Lapierre and his band, they must be crushed and driven out of the land of the lakes and the rivers, but the time was not yet. He, MacNair, would tell them when to strike, and only if Lapierre's Indians were found prowling about the vicinity of Snare Lake were they to be molested.
The Indians dispersed and, slinging a rifle over his shoulder, MacNair swung off alone into the bush.
Bob MacNair knew the North; knew its lakes and its rivers, its forests and its treeless barrens. He knew its hardships, dangers and limitations, and he knew its gentler moods, its compensations, and its possibilities. Also, he knew its people, its savage primitive children who call it home, and its invaders—good and bad, and worse than bad. The men who infest the last frontier, pushing always northward for barter, or for the saving of souls.
He understood Pierre Lapierre, his motives and his methods. But the girl he did not understand, and her presence on the Yellow Knife disturbed him not a little. Had chance thrown her into the clutches of Lapierre? And had the man set about deliberately to use her school as an excuse for the establishment of a trading-post within easy reach of his Indians? MacNair was inclined to believe so—and the matter caused him grave concern. He foresaw trouble ahead, and a trouble that might easily involve the girl who, he felt, was entirely innocent of wrongdoing.
His jaw clamped hard as he swung on and on through the scrub. He had no particular objective, a problem faced him and, where other men would have sat down to work its solution, he walked.
In many things was Bob MacNair different from other men. Just and stern beyond his years, with a sternness that was firmness rather than severity; slow to anger, but once his anger was fairly aroused terrible in meting out his vengeance. Yet, withal, possessed of an understanding and a depth of sympathy, entirely unsuspected by himself, but which enshrined him in the hearts of his Indians, who, in all the world were the men and women who knew him.
Even his own father had not understood this son, who devoured books as ravenously as his dogs devoured salmon. Again and again he remonstrated with him for wasting his time when he might be working for the company. Always the younger man listened respectfully, and continued to read his books and to search for the lost mines with a determination and singleness of purpose that aroused the secret approbation of the old Scotchman, and the covert sneers and scoffings of others.
And then, after four years of fruitless search, at the base of a ridge that skirted the shore of an unmapped lake, he uncovered the mouth of an ancient tunnel with rough-hewn sides and a floor that sloped from the entrance. Imbedded in the slime on the bottom of a pool of stinking water, he found curious implements, rudely chipped from flint and slate, and a few of bone and walrus ivory. Odd-shaped, half-finished tools of hammered copper were strewn about the floor, and the walls were thickly coated with verdigris. Instead of the sharp ring of steel on stone, a dull thud followed the stroke of his pick, and its scars glowed with a red lustre in the flare of the smoking torches.
Old Elk and Wee Johnnie Tamarack looked on in stolid silence, while the young man, with wildly beating heart, crammed a pack-sack with samples. He had found the ancient mine—the lost mine of the Indians, which men said existed only in the fancy of Bob MacNair's brain! Carefully sealing the tunnel, the young man headed for Fort Norman; and never did Old Elk and Wee Johnnie Tamarack face such a trail. Down the raging torrent of the Coppermine, across the long portage to the Dismal Lakes, and then by portage and river to Dease Bay, across the two hundred miles of Great Bear Lake, and down the Bear River to their destination.
Seven hundred long miles they covered, at a man-killing pace that brought them into the fort, hollow-eyed and gaunt, and with their bodies swollen and raw from the sting of black flies and mosquitoes that swarmed through the holes in their tattered garments.
The men wolfed down the food that was set before them by an Indian woman, and then, while Old Elk and Wee Johnnie Tamarack slept, the chief trader led Bob MacNair to the grave of his father.
"'Twas his heart, lad, or somethin' busted inside him," explained the old man. "After supper it was, two weeks agone. He was sittin' i' his chair wi' his book an' his pipe, an' me in anither beside him. He gi' a deep sigh, like, an' his book fell to the ground and his pipe. When I got to him his head was leant back ag'in his chair—and he was dead."
Bob MacNair nodded, and the chief trader returned to the store, leaving the young man standing silent beside the fresh-turned mound with its rudely fashioned wooden cross, that stood among the other grass-grown mounds whose wooden crosses, with their burned inscriptions, were weather-grey and old. For a long time he stood beside the little crosses that lent a solemn dignity to the rugged heights of Fort Norman.
It cannot be said that Bob MacNair had loved his father, in the generally accepted sense of the word. But he had admired and respected him above all other men, and his first thought upon the discovery of the lost mine was to vindicate his course in the eyes of this stern, just man who had so strongly advised against it.
For the opinion of others he cared not the snap of his fingers. But, to read approval in the deep-set eyes of his father, and to hear the deep, rich voice of him raised, at last, in approbation, rather than reproach, he had defied death and pushed himself and his Indians to the limit of human endurance. And he had arrived too late. The bitterness of the young man's soul found expression only in a hardening of the jaw and a clenching of the mighty fists. For, in the heart of him, he knew that in the future, no matter what the measure of the world might be, always, deep within him would rankle the bitter disappointment—the realization that this old man had gone to his grave believing that his son was a fool and a wastrel.
Slowly he turned from the spot and, with heavy steps, entered the post-store. He raised the pack that contained the samples from the floor, and, walking to the verge of the high cliff that overlooked the river, hurled it far out over the water, where it fell with a dull splash that was drowned in the roar of the rapids.
"Ye'll tak' charge here the noo, laddie?" asked McTurk, the grizzled chief trader, the following day when MacNair had concluded the inspection of his father's papers. "'Twad be what he'd ha' counselled!"
"No," answered the young man shortly, and, without a word as to the finding of the lost mine, hurried Old Elk and Wee Johnnie Tamarack into a canoe and headed southward.
A month later the officers of the Hudson Bay Company in Winnipeg gasped in surprise at the offer of young MacNair to trade the broad acres to which his father had acquired title in the wheat belt of Saskatchewan and Alberta for a vast tract of barren ground in the subarctic. They traded gladly, and when the young man heard that his dicker had earned for him the name of Fool MacNair in the conclave of the mighty, he smiled—and bought more barrens.
All of which had happened eight years before Chloe Elliston defied him among the stumps of her clearing, and in the interim much had transpired. In the heart of his barrens he built a post and collected about him a band of Indians who soon learned that those who worked in the mines had a far greater number of brass tokens of "made beaver" to their credit than those who trapped fur.
Those were hard years for Bob MacNair; years in which he worked day and night with his Indians, and paid them, for the most part, in promises. But always he fed them and clothed them and their women and children, although to do so stretched his credit to the limit—raised the limit—and raised it again.
He uncovered vast deposits of copper, only to realize that, until he could devise a cheaper method of transportation, the metal might as well have remained where the forgotten miners had left it. And it was while he was at work upon his transportation problem that the shovels of his Indians began to throw out golden grains from the bed of a buried creek.
When the news of gold reached the river, there was a stampede. But MacNair owned the land and his Indians were armed. There was a short, sharp battle, and the stampeders returned to the rivers to nurse their grievance and curse Brute MacNair.
He paid his debt to the Company and settled with his Indians, who suddenly found themselves rich. And then Bob MacNair learned a lesson which he never forgot—his Indians could not stand prosperity. Most of those who had stood by him all through the lean years when he had provided them only a bare existence, took their newly acquired wealth and departed for the white man's country. Some returned—broken husks of the men who departed. Many would never return, and for their undoing MacNair reproached himself unsparingly, the while he devised an economic system of his own, and mined his gold and worked out his transportation problem upon a more elaborate scale. The harm had been done, however; his Indians were known to be rich, and MacNair found his colony had become the cynosure of the eyes of the whiskey-runners, the chiefest among whom was Pierre Lapierre. It was among these men that the name of Brute, first used by the beaten stampeders, came into general use—a fitting name, from their viewpoint—for when one of them chanced to fall into his hands, his moments became at once fraught with tribulation.
And so MacNair had become a power in the Northland, respected by the officers of the Hudson Bay Company, a friend of the Indians, and a terror to those who looked upon the red man as their natural prey.
Step by step, the events that had been the milestones of this man's life recurred to his mind as he tramped tirelessly through the scrub growth of the barrens toward a spot upon the shore of the lake—the only grass plot within a radius of five hundred miles. Throwing himself down beside a low, sodded mound in the centre of the plot, he idly watched the great flocks of water fowls disport themselves upon the surface of the lake.
How long he lay there, he had no means of knowing, when suddenly his ears detected the soft swish of paddles. He leaped to his feet and, peering toward the water, saw, close to the shore, a canoe manned by four stalwart paddlers. He looked closer, scarcely able to credit his eyes. And at the same moment, in response to a low-voiced order, the canoe swung abruptly shoreward and grated upon the shingle of the beach. Two figures stepped out, and Chloe Elliston, followed by Big Lena, advanced boldly toward him. MacNair's jaw closed with a snap as the girl approached smiling. For in the smile was no hint of friendliness—only defiance, not unmingled with contempt.
"You see, Mr. Brute MacNair," she said, "I have kept my word. I told you I would invade your kingdom—and here I am."
MacNair did not reply, but stood leaning upon his rifle. His attitude angered her.
"Well," she said, "what are you going to do about it?" Still the man did not answer, and, stooping, plucked a tiny weed from among the blades of grass. The girl's eyes followed his movements. She started and looked searchingly into his face. For the first time she noticed that the mound was a grave.
CHAPTER X
AN INTERVIEW
"Oh, forgive me!" Chloe cried, "I—I did not know that I was intruding upon—sacred ground!" There was real concern in her voice, and the lines of Bob MacNair's face softened.
"It is no matter," he said. "She who sleeps here will not be disturbed."
The unlooked for gentleness of the man's tone, the simple dignity of his words, went straight to Chloe Elliston's heart. She felt suddenly ashamed of her air of flippant defiance, felt mean, and small, and self-conscious. She forgot for the moment that this big, quiet man who stood before her was rough, even boorish in his manner, and that he was the oppressor and debaucher of Indians.
"A—a woman's grave?" faltered the girl.
"My mother's."
"Did she live here, on Snare Lake?" Chloe asked in surprise, as her glance swept the barren cliffs of its shore.
MacNair answered with the same softness of tone that somehow dispelled all thought of his uncouthness. "No. She lived at Fort Norman, over on the Mackenzie—that is, she died there. Her home, I think, was in the Southland. My father used to tell me how she feared the North—-its snows and bitter cold, its roaring, foaming rivers, its wild, fierce storms, and its wind-lashed lakes. She hated its rugged cliffs and hills, its treeless barrens and its mean, scrubby timber. She loved the warm, long summers, and the cities and people, and—" he paused, knitting his brows—"and whatever there is to love in your land of civilization. But she loved my father more than these—more than she feared the North. My father was the factor at Fort Norman, so she stayed in the North—and the North killed her. To live in the North, one must love the North. She died calling for the green grass of her Southland."
He ceased speaking and unconsciously stooped and plucked a few spears of grass which he held in his palm and examined intently.
"Why should one die calling for the sight of grass?" he asked abruptly, gazing into Chloe's eyes with a puzzled look.
The girl gazed directly, searchingly into MacNair's eyes. The naive frankness of him—his utter simplicity—astounded her.
"Oh!" she cried, impulsively stepping forward. "It wasn't the grass—it was—oh! can't you see?" The man regarded her wonderingly and shook his head.
"No," he answered gravely. "I can not see."
"It was—everything! Life—friends—home! The grass was only the symbol—the tangible emblem that stood for life!" MacNair nodded, but, by the look in his eye, Chloe knew that he did not understand and that pride and a certain natural reserve sealed his lips from further questioning.
"It is far to the Mackenzie," ventured the girl.
"Aye, far. After my father died I brought her here."
"You! Brought her here!" she exclaimed, staring in surprise into the strong emotionless face.
The man nodded slowly. "In the winter it was—and I came alone—dragging her body upon a sled——"
"But why——"
"Because I think she would have wished it so. If one hated the wild, rugged cliffs and the rock-tossed rapids, would one wish to lie upon a cliff with the rapids roaring, for ever and ever? I do not think that, so I brought her here—away from the grey hills and the ceaseless roar of the rapids."
"But the grass?"
"I brought that from the Southland. I failed many times before I found a kind that would grow. It is little I can do for her, and she does not know, but, somehow, it has made me feel—easier—I cannot tell you exactly. I come here often."
"I think she does know," said Chloe softly, and brushed hot tears from her eyes. Could this be the man whose crimes against the poor, ignorant savages were the common knowledge of the North? Could this be he whom men called Brute—this simple-spoken, straightforward, boyish man who had endured hardships and spared no effort, that the mother he had never known might lie in her eternal rest beneath the green sod of her native land, far from the sights, and sounds that, in life, had become a torture to her soul, and worn her, at last, to the grave?
"Mr.—MacNair." The hard note—the note of uncompromising antagonism—had gone from her voice, and the man looked at her in surprise. It was the first time she had addressed him without prefixing the name Brute and emphasizing the prefix. He stood, regarding her calmly, waiting for her to proceed. Somehow, Chloe found that it had become very difficult for her to speak; to say the things to this man that she had intended to say. "I cannot understand you—your viewpoint."
"Why should you try? I ask no one to understand me. I care not what people think."
"About the Indians, I mean——"
"The Indians? What do you know of my viewpoint in regard to the Indians?" The man's face had hardened at her mention of the Indians.
"I know this!" exclaimed the girl. "That you are trading them whiskey! With my own eyes I saw Mr. Lapierre smash your kegs—the kegs that were cunningly disguised as bales of freight and marked with your name, and I saw the whiskey spilled out upon the ground."
She paused, expecting a denial, but MacNair remained silent and again she saw the peculiar twinkle in his eye as he waited for her to proceed. "And I—you, yourself told me that you would kill some of Mr. Lapierre's Indians! Do you call that justice—to kill men because they happen to be in the employ of a rival trader—one who has as much right to trade in the Northland as you have?"
Again she paused, but the man ignored her question.
"Go on," he said shortly.
"And you told me your Indians had to work so hard they had no time for book-learning, and that the souls of the Indians were black as—as hell."
"And I told you, also, that I have never owned any whiskey. Why do you believe me in some things and not in others? It would seem more consistent, Miss Chloe Elliston, for you either to believe or to disbelieve me."
"But, I saw the whiskey. And as for what you, yourself, told me—a man will scarcely make himself out worse than he is."
"At least, I can scarcely make myself out worse than you believe me to be." The twinkle was gone from MacNair's eyes now, and he spoke more gruffly. "Of what use is all this talk? You are firmly convinced of my character. Your opinion of me concerns me not at all. Even if I were to attempt to make my position clear to you, you would not believe anything I should tell you."
"What defence can there be to conduct such as yours?"
"Defence! Do you imagine I would stoop to defend my conduct to you—to one who is, either wittingly or unwittingly, hand in glove with Pierre Lapierre?"
The unconcealed scorn of the man's words stung Chloe to the quick.
"Pierre Lapierre is a man!" she cried with flashing eyes. "He is neither afraid nor ashamed to declare his principles. He is the friend of the Indians—and God knows they need a friend—living as they do by sufferance of such men as you, and the men of the Hudson Bay Company!"
"You believe that, I think," MacNair said quietly. "I wonder if you are really such a fool, or do you know Lapierre for what he is?"
"Yes!" exclaimed the girl, her face flushed. "I do know him for what he is! He is a man! He knows the North. I am learning the North, and together we will drive you and your kind out of the North."
"You cannot do that," he said. "Lapierre, I will crush as I would crush a snake. I bear you no ill will. As you say, you will learn the North—for you will remain in the North. I told you once that you would soon tire of your experiment, but I was wrong. Your eyes are the eyes of a fighting man."
"Thank you, Mr.—MacNair——"
"Why not Brute MacNair?"
Chloe shook her head. "No," she said. "Not that—not after—I think I shall call you Bob MacNair."
The man looked perplexed. "Women are not like men," he said, simply. "I do not understand you at times. Tell me—why did you come into the North?"
"I thought I had made that plain. I came to bring education to the Indians. To do what I can to lighten their burden and to make it possible for them to compete with the white man on the white man's terms when this country shall bow before the inevitable advance of civilization; when it has ceased to be the land beyond the outposts."
"We are working together then," answered, MacNair. "When you have learned the North we shall be—friends."
"Never! I——"
"Because you will have learned," he continued, ignoring her protest, "that education is the last thing the Indians need. If you can make better trappers and hunters of them; teach them to work in mines, timber, on the rivers, you will come nearer to solving their problem than by giving them all the education in the world. No, Miss Chloe Elliston, they can't play the white man's game—with the white man's chips."
"But they can! In the States we——"
"Why didn't you stay in the States?"
"Because the government looks after the education of the Indians—provides schools and universities, and——"
"And what do they turn out?"
"They turn out lawyers and doctors and engineers and ministers of the gospel, and educated men in all walks of life. We have Indians in Congress!"
"How many? And how many are lawyers and doctors and engineers and ministers of the gospel? And how many can truthfully be said to be 'educated men in all walks of life'? A mere handful! Where one succeeds, a hundred fail! And the others return to their reservation, dissolute, dissatisfied, to live on the bounty of your government; you, yourself, will admit that when an Indian does rise into a profession for which his education has fitted him, he is an object of wonder—a man to be written about in your newspapers and talked about in your homes. And then your sentimentalists—your fools—hold him up as a type! Not your educated Indians are reaping the benefit of your government's belated attention, but those who are following the calling for which nature has fitted them—stock-raising and small farming on their allotted reservations. The educated ones know that the government will feed and clothe them—why should they exert themselves?
"Here in the North, because the Indians have been dealt with sanely, and not herded onto restricted reservations, and subjected to the experiments of departmental fools well-intentioned—and otherwise—they are infinitely better off. They are free to roam the woods, to hunt and to trap and to fish, and they are contented. They remain at the posts only long enough to do their trading, and return again to the wilds. For the most part they are truthful and sober and honest. They can obtain sufficient clothing and enough to eat. The lakes and the rivers teem with fish, and the woods and the barrens abound with game,
"Contrast these with the Indians who have come more intimately into contact with the whites. You can see them hanging about the depots and the grogeries and rum shops of the railway towns, degenerate, diseased, reduced to beggary and petty thievery. And you do not have to go to the railway towns to see the effect of your civilization upon them. Follow the great trade rivers! From source to mouth, their banks are lined with the Indians who have come into contact with your civilization!
"Go to any mission centre! Do you find that the Indian has taken kindly to the doctrines it teaches? Do you find them happy, God-fearing Indians who embraced Christianity and are living in accord with its precepts? You do not! Except in a very few isolated cases, like your lawyers and doctors of the states, you will find at the very gates of the missions, be their denomination what they may, debauchery and rascality in its most vicious forms. Read your answer there in the vice-marked, ragged, emaciated hangers-on of the missions.
"I do not say that this harm is wrought wilfully—on the contrary, I know it is not. They are noble and well-meaning men and women who carry the gospel into the North. Many of them I know and respect and admire—Father Desplaines, Father Crossett, the good Father O'Reiley, and Duncan Fitzgilbert, of my mother's faith. These men are good men; noble men, and the true friends of the Indians; in health and in sickness, in plague, famine, and adversity these men shoulder the red man's burden, feed, clothe, and doctor him, and nurse him back to health—or bury him. With these I have no quarrel, nor with the religion they teach—in its theory. It is not bad. It is good. These men are my friends. They visit me, and are welcome whenever they come.
"Each of these has begged me to allow him to establish a mission among my Indians. And my answer is always the same—'No!' And I point to the mission centres already established. It is then they tell me that the deplorable condition exists, not because of the mission, but despite it." He paused with a gesture of impatience. "Because! Despite! A quibble of words! If the fact remains, what difference does it make whether it is because or despite? It must be a great comfort to the unfortunate one who is degraded, diseased, damned, to know that his degradation, disease, and damnation, were wrought not because, but despite. I think God laughs—even as he pities. But, in spite of all they can do, the fact remains. I do not ask you to believe me. Go and see it with your own eyes, and then if you dare, come back and establish another plague spot in God's own wilderness. The Indian rapidly acquires all the white man's vices—and but few of his virtues.
"Stop and think what it means to experiment with the future of a people. To overthrow their traditions: to confute their beliefs and superstitions, and to subvert their gods! And what do you offer them in return? Other traditions; other beliefs; another God—and education! Do you dare to assume the responsibility? Do you dare to implant in the minds of these people an education—a culture—that will render them for ever dissatisfied with their lot, and send many of them to the land of the white man to engage in a feeble and hopeless struggle after that which is, for them, unattainable?"
"But it is not unattainable! They——"
"I know your sophisms; your fabrication of theory!" MacNair interrupted her almost fiercely. "The facts! I have seen the rum-sodden wrecks, the debauched and soul-warped men and women who hang about your frontier towns, diseased in body and mind, and whose greatest misfortune is that they live. These, Miss Chloe Elliston, are the real monuments to your education. Do you dare to drive one hundred to certain degradation that is worse than fiery hell, that you may point with pride to one who shall attain to the white man's standard of success?"
"That is not the truth! I do not believe it! I will not believe it!"
The steel-grey eyes of the man bored deep into the shining eyes of brown. "I know that you do not believe it. But you are wrong when you say that you will not believe it. You are honest and unafraid, and, therefore, you will learn, and now, one thing further.
"We will say that you succeed in keeping your school, or post, or mission, from this condition of debauchery—which you will not. What then? Suppose you educate your Indians? There are no employers in the North. None who buy education. The men who pay out money in the waste places pay it for bone and brawn, not for brains; they have brains—or something that answers the purpose—therefore, your educated Indian must do one of two things—he must go where he can use his education or he must remain where he is. In either event he will be the loser. If he seeks the land of the white man, he must compete with the white man on the white man's terms. He cannot do it. If he stays here in the North he must continue to hunt, or trap, or work on the river, or in the mines, or the timber, and he is ever afterward dissatisfied with his lot. More, he has wasted the time he spent in filling his brain with useless knowledge."
MacNair spoke rapidly and earnestly, and Chloe realized that he spoke from his heart and also that he spoke from a certain knowledge of his subject. She was at a loss for a reply. She could not dispute him, for he had told her not to believe him; to go see for herself. She did not believe MacNair, but in spite of herself she was impressed.
"The missionaries are doing good! Their reports show——"
"Their reports show! Of course their reports show! Why shouldn't they? Where do their reports go? To the people who pay them their salaries! Do not understand me to say that in all cases these reports are falsely made. They are not—that is, they are literally true. A mission reports so many converts to Christianity during a certain period of time. Well and good; the converts are there—they can produce them. The Indians are not fools. If the white men want them to profess Christianity, why they will profess Christianity—or Hinduism or Mohammedanism. They will worship any god the white man suggests—for a fancy waistcoat or a piece of salt pork. The white man gives many gifts of clothing, and sometimes of food—to his converts. Therefore, he shall not want for converts—while the clothing holds out!"
"And your Indians? Have they not suffered from their contact with you?"
"No. They have not suffered. I know them, their needs and requirements, and their virtues and failings. And they know me."
"Where is your fort?"
"Some distance above here on the shore of this lake."
"Will you take me there? Show me these Indians, that I may see for myself that you have spoken the truth?"
"No. I told you you were to have nothing to do with my Indians. I also warned my Indians against you—and your partner Lapierre. I cannot warn them against you and then take you among them."
"Very well. I shall go myself, then. I came up here to see your fort and the condition of your Indians. You knew I would come."
"No. I did not know that. I had not seen the fighting spirit in your eyes then. Now I know that you will come—but not while I am here. And when you do come you will be taken back to your own school. You will not be harmed, for you are honest in your purpose. But you will, nevertheless, be prevented from coming into contact with my Indians. I will have none of Lapierre's spies hanging about, to the injury of my people."
"Lapierre's spies! Do you think I am a spy? Lapierre's?"
"Not consciously, perhaps—but a spy, nevertheless. Lapierre may even now be lurking near for the furtherance of some evil design."
Chloe suddenly realized that MacNair's boring, steel-grey eyes were fixed upon her with a new intentness—as if to probe into the very thoughts of her brain.
"Mr. Lapierre is far to the Southward," she said—and then, upon the edge of the tiny clearing, a twig snapped. The man whirled, his rifle jerked into position, there was a loud report, and Bob MacNair sank slowly down upon the grass mound that was his mother's grave.
CHAPTER XI
BACK ON THE YELLOW KNIFE
The whole affair had been so sudden that Chloe scarcely realized what had happened before a man stepped quickly into the clearing, at the same time slipping a revolver into its holster. The girl gazed at him in amazement. It was Pierre Lapierre. He stepped forward, hat in hand. Chloe glanced swiftly from the dark, handsome features to the face of the man on the ground. The grey eyes opened for a second, and then closed; but in that brief, fleeting glance the girl read distrust, contempt, and silent reproach. The man's lips moved, but no sound came—and with a laboured, fluttering sigh, he sank into unconsciousness.
"Once more, it seems, my dear Miss Elliston, I have arrived just in time."
A sudden repulsion for this cruel, suave killer of men flashed into the girl's brain. "Get some water," she cried, and dropping to her knees began to unbutton MacNair's flannel shirt.
"But—" objected Lapierre.
"Will you get some water? This is no time to argue! You can explain later!" Lapierre turned and without a word, walked to the lake and, taking a pail from the canoe, filled it with water. When he returned, Chloe was tearing white bandages from a garment essentially feminine, while Big Lena endeavoured to stanch the flow of blood from a small wound high on the man's left breast, and another, more ragged wound where the bullet had torn through the thick muscles of his back.
The two women worked swiftly and capably, while Lapierre waited, frowning.
"Better hurry, Miss Elliston," he said, when the last of the bandages was in place. "This is no place for us to be found if some of MacNair's Indians happen along. Your canoe is ready. Mine is farther down the lake."
"But, this man—surely——"
"Leave him there. You have done all you can do for him. His Indians will find him."
"What!" cried Chloe. "Leave a wounded man to die in the bush!"
Lapierre stepped closer. "What would you do ?" he asked. "Surely you cannot remain here. His Indians would kill you as they would kill a carcajo." The man's face softened. "It is the way of the North," he said sadly. "I would gladly have spared him—even though he is my enemy. But when he whirled with his rifle upon my heart, his finger upon the trigger, and murder in his eye, I had no alternative. It was his life or mine. I am glad I did not kill him." The words and the tone reassured Chloe, and when she answered, it was to speak calmly.
"We will take him with us," she said. "The Indians could not care for him properly even if they found him. At home I have everything necessary for the handling of just such cases."
"But, my dear Miss Elliston—think of the portages and the added burden. His Indians——"
The girl interrupted him—"I am not asking you to help. I have a canoe here. If you are afraid of MacNair's Indians you need not remain."
The note of scorn in the girl's voice was not lost upon Lapierre. He flushed and answered with the quiet dignity that well became him: "I came here, Miss Elliston, with only three canoemen. I returned unexpectedly to your school, and when I learned that you had gone to Snare Lake, I followed—to save you, if possible, from the hand of the Brute."
Chloe interrupted him. "You came here for that?"
The man bowed low. "Knowing what you do of Brute MacNair, and of his hatred of me, you surely do not believe I came here for business—or pleasure." He drew closer, his black eyes glowing with suppressed passion. "There is one thing a man values more than life—the life and the safety of the woman he loves!"
Chloe's eyes dropped. "Forgive me!" she faltered. "I—I did not know—I—Oh! don't you see? It was all so sudden. I have had no time to think! I know you are not afraid. But, we can't leave him here—like this."
"As you please," answered Lapierre, gently.
"It is not the way of the North; but——"
"It is the way of humanity."
"It is your way—and, therefore, it is my way, also. But, let us not waste time!" He spoke sharply to Chloe's canoemen, who sprang to the unconscious form, and raising it from the ground, carried it to the water's edge and deposited it in the canoe.
"Make all possible speed," he said, as Chloe preceded Big Lena into the canoe; "I shall follow to cover your retreat."
The girl was about to protest, but at that moment the canoe shot swiftly out into the lake, and Lapierre disappeared into the bush.
There was small need for the quarter-breed's parting injunction. The four Indian canoemen evidently keenly alive to the desirability of placing distance between themselves and MacNair's retainers, bent to their paddles with a unanimity of purpose that fairly lifted the big canoe through the water and sent the white foam curling from its bow in tiny ripples of protest.
Hour after hour, as the craft drove southward, Chloe sat with the wounded man's head supported in her lap and pondered deeply the things he had told her. Now and again she gazed into the bearded face, calm, masklike in its repose of unconsciousness, as if to penetrate behind the mask and read the real nature of him. She realized with a feeling almost of fear, that here was no weakling—no plastic irresolute—whose will could be dominated by the will of a stronger; but a man, virile, indomitable; a man of iron will who, though he scorned to stoop to defend his position, was unashamed to vindicate it. A man whose words carried conviction, and whose eyes compelled attention, even respect, though the uncouth boorishness of him repelled.
Yet she knew that somewhere deep behind that rough exterior lay a finer sensitiveness, a gentleness of feeling, and a sympathy that had impelled him to a deed of unconscious chivalry of which no man need be ashamed. And in her heart Chloe knew that had she not witnessed with her own eyes the destruction of his whiskey, she would have been convinced of his sincerity, if not of his postulates. "He is bad, but not all bad," she murmured to herself. "A man who will fight hard, but fairly. At all events, my journey to Snare Lake has not been entirely in vain. He knows, now, that I have come into the North to stay; that I am not afraid of him, and will fight him. He knows that I am honest——"
Suddenly the very last words she had spoken to him flashed into her mind—"Mr. Lapierre is far to the Southward"—and then Chloe closed her eyes as if to shut out that look of mingled contempt and reproach with which the wounded man had sunk into unconsciousness. "He thinks I lied to him—that the whole thing was planned," she muttered, and was conscious of a swift anger against Lapierre. Her eyes swept backward to the brown spot in the distance which was Lapierre's canoe.
"He came up here because he thought I was in danger," she mused. "And MacNair would have killed him. Oh, it is terrible," she moaned. "This wild, hard wilderness, where human life is cheap; where men hate, and kill, and maim, and break all the laws of God and man; it is all wrong! Brutal, and savage, and wrong!"
The shadows lengthened, the canoe slipped into the river that leads to Reindeer Lake, and still the tireless canoemen bent unceasingly to their paddles. Reindeer Lake was crossed by moonlight, and a late camp was made a mile to the westward of the portage. The camp was fireless, and the men talked in whispers. Later Lapierre joined them, and at the first grey hint of dawn the outfit was again astir. By noon the five-mile portage had been negotiated, and the canoes headed down Carp Lake, which is the northmost reach of the Yellow Knife.
The following two days showed no diminution in the efforts of the canoemen. The wounded man's condition remained unchanged. Lapierre's canoe followed at a distance of a mile or two, and a hundred times a day Chloe found herself listening with strained expectancy for the sound of the shots that would proclaim that MacNair's Indians had overtaken them. But no shots were fired, and it was with a feeling of intense relief that the girl welcomed the sight of her own buildings as they loomed in the clearing on the evening of the third day.
That night Lapierre visited Chloe in the cottage, where he found her seated beside MacNair's bed, putting the finishing touches to a swathing of fresh bandages.
"How is he doing?" he asked, with a nod toward the injured man.
"There is no change," answered the girl, as she indicated a chair close beside a table, upon which were a tin basin, various bottles, and porcelain cups containing medicine, and a small pile of antiseptic tablets. For just an instant the man's glance rested upon the tablets, and then swiftly swept the room. It was untenanted except for the girl and the unconscious man on the bed.
"LeFroy, it seems, has improved his time," ventured Lapierre as he accepted the proffered chair and drew from his pocket a thick packet of papers. "His complete list of supplies," he smiled. "With these in your storehouse you may well expect to seriously menace the trade of both MacNair and the Hudson Bay Company's post at Fort Rae."
Chloe glanced at the list indifferently. "It seems, Mr. Lapierre, that your mind is always upon trade—when it is not upon the killing of men."
The quarter-breed was quick to note the disapproval of her tone, and hastened to reply. "Surely, Miss Elliston, you cannot believe that I regard the killing of men as a pleasure; it is a matter of deep regret to me that twice during the short period of our acquaintance I have been called upon to shoot a fellow man."
"Only twice! How about the shot in the night—in the camp of the Indians, before you left for the Southward?" The sarcasm of the last four words was not lost upon the man. "Who fired that shot? And what was the thing that was lifted from your canoe and dropped into the river?"
Lapierre's eyes searched hers. Did she know the truth? The chance was against it.
"A most deplorable affair—a fight between Indians. One was killed and we buried him in the river. I had hoped to keep this from your ears. Such incidents are all too common in the Northland——"
"And the murderer——"
"Has escaped. But to return to the others. Both shots, as you well know, were fired on the instant, and in neither case did I draw first."
Chloe, who had been regarding him intently, was forced to admit the justice of his words. She noted the serious sadness of the handsome features, the deep regret in his voice, and suddenly realized that in both instances Lapierre's shots had been fired primarily in defence of her.
A sudden sense of shame—of helplessness—came over her. Could it be that she did not fit the North? Surely, Lapierre was entitled to her gratitude, rather than her condemnation. Judged by his own standard, he had done well. With a shudder she wondered if she would ever reach the point where she could calmly regard the killing of men as a mere incident in the day's work? She thought not. And yet—what had men told her of Tiger Elliston? Without exception, almost, the deeds they recounted had been deeds of violence and bloodshed. When she replied, her voice had lost its note of disapproval.
"Forgive me," she said softly, "it has all been so different—so strange and new, and big. I have been unable to grasp it. All my life I have been taught to hold human life sacred. It is not you who are to blame! Nor, is it the others. It is the kill or be killed creed—the savage wolf creed—of the North."
The girl spoke rapidly, with her eyes upon the face of MacNair. So absorbed was she that she did not see the slim fingers of Lapierre steal softly across the table-top and extract two tablets from the little pile—failed also to see the swift motion with which those fingers dropped the tablets into a porcelain cup, across the rim of which rested a silver spoon.
The man arose at the conclusion of her words, and crossing to her side rested a slim hand upon the back of her chair. "No. Miss Elliston," he said gently, "I am not to blame nor, in a measure, are the others. It is, as you say, the North—the crushing, terrible, alluring North—in whose primitive creed a good man does not mean a moral one, but one who accomplishes his purpose, even though that purpose be bad. End, and not means, is the ethics of the lean, lone land, where human life sinks into insignificance, beneath the immutable law of savage might."
His eyes burned as he gazed down into the upturned face of the girl. His hands stole lightly from the chair back and rested upon her shoulder. For one long, intense moment, their eyes held, and then, with a movement as swift and lithe as the spring of a panther, the man was upon his knees beside her chair, his arms were about her, and with no thought of resistance, Chloe felt herself drawn close against his breast, felt the wild beating of his heart, and then—his lips were upon hers, and she felt herself struggling feebly against the embrace of the sinewy arms.
Only for a moment did Lapierre hold her. With a movement as sudden and impulsive as the movement that embraced her, the arms were withdrawn, and the man leaped swiftly to his feet. Too dazed to speak, Chloe sat motionless, her brain in a chaotic whirl of emotion, while in her breast outraged dignity and hot, fierce anger strove for the mastery over a thrill, so strange to her, so new, so intense that it stirred her to the innermost depths of her being.
Swiftly, unconsciously, her glance rested for a moment upon the lean, bearded face of MacNair; and beside her chair, Lapierre noted the glance, and the thin lips twisted into a smile—a cynical, sardonic smile, that faded on the instant, as his eyes flashed toward the doorway. For there, silent and grim as he had seen her once before, stood Big Lena, whose china-blue eyes were fixed upon him, in that same disconcerting, fishlike stare.
The hot blood mounted to his cheeks and suddenly receded, so that his face showed pallid and pasty in the gloom of the darkened room. He drew his hand uncertainly across his brow and found it damp with a cold, moist sweat. Was it fancy, or did the china-blue, fishlike eyes rest for just an instant upon the porcelain cup on the table? With an effort the man composed himself, and stooping, whispered a few hurried words into the ears of the girl who sat with her face buried in her hands.
"Forgive me, Miss Elliston; for the moment I forgot that I had no right. I love you! Love you more than life itself! More than my own life—or the lives of others. It was but the impulse of an unguarded moment that caused me to forget that I had not the right—forget that I am a gentleman. We love as we kill in the North. And now, good-by, I am going Southward. I will return, if it is within the power of man to return, before the ice skims the lakes and the rivers."
He paused, but the girl remained as though she had not heard him. He leaned closer, his lips almost upon her ear. "Please, Miss Elliston, can you not forgive me—wish me one last bon voyage?"
Slowly, as one in a dream, Chloe offered him her hand. "Good-by!" she said simply, in a dull, toneless voice. The man seized the hand, pressed it lightly, and turning abruptly, crossed to the table. As he drew his Stetson toward him, its brim came into violent contact with the porcelain medicine cup. The cup crashed to the floor, its contents splashing widely over the whip-sawed boards.
With a hurried word of apology he passed out of the door—passed close beside the form of Big Lena onto whose cold, fishlike eyes the black eyes stared insolently, even as the thin lips twisted into a smile—cynical, sardonic, mocking.