The Grizzly King Part 20

"It is beautiful," said Roscoe. He felt himself trembling. Oachi's breath was against his hand. It was his last fight. He half reached out, as if to clasp her to him; but beyond her he still saw the other thing--the other world. He rose to his feet, not daring to look at her now. He loved her too much to sacrifice her. And it would be a sacrifice. He tried to speak firmly.

"Oachi," he said, "I am nearly well enough to travel now. I have spent pleasant weeks with you, weeks which I shall never forget. But it is time for me to go back to my people. They are expecting me. They are waiting for me, and wondering at my absence. I am as you would be if you were down there in a great city. So I must go. I must go to-morrow, or the next day, or soon after. Oachi--"

He still looked where he could not see her face. But he heard her move. He knew that slowly she was drawing away.

"Oachi--"

She was near the door now, and his eyes turned toward her. She was looking back, her slender shoulders bent over, her glorious hair rippling to her knees, as she had left it undone for him. In her eyes was love such as falls from the heavens. But her face was as white as a mask.

"Oachi!"

With a cry Roscoe reached out his arms. But Oachi was gone. At last the Cree girl understood.

Three days later there came in the pa.s.sing of a single day and night the splendour of northern spring. The sun rose warm and golden. From the sides of the mountains and in the valleys water poured forth in rippling, singing floods. There bakneesh glowed on bared rocks. Moose-birds, and jays, and wood-thrushes flitted about the camp, and the air was filled with the fragrant smells of new life bursting from earth, and tree, and shrub. On this morning of the third day Roscoe strode forth from his tepee, with his pack upon his back. An Indian guide waited for him outside. He had smoked his last pipe with the chief, and now he went from tepee to tepee, in the fas.h.i.+on of the Crees, and drew a single puff from the pipe of each master, until there was but one tepee left, and in that was Oachi. With a white face he rubbed his hand over the deer-flap, and waited. Slowly it was drawn back, and Oachi came out. He had not seen her since the night he had driven her from him, and he had planned to say things in this last moment which he might have said then. But words stumbled on his lips. Oachi was changed.

She seemed taller. Her beautiful eyes looked at him clearly and proudly.

For the first time she was to him Oachi, the "Sun Child," a princess of the First People--the daughter of a Cree chief. He held out his hand, and the hand which Oachi gave to him was cold and lifeless. She smiled when he told her that he had come to say good-bye, and when she spoke to him her voice was as clear as the stream singing through the canon. His own voice trembled. In spite of his mightiest effort a tightening fist seemed choking him.

"I am coming back--some day," he managed.

Oachi smiled, with the glory of the morning sun in her eyes and hair. She turned, still smiling, and pointed far to the west.

"And some day--the Valley of Silent Men will awaken," she said, and reentered her father's tepee.

Out of the camp staggered Roscoe c.u.mmins behind his Indian guide, a blinding heat in his eyes. Once or twice a gulping sob rose in his throat, and he clutched hard at his heart to beat himself into submission to the great law of life as it had been made for him.

An hour later the two came to a stream where there was a canoe. Because of rapids and the fierceness of the spring floods, portages were many, and progress slow during the whole of that day. They had made twenty miles when the sun began sinking in the west, and they struck camp. After their supper of meat the Cree rolled himself in his blanket and slept. But for long hours Roscoe sat beside their fire. Night dropped about him, a splendid night filled with sweet breaths and stars and a new moon, and with strange sounds which came to him now in a language which he was beginning to understand. From far away there floated faintly to his ears the lonely cry of a wolf, and it no longer made him shudder, but filled him with the mysterious longing of the cry itself. It was the mate-song of the beast of prey, sending up its message to the stars--crying out to all the wilderness for a response to its loneliness. Night birds twittered about him. A loon laughed in its mocking joy. An owl hooted down at him from the black top of a tall spruce. From out of starvation and death the wilderness had awakened. Its sounds spoke to him still of grief, of the suffering that would never know end; and yet there trembled in them a note of happiness and of content. Beside the campfire it came to him that in this world he had discovered two things--a suffering that he had never known, and a peace he had never known. And Oachi stood for them both. He thought of her until drowsiness drew a pale film over his eyes. The birch crackled more and more faintly in the fire and sounds died away. The stillness of sleep fell about him. Scarce had he fallen into slumber than his eyes seemed to open wide and wakeful, and out of the gloom beyond the smouldering fire he saw a human form slowly revealing itself, until there stood clearly within his vision a figure which he at first took to be that of Mukoki, the chief. But in another moment he saw that it was even taller than the tall chief, and that its eyes had searched him out. When he heard a voice, speaking in Cree the words which mean, "Whither goest thou?" he was startled to hear his own voice reply: "I am going back to my people."

He stared into vacancy, for at the sound of his voice the vision faded away; but there came a voice to him back through the night, which said: "And it is here that you have found that of which you have dreamed--Life, and the Valley of Silent Men!"

Roscoe was wide awake now. The voice and the vision had seemed so real to him that he looked about him tremblingly into the starlit gloom of the forest, as if not quite sure that he had been dreaming. Then he crawled into his balsam shelter, drew his blankets about him, and fell asleep.

The next day he had little to say to his Indian companion as they made their way downstream. At each dip of their paddles a deeper sickness seemed to enter into his heart. Life, after all, he tried to reason, was like a tailored garment. One might have an ideal, and if that ideal became a realization it would be found a misfit for one reason or another. So he told himself, in spite of fill the dreams which had urged him on in the fight for better things. There flooded upon him now the forceful truth of what Ransom had said. His work, as he had begun it, was at an end, his fabric of idealism had fallen into ruins. For he had found all that was ideal--love, faith, purity, and beauty--and he, Roscoe c.u.mmins, the idealist, had repulsed them because they were not dressed in the tailored fas.h.i.+on of his kind. He told himself the truth with brutal directness.

Before him he saw another work in his books, but of a different kind; and each hour that pa.s.sed added to the conviction within him that at last that work would prove a failure. He went off alone into the forest when they camped, early in the afternoon, and thought of Oachi, who would mourn him until the end of time. And he--could he forget? What if he had yielded to temptation, and had taken Oachi with him? She would have come. He knew that. She would have sacrificed herself to him forever, would have gone with him into a life which she could not understand, and would never understand, satisfied to live in his love alone. The old, choking hand gripped at his heart, and yet with the pain of it there was still a rejoicing that he had not surrendered to the temptation, that he had been strong enough to save her.

The last light of the setting sun cast film-like webs of yellow and gold through the forest as he turned in the direction of camp. It was that hour in which a wonderful quiet falls upon the wilderness, the last minutes between night and day, when all wild life seems to shrink in suspensive waiting for the change. Seven months had taught Roscoe a quiet of his own.

His moccasined feet made no sound. His head was bent, his shoulders had a tired droop, and his eyes searched for nothing in the mystery about him.

His heart seemed weighted under a pressure that had taken all life from him, and close above him, in a balsam bough, a night bird twittered. In response to it a low cry burst from his lips, a cry of loneliness and of grief. In that moment he saw Oachi again at his feet; he heard the low, sweet note of love in her throat, so much like that of the bird over his head; he saw the soft l.u.s.tre of her hair, the glory of her eyes, looking up at him from the half gloom of the tepee, telling him that they had found their G.o.d. It was all so near, so real for a moment, that he sprang erect, his fingers clutching handfuls of moss. He looked toward the camp, and he saw something move between the rock and the fire.

It was a wolf, he thought, or perhaps a lynx, and drawing his revolver he moved quickly and silently in its direction. The object had disappeared behind a little clump of balsam shrub within fifty paces of the camp, and as he drew nearer, until he was no more than ten paces away, he wondered why it did not break cover.

There were no trees, and it was quite light where the balsam grew. He approached, step by step. And then, suddenly, from almost under his hands, something darted away with a strange, human cry, turning upon him for a single instant a face that was as white as the white stars of early night--a face with great, glowing, half-mad eyes. It was Oachi. His pistol dropped to the ground. His heart stopped beating. No cry, no breath of sound, came from his paralyzed lips. And like a wild thing Oachi was fleeing from him into the darkening depths of the forest. Life leaped into his limbs, and he raced like mad after her, overtaking her with a panting, joyous cry. When she saw that she was caught the girl turned. Her hair had fallen, and swept about her shoulders and her body. She tried to speak, but only bursting sobs came from her breast. As she shrank from him, Roscoe saw that her clothing was in shreds, and that her thin moccasins were almost torn from her little feet. The truth held him for another moment stunned and speechless. Like a lightning flash there recurred to him her last words: "And some day--the Valley of Silent Men will awaken." He understood--now. She had followed him, fighting her way through swamp and forest along the river, hiding from him, and yet keeping him company so long as her little broken heart could urge her on. And then alone, with a last prayer for him--_she had planned to kill herself_. He trembled.

Something wonderful happened with him, flooding his soul with day--with a joy that descended upon him as the Hand of the Messiah must have fallen upon the heads of the children of Samaria. With a great, glad cry he sprang toward Oachi and caught her in his arms, crus.h.i.+ng her face to him, kissing her hair and her eyes and her mouth until at last with a strange, soft cry she put her arms up about his neck and sobbed like a little child upon his breast.

Back in the camp the Indian waited. The white stars grew red. In the forest the shadows deepened to the chaos of night. Once more there was sound, the pulse and beat of a life that moves in darkness. In the camp the Indian grew restless with the thought that Roscoe had wandered away until he was lost. So at last he fired his rifle.

Oachi started in Roscoe's arms.

"You should go back--alone," she whispered. The old, fluttering love-note was in her voice, sweeter than the sweetest music to Roscoe c.u.mmins. He turned her face up, and held it between his two hands.

"If I go there," he said, pointing for a moment into the south, "I go _alone_. But if I go there--" and he pointed into the north--"I go _with you_. Oachi, my beloved, I am going with you." He drew her close again, and asked, almost in a whisper: "And when we awaken in the Valley of Silent Men, how shall it be, my Oachi?"

And with the sweet love-note, Oachi said in Cree:

"Hand in hand, my master."

Hand in hand they returned to the waiting Indian and the fire.