Snowdrift Part 6

mor'--hondre poun' all way, eight dolla."

"You're on!" agreed Brent, "Thousand pounds, eighty dollars--all the way."

The Indian nodded, and Brent produced a ten dollar gold piece which he handed to the man, indicated that he would get the rest when they reached Lake Lindermann.

The Indian motioned to the smallest of his followers and pointing to the sack of flour, mumbled some words of jargon, whereupon the man stepped to the pack, removed Brent's straps and producing straps of his own swung the burden to his back and started off at a brisk walk.

As Brent led the way back to the beach at the head of his Indians he turned more than once to glance back at the solitary packer, but as far as he could see him, the man continued to swing along at the same brisk pace at which he had started, whereat he conceived a sudden profound respect for his hirelings. "The littlest runt of the bunch has got me skinned a thousand miles," he muttered, "But I'll learn the trick. A year from now I'll hit the trail with any of 'em."

Back at the beach the Indians were surrounded by thirty-nine clamoring, howling men who pushed and jostled one another in a frenzied attempt to hire the packers.

"No, you don't!" cried Brent, "These men are working for me. When I'm through with them you can have them, and not before."

Ugly mutterings greeted the announcement. "Who the h.e.l.l do you think you are?" "Divide 'em up!" "Give someone else a chanct." Others advanced upon the Indians and shook sheaves of bills under their noses, offering double and treble Brent's price. But the Indians paid no heed to the paper money, and inwardly Brent thanked the lucky star that guided him into exchanging all his money into gold before leaving Seattle.

Despite the fact that he was next to useless as a packer Brent was no weakling. Ignoring the mutterings he led the Indians to his outfit and while they affixed their straps, he faced the crowding men.

"Just stay where you are, boys," he said. "This stuff here is my stuff, and for the time being the ground it's on is my ground."

The man who had sneered at his attempt to pack the flour crowded close and quick as a flash, Brent's left fist caught him square on the point of the chin and he crashed backward among the legs of the others.

Brent's voice never changed tone, nor by so much as the flutter of an eye lash did he betray any excitement. "Any man that crosses that line is going to find trouble--and find it d.a.m.ned quick."

"He's bluffin'," cried a thick voice from the rear of the crowd, "Let me up there. I'll show the d.a.m.n dude!" A huge hard-rock man elbowed his way through the parting crowd, his whiskey-reddened eyes narrowed to slits.

Three paces in front of Brent he halted abruptly and stared into the muzzle of the blue steel gun that had flashed into the engineer's hand.

"Come on," invited Brent, "If I'm bluffing I won't shoot. You're twice as big as I am. I wouldn't stand a show in the world in a rough-and-tumble. But, I'm not bluffing--and there won't be any rough-and-tumble."

For a full half minute the man stared into the unwavering muzzle of the gun.

"You would shoot a man, d.a.m.n you!" he muttered as he backed slowly away.

And every man in the crowd knew that he spoke the truth.

Three of the Indians had put their straps to a hundred pounds apiece and were already strung out on the trail. Brent turned to see Joe Pete regarding him with approval, and as he affixed his straps to a fifty pound pack, the big Indian stooped and swung an extra fifty pounds on top of the hundred already on his back and struck out after the others.

At the end of a half-mile Brent was laboring heavily under his load, while Joe Pete had never for an instant slackened his pace. "What's he made of? Don't he ever rest?" thought Brent, as he struggled on. The blood was pounding in his ears, and his laboring lungs were sucking in the air in great gulps. At length his muscles refused to go another step, and he sagged to the ground and lay there sick and dizzy without energy enough left at his command to roll the pack from his shoulders.

After what seemed an hour the pack was raised and the Indian who had gone ahead with his first pack swung the fifty pounds to his own shoulders and started off. Brent scrambled to his feet and followed.

A mile farther on they came to the others lying on the ground smoking and resting. The packs lay to one side, and Brent made mental note of the fact that these packers carried much of the weight upon a strap that looped over their foreheads, and that instead of making short hauls and then resting with their packs on they made long hauls and took long rests with their packs thrown off. They were at least three miles from the beach, and it was nearly an hour before they again took the trail.

In the meantime Joe Pete had rigged a tump-line for Brent, and when he again took the trail he was surprised at the difference the s.h.i.+fting of part of the load to his head made in the ease with which he carried it.

Two miles farther on they came upon the sack of flour where the Indian had left it and Joe Pete indicated that this would be their first day's haul. Six hundred pounds of Brent's thousand had been moved five miles, and leaving the small Indian to make camp, the others, together with Brent returned for the remaining four hundred.

This time they were not molested by the men on the beach, many of whom they pa.s.sed on the trail laboring along under packs which for the most part did not exceed fifty pounds weight.

On the return Brent insisted on packing his fifty pounds and much to his delight found that he was able to make the whole distance of three miles to the resting place. Joe Pete nodded grave approval of this feat and Brent, in whose veins flowed the bluest blood of the South, felt his heart swell with pride because he had won the approbation of this dark skinned packer of the North.

Into this rest camp came the erstwhile head barkeeper at Kelliher's, and to him Brent imparted the trail-lore he had picked up. Also he exchanged with him one hundred dollars in gold for a like amount in bills, and advised Joe Pete that when his present contract was finished this other would be a good man to work for.

Day after day they packed, and upon the last day of trail Brent made four miles under one hundred pounds with only one rest--much of the way through soft muskeg. And he repeated the performance in the afternoon.

At Lindermann Joe Pete found an Indian who agreed to run Brent and his outfit down through the lakes and the river to Dawson in a huge freight canoe.

The first stampeders from the outside bought all available canoes and boats so that by the time of the big rush boats had to be built on the sh.o.r.e of the lake from timber cut green and whip-sawed into lumber on the spot. Also, the price of packing over the Chilkoot jumped from five cents a pound to ten, to twenty, to fifty, to seventy, and even a dollar, as men fought to get in before the freeze up--but that was a year and a half after Brent floated down the Yukon in his big birch canoe.

CHAPTER III

AT THE MISSION

Far in the Northland, upon the bank of a great river that disgorges into the frozen sea, stands a little Roman Catholic Mission. The mission is very old--having had its inception in the early days of the fur trade.

Its little chapel boasts a stained gla.s.s window--a window fas.h.i.+oned in Europe, carried across the Atlantic to Hudson Bay in a wooden sailing vessel, and transported through three thousand miles of wilderness in canoes, York boats, and scows, and over many weary miles of portage upon the backs of sweating Indians. Upon its walls hang paintings--works of real merit, the labor of priestly hands long dead. A worthy monument, this mission, to the toil and self sacrifice of the early Fathers, and a living tribute to the labor of the grave Grey Nuns.

The time was July--late evening of a July day. The sun still held high above the horizon, and upon the gra.s.sed plateau about the buildings of the mission children were playing. They were Indian children, for the most part, thick bodied and swarthy faced but among them here and there, could be seen the lighter skin of a half breed. Near the door of one of the buildings sat a group of older Indian girls sewing. In the doorway the good Father Ambrose stood with his eyes upon the up-reach of the river.

Like a silent grey shadow Sister Mercedes glided from the chapel and seated herself upon a wooden bench drawn close beside the door. Her eyes followed the gaze of the priest. "No sign of the brigade?" she asked.

"They have probably tied up for the night. Tomorrow maybe--or the day after, they will come." Ensued a long pause during which both studied the river. "I think," continued the Nun, "that when the scows return southward we will be losing Snowdrift."

"Eh?" The priest turned his head quickly and regarded Sister Mercedes with a frown. "Henri of the White Water? Think you he has----"

The Sister interrupted: "No, no! To school. She is nineteen, now. We can do nothing more for her here. In the matter of lessons, as you well know, she has easily outstripped all others, and books! She has already exhausted our meagre library."

The priest nodded. The frown still puckered his brow but his lips smiled--a smile that conveyed more of questioning than of mirth.

Intensely human himself, Father Ambrose was no mean student of human nature, and he spoke with a troubled mind: "To us here at the mission have been brought many children, both of the Indians and of the Metis.

And, having absorbed to their capacity our teachings, the Indians have gone stolidly back to their tepees, and to their business of hunting and trapping, carrying with them a measure of useful handicraft, a smattering of letters, and the precepts of the Word." The smile had faded from the clean-cut lips of the priest, and Sister Mercedes noted a touch of sadness in the voice, as she watched a slanting ray of sunlight play for a moment upon the thinning, silvery hair. "I have grown old in the service of G.o.d here at this mission, and it is natural that I have sought diligently among my people for the outward and visible signs of the fruit of my labor. And I have found, with a few notable exceptions that in one year, or two, or three, the handicraft is almost forgotten, the letters are but a dim blur of memory, and the Word?" He shrugged, "Who but G.o.d can tell? It is the Metis who are the real problem. For it is in their veins that civilization meets savagery. The clash and the conflict of races--the antagonism that is responsible for the wars of the world--is inherent in the very blood that gives them life. And the outcome is beyond the ken or the conjecture of man. I have seen, I think, every conceivable combination of physical and mental condition, save the one most devoutly to be hoped for--a blending of the best that is in each race. That I have not seen. Unless it be that we are to see it in Snowdrift."

Sister Mercedes smiled: "I do not believe that Snowdrift is a half breed. I believe she is a white child."

Father Ambrose smiled tolerantly: "Still of that belief? But, it is impossible. I know her mother. She, too, was a child of this mission--long before your time. She is one of the few Indians who did not forget the handicraft nor the letters." The old man paused and shook his head sadly, "And until she brought this child here I believed that she had not forgotten the Word. For she continued to profess her belief, and among her people she waged war upon the rum-runners. Later, I, myself, married her to a Dog Rib, a man who was the best of his tribe.

Then they disappeared and I heard nothing from her until she brought this child, Snowdrift, to us here at the mission. She told me that her husband had been drowned in a rapid, and then she told me--not in confessional, for she would not confess, that this was her child and that her father was a white man, but that he was not her husband."

"She may have lied. Loving the child, she may have feared that we would take her away, or inst.i.tute a search for her people."

"She loves the child--with the mother love. But she did not lie. If she had lied, would she not have said that after the death of her husband she had married this white man? I would have believed her. But, evidently the idea of truth is more firmly implanted in her heart than--other virtues--so she told the truth--knowing even as she did so the light in which she would stand before men, and also the standing of her daughter."

"Oh, it is a shame!" cried the Nun, "But, still I do not believe it! I cannot believe it! Snowdrift's skin, where the sun and the wind have not turned it, is as white as mine."

"But her hair and eyes are the dark hair and eyes of the Indian. And when she was first brought here, have you forgotten that she fought like a little wild cat, and that she ran away and trailed her band to its encampment? Could a white child have done that?"

"But after she had been brought back, and had begun to learn she fought just as hard against returning to the tribe for a brief vacation. She is a dreamer of dreams. She loves music and appreciates its beauty, and the beauty of art and the poets."

"She can trail an animal through country that would throw many an Indian at fault."

"She hates the sordid. She hates the rum-runners, and the greasy smoke-blackened tepees of the Indians. In her heart there has been an awakening. She longs for something better--higher. She has consented to go to the convent."

"And at the same time we are in mortal dread lest she marry that prince of all devils, Henri of the White Water. Why she even dresses like an Indian--the only one of the older girls who does not wear the clothing of white women."

"That is because of her artistic temperament. She loves the ease and comfort of the garments. And she realizes their beauty in comparison to the ugliness of the coa.r.s.e clothing and shoes with which we must provide them."