Northern Lights Part 26

"He is there beyon'--I hear him," he said, pointing farther down the Gulch. "Water--he is near it."

"We heard nothing," said the Sheriff--"not a sound."

"I hear ver' good. He is alive. I hear him--so," responded Gra.s.sette; and his face had a strange, fixed look which the others interpreted to be agitation at the thought that he had saved his own life by finding Bignold--and alive; which would put his own salvation beyond doubt.

He broke away from them and hurried down the Gulch. The others followed hard after, the Sheriff and the warders close behind; but he outstripped them.

Suddenly he stopped and stood still, looking at something on the ground.

They saw him lean forward and his hands stretched out with a fierce gesture. It was the att.i.tude of a wild animal ready to spring.

They were beside him in an instant, and saw at his feet Bignold worn to a skeleton, with eyes starting from his head and fixed on Gra.s.sette in agony and stark fear.

The Sheriff stooped to lift Bignold up, but Gra.s.sette waved them back with a fierce gesture, standing over the dying man.

"He spoil my home. He break me--I have my bill to settle here," he said, in a voice hoa.r.s.e and harsh. "It is so? It is so--eh? Spik!" he said to Bignold.

"Yes," came feebly from the shrivelled lips. "Water! Water!" the wretched man gasped. "I'm dying!"

A sudden change came over Gra.s.sette. "Water--queeck!" he said.

The Sheriff stooped and held a hatful of water to Bignold's lips, while another poured brandy from a flask into the water.

Gra.s.sette watched them eagerly. When the dying man had swallowed a little of the spirit and water, Gra.s.sette leaned over him again, and the others drew away. They realized that these two men had an account to settle, and there was no need for Gra.s.sette to take revenge, for Bignold was going fast.

"You stan' far back," said Gra.s.sette, and they fell away.

Then he stooped down to the sunken, ashen face, over which death was fast drawing its veil.

"Marcile--where is Marcile?" he asked.

The dying man's lips opened. "G.o.d forgive me--G.o.d save my soul!" he whispered. He was not concerned for Gra.s.sette now.

"Queeck--queeck, where is Marcile?" Gra.s.sette said, sharply. "Come back, Bignold. Listen--where is Marcile?"

He strained to hear the answer. Bignold was going, but his eyes opened again, however, for this call seemed to pierce to his soul as it struggled to be free.

"Ten years--since--I saw her," he whispered. "Good girl--Marcile. She loves you, but she--is afraid." He tried to say something more, but his tongue refused its office.

"Where is she?--spik!" commanded Gra.s.sette, in a tone of pleading and agony now.

Once more the flying spirit came back. A hand made a motion toward his pocket, then lay still.

Gra.s.sette felt hastily in the dead man's pocket, drew forth a letter, and with half-blinded eyes read the few lines it contained. It was dated from a hospital in New York, and was signed, "Nurse Marcile."

With a groan of relief Gra.s.sette stood staring at the dead man. When the others came to him again, his lips were moving, but they did not hear what he was saying. They took up the body and moved away with it up the ravine.

"It's all right, Gra.s.sette. You'll be a free man," said the Sheriff.

Gra.s.sette did not answer. He was thinking how long it would take him to get to Marcile, when he was free.

He had a true vision of beginning life again with Marcile.

A MAN, A FAMINE, AND A HEATHEN BOY

I

Athabasca in the Far North is the scene of this story--Athabasca, one of the most beautiful countries in the world in summer, but a cold, bare land in winter. Yet even in winter it is not so bleak and bitter as the districts southwest of it, for the Chinook winds steal through from the Pacific and temper the fierceness of the frozen Rockies. Yet forty and fifty degrees below zero is cold, after all, and July strawberries in this wild Northland are hardly compensation for seven months of ice and snow, no matter how clear and blue the sky, how sweet the sun during its short journey in the day. Some days, too, the sun may not be seen even when there is no storm, because of the fine, white, powdered frost in the air.

A day like this is called a _poudre_ day; and woe to the man who tempts it unthinkingly, because the light makes the delicate mist of frost s.h.i.+ne like silver. For that powder bites the skin white in short order, and sometimes reckless men lose ears or noses or hands under its sharp caress.

But when it really storms in that Far North, then neither man nor beast should be abroad--not even the Eskimo dogs; though times and seasons can scarcely be chosen when travelling in Athabasca, for a storm comes unawares. Upon the plains you will see a cloud arising, not in the sky, but from the ground--a billowy surf of drifting snow; then another white billow from the sky will sweep down and meet it, and you are caught between.

He who went to Athabasca to live a generation ago had to ask himself if the long winter, spent chiefly indoors, with, maybe, a little trading with the Indians, meagre sport, and scant sun, savages and half-breeds the only companions, and out of all touch with the outside world, letters coming but once a year; with frozen fish and meat, always the same, as the staple items in a primitive fare; with danger from starvation and marauding tribes; with endless monotony, in which men sometimes go mad--he had to ask himself if these were to be cheerfully endured because, in the short summer, the air is heavenly, the rivers and lakes are full of fish, the flotilla of canoes of the fur-hunters is pouring down, and all is gayety and pleasant turmoil; because there is good shooting in the autumn, and the smell of the land is like a garden, and hardy fruits and flowers are at hand.

That is a question which was asked William Rufus Holly once upon a time.

William Rufus Holly, often called "Averdoopoy," sometimes "Sleeping Beauty," always Billy Rufus, had had a good education. He had been to high-school and to college, and he had taken one or two prizes _en route_ to graduation; but no fame travelled with him, save that he was the laziest man of any college year for a decade. He loved his little porringer, which is to say that he ate a good deal; and he loved to read books, which is not to say that he loved study; he hated getting out of bed, and he was constantly gated for morning chapel. More than once he had sweetly gone to sleep over his examination papers. This is not to say that he failed at his examinations--on the contrary, he always succeeded; but he only did enough to pa.s.s and no more; and he did not wish to do more than pa.s.s. His going to sleep at examinations was evidence that he was either indifferent or self-indulgent, and it certainly showed that he was without nervousness. He invariably roused himself, or his professor roused him, a half-hour before the papers should be handed in, and, as it were, by a mathematical calculation he had always done just enough to prevent him being plucked.

He slept at lectures, he slept in hall, he slept as he waited his turn to go to the wicket in a cricket match, and he invariably went to sleep afterward. He even did so on the day he had made the biggest score in the biggest game ever played between his college and the pick of the country; but he first gorged himself with cake and tea. The day he took his degree he had to be dragged from a huge grandfather's chair and forced along in his ragged gown--"ten holes and twelve tatters"--to the function in the convocation-hall. He looked so fat and s.h.i.+ny, so balmy and sleepy, when he took his degree and was handed his prize for a poem on Sir John Franklin, that the public laughed, and the college men in the gallery began singing--

"Bye O, my baby, Father will come to you soo-oon!"

He seemed not to care, but yawned in his hand as he put his prize book under his arm through one of the holes in his gown, and in two minutes was back in his room, and in another five was fast asleep.

It was the general opinion that William Rufus Holly, fat, yellow-haired, and twenty-four years old, was doomed to failure in life, in spite of the fact that he had a little income of a thousand dollars a year and had made a century in an important game of cricket. Great, therefore, was the surprise of the college, and afterward of the Province, when, at the farewell dinner of the graduates, Sleeping Beauty announced, between his little open-eyed naps, that he was going Far North as a missionary.

At first it was thought he was joking, but when at last, in his calm and dreamy look, they saw he meant what he said, they arose and carried him round the room on a chair, making impromptu songs as they travelled. They toasted Billy Rufus again and again, some of them laughing till they cried at the thought of Averdoopoy going to the Arctic regions. But an uneasy seriousness fell upon these "beautiful, bountiful, brilliant boys," as Holly called them later, when in a simple, honest, but indolent speech he said he had applied for ordination.

Six months later William Rufus Holly, a deacon in holy orders, journeyed to Athabasca in the Far North.

On his long journey there was plenty of time to think. He was embarked on a career which must forever keep him in the wilds; for very seldom indeed does a missionary of the North ever return to the crowded cities or take a permanent part in civilized life.

What the loneliness of it would be he began to feel, as for hours and hours he saw no human being on the plains; in the thrilling stillness of the night; in fierce storms in the woods, when his half-breed guides bent their heads to meet the wind and rain, and did not speak for hours; in the long, adventurous journey on the river by the day, in the cry of the plaintive loon at night; in the scant food for every meal. Yet what the pleasure would be he felt in the joyous air, the exquisite suns.h.i.+ne, the flocks of wild-fowl flying north, _honking_ on their course; in the song of the half-breeds as they ran the rapids. Of course, he did not think these things quite as they are written here--all at once and all together; but in little pieces from time to time, feeling them rather than saying them to himself.

At least he did understand how serious a thing it was, his going as a missionary into the Far North. Why did he do it? Was it a whim, or the excited imagination of youth, or that prompting which the young often have to make the world better? Or was it a fine spirit of adventure with a good heart behind it? Perhaps it was a little of all these; but there was also something more, and it was to his credit.

Lazy as William Rufus Holly had been at school and college, he had still thought a good deal, even when he seemed only sleeping; perhaps he thought more because he slept so much, because he studied little and read a great deal. He always knew what everybody thought--that he would never do anything but play cricket till he got too heavy to run, and then would sink into a slothful, fat, and useless middle and old age; that his life would be a failure. And he knew that they were right; that if he stayed where he could live an easy life, a fat and easy life he would lead; that in a few years he would be good for nothing except to eat and sleep--no more. One day, waking suddenly from a bad dream of himself so fat as to be drawn about on a dray by monstrous fat oxen with rings through their noses, led by monkeys, he began to wonder what he should do--the hardest thing to do; for only the hardest life could possibly save him from failure, and, in spite of all, he really did want to make something of his life. He had been reading the story of Sir John Franklin's Arctic expedition, and all at once it came home to him that the only thing for him to do was to go to the Far North and stay there, coming back about once every ten years to tell the people in the cities what was being done in the wilds. Then there came the inspiration to write his poem on Sir John Franklin, and he had done so, winning the college prize for poetry.

But no one had seen any change in him in those months; and, indeed, there had been little or no change, for he had an equable and practical, though imaginative, disposition, despite his avoirdupois, and his new purpose did not stir him yet from his comfortable sloth.

And in all the journey west and north he had not been stirred greatly from his ease of body, for the journey was not much harder than playing cricket every day, and there were only the thrill of the beautiful air, the new people, and the new scenes to rouse him. As yet there was no great responsibility. He scarcely realized what his life must be until one particular day.

Then Sleeping Beauty waked wide up, and from that day lost the name. Till then he had looked and borne himself like any other traveller, unrecognized as a parson or "mikonaree." He had not had prayers in camp _en route_, he had not preached, he had held no meetings. He was as yet William Rufus Holly, the cricketer, the laziest dreamer of a college decade. His religion was simple and practical; he had never had any morbid ideas; he had lived a healthy, natural, and honorable life, until he went for a mikonaree, and, if he had no cant, he had not a clear idea of how many-sided, how responsible, his life must be--until that one particular day.

This is what happened then.