The Project Gutenberg eBook ofA backwoods princessThis ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.Title: A backwoods princessAuthor: Hulbert FootnerRelease date: January 3, 2023 [eBook #69702]Most recently updated: October 19, 2024Language: EnglishOriginal publication: United States: George H. Doran Company, 1926Credits: Al Haines, Jen Haines & the online Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at https://www.pgdpcanada.net*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A BACKWOODS PRINCESS ***
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: A backwoods princessAuthor: Hulbert FootnerRelease date: January 3, 2023 [eBook #69702]Most recently updated: October 19, 2024Language: EnglishOriginal publication: United States: George H. Doran Company, 1926Credits: Al Haines, Jen Haines & the online Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at https://www.pgdpcanada.net
Title: A backwoods princess
Author: Hulbert Footner
Author: Hulbert Footner
Release date: January 3, 2023 [eBook #69702]Most recently updated: October 19, 2024
Language: English
Original publication: United States: George H. Doran Company, 1926
Credits: Al Haines, Jen Haines & the online Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at https://www.pgdpcanada.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A BACKWOODS PRINCESS ***
By HULBERT FOOTNER__________________________A Backwoods PrincessMadame StoreyAntennaeThe Shanty SledThe Under DogsThe Wild BirdOfficer!Ramshackle HouseThe Deaves AffairThe Owl TaxiThe Substitute MillionaireThieves’ WitNew Rivers of the North__________________________NEW YORK:GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
By HULBERT FOOTNER
__________________________
A Backwoods Princess
Madame Storey
Antennae
The Shanty Sled
The Under Dogs
The Wild Bird
Officer!
Ramshackle House
The Deaves Affair
The Owl Taxi
The Substitute Millionaire
Thieves’ Wit
New Rivers of the North
__________________________
NEW YORK:
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
A BACKWOODSPRINCESSByHULBERT FOOTNERNEW YORKGEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
A BACKWOODSPRINCESSByHULBERT FOOTNERNEW YORKGEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
A BACKWOODS
PRINCESS
By
HULBERT FOOTNER
NEW YORK
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
COPYRIGHT,1926,BY HULBERT FOOTNER
COPYRIGHT,1926,
BY HULBERT FOOTNER
A BACKWOODS PRINCESS—Q—PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
A BACKWOODS PRINCESS
—Q—
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
CONTENTS
A BACKWOODS PRINCESS
CHAPTER ICATASTROPHE
Springwas in full tide at Blackburn’s Post, but Laurentia Blackburn and the four Marys were confined to the Women’s House by rain. There sat the girlish Princess surrounded by her handmaidens in the midst of a rude magnificence which best sets off a beautiful woman. Her feet were hidden in a superb polar bearskin which had come down from the Arctic in trade; and the chair in which she sat was completely covered by the frosted pelt of a grizzly, his huge head hanging down over the back. She was a black-haired Princess with something untamed about her like the creatures whose pelts decorated her chamber. Around her neck hung an astonishing necklace of great pearls strung alternately with water-worn nuggets of gold. Her black dress was worked at the neck and wrists with an Indian design in brightly dyed porcupine quills.
The four Marys were Indian girls, small and comely, with glistening copper faces, and raven hair drawn smoothly back from their brows. They were clad alike in black cotton dresses, with doeskin moccasins upon their feet; and a stranger would have been hard put to it to tell them apart. However, he would presently have perceived that one of them stood in quite a different relation to her mistress from the others. This was Mary-Lou who was of the Beaver tribe, whereas the others were only Slavis. She was the Princess’ foster sister. She could speak English. All four girls looked at their mistress with fear and respect; but only Mary-Lou’s face was capable of softening with love. She was reading aloud from “The Lady of the Lake.”
The others were Mary-Belle; Mary-Rose and Mary-Ann. The first-named crouched in front of the small fire which had been lighted to mitigate the dampness out-of-doors. It was her task to see that it neither went out, nor became hot enough to scorch the Princess’ face. The other two sat on a bearskin engaged in embroidering velvet-soft moccasins with gayly colored silks. None of them could understand a word of what Mary-Lou was reading from the book; and the gentle, droning voice was fatally conducive to sleep. The Princess watched them lazily through the lowered fringe of her black lashes; and, when a head was seen to nod, she exploded like a fire cracker.
“Sit up straight! Your head is going down between your shoulders! Before you are twenty-five you will be the shape of a sack of hay! Your husband if you ever get one at all will look for another wife!”
It especially terrified the girls to be scolded in the English they could not understand. This particular rebuke was addressed to Mary-Belle but all three of the Slavis cringed, and their dark eyes turned helplessly this way and that like a frightened deer’s. Mary-Lou looked apprehensive, too, expecting her turn to come next.
“Well, go on with the book,” said Loseis crossly. The name Laurentia, being unmanageable on the tongue of the Indians, they had given her this one, which means “little wild duck.”
The tremulous voice resumed.
“Oh, shut the book!” Loseis cried immediately afterwards. “It is a foolish book! It tires my ears!”
“Shall I get another book?” faltered Mary-Lou.
“What’s the use? We have read them all. They are no better than this book. All foolish, goody-goody books!”
All four red girls sat scared and silent.
Loseis jumped up as if she had strong springs in her legs. “Can’t you say something, any of you? Are you all struck dumb? You can chatter fast enough among yourselves when I am not there!” She amplified her remarks in the Slavi tongue.
They were struck dumb indeed, then. They looked at each other helplessly, each one mutely begging her neighbor to speak.
“Oh, leave me! leave me! you foolish pudding faces!” cried Loseis, waving her hands. “Or I shall have to beat you!”
They faded into the kitchen with alacrity. Only Mary-Lou looked back.
“Mary-Lou, you stay here,” commanded Loseis. “I’ve got to have somebody to talk to!”
Mary-Lou leaned shyly against the door frame; pleased at being called back, yet terrified, too. Loseis paced up and down the room like a slim black panther, her eyes shooting greenish sparks.
It was a broad, low room with but two tiny windows, glass being such a difficult article to bring in seven hundred miles by pack train. There was a capacious fireplace, cunningly built out of rounded stones from the creek bed. The log walls had been plastered with clay, hardened now almost to the consistency of brick; and overhead was spread a canvas ceiling cloth to keep in the warmth. Walls and ceiling had been washed with a warm terra cotta color, which made a rich background for the beautiful furs. Over the carved bedstead in the corner was flung a robe made of hundreds of raccoons’ tails, the black stripes worked into an elaborate geometrical design. There were other robes made of otters’ skins, of lynx paws, of silver foxes. On the walls hung many beautiful examples of Indian handicraft.
Glancing at the drooping head of the red girl, Loseis cried: “Mary-Lou, you’ve got as much spirit as a lump of pemmican! When you sit by the fire I wonder that you do not melt and run down in grease!”
Mary-Lou’s head went lower still, and her eyes filled.
Seeing this, Loseis became angrier still. “There you go! Of course you’regood! That’s what makes me mad! Because I’m not good at all! I’ve got the temper of a fiend! Well, do you suppose I enjoy losing it? . . . I know I ought to say I’m sorry now, but it sticks in my throat!”
“I not want that,” murmured Mary-Lou. “I am lovin’ you anyway.”
“Well . . . I love you, too,” grumbled Loseis, shamefaced as a boy. “But I wish you weren’t so humble. It’s bad for me. This is Blackburn’s Post on Blackburn’s River; all this is Blackburn’s country, and I’m Blackburn’s daughter. There is nobody to stand up to me. I am too young to be the mistress. I don’t know anything. . . . That white man laughed at me as one laughs at a child!”
Loseis had stopped her pacing. Her head hung down. “I ought to have a white woman to tell me things,” she said wistfully. “In all my life I have seen but one woman of my own kind. That was the governess my father brought in for me. I used to mock her. But now I wish I had her back. She had nice manners. . . . He laughed at me. . . .”
She strayed to the second little crooked window, which was at the end of the room furthest from the fireplace. It overlooked a natural meadow below, where the tepees of the Slavis were built upon both sides of a creek which emptied into the main stream just beyond. In front of the Post the main river described a great convex bend, so that Loseis could look both up-stream and down. This bend was formed by a bold promontory of a hill which forced the river to go around its base. The point of this hill had been sliced off by the water, leaving a precipitous yellow cut-bank facing the Post. On the summit, startlingly conspicuous against a group of dark pine trees, was a fence of white palings enclosing a tiny plot with a cross rising out of it. By day and by night too, that grave dominated the Post.
“Ah! if only my mother had lived!” sighed Loseis.
“Let me read the book again,” suggested Mary-Lou, to divert her mind.
Loseis shook her head impatiently. She came away from the window. “I am not in the humor for it. I guess it is too fine for me. . . .” She resumed her uneven pacing. “Mary-Lou,” she suddenly cried in a voice full of pain, “when a man and a woman love I am sure they do not think such elegant thoughts as are in that book. Ah! the heart burns a hole in your breast! It is impossible to think at all!”
The red girl’s eyes followed her, full of compassion.
Observing that look, Loseis said sharply: “You must not think I am in love with that white man, Conacher. Oh, no! I was just imagining. I am far from loving him. I hate him!”
“You are not hating Conacher,” murmured Mary-Lou sadly. “Why say that to me?”
Loseis stamped her foot. “I tell you I hate him!” she cried. “That is enough for you! . . . What right had he to treat me like a child? I am Blackburn’s daughter. My father is the master of this country. And who is this white man? A poor man in a canoe with only two servants! Nobody ever heard of him before. My father was angry at his coming, and I was angry. We do not want white men coming here to spoil the fur trade!”
Mary-Lou’s silence suggested that she was far from being convinced.
“A poor man with no outfit at all!” Loseis repeated louder. “Yet he held his head as if he was as good as my father! He must be a fool. He talked to me as if I was anybody at all, and his eyes laughed when I became angry . . . !” In the midst of her tirade Loseis suddenly broke down. “Oh, I wish I could forget him!” she cried, with the angry tears springing to her eyes.
This sign of weakness gave Mary-Lou the courage to glide to her mistress, and wreathe her arms about her. “I think Conacher was a good man,” she whispered. “His eyes were true.”
These words were very sweet to Loseis; but she would not openly confess it. However, she gave Mary-Lou a little squeeze, before withdrawing herself from her arms. “No,” she said; “I shall stand by my father. My father is the finest man living. Conacher is gone. I shall never see him again. I shall quickly forget him.
“It was only because he took me by surprise,” she went on with an eagerness in which there was something pathetically childlike. “When he came paddling down our river with the two Beaver Indians I was like one struck on the head. It was like a white man falling from the skies. No white man ever came down our river before; and he so young and strong and full of laughter! He wore no hat; and the sunlight was snared in his yellow hair. I never saw hair like that. . . .”
“He like you, too, ver’ moch,” ventured Mary-Lou. “I was there when he landed. I saw it burn up like fire in his blue eyes.”
“Yes, I saw that, too,” murmured Loseis, averting her face. “But why did he change right away?”
“Because you treat him like poor, dirty Slavi,” said Mary-Lou. “No white man take that.”
“That is because I was so confused,” whispered poor Loseis. She suddenly covered her face with her hands. “Oh, what will he be thinking of me!” she groaned.
Mary-Lou’s eyes were all sympathy; but she could think of nothing to say.
Loseis drifted back to the window, where she stood with her back to Mary-Lou. After awhile, without turning around, she said in an offhand, experimental sort of voice: “I have a good mind to see him again.”
Mary-Lou merely gasped.
“Oh, not meaning anything in particular,” Loseis said quickly. “There never could be anything between us. But just to show him that I am not a redskin, and then leave him.”
“How could you see him?” faltered Mary-Lou.
“He is camped with his outfit alongside the Limestone Rapids, one hundred miles down,” Loseis went on in that offhand voice. “He has to break the rocks with a hammer, and study them where they split. It is what they call a geologist. . . .” Her assumed indifference suddenly collapsed. “Let us go to see him, Mary-Lou,” she blurted out breathlessly. “We could make it in a long day’s paddling with the current; three days to come back if we worked hard. We wouldn’t let him know we had come to see him. We would say we were hunting. . . .”
“Oh! . . . Oh! . . .” gasped Mary-Lou. “Girls do not hunt.”
“He doesn’t know whatIdo!” cried Loseis. “Imustsee him! It kills me to have him thinking that I am a common, ignorant sort of girl! Let us start at daybreak to-morrow!”
“Oh, no! no!” whispered Mary-Lou, paralyzed by the very thought. “Blackburn . . . Blackburn . . . !”
“He couldn’t say anything until we’d been and come,” said Loseis coolly. “Anyhow, I’m not afraid of my father. My spirit is as strong as his. He can’t shoutmedown!”
“No! No!” reiterated the red girl. “If you go after him like that, he think little of you.”
In her heart Loseis recognized the truth of this, and she fell into a sullen silence. After awhile she said: “Then I will make him come back here. I will send a message. . . . Oh, not a letter, you foolish girl!” she added in response to Mary-Lou’s startled look.
“What kind of message?”
“I will make a little raft and send it floating down on the current,” said Loseis dreamily. “I will set up a little stick on the raft, with a ribbon tied to it, a piece of my hair. I think that will bring him back . . .”
“Maybe it float past his camp in the nighttime,” said Mary-Lou, in her soft, sad voice. “How you know?”
“Then I will send down two,” said Loseis. “One in the day and one in the night. He will see one of them.”
Mary-Lou was astonished by the cleverness of this idea.
“And then when he comes back,” said Loseis quite coolly. “I will say that I did not send it. I will say that it is a custom of the red girls to make offerings to the Spirit of the River. I think that will make him feel pretty small. But I shall not laugh at him. Oh, no! I shall be very polite; polite and proud as Blackburn’s daughter ought to be. And I shall send him away again.”
Mary-Lou looked somewhat dubious as to the feasibility of this program; but held her tongue.
“I shall send him away again,” repeated Loseis with great firmness, “and after that I shall think of no man but my father. Before Conacher came my father was enough for me; and after he has gone my father will be enough. I am lucky to have such a father; so handsome and brave and strong-willed. . . .” Loseis suddenly became dreamy again. “But Conacher was not afraid of my father. That young man was not afraid of my father. I have never seen that before. . . .”
Mary-Lou permitted herself to smile tenderly.
Seeing it, Loseis colored up hotly, and became very firm again. “Never mind that! There is nobody like my father! He is the finest man in the world! I shall be a better daughter to him after this. I will do everything he wants. Ah! my father is like a king . . . !”
Mary-Lou was suddenly drawn to the end window by some disquieting sounds from the Slavi village below. She cried out in surprise: “Jimmy Moosenose is running between the tepees.”
“What do I care?” said Loseis, annoyed by this interruption.
“He is running fast,” said Mary-Lou, her voice scaling up. “He speaks to the people; they throw up their hands; they run after him; they fall down. There is something the matter!”
Loseis, alarmed, ran to join her at the window. Together they watched the old Indian come laboring up the little hill to the grassy bench on which the buildings of the Post stood. Jimmy Moosenose was a Beaver Indian, and Blackburn’s right-hand man by reason of being the only man beside the trader himself, who could speak the English and the Slavi tongues. There were no white men at Blackburn’s Post.
When Jimmy passed beyond range of their vision the girls transferred themselves to the other window. The Indian struck across the grass straight for their door. A tatterdemalion crowd of natives and dogs streamed after him. Fear clutched at Loseis’ brave heart; and she became as pale as paper. An instant later Jimmy Moosenose burst in. The others dared not follow him through the door.
“What is the matter?” demanded Loseis haughtily.
At first the old man could only pant and groan, while his body rocked in despair. Loseis seized him as if she would shake out the news by main strength.
“Speak! Speak!” she cried.
“Blackburn . . . !” he gasped. “Blackburn . . . !”
“My father! Hurt! Take me to him!” said Loseis crisply. She made as if to force her way out through the crowd.
“They . . . are bringing him,” faltered the old man.
Loseis fell back against the door frame. “Bringing him?” she echoed faintly.
The old man’s chin was on his breast. “Blackburn dead!” he said.
Loseis’ arms dropped to her sides; her widened eyes were like tragic black stars. “Dead?” she repeated in quite an ordinary voice. “That is impossible!”
Speech came to the old man. “It was the black stallion,” he cried. “I tell Blackburn, many tam I tell him that horse kill him some day. He jus’ laugh. He say: ‘I lak master that horse.’ Wah! what good master when both are dead! . . . It was the high cut-bank at Swallow Bend. Blackburn, he spur that horse to edge of bank to mak’ him rear and wheel. Blackburn he is laugh lak a boy. The horse is crazy mad. He put his head down. He no stop. He jomp over. He jomp clear in the air. Wah! when I see that, my legs are lak water! When I look over the bank there is nothing but water. Both are gone. We get canoe. Down river I see Blackburn’s leg stickin’ out. We pull him out. His neck is broke. . . .”
The crowd gathered outside the house, broke with a common impulse into a weird, wordless chant of death, the women’s voices rising piercing shrill. There was no sound of human grief in it; and the open-mouthed copper-colored faces expressed nothing either; the bright, flat, black eyes were as soulless as glass. They pointed their chins up like howling dogs.
Loseis clapped her hands to her head. “Stop that ungodly noise!” she cried.
Even old Jimmy looked scandalized. “They sing for Blackburn,” he protested.
“Stop it! Stop it!” she cried. Forcing her way out, Loseis ran to meet the cortège that was crawling up the rise towards Blackburn’s house.
CHAPTER IITHE BURIAL OF BLACKBURN
Hector Blackburn’sown room revealed a beautiful austerity fitting to the chamber of death. It was plastered and ceiled like the room of Loseis, but the color was a cool stone gray. The few articles of furniture that it contained had all been constructed in the old style, carved and polished by the owner himself, who had a taste that way. The lustrous pelts were more sparingly used here.
The narrow bedstead with its four slender columns had been dragged into the center of the room. Upon it lay the body of Hector Blackburn clad in decent black clothes; his big hands crossed on his breast. Beside the bed knelt Loseis, her rapt gaze fixed on her father’s face. Six feet two in height, and forty-eight inches around the chest, he made a splendid figure of death. There was not a white thread to be seen in his spreading black beard, nor in the plentiful wavy hair of his crown. To be sure, the high red color was strangely gone out of his transparent cheeks; and the passionate features were composed into a look of haughty peace. For sheer manhood, truly a father to be proud of.
Loseis thought of the feats of strength and daring that had made his name famous throughout the Northwest Territories; how he had strangled a full grown black bear with his naked hands; how he had leaped from his canoe at the very brink of the American Falls and had brought safely ashore an Indian who was clinging to a rock. He had been even more remarkable for his strength of will. The last of the great free traders, he had defied the power of the mighty Company, and had prospered exceedingly. He held his vast territory against all comers, by the power of his personality alone. Thinking of these things Loseis’ mind was confused. There lay his still body before her eyes, but what had become of the wild energy which had lately animated it? Surely, surely that could not be blown out like a candle flame.
Dragging herself to her feet, she went into the adjoining kitchen. She had had no opportunity to change her dress, but in an impulse of grief had torn off the gay embroidery; and now she was all in black like the corpse. In the kitchen Mary-Lou sat huddled on the floor, with her arms wrapped around her head. Jimmy Moosenose stood beside the open door, looking out, a withered, bent little figure, but still capable of activity. As Loseis entered he said in an expressionless voice:
“They have gone.”
“Who?” asked Loseis sharply.
“The people; all the people.”
She ran to the door. It was true; every tepee was gone from the meadow below. Except for certain litter abandoned in their haste there was no sign that a village had ever stood there. The Slavis had taken flight and vanished like a cloud of insects.
“Where have they gone?” demanded Loseis in astonishment. Though she had been born amongst them she did not understand this inscrutable, timid, savage race. It was impossible for any white man to know what went on inside their cramped skulls, Blackburn used to say. He had ruled them without making any attempt at understanding.
“Gone up river,” muttered Jimmy.
“For why?”
“They moch scare’.”
“But they are familiar with death. Death comes to all alike.”
Jimmy Moosenose cast an uneasy look towards the room where the dead man lay. He was near enough akin to the Slavis to share in their fears. “They think ver’ powerful strong spirit live in Blackburn’s body,” he muttered. “Now that spirit free they not know what it do to them.”
“Oh, what nonsense!” cried Loseis helplessly.
“What we do now?” asked Jimmy fearfully.
Loseis looked him over. “Are you man enough to ride all night?” she asked brusquely. “The trail is good.”
“What trail?” asked Jimmy with a terrified face.
“To Fort Good Hope to fetch the parson,” said Loseis in surprise.
“It is ondred-feefty mile,” faltered Jimmy.
“What of it? Two days to go and two to come. You can drive three spare horses before you. I don’t care if you kill them all.”
“I not man enough for that,” said Jimmy shaking his head.
“Well six days to go and come then. I’d go myself, but I know you two wouldn’t stay here alone.”
Jimmy’s and Mary-Lou’s frightened faces testified eloquently to that. Jimmy shook his head. “No good! No good!” he said. “It is summer time now. He no keep six days.”
Loseis groaned aloud. In her desperate helplessness she looked like a little girl. “How can I bury him without a parson!” she cried.
“You have the parson’s little book,” said Jimmy. “You can say the prayers from that. It is just as good.”
Loseis turned her back on them, that they might not see her childish, twisted face. “Very well,” she said in a strangled voice; “I will be the parson.”
“What I do now?” asked Jimmy Moosenose.
“First you must make a coffin.”
“There is no planks.”
“Oh, tear down the counter in the store!” cried Loseis with a burst of irritation. “Must I think of everything?”
“You tell me how big?” asked Jimmy, with another glance of sullen terror towards the inner room.
“Yes, I will measure,” said Loseis. “And the coffin must be covered all over with good black cloth from the store. Mary-Lou will put it on with tacks. And lined with white cloth. While you are making it I will go across the river, and dig the grave. We will bury him to-morrow.”
“That is well,” said Jimmy with a look of relief. “Then the people come back.”
“Ah, the people!” cried Loseis with a flash of angry scorn. “They are well-named Slaves!”
At the end of May in the latitude of Blackburn’s Post it does not become dark until nearly ten; and it was fully that hour before Loseis, having completed her task, returned dog-weary, across the river. During the balance of the night she sat wide-eyed and dry-eyed beside her dead, her hands in her lap, planning in her childlike and passionate way how best to conduct everything next day with dignity and honor.
At sun-up Jimmy Moosenose was despatched to the river shore to construct a raft, the light bark canoes that they possessed not being sufficient to ferry the coffin across. No flowers were available so early in the season, and Mary-Lou was set to work to twist a handsome wreath of the crisp green leaves of the high-bush cranberry. Neither Jimmy nor Mary-Lou could be induced to enter Blackburn’s room, so Loseis herself dragged the completed coffin in beside the bed; and she unaided, managed somehow to lift the body into it. In life Hector Blackburn had weighed more than two hundred pounds. It was Loseis, too, who nailed the lid on the coffin with an aim no better than any other woman’s. Those crookedly driven nails distressed her sorely.
When Jimmy came up from the river, they slipped short lengths of pole under the coffin, and rolled it to the door. Outside the house, since there was nothing in the nature of wheels at Blackburn’s Post, they hitched an old horse directly to the coffin, and dragged it at a slow pace over the grass down hill to the river. Jimmy led the horse, while Loseis and Mary-Lou walked behind, steadying the coffin with ropes affixed to each side. During this part of the journey Loseis was all child. Every time the coffin [word missing in original] over an unevenness her heart was in her mouth. “Oh! Oh! Oh!” she cried involuntarily; and her agonized eyes seemed to add: “My darling! did that hurt you?”
At the river edge they worked the coffin onto the raft with rollers and short lengths of plank; and Loseis draped the Post flag upon it, and placed the green wreath. Jimmy and Mary-Lou propelled the raft across with long poles, while the slender, black-clad figure of Loseis stood looking down at the coffin like a symbolical figure of Bereavement. In her grief-drowned eyes there was a look of piteous pride, too; for the black coffin with its flag and green wreath looked beautiful.
The smooth brown river moved down in silky eddies; the freshly budded greens of poplar and willow made the shores lovely, backed by the grave, unchanging tones of the evergreens. Behind them the low, solid buildings of the Post crouched on the bench above the river with a sort of human dignity; before them rose the steep grassy promontory with the waiting grave on top. Over their heads smiled the Northern summer sky of an enchanting tenderness of blue that is not revealed to lower latitudes.
Landing upon the further shore they caught another horse—there was no lack of horses at Blackburn’s Post. In order to drag the coffin up the rough, steep hill it was necessary to construct a travois of poles to lift the front end clear of the ground. The horse was fastened between the poles as between shafts. At the top of the hill Loseis had removed the palings; and the new grave yawned beside the old one. She had dug the shallow hole with sloping ends, that the horse might walk right through, leaving his burden in its place.
The animal was then liberated; and Loseis stood on one side, prayer-book in hand, with Jimmy Moosenose and Mary-Lou facing her on the other. It was a meagerly attended burial for the great lord of that country. Loseis read the noble prayers in a grave voice charged with emotion. The sound of it caused the tears to run silently down the smooth cheeks of Mary-Lou; but Jimmy merely looked uncomfortable. The feelings of white people were strange to him. He had given his master a doglike devotion while he lived; but he was dead now, and that was an end to it.
“Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live and is full of misery,” read the brave young voice. “He cometh up and is cut down like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay. In the midst of life we are in death; of whom may we seek for succour but of Thee, O Lord, who for our sins art justly displeased?”
When she came to the end of the service, Loseis dropped the book and involuntarily broke into an extempore prayer, standing with straight back and lifted face like an Indian, her arms at her sides. Her words were hardly couched in the same humble strain as those of the book; but the passionate sincerity of the speaker redeemed them from irreverence.
“O God, this is my father. He was a strong man, God, and you must make allowances for him. You gave him a proud heart and a terrible anger when he was crossed, and it would not be fair to judge him like common men. He could have done anything he wanted here, because he was the master, but he was always square. Every season he paid the Indians half as much again for their fur as the Company would pay, and that is why the Company traders spoke evil of him. He was hard and stern to the Indians, but that was the only thing they could understand. How else could you deal with a tribe of slaves? Be merciful to my father, O God! for he would never ask mercy for himself; and let him see my mother again, for that was all he wanted. Amen.”
Jimmy Moosenose picked up the spade with a businesslike air, and threw a clod on the coffin. At the dreadful sound that it gave forth, a sharp cry broke from Loseis. She wrapped her arms about her head and fled away down the hill.
CHAPTER IIITHE SLAVES WITHOUT A MASTER
Whenthe three mourners landed again on their own side of the river, Jimmy and Mary-Lou looked at Loseis at a loss. What to do next?
Rousing herself, Loseis said wearily: “Jimmy, you must fix up the counter in the store. Fix it with split poles until we can make some plank. Mary-Lou, fetch a hatchet and come with me.”
On the river shore some hundred yards downstream, hidden by a clump of willows in case Jimmy Moosenose should be inclined to spy on what they were doing, Mary-Lou under Loseis’ instructions built a tiny raft out of dead branches. To the raft Loseis fixed a little pole to the top of which she tied a streamer of black. She launched the raft on the current, and with big, childish eyes watched it float around the bend.
“I am not sending for Conacher to come to me,” she said haughtily to Mary-Lou. “But when a white man dies it is customary to let men know. . . . To-night I will push off another one. One or the other he will see.”
Within an hour the Slavis returned as mysteriously as they had departed. They must have had an outlook posted to report upon the burial of Blackburn. To Loseis their actions seemed perfectly senseless; for Jimmy had said it was the spirit of Blackburn that they dreaded, yet as soon as his body was hidden underground their fears departed. They set up the tepees in their former places, and went about their usual occupations as if nothing had happened. Loseis’ breast burned with anger; and she wanted to go down and give them a piece of her mind. However, Jimmy dissuaded her.
“No good! No good!” he said. “It is over now. They not understand white man’s ways.”
There was a sharp ring of anxiety in his voice that caused Loseis to stare in haughty surprise. She thoroughly despised the Slavis. However, she said nothing. She and Mary-Lou went off to their house to sleep.
Down on the flat it was the women who were erecting the tepee poles, and drawing the covers over them. They no longer used skins for this purpose, Blackburn having persuaded them of the superior advantages of the canvas that he sold. In the same way the whole tribe had learned to wear white men’s clothes out of the store. While the women worked, the men sat in groups smoking and talking in that queer clicking tongue that few white men have ever mastered. Their talk was light and punctuated with laughter; but it was clear from their uneasy glances towards the white man’s buildings that they were not speaking their hearts. As a matter of fact the Indians are quite as adept in insincere small talk as their white brethren.
From time immemorial the Slavis have been known as a small, weak people; and this particular branch, cut off from their fellows on the distant shores of Blackburn’s River had further degenerated as a result of too close inter-marriage. They were a weedy lot, and like all weak peoples, shifty-eyed. As is always the case, the men showed up worse; hollow chests and spindle shanks were the rule; the whole tribe could not produce one stalwart, handsome youth. But they were not poverty-stricken. They all wore good clothes, and lived in new, weather-proof tepees. They hunted the best fur country in all the North, and for twenty years Blackburn had jealously guarded it for them.
From where they sat Jimmy Moosenose could be seen splitting poles in front of the store, and carrying them in. Without appearing to, the men were all watching him. The groups of talkers fell silent. They could not meet each other’s eyes. A curious look of dread flickered in their faces; that which had directed the whole course of their lives for so many years had been suddenly removed, and they were all at a stand.
By twos and threes they began to drift up the grassy rise, their vacant eyes drifting this way and that. There was something peculiarly ominous about their purposelessness, their lack of direction. They squatted down on their hunkers, making a rough semi-circle about Jimmy. They no longer spoke among themselves, nor did any volunteer to help Jimmy; they simply squatted and stared at him with their unwinking animal-like eyes. Jimmy affected to take no notice of them; but his forehead became moist with a sudden fear. He was reminded that he was of alien blood to these people, and that they were thirty to his one. And there were five times that number more in their summer camp at Blackburn’s Lake.
At length the silence, the unwinking stares became more than Jimmy could bear. “Where is Etzooah?” he asked, affecting indifference.
Etzooah was one whom Jimmy suspected of being a trouble maker. He was a bigger man than the others; and was said to have Cree blood. More than once in the past his sharpness had displeased Blackburn, who, however, tolerated him because he was the best hunter in the tribe.
“Etzooah gone to the lake to see a girl,” said one.
From the way the others grinned it was clear this was a lie. Jimmy was much troubled that they grinned openly in his face. Had Blackburn been in the store behind him they would never have done that. Jimmy glanced desirously in the direction of the Women’s House, and his watchers marked that glance.
One said, affecting the stupid look of a crafty schoolboy: “Are you the trader now?”
“No,” said Jimmy, “Loseis is the mistress here.”
The ugly little men bared their blackened teeth; and a squall of laughter rocked them on their heels. There was no true merriment in the sound. It ended as suddenly as it began. It struck an icy fear into Jimmy’s breast. He was all alone; all alone.
“Go back to your lodges!” he said, drawing himself up, and imitating the voice of Blackburn.
They neither moved nor spoke; but squatted there staring at him.
He dared not repeat the order. Shouldering his poles, he started into the store. Of one accord the Slavis rose, and came pushing through the door after him. Flinging down his poles, Jimmy spread out his arms to bar their way.
“Get out!” he cried. “There is no trading to-day.”
Keeping their eyes fixed on his, they continued to push in. They walked right into Jimmy, forcing him back. What was he to do? His instinct told him that the moment he showed fight it would be all up with him. He picked up one of his poles and started to nail it into place, grumbling to himself, and making believe to ignore them.
They stood about the store watching him with affected sleepiness through half-closed eyes. One of them, keeping his eyes fixed on Jimmy, thrust a hand into an opened box and pulled it out full of dried apricots. All the instincts of thirty years of trading were outraged by this act, and Jimmy forgot his fears.
“Put it back!” he cried, brandishing the hammer. “Get out, you thieves! You half-men, you dirty slaves!”
None moved, nor changed a muscle of his face. The man with the apricots held them in his hand, waiting to see what Jimmy woulddo. What he said was nothing to them. He might as well have been storming at the wind. Finally, half beside himself with rage, Jimmy ran to the back of the store where the guns were kept.
Instantly the little men sprang into noiseless activity. One picked up a short length of pole, and darting after Jimmy on soft pads like a lynx, hit him over the head with it, before he could turn. In a flash they were all about him, their dark faces fixed in hideous grins, each trying to strike. They used tinned goods for weapons; one secured the hammer; one snatched up a heavy steel trap which he held poised aloft waiting for Jimmy’s head to appear. The whole mass swayed from this side to that, toppling over the goods on either side. Jimmy went down, and they had to bend over to hit him. They were as voiceless as squirming insects. There was no sound but the sickening blows that fell.
When they finally drew back a shapeless huddle was revealed, lying in blood. Panic overtook the feather-headed Slavis, and they ran out of the store to look anxiously in the direction of the Women’s House. Nothing stirred there. They returned inside the store. They did not consult together, but appeared to act as instinctively as animals. There was a window at the back of the store. They pried it out frame and all, and hastily shoved the broken body through the hole, careless of where it fell. The instant it was out of sight they forgot about it, nor did they trouble to put the window back.
Alone in the store, the Slavis betrayed a curious timidity. It seemed as if the ghost of Hector Blackburn restrained them still. They overran the place like ants, peering into everything, stroking the objects that they desired, but forbearing as yet to pick them up. At intervals panic seized them, and they swept in a cloud to the door to look over towards the Women’s House. Some of the Slavi women and children had been attracted from the tepees. These never ventured through the doors, but hung about outside, expressing no concern one way or the other; merely waiting to see how it all turned out.
At length one man ventured to eat of the dried apricots; another split the top of a can of peaches with a hatchet; and instantly looting became general. Boxes were smashed, and bags ripped open, pouring their precious contents on the floor. Food in the North is not to be lightly wasted. Articles of clothing were the chief prizes; the only way to secure them was to put them on, one on top of another. Sometimes two pulled at the same garment, snarling at each other. But they never fought singly. They were dangerous only in the mass.
In the middle of this scene suddenly appeared Loseis, her black eyes blazing. A terrified Mary-Lou cringed at her heels. Every Indian in the store, dropping what he was about, instantly became as immobile and watchful as a surprised animal. Loseis glared about her speechless. She was as much aghast as she was angry, for such a scene was beyond anything she had ever conceived of. But she was not afraid. She turned to the door.
“Jimmy! Jimmy!” she called peremptorily.
She waited in vain for an answer.
“Where is Jimmy?” she demanded haughtily.
None answered her.
She dispatched Mary-Lou in search of him.
The situation was beyond words. Loseis’ eyes darted silent lightnings at one man after another. The scattered Slavis slyly edged together. No single pair of eyes could meet hers, but she could not cow more than one man at a time; and the bright, inhuman eyes of the others remained fixed on her face.
Finally with a magnificent gesture Loseis pointed to the door. “Get out!” she said.
No man moved.
That was a terrible moment for the high-spirited girl. A look of astonishment appeared in her eyes. Suddenly her face crimsoned with rage; she flew at the nearest man, and started pommeling him with her little fists. The man ducked under her blows, and sought to evade her. He pulled another man in front of him; whereupon Loseis transferred her blows to this one. All the others looked on with faces like masks. And so it went. The mysterious prestige of the white blood sanctified her, and they dared not strike back; they resisted her with that senseless animal obstinacy that drives masters mad with rage. They were satisfied to let her pommel them, knowing that she must tire of it in the end. And what then? It was like fighting a cloud of flies. They would not be driven out of the store. When one was driven out, as soon as Loseis went for another, he returned.
She drew off at last. In that moment she knew the unspeakable agony of an imperious will that finds itself balked. She nearly died of her rage. But she faced it out. She admitted to herself that she was balked. The last two days had matured her. Fortunately for her, under all the passion and wilfulness of her nature there was a solid substratum of commonsense. Commonsense warned her that it would be fatal to make the least move in the direction of the guns at the back of the store. She could not force the senseless savages to obey her; well, commonsense suggested that she use guile. Loseis had an inspiration.
Just inside the door of the store, behind a rough screen of wood, Blackburn had a little desk with a cover that lifted up. Loseis went to it, and took out a sizable book stoutly bound in gray linen and red leather. Every Slavi knew that book. It was Blackburn’s ledger. Loseis appeared around the screen carrying the ledger; and up-ending a box beside the door, sat herself upon it with the book spread on her knees.
“You wish to trade?” she said to the men at large. “It is good. Take what you want. I will put it down in the book.”
The eyes of the Slavis bolted; and they moved uneasily. The spell of their strangeness was broken. To their simple minds there was magic in those scratches by which white men’s thoughts might be conveyed to any distance that they chose; or stored up in a book to be brought out years afterwards unchanged. In particular, Blackburn’s ledger had always been held in superstitious awe as the source of his “strong medicine.”
Loseis looked at the man nearest her, and thumbed the pages of the book. “Mahtsonza,” she said; “a Stetson hat; two skins. A Mackinaw coat; five skins. Wah! you have two coats? Ten skins!”
Mahtsonza began to slide out of his stolen clothing.
Loseis turned to the next. “Ahchoogah; a bag of rice; one skin. The bag is spoiled, and you must pay for all. You can carry it away.”
There was a sudden rush for the door; but Loseis, springing up, barred the way. “I have all your names,” she cried. “Whatever is taken or spoiled will be written down, and all must pay a share!”
Then she stood aside and let them slink by, a ridiculously crestfallen crowd of little bravoes.
For the moment Loseis had won—but at no small cost. The instant they were out, the reaction set in. All the strength seemed to run out of her limbs; she sank down on the box covering her face with her hands. The fact of her appalling solitariness was made clear to her. She dared not look into the future.
Presently Mary-Lou came back. “No can find Jimmy,” she said. “Nobody see him.”
Proceeding to the rear of the store to survey the damage, the two girls came upon the wet, dark stain spreading over the floor. The instant she saw it, Loseis knew what had happened and went very still; but Mary-Lou cried out: “Look, the window is out!” and must needs stick her head through the hole to look.
A piercing shriek broke from the red girl; she fell back half witless with terror into Loseis’s arms.