“For it’s rest when the gallop is over, me men!And it’s here’s to the lads that have ridden their last;And it’s here’s—”
But Shon had fainted with the flask in his hand and this snatch of a song on his lips.
They reached shelter that night. Had it not been for the accident, they would have got to their destination in the Valley; but here they were twelve miles from it. Whether this was fortunate or unfortunate may be seen later. Comfortably bestowed in this mountain tavern, after they had toasted and eaten their venison and lit their pipes, they drew about the fire.
Besides the four, there was a figure that lay sleeping in a corner on a pile of pine branches, wrapped in a bearskin robe. Whoever it was slept soundly.
“And what was it like—the gold-pan flyer—the tobogan ride, Shon?” remarked Jo Gordineer.
“What was it like?—what was it like”? replied Shon. “Sure, I couldn’t see what it was like for the stars that were hittin’ me in the eyes. There wasn’t any world at all. I was ridin’ on a streak of lightnin’, and nivir a rubber for the wheels; and my fingers makin’ stripes of blood on the snow; and now the stars that were hittin’ me were white, and thin they were red, and sometimes blue—”
“The Stars and Stripes,” inconsiderately remarked Jo Gordineer.
“And there wasn’t any beginning to things, nor any end of them; and whin I struck the snow and cut down the core of it like a cat through a glass, I was willin’ to say with the Prophet of Ireland—”
“Are you going to pass the liniment, Pretty Pierre?” It was Jo Gordineer said that.
What the Prophet of Israel did say—Israel and Ireland were identical to Shon—was never told.
Shon’s bubbling sarcasm was full-stopped by the beneficent savour that, rising now from the hands of the four, silenced all irrelevant speech. It was a function of importance. It was not simply necessary to say How! or Here’s reformation! or I look towards you! As if by a common instinct, the Honourable, Jo Gordineer, and Pretty Pierre, turned towards Shon and lifted their glasses. Jo Gordineer was going to say: “Here’s a safe foot in the stirrups to you,” but he changed his mind and drank in silence.
Shon’s eye had been blazing with fun, but it took on, all at once, a misty twinkle. None of them had quite bargained for this. The feeling had come like a wave of soft lightning, and had passed through them. Did it come from the Irishman himself? Was it his own nature acting through those who called him “partner”?
Pretty Pierre got up and kicked savagely at the wood in the big fireplace. He ostentatiously and needlessly put another log of Norfolk-pine upon the fire.
The Honourable gaily suggested a song.
“Sing us ‘Avec les Braves Sauvages,’ Pierre,” said Jo Gordineer.
But Pierre waved his fingers towards Shon: “Shon, his song—he did not finish—on the glacier. It is good we hear all. ‘Hein?’”
And so Shon sang:
“Oh it’s down the long side of Farcalladen Rise.”
The sleeper on the pine branches stirred nervously, as if the song were coming through a dream to him. At the third verse he started up, and an eager, sun-burned face peered from the half-darkness at the singer. The Honourable was sitting in the shadow, with his back to the new actor in the scene.
“For it’s rest when the gallop is over, my men IAnd it’s here’s to the lads that have ridden their last!And it’s here’s—”
Shon paused. One of those strange lapses of memory came to him which come at times to most of us concerning familiar things. He could get no further than he did on the mountain side. He passed his hand over his forehead, stupidly:—“Saints forgive me; but it’s gone from me, and sorra the one can I get it; me that had it by heart, and the lad that wrote it far away. Death in the world, but I’ll try it again!
“For it’s rest when the gallop is over, my men!And it’s here’s to the lads that have ridden their last!And it’s here’s—”
Again he paused.
But from the half-darkness there came a voice, a clear baritone:
“And here’s to the lasses we leave in the glen,With a smile for the future, a sigh for the past.”
At the last words the figure strode down into the firelight.
“Shon, old friend, don’t you know me?”
Shon had started to his feet at the first note of the voice, and stood as if spellbound.
There was no shaking of hands. Both men held each other hard by the shoulders, and stood so for a moment looking steadily eye to eye.
Then Shon said: “Duke Lawless, there’s parallels of latitude and parallels of longitude, but who knows the tomb of ould Brian Borhoime?”
Which was his way of saying, “How come you here”? Duke Lawless turned to the others before he replied. His eyes fell on the Honourable. With a start and a step backward, and with a peculiar angry dryness in his voice, he said:
“Just Trafford!”
“Yes,” replied the Honourable, smiling, “I have found you.”
“Found me! And why have you sought me? Me, Duke Lawless? I should have thought—”
The Honourable interrupted: “To tell you that you are Sir Duke Lawless.”
“That? You sought me to tell me that?”
“I did.”
“You are sure? And for naught else?”
“As I live, Duke.”
The eyes fixed on the Honourable were searching. Sir Duke hesitated, then held out his hand. In a swift but cordial silence it was taken. Nothing more could be said then. It is only in plays where gentlemen freely discuss family affairs before a curious public. Pretty Pierre was busy with a decoction. Jo Gordineer was his associate. Shon had drawn back, and was apparently examining the indentations on his gold-pan.
“Shon, old fellow, come here,” said Sir Duke Lawless.
But Shon had received a shock. “It’s little I knew Sir Duke Lawless—” he said.
“It’s little you needed to know then, or need to know now, Shon, my friend. I’m Duke Lawless to you here and henceforth, as ever I was then, on the wallaby track.”
And Shon believed him. The glasses were ready.
“I’ll give the toast,” said the Honourable with a gentle gravity. “To Shon McGann and his Tobogan Ride!”
“I’ll drink to the first half of it with all my heart,” said Sir Duke. “It’s all I know about.”
“Amen to that divorce,” rejoined Shon.
“But were it not for the Tobogan Ride we shouldn’t have stopped here,” said the Honourable; “and where would this meeting have been?”
“That alters the case,” Sir Duke remarked. “I take back the ‘Amen,’” said Shon.
II
Whatever claims Shon had upon the companionship of Sir Duke Lawless, he knew there were other claims that were more pressing. After the toast was finished, with an emphasised assumption of weariness, and a hint of a long yarn on the morrow, he picked up his blanket and started for the room where all were to sleep. The real reason of this early departure was clear to Pretty Pierre at once, and in due time it dawned upon Jo Gordineer.
The two Englishmen, left alone, sat for a few moments silent and smoking hard. Then the Honourable rose, got his knapsack, and took out a small number of papers, which he handed to Sir Duke, saying, “By slow postal service to Sir Duke Lawless. Residence, somewhere on one of five continents.”
An envelope bearing a woman’s writing was the first thing that met Sir Duke’s eye. He stared, took it out, turned it over, looked curiously at the Honourable for a moment, and then began to break the seal.
“Wait, Duke. Do not read that. We have something to say to each other first.”
Sir Duke laid the letter down. “You have some explanation to make,” he said.
“It was so long ago; mightn’t it be better to go over the story again?”
“Perhaps.”
“Then it is best you should tell it. I am on my defence, you know.”
Sir Duke leaned back, and a frown gathered on his forehead. Strikingly out of place on his fresh face it seemed. Looking quickly from the fire to the face of the Honourable and back again earnestly, as if the full force of what was required came to him, he said: “We shall get the perspective better if we put the tale in the third person. Duke Lawless was the heir to the title and estates of Trafford Court. Next in succession to him was Just Trafford, his cousin. Lawless had an income sufficient for a man of moderate tastes. Trafford had not quite that, but he had his profession of the law. At college they had been fast friends, but afterwards had drifted apart, through no cause save difference of pursuits and circumstances. Friends they still were and likely to be so always. One summer, when on a visit to his uncle, Admiral Sir Clavel Lawless, at Trafford Court, where a party of people had been invited for a month, Duke Lawless fell in love with Miss Emily Dorset. She did him the honour to prefer him to any other man—at least, he thought so. Her income, however, was limited like his own. The engagement was not announced, for Lawless wished to make a home before he took a wife. He inclined to ranching in Canada, or a planter’s life in Queensland. The eight or ten thousand pounds necessary was not, however, easy to get for the start, and he hadn’t the least notion of discounting the future, by asking the admiral’s help. Besides, he knew his uncle did not wish him to marry unless he married a woman plus a fortune. While things were in this uncertain state, Just Trafford arrived on a visit to Trafford Court. The meeting of the old friends was cordial. Immediately on Trafford’s arrival, however, the current of events changed. Things occurred which brought disaster. It was noticeable that Miss Emily Dorset began to see a deal more of Admiral Lawless and Just Trafford, and a deal less of the younger Lawless. One day Duke Lawless came back to the house unexpectedly, his horse having knocked up on the road. On entering the library he saw what turned the course of his life.” Sir Duke here paused, sighed, shook the ashes out of his pipe with a grave and expressive anxiety which did not properly belong to the action, and remained for a moment, both arms on his knees, silent, and looking at the fire. Then he continued:
“Just Trafford sat beside Emily Dorset in an attitude of—say, affectionate consideration. She had been weeping, and her whole manner suggested very touching confidences. They both rose on the entrance of Lawless; but neither tried to say a word. What could they say? Lawless apologised, took a book from the table which he had not come for, and left.”
Again Sir Duke paused.
“The book was an illustrated Much Ado About Nothing,” said the Honourable.
“A few hours after, Lawless had an interview with Emily Dorset. He demanded, with a good deal of feeling, perhaps,—for he was romantic enough to love the girl,—an explanation. He would have asked it of Trafford first if he had seen him. She said Lawless should trust her; that she had no explanation at that moment to give. If he waited—but Lawless asked her if she cared for him at all, if she wished or intended to marry him? She replied lightly, ‘Perhaps, when you become Sir Duke Lawless.’ Then Lawless accused her of heartlessness, and of encouraging both his uncle and Just Trafford. She amusingly said, ‘Perhaps she had, but it really didn’t matter, did it?’ For reply, Lawless said her interest in the whole family seemed active and impartial. He bade her not vex herself at all about him, and not to wait until he became Sir Duke Lawless, but to give preference to seniority and begin with the title at once; which he has reason since to believe that she did. What he said to her he has been sorry for, not because he thinks it was undeserved, but because he has never been able since to rouse himself to anger on the subject, nor to hate the girl and Just Trafford as he ought. Of the dead he is silent altogether. He never sought an explanation from Just Trafford, for he left that night for London, and in two days was on his way to Australia. The day he left, however, he received a note from his banker saying that L8000 had been placed to his credit by Admiral Lawless. Feeling the indignity of what he believed was the cause of the gift, Lawless neither acknowledged it nor used it, not any penny of it. Five years have gone since then, and Lawless has wandered over two continents, a self-created exile. He has learned much that he didn’t learn at Oxford; and not the least of all, that the world is not so bad as is claimed for it, that it isn’t worth while hating and cherishing hate, that evil is half-accidental, half-natural, and that hard work in the face of nature is the thing to pull a man together and strengthen him for his place in the universe. Having burned his ships behind him, that is the way Lawless feels. And the story is told.”
Just Trafford sat looking musingly but imperturbably at Sir Duke for a minute; then he said:
“That is your interpretation of the story, but not the story. Let us turn the medal over now. And, first, let Trafford say that he has the permission of Emily Dorset—”
Sir Duke interrupted: “Of her who was Emily Dorset.”
“Of Miss Emily Dorset, to tell what she did not tell that day five years ago. After this other reading of the tale has been rendered, her letter and those documents are there for fuller testimony. Just Trafford’s part in the drama begins, of course, with the library scene. Now Duke Lawless had never known Trafford’s half-brother, Hall Vincent. Hall was born in India, and had lived there most of his life. He was in the Indian Police, and had married a clever, beautiful, but impossible kind of girl, against the wishes of her parents. The marriage was not a very happy one. This was partly owing to the quick Lawless and Trafford blood, partly to the wife’s wilfulness. Hall thought that things might go better if he came to England to live. On their way from Madras to Colombo he had some words with his wife one day about the way she arranged her hair, but nothing serious. This was shortly after tiffin. That evening they entered the harbour at Colombo; and Hall going to his cabin to seek his wife, could not find her; but in her stead was her hair, arranged carefully in flowing waves on the pillow, where through the voyage her head had lain. That she had cut it off and laid it there was plain; but she could not be found, nor was she ever found. The large porthole was open; this was the only clue. But we need not go further into that. Hall Vincent came home to England. He told his brother the story as it has been told to you, and then left for South America, a broken-spirited man. The wife’s family came on to England also. They did not meet Hall Vincent; but one day Just Trafford met at a country seat in Devon, for the first time, the wife’s sister. She had not known of the relationship between Hall Vincent and the Traffords; and on a memorable afternoon he told her the full story of the married life and the final disaster, as Hall had told it to him.”
Sir Duke sprang to his feet. “You mean, Just, that—”
“I mean that Emily Dorset was the sister of Hall Vincent’s wife.”
Sir Duke’s brown fingers clasped and unclasped nervously. He was about to speak, but the Honourable said: “That is only half the story—wait.
“Emily Dorset would have told Lawless all in due time, but women don’t like to be bullied ever so little, and that, and the unhappiness of the thing, kept her silent in her short interview with Lawless. She could not have guessed that Lawless would go as he did. Now, the secret of her diplomacy with the uncle—diplomacy is the best word to use—was Duke Lawless’s advancement. She knew how he had set his heart on the ranching or planting life. She would have married him without a penny, but she felt his pride in that particular, and respected it. So, like a clever girl, she determined to make the old chap give Lawless a cheque on his possible future. Perhaps, as things progressed, the same old chap got an absurd notion in his head about marrying her to Just Trafford, but that was meanwhile all the better for Lawless. The very day that Emily Dorset and Just Trafford succeeded in melting Admiral Lawless’s heart to the tune of eight thousand, was the day that Duke Lawless doubted his friend and challenged the loyalty of the girl he loved.”
Sir Duke’s eyes filled. “Great Heaven! Just—” he said.
“Be quiet for a little. You see she had taken Trafford into her scheme against his will, for he was never good at mysteries and theatricals, and he saw the danger. But the cause was a good one, and he joined the sweet conspiracy, with what result these five years bear witness. Admiral Lawless has been dead a year and a half, his wife a year. For he married out of anger with Duke Lawless; but he did not marry Emily Dorset, nor did he beget a child.”
“In Australia I saw a paragraph speaking of a visit made by him and Lady Lawless to a hospital, and I thought—”
“You thought he had married Emily Dorset and—well, you had better read that letter now.”
Sir Duke’s face was flushing with remorse and pain. He drew his hand quickly across his eyes. “And you’ve given up London, your profession, everything, just to hunt for me, to tell me this—you who would have profited by my eternal absence! What a beast and ass I’ve been!”
“Not at all; only a bit poetical and hasty, which is not unnatural in the Lawless blood. I should have been wild myself, maybe, if I had been in your position; only I shouldn’t have left England, and I should have taken the papers regularly and have asked the other fellow to explain. The other fellow didn’t like the little conspiracy. Women, however, seem to find that kind of thing a moral necessity. By the way, I wish when you go back you’d send me out my hunting traps. I’ve made up my mind to—oh, quite so—read the letter—I forgot!”
Sir Duke opened the letter and read it, putting it away from him now and then as if it hurt him, and taking it up a moment after to continue the reading. The Honourable watched him.
At last Sir Duke rose. “Just—”
“Yes? Go on.”
“Do you think she would have me now?”
“Don’t know. Your outfit is not so beautiful as it used to be.”
“Don’t chaff me.”
“Don’t be so funereal, then.”
Under the Honourable’s matter of fact air Sir Duke’s face began to clear. “Tell me, do you think she still cares for me?”
“Well, I don’t know. She’s rich now—got the grandmother’s stocking. Then there’s Pedley, of the Scots Guards; he has been doing loyal service for a couple of years. What does the letter say?”
“It only tells the truth, as you have told it to me, but from her standpoint; not a word that says anything but beautiful reproach and general kindness. That is all.”
“Quite so. You see it was all four years ago, and Pedley—”
But the Honourable paused. He had punished his friend enough. He stepped forward and laid his hand on Sir Duke’s shoulder. “Duke, you want to pick up the threads where they were dropped. You dropped them. Ask me nothing about the ends that Emily Dorset held. I conspire no more. But go you and learn your fate. If one remembers, why should the other forget?”
Sir Duke’s light heart and eager faith came back with a rush. “I’ll start for England at once. I’ll know the worst or the best of it before three months are out.” The Honourable’s slow placidity turned.
“Three months.—Yes, you may do it in that time. Better go from Victoria to San Francisco and then overland. You’ll not forget about my hunting traps, and—oh, certainly, Gordineer; come in.”
“Say,” said Gordineer. “I don’t want to disturb the meeting, but Shon’s in chancery somehow; breathing like a white pine, and thrashing about! He’s red-hot with fever.”
Before he had time to say more, Sir Duke seized the candle and entered the room. Shon was moving uneasily and suppressing the groans that shook him. “Shon, old friend, what is it?”
“It’s the pain here, Lawless,” laying his hand on his chest.
After a moment Sir Duke said, “Pneumonia!”
From that instant thoughts of himself were sunk in the care and thought of the man who in the heart of Queensland had been mate and friend and brother to him. He did not start for England the next day, nor for many a day.
Pretty Pierre and Jo Gordineer and his party carried Sir Duke’s letters over into the Pipi Valley, from where they could be sent on to the coast. Pierre came back in a few days to see how Shon was, and expressed his determination of staying to help Sir Duke, if need be.
Shon hovered between life and death. It was not alone the pneumonia that racked his system so; there was also the shock he had received in his flight down the glacier. In his delirium he seemed to be always with Lawless:
“‘For it’s down the long side of Farcalladen Rise’—It’s share and share even, Lawless, and ye’ll ate the rest of it, or I’ll lave ye—Did ye say ye’d found water—Lawless—water!—Sure you’re drinkin’ none yourself—I’ll sing it again for you then—‘And it’s back with the ring of the chain and the spur’—‘But burn all your ships behind you’—‘I’ll never go back to Farcalladen more!’”
Sir Duke’s fingers had a trick of kindness, a suggestion of comfort, a sense of healing, that made his simple remedies do more than natural duty. He was doctor, nurse,—sleepless nurse,—and careful apothecary. And when at last the danger was past and he could relax watching, he would not go, and he did not go, till they could all travel to the Pipi Valley.
In the blue shadows of the firs they stand as we take our leave of one of them. The Honourable and Sir Duke have had their last words, and Sir Duke has said he will remember about the hunting traps. They understand each other. There is sunshine in the face of all—a kind of Indian summer sunshine, infused with the sadness of a coming winter; and theirs is the winter of parting. Yet it is all done quietly.
“We’ll meet again, Shon,” said Sir Duke, “and you’ll remember your promise to write to me.”
“I’ll keep my promise, and I hope the news that’ll please you best is what you’ll send us first from England. And if you should go to ould Donegal—I’ve no words for me thoughts at all!”
“I know them. Don’t try to say them. We’ve not had the luck together, all kinds and all weathers, for nothing.”
Sir Duke’s eyes smiled a good-bye into the smiling eyes of Shon. They were much alike, these two, whose stations were so far apart. Yet somewhere, in generations gone, their ancestors may have toiled, feasted, or governed, in the same social hemisphere; and here in the mountains life was levelled to one degree again.
Sir Duke looked round. The pines were crowding up elate and warm towards the peaks of the white silence. The river was brawling over a broken pathway of boulders at their feet; round the edge of a mighty mountain crept a mule train; a far-off glacier glistened harshly in the lucid morning, yet not harshly either, but with the rugged form of a vast antiquity, from which these scarred and grimly austere hills had grown. Here Nature was filled with a sense of triumphant mastery—the mastery of ageless experience. And down the great piles there blew a wind of stirring life, of the composure of great strength, and touched the four, and the man that mounted now was turned to go. A quick good-bye from him to all; a God-speed-you from the Honourable; a wave of the hand between the rider and Shon, and Sir Duke Lawless was gone.
“You had better cook the last of that bear this morning, Pierre,” said the Honourable. And their life went on.
........................
It was eight months after that, sitting in their hut after a day’s successful mining, the Honourable handed Shon a newspaper to read. A paragraph was marked. It concerned the marriage of Miss Emily Dorset and Sir Duke Lawless.
And while Shon read, the Honourable called into the tent: “Have you any lemons for the whisky, Pierre?”
A satisfactory reply being returned, the Honourable proceeded: “We’ll begin with the bottle of Pommery, which I’ve been saving months for this.”
The royal-flush toast of the evening belonged to Shon.
“God bless him! To the day when we see him again!”
And all of them saw that day.
“Is it that we stand at the top of the hill and the end of the travel has come, Pierre? Why don’t you spake?”
“We stand at the top of the hill, and it is the end.”
“And Lonely Valley is at our feet and Whiteface Mountain beyond?”
“One at our feet, and the other beyond, Shon McGann.”
“It’s the sight of my eyes I wish I had in the light of the sun this mornin’. Tell me, what is’t you see?”
“I see the trees on the foot-hills, and all the branches shine with frost. There is a path—so wide!—between two groves of pines. On Whiteface Mountain lies a glacier-field... and all is still.”...
“The voice of you is far-away-like, Pierre—it shivers as a hawk cries. It’s the wind, the wind, maybe.”
“There’s not a breath of life from hill or valley.”
“But I feel it in my face.”
“It is not the breath of life you feel.”
“Did you not hear voices coming athwart the wind?... Can you see the people at the mines?”
“I have told you what I see.”
“You told me of the pine-trees, and the glacier, and the snow—”
“And that is all.”
“But in the Valley, in the Valley, where all the miners are?”
“I cannot see them.”
“For love of heaven, don’t tell me that the dark is fallin’ on your eyes too.”
“No, Shon, I am not growing blind.”
“Will you not tell me what gives the ache to your words?”
“I see in the Valley—snow... snow.”
“It’s a laugh you have at me in your cheek, whin I’d give years of my ill-spent life to watch the chimney smoke come curlin’ up slow through the sharp air in the Valley there below.”
“There is no chimney and there is no smoke in all the Valley.”
“Before God, if you’re a man, you’ll put your hand on my arm and tell me what trouble quakes your speech.”
“Shon McGann, it is for you to make the sign of the Cross... there, while I put my hand on your shoulder—so!”
“Your hand is heavy, Pierre.”
“This is the sight of the eyes that see. In the Valley there is snow; in the snow of all that was, there is one poppet-head of the mine that was called St. Gabriel... upon the poppet-head there is the figure of a woman.”
“Ah!”
“She does not move—”
“She will never move?”
“She will never move.”
“The breath o’ my body hurts me.... There is death in the Valley, Pierre?”
“There is death.”
“It was an avalanche—that path between the pines?”
“And a great storm after.”
“Blessed be God that I cannot behold that thing this day!... And the woman, Pierre, the woman aloft?”
“She went to watch for someone coming, and as she watched, the avalanche came—and she moves not.”
“Do we know that woman?”
“Who can tell?”
“What was it you whispered soft to yourself, then, Pierre?”
“I whispered no word.”
“There, don’t you hear it, soft and sighin’?... Nathalie!”
“‘Mon Dieu!’ It is not of the world.”
“It’s facin’ the poppet-head where she stands I’d be.”
“Your face is turned towards her.”
“Where is the sun?”
“The sun stands still above her head.”
“With the bitter over, and the avil past, come rest for her and all that lie there.”
“Eh, ‘bien,’ the game is done!”
“If we stay here we shall die also.”
“If we go we die, perhaps.”...
“Don’t spake it. We will go, and we will return when the breath of summer comes from the South.”
“It shall be so.”
“Hush! Did you not hear—?”
“I did not hear. I only see an eagle, and it flies towards Whiteface Mountain.”
And Shon McGann and Pretty Pierre turned back from the end of their quest—from a mighty grave behind to a lonely waste before; and though one was snow-blind, and the other knew that on him fell the chiefer weight of a great misfortune, for he must provide food and fire and be as a mother to his comrade—they had courage; without which, men are as the standing straw in an unreaped field in winter; but having become like the hooded pine, that keepeth green in frost, and hath the bounding blood in all its icy branches.
And whence they came and wherefore was as thus:
A French Canadian once lived in Lonely Valley. One day great fortune came to him, because it was given him to discover the mine St. Gabriel. And he said to the woman who loved him, “I will go with mules and much gold, that I have hewn and washed and gathered, to a village in the East where my father and my mother are. They are poor, but I will make them rich; and then I will return to Lonely Valley, and a priest shall come with me, and we will dwell here at Whiteface Mountain, where men are men and not children.” And the woman blessed him, and prayed for him, and let him go.
He travelled far through passes of the mountains, and came at last where new cities lay upon the plains, and where men were full of evil and of lust of gold. And he was free of hand and light of heart; and at a place called Diamond City false friends came about him, and gave him champagne wine to drink, and struck him down and robbed him, leaving him for dead.
And he was found, and his wounds were all healed: all save one, and that was in the brain. Men called him mad.
He wandered through the land, preaching to men to drink no wine, and to shun the sight of gold. And they laughed at him, and called him Pere Champagne.
But one day much gold was found at a place called Reef o’ Angel; and jointly with the gold came a plague which scars the face and rots the body; and Indians died by hundreds and white men by scores; and Pere Champagne, of all who were not stricken down, feared nothing, and did not flee, but went among the sick and dying, and did those deeds which gold cannot buy, and prayed those prayers which were never sold. And who can count how high the prayers of the feckless go!
When none was found to bury the dead, he gave them place himself beneath the prairie earth,—consecrated only by the tears of a fool,—and for extreme unction he had but this: “God be merciful to me, a sinner!”
Now it happily chanced that Pierre and Shon McGann, who travelled westward, came upon this desperate battle-field, and saw how Pere Champagne dared the elements of scourge and death; and they paused and laboured with him—to save where saving was granted of Heaven, and to bury when the Reaper reaped and would not stay his hand. At last the plague ceased, because winter stretched its wings out swiftly o’er the plains from frigid ranges in the West. And then Pere Champagne fell ill again.
And this last great sickness cured his madness: and he remembered whence he had come, and what befell him at Diamond City so many moons ago. And he prayed them, when he knew his time was come, that they would go to Lonely Valley and tell his story to the woman whom he loved; and say that he was going to a strange but pleasant Land, and that there he would await her coming. He begged them that they would go at once, that she might know, and not strain her eyes to blindness, and be sick at heart because he came not. And he told them her name, and drew the coverlet up about his head and seemed to sleep; but he waked between the day and dark, and gently cried: “The snow is heavy on the mountain... and the Valley is below.... ‘Gardez, mon Pere!’... Ah, Nathalie!” And they buried him between the dark and dawn.
Though winds were fierce, and travel full of peril, they kept their word, and passed along wide steppes of snow, until they entered passes of the mountains, and again into the plains; and at last one ‘poudre’ day, when frost was shaking like shreds of faintest silver through the air, Shon McGann’s sight fled. But he would not turn back—a promise to a dying man was sacred, and he could follow if he could not lead; and there was still some pemmican, and there were martens in the woods, and wandering deer that good spirits hunted into the way of the needy; and Pierre’s finger along the gun was sure.
Pierre did not tell Shon that for many days they travelled woods where no sunshine entered; where no trail had ever been, nor foot of man had trod: that they had lost their way. Nor did he make his comrade know that one night he sat and played a game of solitaire to see if they would ever reach the place called Lonely Valley. Before the cards were dealt, he made a sign upon his breast and forehead. Three times he played, and three times he counted victory; and before three suns had come and gone, they climbed a hill that perched over Lonely Valley. And of what they saw and their hearts felt we know.
And when they turned their faces eastward they were as men who go to meet a final and a conquering enemy; but they had kept their honour with the man upon whose grave-tree Shon McGann had carved beneath his name these words:
“A Brother of Aaron.”
Upon a lonely trail they wandered, the spirits of lost travellers hungering in their wake—spirits that mumbled in cedar thickets, and whimpered down the flumes of snow. And Pierre, who knew that evil things are exorcised by mighty conjuring, sang loudly, from a throat made thin by forced fasting, a song with which his mother sought to drive away the devils of dreams that flaunted on his pillow when a child: it was the song of the Scarlet Hunter. And the charm sufficed; for suddenly of a cheerless morning they came upon a trapper’s hut in the wilderness, where their sufferings ceased, and the sight of Shon’s eyes came back. When strength returned also, they journeyed to an Indian village, where a priest laboured. Him they besought; and when spring came they set forth to Lonely Valley again that the woman and the smothered dead—if it might chance so—should be put away into peaceful graves. But thither coming they only saw a grey and churlish river; and the poppet-head of the mine of St. Gabriel, and she who had knelt thereon, were vanished into solitudes, where only God’s cohorts have the rights of burial....
But the priest prayed humbly for their so swiftly summoned souls.
“News out of Egypt!” said the Honourable Just Trafford. “If this is true, it gives a pretty finish to the season. You think it possible, Pierre? It is every man’s talk that there isn’t a herd of buffaloes in the whole country; but this-eh?”
Pierre did not seem disposed to answer. He had been watching a man’s face for some time; but his eyes were now idly following the smoke of his cigarette as it floated away to the ceiling in fading circles. He seemed to take no interest in Trafford’s remarks, nor in the tale that Shangi the Indian had told them; though Shangi and his tale were both sufficiently uncommon to justify attention.
Shon McGann was more impressionable. His eyes swam; his feet shifted nervously with enjoyment; he glanced frequently at his gun in the corner of the hut; he had watched Trafford’s face with some anxiety, and accepted the result of the tale with delight. Now his look was occupied with Pierre.
Pierre was a pretty good authority in all matters concerning the prairies and the North. He also had an instinct for detecting veracity, having practised on both sides of the equation. Trafford became impatient, and at last the half-breed, conscious that he had tried the temper of his chief so far as was safe, lifted his eyes, and, resting them casually on the Indian, replied: “Yes, I know the place.... No, I have not been there, but I was told-ah, it was long ago! There is a great valley between hills, the Kimash Hills, the hills of the Mighty Men. The woods are deep and dark; there is but one trail through them, and it is old. On the highest hill is a vast mound. In that mound are the forefathers of a nation that is gone. Yes, as you say, they are dead, and there is none of them alive in the valley—which is called the White Valley—where the buffalo are. The valley is green in summer, and the snow is not deep in winter; the noses of the buffalo can find the tender grass. The Injin speaks the truth, perhaps. But of the number of buffaloes, one must see. The eye of the red man multiplies.”
Trafford looked at Pierre closely. “You seem to know the place very well. It is a long way north where—ah yes, you said you had never been there; you were told. Who told you?”
The half-breed raised his eyebrows slightly as he replied: “I can remember a long time, and my mother, she spoke much and sang many songs at the campfires.” Then he puffed his cigarette so that the smoke clouded his face for a moment, and went on,—“I think there may be buffaloes.”
“It’s along the barrel of me gun I wish I was lookin’ at thim now,” said McGann.
“‘Tiens,’ you will go”? inquired Pierre of Trafford. “To have a shot at the only herd of wild buffaloes on the continent! Of course I’ll go. I’d go to the North Pole for that. Sport and novelty I came here to see; buffalo-hunting I did not expect. I’m in luck, that’s all. We’ll start to-morrow morning, if we can get ready, and Shangi here will lead us; eh, Pierre?”
The half-breed again was not polite. Instead of replying he sang almost below his breath the words of a song unfamiliar to his companions, though the Indian’s eyes showed a flash of understanding. These were the words: