“Oh, the bird in a cage and the bird on a treeVoila! ‘tis a different fear!The maiden weeps and she bends the kneeOh, the sweet Saint Gabrielle hear!But the bird in a cage has a friend in the tree,And the maiden she dries her tear:And the night is dark and no moon you seeOh, the sweet Saint Gabrielle hear!When the doors are open the bird is freeOh, the sweet Saint Gabrielle hear!”
VII
These words kept ringing in Jen’s ears as she stood again in the doorway that night with her face turned to the beacon. How different it seemed now! When she saw it last night it was a cheerful spirit of light—a something suggesting comfort, companionship, aspiration, a friend to the traveller, and a mysterious, but delightful, association. In the morning when she returned from that fortunate, yet most unfortunate, ride, it was still burning, but its warm flame was exhausted in the glow of the life-giving sun; the dream and delight of the night robbed of its glamour by the garish morning; like her own body, its task done, sinking before the unrelieved scrutiny of the day. To-night it burned with a different radiance. It came in fiery palpitations from the earth. It made a sound that was now like the moan of pine trees, now like the rumble of far-off artillery. The slight wind that blew spread the topmost crest of flame into strands of ruddy hair, and, looking at it, Jen saw herself rocked to and fro by tumultuous emotions, yet fuller of strength and larger of life than ever she had been. Her hot veins beat with determination, with a love which she drove back by another, cherished now more than it had ever been, because danger threatened the boy to whom she had been as a mother. In twenty-four hours she had grown to the full stature of love and suffering.
There were shadows that betrayed less roundness to her face; there were lines that told of weariness; but in her eyes there was a glowing light of hope. She raised her face to the stars and unconsciously paraphrasing Pierre’s song said: “Oh, the God that dost save us, hear!”
A hand touched her arm, and a voice said, huskily, “Jen, I wanted to save him and—and not let you know of it; that’s all. You’re not keepin’ a grudge agin me, my girl?”
She did not move nor turn her head. “I’ve no grudge, father; but—if—if you had told me, ‘twouldn’t be on my mind that I had made it worse for Val.”
The kindness in the voice reassured him, and he ventured to say: “I didn’t think you’d be carin’ for one of the Riders of the Plains, Jen.”
Then the old man trembled lest she should resent his words. She seemed about to do so, but the flush faded from her brow, and she said, simply: “I care for Val most, father. But he didn’t know he was getting Val into trouble.”
She suddenly quivered as a wave of emotion passed through her; and she said, with a sob in her voice: “Oh, it’s all scrub country, father, and no paths, and—and I wish I had a mother!”
The old man sat down in the doorway and bowed his grey head in his arms. Then, after a moment, he whispered:
“She’s been dead twenty-two years, Jen. The day Val was born she went away. I’d a-been a better man if she’d a-lived, Jen; and a better father.”
This was an unusual demonstration between these two. She watched him sadly for a moment, and then, leaning over and touching him gently on the shoulder, said: “It’s worse for you than it is for me, father. Don’t feel so bad. Perhaps we shall save him yet.”
He caught a gleam of hope in her words: “Mebbe, Jen, mebbe!” and he raised his face to the light.
This ritual of affection was crude and unadorned; but it was real. They sat there for half-an-hour, silent.
Then a figure came out of the shadows behind the house and stood before them. It was Pierre.
“I go to-morrow morning, Galbraith,” he said. The old man nodded, but did not reply.
“I go to Fort Desire,” the gambler added.
Jen faced him. “What do you go there for, Pretty Pierre?”
“It is my whim. Besides, there is Val. He might want a horse some dark night.”
“Pierre, do you mean that?”
“As much as Sergeant Tom means what he says. Every man has his friends. Pretty Pierre has a fancy for Val Galbraith—a little. It suits him to go to Fort Desire. Jen Galbraith, you make a grand ride last night. You do a bold thing—all for a man. We shall see what he will do for you. And if he does nothing—ah! you can trust the tongue of Pretty Pierre. He will wish he could die, instead of—Eh, bien, good-night!” He moved away. Jen followed him. She held out her hand. It was the first time she had ever done so to this man.
“I believe you,” she said. “I believe that you mean well to our Val. I am sorry that I called you a devil.” He smiled. “Ma’m’selle, that is nothing. You spoke true. But devils have their friends—and their whims. So you see, good-night.”
“Mebbe it will come out all right, Jen—mebbe!” said the old man.
But Jen did not reply. She was thinking hard, her eyes upon the Prairie Star. Living life to the hilt greatly illumines the outlook of the mind. She was beginning to understand that evil is not absolute, and that good is often an occasion more than a condition.
There was a long silence again. At last the old man rose to go and reduce the volume of flame for the night; but Jen stopped him. “No, father, let it burn all it can to-night. It’s comforting.”
“Mebbe so—mebbe!” he said.
A faint refrain came to them from within the house:
“When doors are open the bird is freeOh, the sweet Saint Gabrielle hear!”
VIII
It was a lovely morning. The prairie billowed away endlessly to the south, and heaved away in vastness to the north; and the fresh, sharp air sent the blood beating through the veins. In the bar-room some early traveller was talking to Peter Galbraith. A wandering band of Indians was camped about a mile away, the only sign of humanity in the waste. Jen sat in the doorway culling dried apples. Though tragedies occur in lives of the humble, they must still do the dull and ordinary task. They cannot stop to cherish morbidness, to feed upon their sorrow; they must care for themselves and labour for others. And well is it for them that it is so.
The Indian camp brings unpleasant memories to Jen’s mind. She knows it belongs to old Sun-in-the-North, and that he will not come to see her now, nor could she, or would she, go to him. Between her and that race there can never again be kindly communion. And now she sees, for the first time, two horsemen riding slowly in the track from Fort Desire towards Galbraith’s Place. She notices that one sits upright, and one seems leaning forward on his horse’s neck. She shades her eyes with her hand, but she cannot distinguish who they are. But she has seen men tied to their horses ride as that man is riding, when stricken with fever, bruised by falling timber, lacerated by a grizzly, wounded by a bullet, or crushed by a herd of buffaloes. She remembered at that moment the time that a horse had struck Val with its forefeet, and torn the flesh from his chest, and how he had been brought home tied to a broncho’s back.
The thought of this drove her into the house, to have Val’s bed prepared for the sufferer, whoever he was. Almost unconsciously she put on the little table beside the bed a bunch of everlasting prairie flowers, and shaded the light to the point of quiet and comfort.
Then she went outside again. The travellers now were not far away. She recognised the upright rider. It was Pretty Pierre. The other—she could not tell. She called to her father. She had a fear which she did not care to face alone. “See, see, father,” she said, “Pretty Pierre and—and can it be Val?” For the moment she seemed unable to stir. But the old man shook his head, and said: “No, Jen, it can’t be. It ain’t Val.”
Then another thought possessed her. Her lips trembled, and, throwing her head back as does a deer when it starts to shake off its pursuers by flight, she ran swiftly towards the riders. The traveller standing beside Galbraith said: “That man is hurt, wounded probably. I didn’t expect to have a patient in the middle of the plains. I’m a doctor. Perhaps I can be of use here?” When a hundred yards away Jen recognised the recumbent rider. A thousand thoughts flashed through her brain. What had happened? Why was he dressed in civilian’s clothes? A moment, and she was at his horse’s head. Another, and her warm hand clasped the pale, moist, and wrinkled one which hung by the horse’s neck. His coat at the shoulder was stained with blood, and there was a handkerchief about his head. This—this was Sergeant Tom Gellatly!
She looked up at Pierre, an agony of inquiry in her eyes, and pointing mutely to the wounded man. Pierre spoke with a tone of seriousness not common to his voice: “You see, Jen Galbraith, it was brave. Sergeant Tom one day resigns the Mounted Police. He leaves the Riders of the Plains. That is not easy to understand, for he is in much favour with the officers. But he buys himself out, and there is the end of the Sergeant and his triple chevron. That is one day. That night, two men on a ferry are crossing the Saskatchewan at Fort Desire. They are fired at from the shore behind. One man is hit twice. But they get across, cut the ferry loose, mount horses, and ride away together. The man that was hit—yes, Sergeant Tom. The other that was not hit was Val Galbraith.”
Jen gave a cry of mingled joy and pain, and said, with Tom Gellatly’s cold hand clasped to her bosom: “Val, our Val, is free, is safe.”
“Yes, Val is free and safe-quite. The Riders of the Plains could not cross the river. It was too high. And so Tom Gellatly and Val got away. Val rides straight for the American border, and the other rides here.” They were now near the house, but Jen said, eagerly: “Go on. Tell me all.”
“I knew what had happened soon, and I rode away, too, and last night I found Tom Gellatly lying beside his horse on the prairie. I have brought him here to you. You two are even now, Jen Galbraith.”
They were at the tavern door. The traveller and Pierre lifted, down the wounded and unconscious man, and brought him and laid him on Val Galbraith’s bed.
The traveller examined the wounds in the shoulder and the head, and said: “The head is all right. If I can get the bullet out of the shoulder he’ll be safe enough—in time.”
The surgery was skilful but rude, for proper instruments were not at hand; and in a few hours he, whom we shall still call Sergeant Tom, lay quietly sleeping, the pallor gone from his face and the feeling of death from his hand.
It was near midnight when he waked. Jen was sitting beside him. He looked round and saw her. Her face was touched with the light that shone from the Prairie Star. “Jen,” he said, and held out his hand.
She turned from the window and stood beside his bed. She took his outstretched hand. “You are better, Sergeant Tom”? she said, gently.
“Yes, I’m better; but it’s not Sergeant Tom I am any longer, Jen.”
“I forgot that.”
“I owed you a great debt, Jen. I couldn’t remain one of the Riders of the Plains and try to pay it. I left them. Then I tried to save Val, and I did. I knew how to do it without getting anyone else into trouble. It is well to know the trick of a lock and the hour that guard is changed. I had left, but I relieved guard that night just the same. It was a new man on watch. It’s only a minute I had; for the regular relief watch was almost at my heels. I got Val out just in time. They discovered us, and we had a run for it. Pretty Pierre has told you. That’s right. Val is safe now—”
In a low strained voice, interrupting him, she said, “Did Val leave you wounded so on the prairie?”
“Don’t let that ate at your heart. No, he didn’t. I hurried him off, and he didn’t know how bad I was hit. But I—I’ve paid my debt, haven’t I, Jen?” With eyes that could not see for tears, she touched pityingly, lovingly, the wounds on his head and shoulder, and said: “These pay a greater debt than you ever owed me. You risked your life for me—yes, for me. You have given up everything to do it. I can’t pay you the great difference. No, never!”
“Yes—yes, you can, if you will, Jen. It’s as aisy! If you’ll say what I say, I’ll give you quit of that difference, as you call it, forever and ever.”
“First, tell me. Is Val quite, quite safe?”
“Yes, he’s safe over the border by this time; and to tell you the truth, the Riders of the Plains wouldn’t be dyin’ to arrest him again if he was in Canada, which he isn’t. It’s little they wanted to fire at us, I know, when we were crossin’ the river, but it had to be done, you see, and us within sight. Will you say what I ask you, Jen?”
She did not speak, but pressed his hand ever so slightly.
“Tom Gellatly, I promise,” he said.
“Tom Gellatly, I promise—”
“To give you as much—”
“To give you as much—”
“Love—”
There was a pause, and then she falteringly said, “Love—”
“As you give to me-”
“As you give to me—”
“And I’ll take you poor as you are—”
“And I’ll take you poor as you are—”
“To be my husband as long as you live—”
“To be my husband as long as you live—”
“So help me, God.”
“So help me, God.”
She stooped with dropping tears, and he kissed her once. Then what was girl in her timidly drew back, while what was woman in her, and therefore maternal, yearned over the sufferer.
They had not seen the figure of an old man at the door. They did not hear him enter. They only knew of Peter Galbraith’s presence when he said: “Mebbe—mebbe I might say Amen!”
The missionary at Fort Anne of the H. B. C. was violently in earnest. Before he piously followed the latest and most amply endowed batch of settlers, who had in turn preceded the new railway to the Fort, the word scandal had no place in the vocabulary of the citizens. The H. B. C. had never imported it into the Chinook language, the common meeting-ground of all the tribes of the North; and the British men and native-born, who made the Fort their home, or place of sojourn, had never found need for its use. Justice was so quickly distributed, men were so open in their conduct, good and bad, that none looked askance, nor put their actions in ambush, nor studied innuendo. But this was not according to the new dispensation—that is, the dispensation which shrewdly followed the settlers, who as shrewdly preceded the railway. And, the dispensation and the missionary were known also as the Reverend Ezra Badgley, who, on his own declaration, in times past had “a call” to preach, and in the far East had served as local preacher, then probationer, then went on circuit, and now was missionary in a district of which the choice did credit to his astuteness, and gave room for his piety and for his holy rage against the Philistines. He loved a word for righteous mouthing, and in a moment of inspiration pagan and scandal came to him. Upon these two words he stamped, through them he perspired mightily, and with them he clenched his stubby fingers—such fingers as dug trenches, or snatched lewdly at soft flesh, in days of barbarian battle. To him all men were Pagans who loved not the sound of his voice, nor wrestled with him in prayer before the Lord, nor fed him with rich food, nor gave him much strong green tea to drink. But these men were of opaque stuff, and were not dismayed, and they called him St. Anthony, and with a prophetic and deadly patience waited. The time came when the missionary shook his denouncing finger mostly at Pretty Pierre, who carefully nursed his silent wrath until the occasion should arrive for a delicate revenge which hath its hour with every man, if, hating, he knows how to bide the will of Fate.
The hour came. A girl had been found dying on the roadside beyond the Fort by the drunken doctor of the place and Pierre. Pierre was with her when she died.
“An’ who’s to bury her, the poor colleen”? said Shon McGann afterwards.
Pierre musingly replied: “She is a Protestant. There is but one man.”
After many pertinent and vigorous remarks, Shon added, “A Pagan is it, he calls you, Pierre, you that’s had the holy water on y’r forehead, and the cross on the water, and that knows the book o’ the Mass like the cards in a pack? Sinner y’ are, and so are we all, God save us! say I; and weavin’ the stripes for our backs He may be, and little I’d think of Him failin’ in that: but Pagan—faith, it’s black should be the white of the eyes of that preachin’ sneak, and a rattle of teeth in his throat—divils go round me!”
The half-breed, still musing, replied: “An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth—is that it, Shon?” “Nivir a word truer by song or by book, and stand by the text, say I. For Papist I am, and Papist are you; and the imps from below in y’r fingers whip poker is the game; and outlaws as they call us both—you for what it doesn’t concern me, and I for a wild night in ould Donegal—but Pagan, wurra! whin shall it be, Pierre?”
“When shall it to be?”
“True for you. The teeth in his throat and a lump to his eye, and what more be the will o’ God. Fightin’ there’ll be, av coorse; but by you I’ll stand, and sorra inch will I give, if they’ll do it with sticks or with guns, and not with the blisterin’ tongue that’s lied of me and me frinds—for frind I call you, Pierre, that loved me little in days gone by. And proud I am not of you, nor you of me; but we’ve tasted the bitter of avil days together, and divils surround me, if I don’t go down with you or come up with you, whichever it be! For there’s dirt, as I say on their tongues, and over their shoulder they look at you, and not with an eye full front.”
Pierre was cool, even pensive. His lips parted slightly once or twice, and showed a row of white, malicious teeth. For the rest, he looked as if he were politely interested but not moved by the excitement of the other. He slowly rolled a cigarette and replied: “He says it is a scandal that I live at Fort Anne. Well, I was here before he came, and I shall be here after he goes—yes. A scandal—tsh! what is that? You know the word ‘Raca’ of the Book? Well, there shall be more ‘Raca; soon—perhaps. No, there shall not be fighting as you think, Shon; but—” here Pierre rose, came over, and spread his fingers lightly on Shon’s breast “but this thing is between this man and me, Shon McGann, and you shall see a great matter. Perhaps there will be blood, perhaps not—perhaps only an end.” And the half-breed looked up at the Irishman from under his dark brows so covertly and meaningly that Shon saw visions of a trouble as silent as a plague, as resistless as a great flood. This noiseless vengeance was not after his own heart. He almost shivered as the delicate fingers drummed on his breast.
“Angels begird me, Pretty Pierre, but it’s little I’d like you for enemy o’ mine; for I know that you’d wait for y’r foe with death in y’r hand, and pity far from y’r heart; and y’d smile as you pulled the black-cap on y’r head, and laugh as you drew the life out of him, God knows how! Arrah, give me, sez I, the crack of a stick, the bite of a gun, or the clip of a sabre’s edge, with a shout in y’r mouth the while!”
Though Pierre still listened lazily, there was a wicked fire in his eyes. His words now came from his teeth with cutting precision. “I have a great thought tonight, Shon McGann. I will tell you when we meet again. But, my friend, one must not be too rash—no, not too brutal. Even the sabre should fall at the right time, and then swift and still. Noise is not battle. Well, ‘au revoir!’ To-morrow I shall tell you many things.” He caught Shon’s hand quickly, as quickly dropped it, and went out indolently singing a favourite song,—“Voici le sabre de mon Pere!”
It was dark. Pretty Pierre stood still, and thought for a while. At last he spoke aloud: “Well, I shall do it, now I have him—so!” And he opened and shut his hand swiftly and firmly. He moved on, avoiding the more habited parts of the place, and by a roundabout came to a house standing very close to the bank of the river. He went softly to the door and listened. Light shone through the curtain of a window. He went to the window and looked beneath the curtain. Then he came back to the door, opened it very gently, stepped inside, and closed it behind him.
A man seated at a table, eating, rose; a man on whom greed had set its mark—greed of the flesh, greed of men’s praise, greed of money. His frame was thick-set, his body was heavily nourished, his eye was shifty but intelligent; and a close observer would have seen something elusive, something furtive and sinister, in his face. His lips were greasy with meat as he stood up, and a fear sprang to his face, so that its fat looked sickly. But he said hoarsely, and with an attempt at being brave—“How dare you enter my house with out knocking? What do you want?”
The half-breed waved a hand protestingly towards him. “Pardon!” he said. “Be seated, and finish your meal. Do you know me?”
“Yes, I know you.”
“Well, as I said, do not stop your meal. I have come to speak with you very quietly about a scandal—a scandal, you understand. This is Sunday night, a good time to talk of such things.” Pierre seated himself at the table, opposite the man.
But the man replied: “I have nothing to say to you. You are—”
The half-breed interrupted: “Yes, I know, a Pagan fattening—” here he smiled, and looked at his thin hands—“fattening for the shambles of the damned, as you have said from the pulpit, Reverend Ezra Badgley. But you will permit me—a sinner as you say—to speak to you like this while you sit down and eat. I regret to disturb you, but you will sit, eh?”
Pierre’s tone was smooth and low, almost deferential, and his eyes, wide open now, and hot with some hidden purpose, were fixed compellingly on the man. The missionary sat, and, having recovered slightly, fumbled with a knife and fork. A napkin was still beneath his greasy chin. He did not take it away.
Pierre then spoke slowly: “Yes, it is a scandal concerning a sinner—and a Pagan.... Will you permit me to light a cigarette? Thank you.... You have said many harsh things about me: well, as you see, I am amiable. I lived at Fort Anne before you came. They call me Pretty Pierre. Why is my cheek so? Because I drink no wine; I eat not much. Pardon, pork like that on your plate—no! no! I do not take green tea as there in your cup; I do not love women, one or many. Again, pardon, I say.”
The other drew his brows together with an attempt at pious frowning and indignation; but there was a cold, sneering smile now turned upon him, and it changed the frown to anxiety, and made his lips twitch, and the food he had eaten grow heavy within him.
“I come to the scandal slowly. The woman? She was a young girl travelling from the far East, to search for a man who had—spoiled her. She was found by me and another. Ah, you start so!... Will you not listen?... Well, she died to-night.”
Here the missionary gasped, and caught with both hands at the table.
“But before she died she gave two things into my hands: a packet of letters—a man is a fool to write such letters—and a small bottle of poison—laudanum, old-fashioned but sure. The letters were from the man at Fort Anne—the man, you hear! The other was for her death, if he would not take her to his arms again. Women are mad when they love. And so she came to Fort Anne, but not in time. The scandal is great, because the man is holy—sit down!”
The half-breed said the last two words sharply, but not loudly. They both sat down slowly again, looking each other in the eyes. Then Pierre drew from his pocket a small bottle and a packet of letters, and held them before him. “I have this to say: there are citizens of Fort Anne who stand for justice more than law; who have no love for the ways of St. Anthony. There is a Pagan, too, an outlaw, who knows when it is time to give blow for blow with the holy man. Well, we understand each other, ‘hein?’”
The elusive, sinister look in the missionary’s face was etched in strong lines now. A dogged sullenness hung about his lips. He noticed that one hand only of Pretty Pierre was occupied with the relics of the dead girl; the other was free to act suddenly on a hip pocket. “What do you want me to do”? he said, not whiningly, for beneath the selfish flesh and shallow outworks there were the elements of a warrior—all pulpy now, but they were there.
“This,” was the reply: “for you to make one more outlaw at Fort Anne by drinking what is in this bottle—sit down, quick, by God!” He placed the bottle within reach of the other. “Then you shall have these letters; and there is the fire. After? Well, you will have a great sleep, the good people will find you, they will bury you, weeping much, and no one knows here but me. Refuse that, and there is the other, the Law—ah, the poor girl was so very young!—and the wild Justice which is sometimes quicker than Law. Well? well?”
The missionary sat as if paralysed, his face all grey, his eyes fixed on the half-breed. “Are you man or devil”? he groaned at length.
With a slight, fantastic gesture Pierre replied: “It was said that a devil entered into me at birth, but that was mere scandal—‘peut-etre.’ You shall think as you will.”
There was silence. The sullenness about the missionary’s lips became charged with a contempt more animal than human. The Reverend Ezra Badgley knew that the man before him was absolute in his determination, and that the Pagans of Fort Anne would show him little mercy, while his flock would leave him to his fate. He looked at the bottle. The silence grew, so that the ticking of the watch in the missionary’s pocket could be heard plainly, having for its background of sound the continuous swish of the river. Pretty Pierre’s eyes were never taken off the other, whose gaze, again, was fixed upon the bottle with a terrible fascination. An hour, two hours, passed. The fire burned lower. It was midnight; and now the watch no longer ticked; it had fulfilled its day’s work. The missionary shuddered slightly at this. He looked up to see the resolute gloom of the half-breed’s eyes, and that sneering smile, fixed upon him still. Then he turned once more to the bottle.... His heavy hand moved slowly towards it. His stubby fingers perspired and showed sickly in the light.... They closed about the bottle. Then suddenly he raised it, and drained it at a draught. He sighed once heavily and as if a great inward pain was over. Rising he took the letters silently pushed towards him, and dropped them into the fire. He went to the window, raised it, and threw the bottle into the river. The cork was left: Pierre pointed to it. He took it up with a strange smile and thrust it into the coals. Then he sat down by the table, leaning his arms upon it, his eyes staring painfully before him, and the forgotten napkin still about his neck. Soon the eyes closed, and, with a moan on his lips, his head dropped forward on his arms.... Pierre rose, and, looking at the figure soon to be breathless as the baked meats about it, said: “‘Bien,’ he was not all coward. No.”
Then he turned and went out into the night.
“Oh, it’s down the long side of Farcalladen Rise,With the knees pressing hard to the saddle, my men;With the sparks from the hoofs giving light to the eyes,And our hearts beating hard as we rode to the glen!“And it’s back with the ring of the chain and the spur,And it’s back with the sun on the hill and the moor,And it’s back is the thought sets my pulses astir!But I’ll never go back to Farcalladen more.”
Shon McGann was lying on a pile of buffalo robes in a mountain hut,—an Australian would call it a humpey,—singing thus to himself with his pipe between his teeth. In the room, besides Shon, were Pretty Pierre, Jo Gordineer, the Hon. Just Trafford, called by his companions simply “The Honourable,” and Prince Levis, the owner of the establishment. Not that Monsieur Levis, the French Canadian, was really a Prince. The name was given to him with a humorous cynicism peculiar to the Rockies. We have little to do with Prince Levis here; but since he may appear elsewhere, this explanation is made.
Jo Gordineer had been telling The Honourable about the ghost of Guidon Mountain, and Pretty Pierre was collaborating with their host in the preparation of what, in the presence of the Law—that is of the North-West Mounted Police—was called ginger-tea, in consideration of the prohibition statute.
Shon McGann had been left to himself—an unusual thing; for everyone had a shot at Shon when opportunity occurred; and never a bull’s-eye could they make on him. His wit was like the shield of a certain personage of mythology.
He had wandered on from verse to verse of the song with one eye on the collaborators and an ear open to The Honourable’s polite exclamations of wonder. Jo had, however, come to the end of his weird tale—for weird it certainly was, told at the foot of Guidon Mountain itself, and in a region of vast solitudes—the pair of chemists were approaching “the supreme union of unctuous elements,” as The Honourable put it, and in the silence that fell for a moment there crept the words of the singer:
“And it’s down the long side of Farcalladen Rise,And it’s swift as an arrow and straight as a spear—”
Jo Gordineer interrupted. “Say, Shon, when’ll you be through that tobogan ride of yours? Aint there any end to it?”
But Shon was looking with both eyes now at the collaborators, and he sang softly on:
“And it’s keen as the frost when the summer-time dies,That we rode to the glen and with never a fear.”
Then he added: “The end’s cut off, Joey, me boy; but what’s a tobogan ride, annyway?”
“Listen to that, Pierre. I’ll be eternally shivered if he knows what a tobogan ride is!”
“Hot shivers it’ll be for you, Joey, me boy, and no quinine over the bar aither,” said Shon.
“Tell him what a tobogan ride is, Pierre.”
And Pretty Pierre said: “Eh, well, I will tell you. It is like-no, you have the word precise, Joseph. Eh? What?”
Pierre then added something in French. Shon did not understand it, but he saw The Honourable smile, so with a gentle kind of contempt he went on singing:
“And it’s hey for the hedge, and it’s hey for the wall!And it’s over the stream with an echoing cry;And there’s three fled for ever from old Donegal,And there’s two that have shown how bold Irishmen die.”
The Honourable then said, “What is that all about, Shon? I never heard the song before.”
“No more you did. And I wish I could see the lad that wrote that song, livin’ or dead. If one of ye’s will tell me about your tobogan rides, I’ll unfold about Farcalladen Rise.”
Prince Levis passed the liquor. Pretty Pierre, seated on a candle-box, with a glass in his delicate fingers, said: “Eh, well, the Honourable has much language. He can speak, precise—this would be better with a little lemon, just a little,—the Honourable, he, perhaps, will tell. Eh?”
Pretty Pierre was showing his white teeth. At this stage in his career, he did not love the Honourable. The Honourable understood that, but he made clear to Shon’s mind what toboganing is.
And Shon, on his part, with fresh and hearty voice, touched here and there by a plaintive modulation, told about that ride on Farcalladen Rise; a tale of broken laws, and fight and fighting, and death and exile; and never a word of hatred in it all.
“And the writer of the song, who was he”? asked the Honourable.
“A gentleman after God’s own heart. Heaven rest his soul, if he’s dead, which I’m thinkin’ is so, and give him the luck of the world if he’s livin’, say I. But it’s little I know what’s come to him. In the heart of Australia I saw him last; and mates we were together after gold. And little gold did we get but what was in the heart of him. And we parted one day, I carryin’ the song that he wrote for me of Farcalladen Rise, and the memory of him; and him givin’ me the word,‘I’ll not forget you, Shon, me boy, whatever comes; remember that. And a short pull of the Three-Star together for the partin’ salute,’ says he. And the Three-Star in one sup each we took, as solemn as the Mass, and he went away towards Cloncurry and I to the coast; and that’s the last that I saw of him, now three years gone. And here I am, and I wish I was with him wherever he is.”
“What was his name”? said the Honourable.
“Lawless.”
The fingers of the Honourable trembled on his cigar. “Very interesting, Shon,” he said, as he rose, puffing hard till his face was in a cloud of smoke. “You had many adventures together, I suppose,” he continued.
“Adventures we had and sufferin’ bewhiles, and fun, too, to the neck and flowin’ over.”
“You’ll spin us a long yarn about them another night, Shon”? said the Honourable.
“I’ll do it now—a yarn as long as the lies of the Government; and proud of the chance.”
“Not to-night, Shon” (there was a kind of huskiness in the voice of the Honourable); “it’s time to turn in. We’ve a long tramp over the glacier to-morrow, and we must start at sunrise.”
The Honourable was in command of the party, though Jo Gordineer was the guide, and all were, for the moment, miners, making for the little Goshen Field over in Pipi Valley.—At least Pretty Pierre said he was a miner.
No one thought of disputing the authority of the Honourable, and they all rose.
In a few minutes there was silence in the hut, save for the oracular breathing of Prince Levis and the sparks from the fire. But the Honourable did not sleep well; he lay and watched the fire through most of the night.
The day was clear, glowing, decisive. Not a cloud in the curve of azure, not a shiver of wind down the canon, not a frown in Nature, if we except the lowering shadows from the shoulders of the giants of the range. Crowning the shadows was a splendid helmet of light, rich with the dyes of the morning; the pines were touched with a brilliant if austere warmth. The pride of lofty lineage and severe isolation was regnant over all. And up through the splendour, and the shadows, and the loneliness, and the austere warmth, must our travellers go. Must go? Scarcely that, but the Honourable had made up his mind to cross the glacier and none sought to dissuade him from his choice; the more so, because there was something of danger in the business. Pretty Pierre had merely shrugged his shoulders at the suggestion, and had said:
“‘Nom de Dieu,’ the higher we go the faster we live, that is something.”
“Sometimes we live ourselves to death too quickly. In my schooldays I watched a mouse in a jar of oxygen do that;” said the Honourable.
“That is the best way to die,” remarked the halfbreed—“much.”
Jo Gordineer had been over the path before. He was confident of the way, and proud of his office of guide.
“Climb Mont Blanc, if you will,” said the Honourable, “but leave me these white bastions of the Selkirks.”
Even so. They have not seen the snowy hills of God who have yet to look upon the Rocky Mountains, absolute, stupendous, sublimely grave.
Jo Gordineer and Pretty Pierre strode on together. They being well away from the other two, the Honourable turned and said to Shon: “What was the name of the man who wrote that song of yours, again, Shon?”
“Lawless.”
“Yes, but his first name?”
“Duke—Duke Lawless.”
There was a pause, in which the other seemed to be intently studying the glacier above them. Then he said: “What was he like?—in appearance, I mean.”
“A trifle more than your six feet, about your colour of hair and eyes, and with a trick of smilin’ that would melt the heart of an exciseman, and O’Connell’s own at a joke, barrin’ a time or two that he got hold of a pile of papers from the ould country. By the grave of St. Shon! thin he was as dry of fun as a piece of blotting paper. And he said at last, before he was aisy and free again, ‘Shon,’ says he, ‘it’s better to burn your ships behind ye, isn’t it?’
“And I, havin’ thought of a glen in ould Ireland that I’ll never see again, nor any that’s in it, said: ‘Not, only burn them to the water’s edge, Duke Lawless, but swear to your own soul that they never lived but in the dreams of the night.’
“‘You’re right there, Shon,’ says he, and after that no luck was bad enough to cloud the gay heart of him, and bad enough it was sometimes.”
“And why do you fear that he is not alive?”
“Because I met an old mate of mine one day on the Frazer, and he said that Lawless had never come to Cloncurry; and a hard, hard road it was to travel.”
Jo Gordineer was calling to them, and there the conversation ended. In a few minutes the four stood on the edge of the glacier. Each man had a long hickory stick which served as alpenstock, a bag hung at his side, and tied to his back was his gold-pan, the hollow side in, of course. Shon’s was tied a little lower down than the others.
They passed up this solid river of ice, this giant power at endless strife with the high hills, up towards its head. The Honourable was the first to reach the point of vantage, and to look down upon the vast and wandering fissures, the frigid bulwarks, the great fortresses of ice, the ceaseless snows, the aisles of this mountain sanctuary through which Nature’s splendid anthems rolled. Shon was a short distance below, with his hand over his eyes, sweeping the semi-circle of glory.
Suddenly there was a sharp cry from Pierre: “Mon Dieu! Look!”
Shon McGann had fallen on a smooth pavement of ice. The gold-pan was beneath him, and down the glacier he was whirled-whirled, for Shon had thrust his heels in the snow and ice, and the gold-pan performed a series of circles as it sped down the incline. His fingers clutched the ice and snow, but they only left a red mark of blood behind. Must he go the whole course of that frozen slide, plump into the wild depths below?
“‘Mon Dieu!—mon Dieu!’” said Pretty Pierre, piteously. The face of the Honourable was set and tense.
Jo Gordineer’s hand clutched his throat as if he choked. Still Shon sped. It was a matter of seconds only. The tragedy crowded to the awful end.
But, no.
There was a tilt in the glacier, and the gold-pan, suddenly swirling, again swung to the outer edge, and shot over.
As if hurled from a catapult, the Irishman was ejected from the white monster’s back. He fell on a wide shelf of ice, covered with light snow, through which he was tunnelled, and dropped on another ledge below, near the path by which he and his companions had ascended. “Shied from the finish, by God!” said Jo Gordineer. “‘Le pauvre Shon!’” added Pretty Pierre.
The Honourable was making his way down, his brain haunted by the words, “He’ll never go back to Farcalladen more.”
But Jo was right.
For Shon McGann was alive. He lay breathless, helpless, for a moment; then he sat up and scanned his lacerated fingers: he looked up the path by which he had come; he looked down the path he seemed destined to go; he started to scratch his head, but paused in the act, by reason of his fingers.
Then he said: “It’s my mother wouldn’t know me from a can of cold meat if I hadn’t stopped at this station; but wurrawurra, what a car it was to come in!” He examined his tattered clothes and bare elbows; then he unbuckled the gold-pan, and no easy task was it with his ragged fingers. “‘Twas not for deep minin’ I brought ye,” he said to the pan, “nor for scrapin’ the clothes from me back.”
Just then the Honourable came up. “Shon, my man... alive, thank God! How is it with you?”
“I’m hardly worth the lookin’ at. I wouldn’t turn my back to ye for a ransom.”
“It’s enough that you’re here at all.”
“Ah, ‘voila!’ this Irishman!” said Pretty Pierre, as his light fingers touched Shon’s bruised arm gently. This from Pretty Pierre!
There was that in the voice which went to Shon’s heart. Who could have guessed that this outlaw of the North would ever show a sign of sympathy or friendship for anybody? But it goes to prove that you can never be exact in your estimate of character. Jo Gordineer only said jestingly: “Say, now, what are you doing, Shon, bringing us down here, when we might be well into the Valley by this time?”
“That in your face and the hair aff your head,” said Shon; “it’s little you know a tobogan ride when you see one. I’ll take my share of the grog, by the same token.”
The Honourable uncorked his flask. Shon threw back his head with a laugh.