CHAPTER VII
For three days the Pine Croft Ranch was plunged in gloom. In her room the lady of the ranch lay, fighting back death till her man should return. She was unwilling to pass out of the world in which together they had shared so deeply of its joys, without another word beyond that last spoken between them.
On the third day Paul, with face pale, tense and worn, rode into the Indian camp to interview the Chief. Straight up he stood, pale, quivering under the nerve strain, but unafraid.
“Mother is very sick,” he said. “I’m awful afraid she will die. Father is lost in the woods. She wants him awful bad.”
The chief listened, apparently unmoved.
“Mother kept the little baby from dying.”
The chief glanced sharply at the little lad. “Huh! I go find him,” he said abruptly. He called his men. Together they consulted, apparently canvassing the situation and planning the search. Then, with swift expedition, they prepared for their tramp. In a very few minutes the chief and one of his men stood ready for their journey, the other man remaining in camp with the child. Before setting forth, the chief came to the boy.
“You go mother,” he said. “Good woman! Two day father he come back. Sure, two day. Tell mother. Good woman. Chief not forget baby.”
“Oh, thank you, Chief,” said the little boy, impulsively catching his hand. “I’ll tell Mother. She will be awfully thankful to you. Good-bye. Everything will be right now.”
“Huh!” grunted the chief, and with a wave of the hand he was gone.
“Hello, little one,” Paul called, catching sight of the Indian child standing shyly within the tent door. “Come on over here. Come on and see my pony.”
The child, with a fearlessness quite unusual among Indian children, came trotting to him. Paul was delighted to find he was not forgotten.
“I say, little chap, tell me your name again,” he said, dropping on his knees beside the youngster. The little chap gurgled a reply. “What is it?” Again a gurgle. Paul gave an answering gurgle. “Is that it?”
The stolid face of the Indian standing near suddenly broke into a grin.
“Him name Peter,” he said, with a struggle.
“Peter,” shouted the boy, with a delighted laugh. “And I’m Paul. Oh, isn’t that funny? Peter and Paul! Why, we are two Apostles.” He caught up the little child and danced about with him in high glee, and the glee of the little one was no less high. Then for half an hour the grave-faced Indian looked upon a scene that more than once broke up his gravity. For with all sorts of games and antics the white boy tumbled the other about upon the grass, driving him into shrieks of delighted laughter, such as in his rather sombre four years of life in the wigwam with his stolid seniors he had never been known to utter. In the full tide of his play Paul remembered his duty.
“Here, Peter, old chap, I must get away home,” he cried, rolling off from his back the little Indian who had been using him as a pony. “Good-bye. I’ll see you again soon.”
But a fierce howl of protest brought him back running. It was only after he had emptied his pockets of his treasures, a top, a knife, some peppermints, somewhat the worse for wear but none the less toothsome to Peter, impervious to the microbe terror, that he was able to make his escape in an atmosphere of smiling serenity.
“Two days!” The chief’s promise he knew would be kept. In two days his father, whose mysterious absence had wrought such havoc in the life of home, would be back again, and then the old serene and happy life would be restored. In two days that dreadful fear which had been clutching at his heart all yesterday and this morning and which the memory of his mother’s face even now brought back to him would be gone. Two days! He let his pony out to his full speed, eager to bring the great news to his mother.
Two days later the chief appeared at the bungalow, supporting a stumbling, ragged, half-starved man who fell sprawling at the steps and lay there waiting for strength to make the ascent. The chief passed quickly into the living room and finding no one went on into the kitchen. There he found old Jinny, rocking in her arms a haggard, grief-distracted boy who sobbed in his sleep. The old nurse, catching sight of the chief, held up her hand for silence.
“Man come! Drink!” muttered the Indian, picking up a cup from the table and going through the motion of drinking. Old Jinny, nodding comprehension, rose with the boy in her arms, carried him to a sofa and laying him gently down turned to the Indian with her finger on her lips, then passing into the living room procured a glass of liquor and gave it to the Indian.
“Come,” he ordered, and she followed promptly and without a word. Together they lifted the exhausted Gaspard, gave him the drink, and waited till his strength should come back.
“The Lord help the man, he maun dree his weird! It’s a sair warl for him.” Then, turning to the chief who stood as if cut from stone, she said:
“Gae awa’, you, tae Colonel Pelham,” she commanded him, “tae the big white hoose doon the way yonder, and tell him the woman’s deid.” But her speech was beyond the Indian till, baffled, she beckoned him into the house.
“Come,” she said, and took him into the room where the dead woman lay. At once the chief understood. Down the driveway she went with him and pointed the way to the “big white house” of Colonel Pelham. Without a word he was off on his errand, on the long swinging trot of the Indian, while the old nurse returned to the man who still lay upon the steps, too spent to move. She bent over him, shook him awake, and said, “Come, man, get ye in till y’re bed. Ye’re no fit for onything.” He turned dull eyes upon the house.
“Jinny,” he mumbled, “my—your—Marion—she is better?”
“Aye, she’s better,” said the old nurse calmly. “She’s beyond all ill.” Jinny was entirely preoccupied with grief over the death of the woman she had nursed as a babe and whose babes she had nursed as well.
The man staggered to his feet and held by the verandah post, struggling for breath.
“Jinny,” he gasped. “No—no—you don’t—mean—she’s——” He could get no further.
“Aye, she’s deid. Gude save us a’, my sweet lassie is deid.” The old woman threw her apron over her head and burst into wailing. “Aye, the puir lassie, the puir lassie! Ma bonnie wee lamb! She’s awa’, she’s awa’.”
The man stared stupidly upon the rocking, wailing figure at his feet.
“Dead! Dead!” he said in a harsh voice. “It’s a lie. It’s a lie! She wouldn’t die that way. She wouldn’t die without a word to me.”
“Aye, she left ye a word as she was bleedin’ ta deith. A pail full o’ bluid she pit up. Wae’s me! But she didna forget ye.” Old Jinny’s voice took a grudging note. “She left ye a word.” She went into the house, returning in a minute with a torn piece of paper. Gaspard took it with a shaking hand, dropped it with a cry.
“What’s that on it?” he gasped pointing at a stain upon the white paper. “What’s that? You old—fool—don’t tell me it’s——” His voice became a shriek. “My God—my God! It’s blood! Her blood!” He pointed at the stained paper a finger that wavered and shook, his face white, his eyes fierce and glaring like those of a mad man.
“Aye, it’s her bluid. The blessed lamb!” said Jinny picking up the paper. “She pit her dyin’ lips till it—the bluid——”
“Stop! Stop! For Heaven’s sake, stop! Do you want to kill me?” cried the man, his voice shrill, strident, broken.
“Oh, Daddy, Daddy! You’re here! Oh, I’m glad you’re here!” The child’s voice rang out in a cry of wild joy. In the doorway he paused, looking from one to the other, then flung himself at his father.
Gaspard made as if to thrust him off, but on a second impulse he gathered the boy in his arms and sank down, moaning, on the steps.
“She’s gone, she’s gone! Oh, God, let me go! Let me go too! She’s left us, boy! She’s left us!”
“Yes, Daddy,” said the boy quietly, his hand reaching up to his father’s cheek. “And she said you would go and me too, Daddy. I want to go with you, Daddy.”
His father only groaned.
“And she made me promise to tell you about my very last lesson.” Still the father was silent, heedless of the boy’s talk. “My Bible lesson, you know, Daddy. She made me promise to tell you about it. Are you listening, Daddy?”
“What! Oh, yes, yes, go on boy. What was it you were saying?” His father roused himself to listen.
“She made me promise to tell you my lesson.”
“Yes! Go on!”
“About the seventy times seven, you remember.”
“Seventy times seven?” The man was broad awake.
“Yes, you know, seventy times seven in one day. That’s four hundred and ninety times in one day we must forgive. And she said, ‘Be sure, be very sure to tell Daddy that.’ She said you would be awful glad to hear that. Why, Daddy? And she said it was the lesson she loved best in all the Bible. I don’t think so, do you Daddy?”
“Seventy times seven! She said that. Oh, my God, my God! Seventy times seven! Seventy times seven!” Convulsive, mighty sobs shook his great body. The boy was terrified, too terrified to speak. His father’s eyes fell upon the stained bit of paper, lying where it had fallen from his fingers. Shuddering, he picked it up. There in poor wandering letters he read:
“My dear, dear love—I want you so—oh—I want you so. I want to ask you to forgive—to tell you—oh, I want you—with me—now—dear heart——” Then one desperate trailing scrawl as if death were clutching at her fingers. “Remember—70 X 7——” Then a poor faltering “X” and the marks of blood. “She pit her dyin’ lips till it,” old Jinny had said.
With an agonising cry he put the boy from him, scrambled up the steps, staggered through the living room, felt his way blindly into the bedroom where she lay. One glance he gave at the white still face touched with the calm dignity of death. Then with a bitter cry he fell on his knees at the bedside, gathered the quiet form in his arms, and there drank slowly, drop by drop, to the last dregs, the cup of his Gethsemane.
Terrified, petrified with his terror, his little son stood behind him, his limbs shaking under him, impotent of motion, desperately longing but unable to escape from the room, till at length, overcome by the tumultuous tide of his emotions, with a sobbing cry, “Oh, Daddy, I’m afraid,” he flung himself on his knees at his father’s side and there clung to him.
In that position the wife of Colonel Pelham found them half an hour later.
“Paul, dear, come with me,” she said, trying to lift him up.
“I want Daddy,” whispered the boy, still clinging to his father.
“Mr. Gaspard,” she said sharply, “this boy must be put to bed at once. He will be ill.”
The man raised his face, ghastly, unshaven, horrible.
“What do you say?” he asked dully.
“The boy, the boy,” she said, pointing to him. “He ought to be in bed. He will be ill.”
“Yes, yes,” he said stupidly. “Certainly, he must go to bed. Come, Paul.” He rose to his feet, and with the boy in his arms staggered into the living room, stood there, swaying drunkenly, and would have fallen had not Colonel Pelham caught him and steadied him to a couch where he lay moaning, “Gone, gone, gone! Oh, my God! Gone forever!” till from sheer weakness, due to starvation and emotional exhaustion, he sank into deathlike sleep.
The boy crept in beside him, stroking his cheek and whispering, “Poor Daddy! Poor Daddy!” till he too fell asleep.