The Boy stared, mystified by the lack of sequence. "Poor Anna doesn't want to marrythatPymeut."
Muckluck nodded.
The Boy gave her up. Perversity was not confined to the civilized of her sex. He walked on to find the Colonel. Muckluck followed, but the Boy wouldn't speak to her, wouldn't look at her.
"You like my Holy Cross clo'es?" she inquired. "Me—I look like your kind of girls now, huh?" No answer, but she kept up with him. "See?" She held up proudly a medallion, or coin of some sort, hung on a narrow strip of raw-hide.
He meant not to look at it at all, and he jerked his head away after the merest glance that showed him the ornament was tarnished silver, a little bigger than an American dollar, and bore no device familiar to his eyes. He quickened his pace, and walked on with face averted. The Colonel appeared just below the Kachime.
"Well, aren't youevercomin'?" he called out.
"I've been ready this half-hour—hangin' about waitin' for you. That devil Joe," he went on, lowering his voice as he came up and speaking hurriedly, "has been trying to drag Yagorsha's girl into his ighloo. They've just had a fight out yonder on the ice. I got her away, but not before he'd thrown her down and given her a bloody face. We ought to tell old Yagorsha, hey?"
Muckluck chuckled. The Boy turned on her angrily, and saw her staring back at Joe's ighloo. There, sauntering calmly past the abhorred trap, was the story-teller's daughter. Past it? No. She actually halted and busied herself with her legging thong.
"That girl must be an imbecile!" Or was it the apparition of her father, up at the Kachime entrance, that inspired such temerity?
The Boy had gone a few paces towards her, and then turned. "Yagorsha!" he called up the slope. Yagorsha stood stock-still, although the Boy waved unmistakable danger-signals towards Joe's ighloo. Suddenly an arm flashed out of the tunnel, caught Anna by the ankle, and in a twinkling she lay sprawling on her back. Two hands shot out, seized her by the heels, and dragged the wretched girl into the brute's lair. It was all over in a flash. A moment's paralysis of astonishment, and the involuntary rush forward was arrested by Muckluck, who fastened herself on to the rescuer's parki-tail and refused to be detached. "Yagorsha!" shouted the Boy. But it was only the Colonel who hastened towards them at the summons. The poor girl's own father stood calmly smoking, up there, by the Kachime, one foot propped comfortably on the travellers' loaded sled. "Yagorsha!" he shouted again, and then, with a jerk to free himself from Muckluck, the Boy turned sharply towards the ighloo, seeming in a bewildered way to be, himself, about to transact this paternal business for the cowardly old loafer. But Muckluck clung to his arm, laughing.
"Yagorsha know. Joe give him nice mitts—sealskin—newmitts."
"Hear that, Colonel? For a pair of mitts he sells his daughter to that ruffian."
Without definite plan, quite vaguely and instinctively, he shook himself free from Muckluck, and rushed down to the scene of the tragedy. Muffled screams and yells issued with the smoke. Muckluck turned sharply to the Colonel, who was following, and said something that sent him headlong after the Boy. He seized the doughty champion by the feet just as he was disappearing in the tunnel, and hauled him out.
"What in thunder—All right, you go first, then.Quick! as more screams rent the still air.
"Don't be a fool. You've been interruptin' the weddin' ceremonies."
Muckluck had caught up with them, and Yagorsha was advancing leisurely across the snow.
"She no wantyou," whispered Muckluck to the Boy. "ShelikeJoe—like him best of all." Then, as the Boy gaped incredulously: "She tell me heap long time ago she want Joe."
"That's just part of the weddin' festivity," says the Colonel, as renewed shrieks issued from under the snow. "You've been an officious interferer, and I think the sooner I get you out o' Pymeut the healthier it'll be for you."
The Boy was too flabbergasted to reply, but he was far from convinced. The Colonel turned back to apologise to Yagorsha.
"No like this in your country?" inquired Muckluck of the crestfallen champion.
"N-no—not exactly."
"When you like girl—what you do?"
"Tell her so," muttered the Boy mechanically.
"Well—Joe been tellin' Anna—all winter."
"And she hated him."
"No. She like Joe—best of any."
"What did she go on like that for, then?"
"Oh-h! She know Joe savvy."
The Boy felt painfully small at his own lack ofsavoir, but no less angry.
"When you marry"—he turned to her incredulously—"will it be"—again the shrieks—"like this?"
"I no marry Pymeut."
Glancing riverwards, he saw the dirty imp, who had been so wildly entertained by the encounter on the ice, still huddled on his drift-wood observatory, presenting as little surface to the cold as possible, but grinning still with rapture at the spirited last act of the winter-long drama. As the Boy, with an exclamation of "Well, I give it up," walked slowly across the slope after the Colonel and Yagorsha, Muckluck lingered at his side.
"In your country when girl marry—she no scream?"
"Well, no; not usually, I believe."
"She go quiet? Like—like shewant—" Muckluck stood still with astonishment and outraged modesty.
"They agree," he answered irritably. "They don't go on like wild beasts."
Muckluck pondered deeply this matter of supreme importance.
"When you—get you squaw, you nomakeher come?"
The Boy shook his head, and turned away to cut short these excursions into comparative ethnology.
But Muckluck was athirst for the strange new knowledge.
"What you do?"
He declined to betray his plan of action.
"When you—all same Joe? Hey?"
Still no answer.
"When youknow—girl like you best—you no drag her home?"
"No. Be quiet."
"No?How you marry you self, then?"
The conversation would be still more embarrassing before the Colonel, so he stopped, and said shortly: "In our country nobody beats a woman because he likes her."
"How she know, then?"
"Theyagree, I tell you."
"Oh—an' girl—just come—when he call? Oh-h!" She dropped her jaw, and stared. "No fight alittle?"she gasped. "No scream quitesmall?"
"No, I tell you." He ran on and joined the Colonel. Muckluck stood several moments rooted in amazement.
Yagorsha had called the rest of the Pymeuts out, for these queer guests of theirs were evidently going at last.
They all said "Goo'-bye" with great goodwill. Only Muckluck in her chilly "Holy Cross clo'es" stood sorrowful and silent, swinging her medal slowly back and forth.
Nicholas warned them that the Pymeut air-hole was not the only one.
"No," Yagorsha called down the slope; "better no play tricks withhim." He nodded towards the river as the travellers looked back. "Him no like. Him got heap plenty mouths—chew you up." And all Pymeut chuckled, delighted at their story-teller's wit.
Suddenly Muckluck broke away from the group, and ran briskly down to the river trail.
"I will pray for you—hard." She caught hold of the Boy's hand, and shook it warmly. "Sister Winifred says the Good Father—"
"Fact is, Muckluck," answered the Boy, disengaging himself with embarrassment, "my pardner here can hold up that end. Don't you think you'd better square Yukon Inua? Don't b'lieve he likes me."
And they left her, shivering in her "Holy Cross clo'es," staring after them, and sadly swinging her medal on its walrus-string.
"I don't mind sayin' I'm glad to leave Pymeut behind," said the Colonel.
"Same here."
"You're safe to get into a muss if you mix up with anything that has to do with women. That Muckluck o' yours is a minx."
"She ain't my Muckluck, and I don't believe she's a minx, not a little bit."
Not wishing to be too hard on his pardner, the Colonel added:
"I lay it all to the chaparejos myself." Then, observing his friend's marked absence of hilarity, "You're very gay in your fine fringes."
"Been a little too gay the last two or three hours."
"Well, now, I'm glad to hear you say that. I think myself we've had adventures enough right here at the start."
"I b'lieve you. But there's something in that idea o' yours. Other fellas have noticed the same tendency in chaparejos."
"Well, if the worst comes to the worst," drawled the Colonel, "we'll change breeches."
The suggestion roused no enthusiasm.
"B'lieve I'd have a cammin' influence. Yes, sir, I reckon I could keep those fringes out o' kinks."
"Oh, I think they'll go straight enough after this"; and the Boy's good spirits returned before they passed the summer village.
It came on to snow again, about six o'clock, that second day out, and continued steadily all the night. What did it matter? They were used to snow, and they were as jolly as clams at high-tide.
The Colonel called a halt in the shelter of a frozen slough, between two banks, sparsely timbered, but promising all the wood they needed, old as well as new. He made his camp fire on the snow, and the Boy soon had the beef-tea ready—always the first course so long as Liebig lasted.
Thereafter, while the bacon was frying and the tea brewing, the Colonel stuck up in the snow behind the fire some sticks on which to dry their foot-gear. When he pulled off his mucklucks his stockinged feet smoked in the frosty air. The hint was all that was needed, that first night on the trail, for the Boy to follow suit and make the change into dry things. The smoky background was presently ornamented with German socks, and Arctic socks (a kind of felt slipper), and mucklucks, each with a stick run through them to the toe, all neatly planted in a row, like monstrous products of a snow-garden. With dry feet, burning faces and chilly backs, they hugged the fire, ate supper, laughed and talked, and said that life on the trail wasn't half bad. Afterwards they rolled themselves in their blankets, and went to sleep on their spruce-bough spring mattresses spread near the fire on the snow.
After about half an hour of oblivion the Boy started up with the drowsy impression that a flying spark from the dying fire had set their stuff ablaze. No. But surely the fire had been made up again—and—he rubbed the sleep out of his incredulous eyes—yes, Muckluck was standing there!
"What in thunder!" he began. "Wh-what is it?"
"It is me."
"I can see that much. But what brings you here?"
Shivering with cold, she crouched close to the fire, dressed, as he could see now, in her native clothes again, and it was her parki that had scorched—was scorching still.
"Me—I—" Smiling, she drew a stiff hand out of its mitten and held it over the reviving blaze, glancing towards the Colonel. He seemed to be sleeping very sound, powdered over already with soft wet snow; but she whispered her next remark.
"I think I come help you find that Onge Grove."
"I think you'll do nothing of the kind." He also spoke with a deliberate lowering of the note. His great desire not to wake the Colonel gave an unintentional softness to his tone.
"You think winter bad time for squaws to travel?" She shook her head, and showed her beautiful teeth an instant in the faint light. Then, rising, half shy, but very firm, "I no wait till summer."
He was so appalled for the moment, at the thought of having her on their hands, all this way from Pymeut, on a snowy night, that words failed him. As she watched him she, too, grew grave.
"You say me nice girl."
"When did I say that?" He clutched his head in despair.
"When you first come. When Shamán make Ol' Chief all well."
"I don't remember it."
"Yes."
"I think you misunderstood me, Muckluck."
"Heh?" Her countenance fell, but more puzzled than wounded.
"That is—oh, yes—of course—you're a nice girl."
"I think—Anna, too—you like me best." She helped out the white man's bashfulness. But as her interlocutor, appalled, laid no claim to the sentiment, she lifted the mittened hand to her eyes, and from under it scanned the white face through the lightly falling snow. The other hand, still held out to the comfort of the smoke, was trembling a little, perhaps not altogether with the cold.
"The Colonel'll have to take over the breeches," said the Boy, with the air of one wandering in his head. Then, desperately: "WhatamI to do? What am I tosay?"
"Say? You say you no like girl scream, no like her fight like Anna. Heh? So, me—I come like your girls—quite, quite good.... Heh?"
"You don't understand, Muckluck. I—you see, I could never find that Orange Grove if you came along."
"Why?"
"Well—a—no woman ever goes to help to find an Orange Grove. Th-there's a law against it."
"Heh? Law?"
Alas! she knew too little to be impressed by the Majesty invoked.
"You see, women, they—they come by-and-by—when the Orange Grove's all—all ready for 'em. No manevertakes a woman on that kind of hunt."
Her saddened face was very grave. The Boy took heart.
"Now, the Pymeuts are going in a week or two, Nicholas said, to hunt caribou in the hills."
"Yes."
"But they won't take you to hunt caribou. No; they leave you at home. It's exactly the same with Orange Groves. No nice girlevergoes hunting."
Her lip trembled.
"Me—I can fish."
"Course you can." His spirits were reviving. "You can do anything—except hunt." As she lifted her head with an air of sudden protest he quashed her. "From the beginning there's been a law against that. Squaws must stay at home and let the men do the huntin'."
"Me ... I can cook"—she was crying now—"while you hunt. Good supper all ready when you come home."
He shook his head solemnly.
"Perhaps you don't know"—she flashed a moment's hope through her tears—"me learn sew up at Holy Cross. Sew up your socks for you when they open their mouths." But she could see that not even this grand new accomplishment availed.
"Can help pull sled," she suggested, looking round a little wildly as if instantly to illustrate. "Never tired," she added, sobbing, and putting her hands up to her face.
"Sh! sh! Don't wake the Colonel." He got up hastily and stood beside her at the smouldering fire. He patted her on the shoulder. "Of course you're a nice girl. The nicest girl in the Yukon"—he caught himself up as she dropped her hands from her face—"that is, you will be, if you go home quietly."
Again she hid her eyes.
Go home? How could he send her home all that way at this time of night? It was a bothering business!
Again her hands fell from the wet unhappy face. She shivered a little when she met his frowning looks, and turned away. He stooped and picked up her mitten. Why, you couldn't turn a dog away on a night like this—
Plague take the Pymeuts, root and branch! She had shuffled her feet into her snow-shoe straps, and moved off in the dimness. But for the sound of sobbing, he could not have told just where, in the softly-falling snow, Muckluck's figure was fading into the dusk. He hurried after her, conscience-stricken, but most unwilling.
"Look here," he said, when he had caught up with her, "I'm sorry you came all this way in the cold—very sorry." Her sobs burst out afresh, and louder now, away from the Colonel's restraining presence. "But, see here: I can't send you off like this. You might die on the trail."
"Yes, I think me die," she agreed.
"No, don't do that. Come back, and we'll tell the Colonel you're going to stay by the fire till morning, and then go home."
She walked steadily on. "No, I go now."
"But you can't, Muckluck. You can't find the trail."
"I tell you before, I not like your girls. I can go in winter as good as summer. Icanhunt!" She turned on him fiercely. "Once I hunt a owel. Ketch him, too!" She sniffed back her tears. "I can do all kinds."
"No, you can't hunt Orange Groves," he said, with a severity that might seem excessive. "But I can't let you go off in this snowstorm—"
"He soon stop. Goo'-bye."
Never word of sweeter import in his ears than that. But he was far from satisfied with his conduct all the same. It was quite possible that the Pymeuts, discovering her absence, would think he had lured her away, and there might be complications. So it was with small fervour that he said: "Muckluck, I wish you'd come back and wait till morning."
"No, I go now." She was in the act of darting forward on those snow-shoes, that she used so skillfully, when some sudden thought cried halt. She even stopped crying. "I no like go near blow-hole by night. I keep to trail—"
"But how the devil do you do it?"
She paid no heed to the interruption, seeming busy in taking something over her head from round her neck.
"To-morrow," she said, lowering her tear-harshened voice, "you find blow-hole. You give this to Yukon Inua—say I send it. He will not hate you any more." She burst into a fresh flood of tears. In a moment the dim sight of her, the faint trail of crying left in her wake, had so wholly vanished that, but for the bit of string, as it seemed to be, left in his half-frozen hands, he could almost have convinced himself he had dreamt the unwelcome visit.
The half-shut eye of the camp fire gleamed cheerfully, as he ran back, and crouched down where poor little Muckluck had knelt, so sure of a welcome. Muckluck, cogitated the Boy, will believe more firmly than ever that, if a man doesn't beat a girl, he doesn't mean business. What was it he had wound round one hand? What was it dangling in the acrid smoke?That, then—her trinket, the crowning ornament of her Holy Cross holiday attire, that was what she was offering the old ogre of the Yukon—for his unworthy sake. He stirred up the dying fire to see it better. A woman's face—some Catholic saint? He held the medal lower to catch the fitful blaze. "D. G. Autocratrix Russorum." The Great Katharine! Only a little crown on her high-rolled hair, and her splendid chest all uncovered to the Arctic cold.
Her Yukon subjects must have wondered that she wore no parki—this lady who had claimed sole right to all the finest sables found in her new American dominions. On the other side of the medal, Minerva, with a Gorgon-furnished shield and a beautiful bone-tipped harpoon, as it looked, with a throwing-stick and all complete. But she, too, would strike the Yukon eye as lamentably chilly about the legs. How had these ladies out of Russia and Olympus come to lodge in Ol' Chief's ighloo? Had Glovotsky won this guerdon at Great Katharine's hands? Had he brought it on that last long journey of his to Russian America, and left it to his Pymeut children with his bones? Well, Yukon Inua should not have it yet. The Boy thrust the medal into a pocket of his chaparejos, and crawled into his snow-covered bed.
HOLY CROSS
HOLY CROSS
"Raise the stone, and ye shall find me; cleave the wood, and there am I."
The stars were shining frostily, in a clear sky, when the Boy crawled out from under his snow-drift in the morning. He built up the fire, quaking in the bitter air, and bustled the breakfast.
"You seem to be in something of a hurry," said the Colonel, with a yawn stifled in a shiver.
"We haven't come on this trip to lie abed in the morning," his pardner returned with some solemnity. "I don't care how soon I begin caperin' ahead with that load again."
"Well, it'll be warmin', anyway," returned the Colonel, "and I can't say as much for your fire."
It was luck that the first forty miles of the trail had already been traversed by the Boy. He kept recognising this and that in the landscape, with an effect of good cheer on both of them. It postponed a little the realization of their daring in launching themselves upon the Arctic waste, without a guide or even a map that was of the smallest use.
Half an hour after setting off, they struck into the portage. Even with a snow-blurred trail, the Boy's vivid remembrance of the other journey gave them the sustaining sense that they were going right. The Colonel was working off the surprising stiffness with which he had wakened, and they were both warm now; but the Colonel's footsoreness was considerable, an affliction, besides, bound to be worse before it was better.
The Boy spoke with the old-timer's superiority, of his own experience, and was so puffed up, at the bare thought of having hardened his feet, that he concealed without a qualm the fact of a brand-new blister on his heel. A mere nothing that, not worth mentioning to anyone who remembered the state he was in at the end of that awful journey of penitence.
It was well on in the afternoon before it began to snow again, and they had reached the frozen lake. The days were lengthening, and they still had good light by which to find the well-beaten trail on the other side.
"Now in a minute we'll hear the mission dogs. What did I tell you?" Out of the little wood, a couple of teams were coming, at a good round pace. They were pulled up at the waterhole, and the mission natives ran on to meet the new arrivals. They recognised the Boy, and insisted on making the Colonel, who was walking very lame, ride to the mission in the strongest sled, and they took turns helping the dogs by pushing from behind. The snow was falling heavily again, and one of the Indians, Henry, looking up with squinted eyes, said, "There'll be nothing left of that walrus-tusk."
"Hey?" inquired the Boy, straining at his sled-rope and bending before the blast. "What's that?"
"Don't you know what makes snow?" said Henry.
"No. What does?"
"Ivory whittlings. When they get to their carving up yonder then we have snow."
What was happening to the Colonel?
The mere physical comfort of riding, instead of serving as packhorse, great as it was, not even that could so instantly spirit away the weariness, and light up the curious, solemn radiance that shone on the Colonel's face. It struck the Boy that good old Kentucky would look like that when he met his dearest at the Gate of Heaven—if there was such a place.
The Colonel was aware of the sidelong wonder of his comrade's glance, for the sleds, abreast, had come to a momentary halt. But still he stared in front of him, just as a sailor in a storm dares not look away from the beacon-light an instant, knowing all the waste about him abounds in rocks and eddies and in death, and all the world of hope and safe returning is narrowed to that little point of light.
After the moment's speculation the Boy turned his eyes to follow the Colonel's gaze into space.
"The Cross! the Cross!" said the man on the sled. "Don't you see it?"
"Oh, that? Yes."
At the Boy's tone the Colonel, for the first time, turned his eyes away from the Great White Symbol.
"Don't know what you're made of, if, seeing that... you needn't be a Church member, but only a man, I should think, to—to—" He blew out his breath in impotent clouds, and then went on. "We Americans think a good deal o' the Stars and Stripes, but that up yonder—that's the mightier symbol."
"Huh!" says the Boy. "Stars and Stripes tell of an ideal of united states. That up there tells of an ideal of United Mankind. It's the great Brotherhood Mark. There isn't any other standard that men would follow just to build a hospice in a place like this."
At an upper window, in a building on the far side of the white symbol, the travellers caught a glimpse, through the slanting snow, of one of the Sisters of St. Ann shutting in the bright light with thick curtains.
"Glass!"ejaculated the Colonel.
One of the Indians had run on to announce them, and as they drew up at the door—that the Boy remembered as a frame for Brother Paul, with his lamp, to search out iniquity, and his face of denunciation—out came Father Brachet, brisk, almost running, his two hands outstretched, his face a network of welcoming wrinkles. No long waiting, this time, in the reception-room. Straight upstairs to hot baths and mild, reviving drinks, and then, refreshed and already rested, down to supper.
With a shade of anxiety the Boy looked about for Brother Paul. But Father Wills was here anyhow, and the Boy greeted him, joyfully, as a tried friend and a man to be depended on. There was Brother Etienne, and there were two strange faces.
Father Brachet put the Colonel on his right and the Boy on his left, introducing: "Fazzer Richmond, my predecessor as ze head of all ze Alaskan missions," calmly eliminating Greek, Episcopalian, and other heretic establishments. "Fazzer Richmond you must have heard much of. He is ze great ausority up here. He is now ze Travelling Priest. You can ask him all. He knows everysing."
In no wise abashed by this flourish, Father Richmond shook hands with the Big Chimney men, smiling, and with a pleasant ease that communicated itself to the entire company.
It was instantly manifest that the scene of this Jesuit's labours had not been chiefly, or long, beyond the borders of civilization. In the plain bare room where, for all its hospitality and good cheer, reigned an air of rude simplicity and austerity of life—into this somewhat rarefied atmosphere Father Richmond brought a whiff from another world. As he greeted the two strangers, and said simply that he had just arrived, himself, by way of the Anvik portage, the Colonel felt that he must have meant from New York or from Paris instead of the words he added, "from St. Michael's."
He claimed instant kinship with the Colonel on the strength of their both being Southerners.
"I'm a Baltimore man," he said, with an accent no Marylander can purge of pride.
"How long since you've been home?"
"Oh, I go back every year."
"He goes all over ze world, to tell ze people—"
"—something of the work being done here by Father Brachet—and all of them." He included the other priests and lay-brothers in a slight circular movement of the grizzled head.
And to collect funds! the Colonel rightly divined, little guessing how triumphantly he achieved that end.
"Alaska is so remote," said the Travelling Priest, as if in apology for popular ignorance, "and people think of it so... inadequately, shall we say? In trying to explain the conditions up here, I have my chief difficulty in making them realise the great distances we have to cover. You tell them that in the Indian tongue Alaska means "the great country," they smile, and think condescendingly of savage imagery. It is vain to say we have an area of six hundred thousand square miles. We talk much in these days of education; but few men and no women can count! Our Eastern friends get some idea of what we mean, when we tell them Alaska is bigger than all the Atlantic States from Maine to Louisiana with half of great Texas thrown in. With a coast-line of twenty six thousand miles, this Alaska of ours turns to the sea a greater frontage than all the shores of all the United States combined. It extends so far out towards Asia that it carries the dominions of the Great Republic as far west of San Francisco as New York is east of it, making California a central state. I try to give Europeans some idea of it by saying that if you add England, Ireland, and Scotland together, and to that add France, and to that add Italy, you still lack enough to make a country the size of Alaska. I do not speak of our mountains, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen thousand feet high, and our Yukon, flowing for more than two thousand miles through a country almost virgin still."
"You travel about up here a good deal?"
"He travelsallze time. He will not rest," said Father Brachet as one airing an ancient grievance.
"Yes, I will rest now—a little. I have been eight hundred miles over the ice, with dogs, since January 1."
The Boy looked at him with something very like reverence. Here was a man who could give you tips!
"You have travelled abroad, too," the Colonel rather stated than asked.
"I spent a good deal of my youth in France and Germany."
"Educated over there?"
"Well, I am a Johns Hopkins man, but I may say I found my education in Rome. Speaking of education"—he turned to the other priests—"I have greatly advanced my grammar since we parted." Father Brachet answered with animation in French, and the conversation went forward for some minutes in that tongue. The discussion was interrupted to introduce the other new face, at the bottom of the table, to the Big Chimney men: "Resident Fazzer Roget of ze Kuskoquim mission."
"That is the best man on snow-shoes in Central Alaska," said Father Richmond low to the Colonel, nodding at the Kuskoquim priest.
"And he knows more of two of ze native dialects here zan anyone else," added the Father Superior.
"You must forgive our speaking much of the Indian tongues," said Father Richmond. "We are all making dictionaries and grammars; we have still to translate much of our religious instruction, and the great variety in dialect of the scattered tribes keeps us busy with linguistic studies."
"Tomorrow you must see our schools," said Father Brachet.
But the Boy answered quickly that they could not afford the time. He was surprised at the Colonel's silence; but the Boy didn't know what the Colonel's feet felt like.
Kentucky ain't sorry, he said to himself, to have a back to his chair, and to eat off china again. Kentucky's a voluptuary! I'll have to drag him away by main force; and the Boy allowed Father Richmond to help him yet more abundantly to the potatoes and cabbage grown last summer in the mission garden!
It was especially the vegetables that lent an element of luxury to the simple meal. The warm room, the excellent food, better cooked than any they had had for seven months, produced a gentle somnolence. The thought of the inviting look of the white-covered bed upstairs lay like a balm on the spirits of men not born to roughing it. As the travellers said an early and grateful good-night, the Boy added sleepily something about the start at dawn.
Father Brachet answered, "Morning will bring counsel, my son. I sink ze bleezzar-r will not let us lose you so soon."
They overslept themselves, and they knew it, in that way the would-be early riser does, before ever he looks into the accusing face of his watch. The Boy leapt out of bed.
"Hear that?" The wind was booming among the settlement buildings. "Sounds as if there was weather outside." A glance between the curtains showed the great gale at its height. The snow blew level in sheets and darkened the air.
"Well," said the Colonel, splashing mightily in the ice-cold water, "I don't know as I mind giving my feet twenty-four hours' time to come to their senses."
A hurried toilet and they went downstairs, sharp-set for breakfast after the long, refreshing sleep.
Father Richmond was writing on his knee by the stove in the reception-room.
"Good-morning—good-morning." He rang the bell.
"Well, what did we tell you? I don't think you'll get far today. Let these gentlemen know when breakfast is ready," he said, as Christopher put his head in. He looked at his watch. "I hope you will find everything you need," he said; and, continuing to talk about the gale and some damage it had done to one of the outbuildings, he went into the entry, just beyond the reception-room door, and began to put on his furs.
"You arenot going out in such weather!" the Colonel called after him incredulously.
"Only as far as the church."
"Oh, is there church today?" inquired the Boy more cheerfully than one might expect.
The Colonel started and made a signal for discretion.
"Blest if it isn't Sunday!" he said under his breath.
"He doesn't seem dead-set on our observing it," whispered the Boy.
The Colonel warmed himself luxuriously at the stove, and seemed to listen for that summons from the entry that never came. Was Father Richmond out there still, or had he gone?
"Do they think we are heathens because we are not Jesuits?" he said under his breath, suddenly throwing out his great chest.
"Perhaps we ought to... Hey? They've been awfully considerate ofus—"
The Colonel went to the door. Father Richmond was struggling with his snow-boots.
"With your permission, sir," says the Colonel in his most magnificent manner, "we will accompany you, or follow if you are in haste."
"With all my heart. Come," said the priest, "if you will wait and breakfast with us after Mass."
It was agreed, and the immediate order was countermanded. The sound of a bell came, muffled, through the storm.
With thoughts turning reluctantly from breakfast, "What's that?" asked the Boy.
"That is our church bell." The Father had helped the Colonel to find his parki.
"Oh—a—of course—"
"A fine tone, don't you think? But you can't tell so well in this storm. We are fond of our bell. It is the first that ever rang out in the Yukon valley. Listen!"
They stood still a moment before opening the front door. The Boy, seeing the very look of a certain high-shouldered gray stone "St. Andrew's" far away, and himself trotting along beside that figure, inseparable from first memories, was dimly aware again, as he stood at the Jesuit's door, in these different days, of the old Sunday feeling invading, permeating his consciousness, half reluctant, half amused.
The Colonel sat in a rural church and looked at the averted face of a woman.
Only to the priest was the sound all music.
"That language," he said, "speaks to men whatever tongue they call their own. The natives hear it for miles up the river, and down the river, and over the white hills, and far across the tundra. They come many miles to Mass—"
He opened the door, and the gale rushed in.
"I do not mean on days like this," he wound up, smiling, and out they went into the whirling snow.
The church was a building of logs like the others, except that it was of one story. Father Brachet was already there, with Father Wills and Brother Etienne; and, after a moment, in came Brother Paul, looking more waxen and aloof than ever, at the head of the school, the rear brought up by Brother Vincent and Henry.
In a moment the little Mother Superior appeared, followed by two nuns, heading a procession of native women and girls. They took their places on the other side of the church and bowed their heads.
"Beautiful creature!" ejaculated the Colonel under his breath, glancing back.
His companion turned his head sharply just in time to see Sister Winifred come last into the church, holding by either hand a little child. Both men watched her as she knelt down. Between the children's sallow, screwed-up, squinting little visages the calm, unconscious face of the nun shone white like a flower.
The strangers glanced discreetly about the rude little church, with its pictures and its modest attempt at stained glass.
"No wonder all this impresses the ignorant native," whispered the Colonel, catching himself up suddenly from sharing in that weakness.
Without, the wild March storm swept the white world; within another climate reigned—something of summer and the far-off South, of Italy herself, transplanted to this little island of civilisation anchored in the Northern waste.
"S'pose you've seen all the big cathedrals, eh?"
"Good many."
There was still a subdued rustling in the church, and outside, still the clanging bell contended with the storm.
"And this—makes you smile?"
"N—no," returned the older man with a kind of reluctance. "I've seen many a worse church; America's full of 'em."
"Hey?"
"So far as—dignity goes—" The Colonel was wrestling with some vague impression difficult for him to formulate. "You see, you can't build anything with wood that's better than a log-cabin. For looks—justlooks—it beats all your fancy gimcracks, even brick; beats everything else hollow, except stone. Then they've got candles. We went on last night about the luxury of oil-lamps. They don't bring 'em in here!"
"Wedo in our prairie and Southern country churches."
"I know. But look at those altar lights." The Boy was too busy looking at Sister Winifred. "I tell you, sir, a man never made a finer thing than a tall wax candle."
"Sh! Mustn't talk in church."
The Colonel stared a moment at the Boy's presumption, drew himself up a little pompously, and crossed his arms over his huge chest.
"Why, they've got an organ!" The Boy forgot his strict views on church etiquette as the sudden sweetness swelled in the air. Brother Paul, with head thrown back and white face lifted, was playing, slowly, absently, like one who listens to some great choir invisible, and keeps their time with a few obedient but unnecessary chords. And yet—
"The fella can play," the Colonel admitted.
The native choir, composed entirely of little dark-faced boys, sang their way truly through the service, Father Brachet celebrating Mass.
"Brother Paul's ill, isn't he? Look!" The lay-brother had swayed, and drooped forward over the keyboard, but his choir sang steadily on. He recovered himself, and beckoned one of the boys to his side. When he rose, the child nodded and took the organist's place, playing quite creditably to the end. Brother Paul sat in the corner with bowed head.
Coming out, they were in time to confront Sister Winifred, holding back the youngest children, eager to anticipate their proper places in the procession.
The Boy looked fixedly at her, wondering. Suddenly meeting The clear eyes, he smiled, and then shrank inwardly at his forwardness. He could not tell if she remembered him.
The Colonel, finding himself next her at the door, bowed, and stood back for her to pass.
"No," she said gently; "my little children must wait for the older ones."
"You have them under good discipline, madam." He laid his hand on the furry shoulder of the smallest.
The Boy stood behind the Colonel, unaccountably shy in the presence of the only white woman he had seen in nearly seven months. She couldn't be any older than he, and yet she was a nun. What a gulf opened at the word! Sister Winifred and her charges fell into rank at the tail of the little procession, and vanished in the falling snow. At breakfast the Colonel would not sit down till he was presented to Brother Paul.
"Sir," he said in his florid but entirely sincere fashion, "I should like to thank you for the pleasure of hearing that music to-day. We were much impressed, sir, by the singing. How old is the boy who played the organ?"
"Ten," said Brother Paul, and for the first time the Boy saw him smile. "Yes, I think he has music in him, our little Jerome."
"And how wellallyour choir has the service by heart! Their unison is perfect."
"Yes," said Father Brachet from the head of the table, "our music has never been so good as since Paul came among us." He lifted his hand, and every one bowed his head.
After grace Father Richmond took the floor, conversationally, as seemed to be his wont, and breakfast went on, as supper had the night before, to the accompaniment of his shrewd observations and lively anecdotes. In the midst of all the laughter and good cheer Brother Paul sat at the end of the board, eating absently, saying nothing, and no one speaking to him.
Father Richmond especially, but, indeed, all of them, seemed arrant worldlings beside the youngest of the lay-brethren. The Colonel could more easily imagine Father Richmond walking the streets of Paris or of Rome, than "hitting the Yukon trail." He marvelled afresh at the devotion that brought such a man to wear out his fine attainments, his scholarship, his energy, his wide and Catholic knowledge, in travelling winter after winter, hundreds of miles over the ice from one Indian village to another. You could not divorce Father Richmond in your mind from the larger world outside; he spoke with its accent, he looked with his humourous, experienced eyes. You found it natural to think of him in very human relations. You wondered about his people, and what brought him to this.
Not so with Brother Paul. He was one of those who suggest no country upon any printed map. You have to be reminded that you do not know his birthplace or his history. It was this same Brother Paul who, after breakfast and despite the Pymeut incident, offered to show the gold-seekers over the school. The big recitation-room was full of natives and decidedly stuffy. They did not stay long. Upstairs, "I sleep here in the dormitory," said the Brother, "and I live with the pupils—as much as I can. I often eat with them," he added as one who mounts a climax. "They have to be taughteverything, and they have to be taught it over again every day."
"Except music, apparently."
"Except music—and games. Brother Vincent teaches them football and baseball, and plays with them and works with them. Part of each day is devoted to manual training and to sport."
He led the way to the workshop.
"One of our brothers is a carpenter and master mechanic."
He called to a pupil passing the door, and told him the strangers would like to inspect the school work. Very proudly the lad obeyed. He himself was a carpenter, and showed his half-finished table. The Boy's eye fell on a sled.
"Yes," said the lad, "that kind better. Your kind no good." He had evidently made intimate acquaintance with the Boy's masterpiece.
"Yours is splendid," admitted the unskilled workman.
"Will you sell it?" the Colonel asked Brother Paul.
"They make them to sell," was the answer, and the transaction was soon effected.
"It has stopped snowing and ze wind is fallen," said Father Brachet, going to the reception-room window an hour or so after they had come in from dinner.
The Colonel exchanged looks with the Boy, and drew out his watch.
"Later than I thought."
"Much," the Colonel agreed, and sat considering, watch in hand.
"I sink our friends must see now ze girls' school, and ze laundry, hein?"
"To be sure," agreed Father Richmond. "I will take you over and give you into the hands of our Mother Superior."
"Why, it's much warmer," said the Boy as they went by the cross; and Father Richmond greeted the half-dozen native boys, who were packing down the fresh snow under their broad shoes, laughing and shouting to one another as they made anew the familiar mission trails.
The door of the two-story house, on the opposite side of the settlement, was opened by Sister Winifred.
"Friends of ours from the White Camp below."
She acknowledged the nameless introduction, smiling; but at the request that followed, "Ah, it is too bad that just to-day—the Mother Superior—she is too faint and weak to go about. Will you see her, Father?"
"Yes, if you will show these strangers the school and laundry and—"
"Oh, yes, I will show them."
She led the way into the cheerful schoolroom, where big girls and little girls were sitting about, amusing themselves in the quiet of a long Sunday afternoon. Several of the younger children ran to her as she came in, and stood holding fast to the folds of her black habit, staring up at the strangers, while she explained the kind of instruction given, the system, and the order reigning in each department. Finally, she persuaded a little girl, only six years old, to take her dusky face out of the long flowing veil of the nun, and show how quickly she could read a sentence that Sister Winifred wrote on the blackboard. Then others were called on, and gave examples of their accomplishments in easy arithmetic and spelling. The children must have been very much bored with themselves that stormy Sunday, for they entered into the examination with a quite unnatural zest.
Two of the elder girls recited, and some specimens of penmanship and composition were shown. The delicate complexion of the little nun flushed to a pretty wild-rose pink as these pupils of hers won the Colonel's old fashioned compliments.
"And they are taught most particularly of all," she hastened to say, "cooking, housekeeping, and sewing."
Whereupon specimens of needlework were brought out and cast like pearls before the swine's eyes of the ignorant men. But they were impressed in their benighted way, and said so.
"And we teach them laundry-work." She led the way, with the children trooping after, to the washhouse. "No, run back. You'll take cold. Run back, and you shall sing for the strangers before they go."
She smiled them away—a happy-faced, clean little throng, striking contrast to the neglected, filthy children seen in the native villages. As they were going into the laundry, Father Richmond came out of the house, and stopped to point out to the Colonel a snow-covered enclosure—"the Sisters' garden"—and he told how marvellously, in the brief summer, some of the hardier vegetables flourished there.
"They spring up like magic at the edge of the snow-drifts, and they do not rest from their growing all night. If the time is short, they have twice as much sunlight as with you. They drink it in the whole summer night as well as all the day. And over here is the Fathers' garden." Talking still, he led the way towards a larger enclosure on the other side of the Cross.
Sister Winifred paused a moment, and then, as they did not turn back, and the Boy stood waiting, she took him into the drying-room and into the ironing-room, and then returned to the betubbed apartment first invaded. There was only one blot on the fairness of that model laundry—a heap of torn and dirty canvas in the middle of the floor.
The Boy vaguely thought it looked familiar, before the Sister, blushing faintly, said: "We hope you won't go before we have time to repair it."
"Why, it's our old sled-cover!"
"Yes; it is very much cut and torn. But you do not go at once?"
"Yes, to-morrow."
"Oh! Father Brachet thought you would stay for a few days, at least."
"We have no time."
"You go, like the rest, for gold?"
"Like the rest."
"But you came before to help poor Nicholas out of his trouble."
"He was quite able to help himself, as it turned out."
"Why will you go so far, and at such risk?" she said, with a suddenness that startled them both.
"I—I—well, I think I go chiefly because I want to get my home back. I lost my home when I was a little chap. Where is your home?"
"Here."
"How long have you been here?"
"Nearly two years."
"Then how can you call it home?"
"I do that only that I may—speak your language. Of course, it is not my real home."
"Where is the real home?"
"I hope it is in heaven," she said, with a simplicity that took away all taint of cant or mere phrase-making.
"But where do you come from?"
"I come from Montreal."
"Oh! and don't you ever go back to visit your people?"
"No, I never go back."
"But you will some time?"
"No; I shall never go back."
"Don't youwantto?"
She dropped her eyes, but very steadfastly she said:
"My work is here."
"But you are young, and you may live a great, great many years."
She nodded, and looked out of the open door. The Colonel and the Travelling Priest were walking in Indian file the new-made, hard-packed path.
"Yes," she said in a level voice, "I shall grow old here, and here I shall be buried."
"I shall never understand it. I have such a longing for my home. I came here ready to bear anything that I might be able to get it back."
She looked at him steadily and gravely.
"I may be wrong, but I doubt if you would be satisfied even if you got it back—now."
"What makes you think that?" he said sharply.
"Because"—and she checked herself as if on the verge of something too personal—"you can never get back a thing you've lost. When the old thing is there again, you are not as you were when you lost it, and the change in you makes the old thing new—and strange."
"Oh, it's plain I am very different from you," but he said it with a kind of uneasy defiance. "Besides, in any case, I shall do it for my sister's sake."
"Oh, you have a sister?"
He nodded.
"How long since you left her?"
"It's a good while now."
"Perhaps your sister won't want that particular home any more than you when you two meet again." Then, seeming not to notice the shade on her companion's face: "I promised my children they should sing for you. Do you mind? Will your friend come in, too?" And, looking from the door after the Colonel and the Father as they turned to rejoin them: "He is odd, that big friend of yours," she said—quite like a human being, as the Boy thought instantly.
"He's not odd, I assure you."
"He called me 'madam.'" She spoke with a charming piqued childishness.
"You see, he didn't know your name. What is your name?"
"Sister Winifred."
"But your real name?" he said, with the American's insistence on his own point of view.
"That is my only name," she answered with dignity, and led the way back into the schoolroom. Another, older, nun was there, and when the others rejoined them they made the girls sing.
"Now we have shown you enough," said Father Richmond, rising; "boasted to you enough of the very little we are able to accomplish here. We must save something for to-morrow."
"Ah, to-morrow we take to the trail again," said the Colonel, and added his "Good-bye, madam."
Sister Winifred, seeing he expected it, gave him her hand.
"Good-bye, and thank you for coming."
"For your poor," he said shyly, as he turned away and left a gift in her palm.
"Thank you for showing us all this," the Boy said, lingering, but not daring to shake hands. "It—it seems very wonderful. I had no idea a mission meant all this."
"Oh, it means more—more than anything you cansee."
"Good-bye."
"Good-bye."
In the early evening the reception-room was invaded by the lads' school for their usual Sunday night entertainment. Very proudly these boys and young men sang their glees and choruses, played the fiddle, recited, even danced.
"Pity Mac isn't here!"
"Awful pity. Sunday, too."
Brother Etienne sang some French military songs, and it came out that he had served in the French army. Father Roget sang, also in French, explaining himself with a humourous skill in pantomime that set the room in a roar.
"Well," said the Colonel when he stood up to say good-night, "I haven't enjoyed an evening so much for years."
"It is very early still," said Father Brachet, wrinkling up his face in a smile.
"Ah, but we have to make such an early start."
The Colonel went up to bed, leaving the Boy to go to Father Richmond's room to look at his Grammar of the Indian language.
The instant the door was shut, the priest set down the lamp, and laid his hands on the young man's shoulders.
"My son, you must not go on this mad journey."
"I must, you know."
"You mustnot. Sit there." He pushed him into a chair. "Let me tell you. I do not speak as the ignorant. I have in my day travelled many hundreds of miles on the ice; but I've done it in the season when the trail's at its best, with dogs, my son, and with tried native servants."
"I know it is pleasanter that way, but—"
"Pleasanter? It is the way to keep alive."
"But the Indians travel with hand-sleds."
"For short distances, yes, and they are inured to the climate. You? You know nothing of what lies before you."
"But we'll find out as other people have." The Boy smiled confidently.
"I assure you, my son, it is madness, this thing you are trying to do. The chances of either of you coming out alive, are one in fifty. In fifty, did I say? In five hundred."
"I don't think so, Father. We don't mean to travel when—"
"But you'll have to travel. To stay in such places as you'll find yourself in will be to starve. Or if by any miracle you escape the worst effects of cold and hunger, you'll get caught in the ice in the spring break-up, and go down to destruction on a floe. You've no conception what it's like. If you were six weeks earlier, or six weeks later, I would hold my peace."
The Boy looked at the priest and then away.Wasit going to be so bad? Would they leave their bones on the ice? Would they go washing by the mission in the great spring flood, that all men spoke of with the same grave look? He had a sudden vision of the torrent as it would be in June. Among the whirling ice-masses that swept by—two bodies, swollen, unrecognisable. One gigantic, one dressed gaily in chaparejos. And neither would lift his head, but, like men bent grimly upon some great errand, they would hurry on, past the tall white cross with never a sign—on, on to the sea.
"Be persuaded, my son."
Dimly the Boy knew he was even now borne along upon a current equally irresistible, this one setting northward, as that other back to the south. He found himself shaking his head under the Jesuit's remonstrant eyes.
"We've lost so much time already. We couldn't possibly turn back—now."
"Then here's my Grammar." With an almost comic change of tone and manner the priest turned to the table where the lamp stood, among piles of neatly tied-up and docketed papers.
He undid one of the packets, with an ear on the sudden sounds outside in the passage.
"Brother Paul's got it in the schoolhouse."
Brother Paul! He hadn't been at the entertainment, and no one seemed to have missed him.
"How did Sister Winifred know?" asked another voice.
"Old Maria told her."
Father Richmond got up and opened the door.
"What is it?"
"It's a new-born Indian baby." The Father looked down as if it might be on the threshold. "Brother Paul found it below at the village all done up ready to be abandoned."
"Tell Sister Winifred I'll see about it in the morning."
"She says—pardon me, Father—she says that is like a man. If I do not bring the little Indian in twenty minutes she will come herself and get it."
Father Richmond laughed.
"Good-night, my son"; and he went downstairs with the others.
"Colonel, you asleep?" the Boy asked softly.
"No."
He struggled in silence with his mucklucks. Presently, "Isn't it frightfully strange," he mused aloud. "Doesn't it pull a fella up by the roots, somehow, to see Americans on this old track?"
The Colonel had the bedclothes drawn up to his eyes. Under the white quilt he made some undistinguishable sound, but he kept his eyes fastened on his pardner.
"Everything that we Americans have done, everything that we are, is achieved by the grace of goin' bang the other way." The Boy pulled off a muckluck and threw it half across the room. "And yet, and yet—"
He sat with one stocking-foot in his hand and stared at the candle.
"I wonder, Colonel, if itsatisfiesanybody to be a hustler and a millionaire."
"Satisfies?" echoed the Colonel, pushing his chin over the bed-clothes. "Who expects to be satisfied?"
"Why, every man, woman and child on the top o' the earth; and it just strikes me I've never, personally, known anybody get there but these fellas at Holy Cross."
The Colonel pushed back the bedclothes a little farther with his chin.
"Haven't you got the gumption to see why it is this place and these men take such a hold on you? It's because you've eaten, slept, and lived for half a year in a space the size of this bedroom. We've got so used to narrowing life down, that the first result of a little larger outlook is to make us dizzy. Now, you hurry up and get to bed. You'll sleep it off."
The Boy woke at four o'clock, and after the match-light, by which he consulted his watch, had flickered out, he lay a long time staring at the dark.
Silence still reigned supreme, when at last he got up, washed and dressed, and went downstairs. An irresistible restlessness had seized hold of him.
He pulled on his furs, cautiously opened the door, and went out—down, over the crisp new crust, to the river and back in the dimness, past the Fathers' House to the settlement behind, then to the right towards the hillside. As he stumbled up the slope he came to a little burial-ground. Half hidden in the snow, white wooden crosses marked the graves. "And here I shall be buried," she had said—"here." He came down the hill and round by the Sisters' House.
That window! That was where a light had shone the evening they arrived, and a nun—Sister Winifred—had stood drawing the thick curtains, shutting out the world.
He thought, in the intense stillness, that he heard sounds from that upper room. Yes, surely an infant's cry.
A curious, heavy-hearted feeling came upon him, as he turned away, and went slowly back towards the other house.
He halted a moment under the Cross, and stared up at it. The door of the Fathers' House opened, and the Travelling Priest stood on the threshold. The Boy went over to him, nodding good-morning.
"So you are all ready—eager to go from us?"
"No; but, you see—"
"I see."
He held the door open, and the Boy went in.
"I don't believe the Colonel's awake yet," he said, as he took off his furs. "I'll just run up and rouse him."
"It is very early"—the priest laid his hand on the young man's arm—"and he will not sleep so well for many a night to come. It is an hour till breakfast."
Henry had lit the fire, and now left it roaring. The priest took a chair, and pushed one forward for his guest.
The Boy sat down, stretched his legs out straight towards the fire, and lifting his hands, clasped them behind his head. The priest read the homesick face like a book.
"Why are you up here?" Before there was time for reply he added: "Surely a young man like you could find, nearer home, many a gate ajar. And you must have had glimpses through of—things many and fair."
"Oh, yes, I've had glimpses of those things."
"Well——"
"What I wanted most I never saw."
"You wanted——"
"To be—sure."
"Ah! it is one of the results of agnosticism."
The Boy never saw the smile.
"I've said—and I was not lying—that I came away to shorten the business of fortune-making—to buy back an old place we love, my sister and I; but——"
"Which does she love best, the old place or the young brother?"
"Oh, she cares about me—no doubt o' that." He smiled the smile of faith.
"Has she ... an understanding heart?"
"The most I know."
"Then she would be glad to know you had found a home for the spirit. A home for the body, what does it matter?"
In the pause, Father Brachet opened the door, but seemed suddenly to remember some imperative call elsewhere. The Boy jumped up, but the Superior had vanished without even "Good-morning." The Boy sat down again.