In that homage Douglas joined for a moment shivering with cold, then dived for his morning bath in the Columbia.
Near by, at the jetty, a crew of five voyageurs, the hoods of their blanket capotes like the cowls of monks, were urging a prisoner into their birch canoe. As he flatly refused to enter they gabbled like squattering sea fowl in shrill French, until the patron Louis le Grandeur bade them desist. "Laissez, mes enfants! Restez! Cet animal!" He shook his fist in Bill's face. "And how you t'ink we mak' ze bre'kfas' if we no depart—hein? Sacré, mojee, batteme, goddam pig!"
He turned about and saw Black Douglas climb dripping up the bank, all glowing from the sting of the crisp tide.
"V'la!" He ran to the big chief. "Bo'jour, M'sieu Dougla!" He saluted. "Sare—zees animal prisonnier Beel——"
"Good morning, le Grandeur. Ready to start, eh?"
"—'e say he no coom!"
Bill shouldered him aside, presenting shackled hands.
"Don't like the handcuffs, eh?" said Mr. Douglas cheerily, grooming his back with the bath towel.
"Called me an animal!" cried Bill, exasperated, raging at fresh indignities. Yet somehow this man, twice his size and many times as strong, this Justice of the Peace, this leader born to command, who looked down at him smiling, indulgent, did make him feel like one of the lower animals content to obey, to trust, to do his bidding.
"You and I," said Douglas, "are being watched. There's your late commanding officer watching from the poop, and no doubt His Holiness the Chaplain is peeping somewhere from behind a house. The handcuffs look impressive."
"I see," said Bill, quite humbled.
"Look up the valley," said Douglas. "See a point of standing forest yonder?"
The headland was black against the sunblaze.
"Behind that point," said Douglas, "le Grandeur will release you."
"Yes, sure!" broke in le Grandeur, "and ze fusil!"
"The gun," Douglas translated, "and everything your shipmates gave you is in that canoe. You are free. You can run away, and my voyageurs will not shoot. They have my orders."
"You mean that, sir?"
"Yes. But will you take advice from an old frontiersman? I know you're too sensible a lad to run away and starve in the bush with a gun you can't use, in swamps you cannot cross. These good voyageurs will teach you how to hunt, and if you can feed the crew it stands to reason you wouldn't starve alone."
"Then I run away, sir?"
"I wouldn't. Inland the tribes are dangerous, unless you know their ways. Run by all means, but, if you want to live, go with these men to the point where the River of the Kutenais falls into Flatbow Lake. There you will find my old friend the Russian, Nicolai Tschirikoff."
"I've heard that name, sir, somewhere, Fatbald Tschirikov."
"That's curious, for the doctor and myself are the only men here in Oregon who know him by that name, or call him Fatbald."
"I must ha' dreamed it."
"Maybe. Anyway"—Douglas picked up his blanket and wrapped it about him like a Roman toga—"he'll make a man of you, hunter, trapper, able to hold your own among the tribes."
"Gawd bless you, sir."
"But, lad, remember that you've run away, and as a Justice of the Peace I'm after you, to catch you if I can, and ship you to England, to be hanged because your worthy father killed your mother. Don't let me catch you, Bill.
"Now, march off looking just as if I had sent you to the gallows."
"Mayn't I shake 'ands, sir?"
The magistrate shook his head, and as Bill turned to go assisted him on his way with a bare foot. At that Bill was indignant.
Still Black Douglas stood on the river bank, until the prisoner had boarded the canoe, and the voyageurs shoved off. They came upstream saluting as they passed, then the swing and flash and glitter of their paddles took time from the voyageur chantey:
Allouette! Chantez Allouette!All-ou-ette! Je le plumerai!
Douglas followed with his eyes as the canoe went on into the blaze of sunshine on the ripples. There was something very tender, very wistful, in his smile as he stood listening.
Je le plumerai le bee;Et les yeux,Et la tête,Et les ailles,Ah-a-allouette! Chantez allouette!
* * * * *
Et les ailles!
I
When Fatbald Tschirikov would take his seat before the fireplace his glance went first backward and downward, fear seemed to flatten his large ears against his head, and he lowered his hands to the chair-arms, testing in doubt the strength of the birchen frame. Next would his eyeballs roll, and his mouth gape in readiness for a screech while he lowered himself, fearful even unto anguish, into the vast rawhide seat; a very hammock, but liable to split. A smirk succeeded, the signal for applause from his four Indian wives, then a wriggle or two adjusted him for the day. No. 1 wife cast the bison robe to cover him. No. 2 served the soup wherewith he greased himself most amply, slopping his way through the mess. No. 3 loaded his meerschaum pipe. No. 4 stood by to run for the help of the tribe if aught went wrong. Afterwards he would remark that the four of them were canaille, and might attend their own several funerals for all he cared. At this token of his gratitude they crept away on tiptoe into the lean-to kitchen.
The clay fireplace in front of him was full of logs set upright and aflame as though an ox were to roast. The cabin walls were of cottonwood trunks notched at the ends and dovetailed where they crossed, the chinks between them being filled with blocks of wood, moss, and a daub of mud. No air got in or out save when some malefactor, a wife perchance, opened the front door. Then Fatbald screamed reproaches in Russian, Samoyed, French, Blackfoot, Kutenais, and general profanity mixed, hot, crescendo, and culminating in a volley of good round English damns, fortissimo.
Outside it might be twenty to forty degrees below zero Fahrenheit in a world of dazzling sunshine and glittering snowdrift. Northward from the front door extended the frozen levels of Kootenay Lake some ninety miles, walled by austere forest, and still, white dreaming Alps. And yonder, fifty miles or so from the trading post, was a little headland jutting from the right. As far back as 1825—some fifteen years ago—the Hudson's Bay voyageurs, making a night camp, where now is the Bluebell mine, had been astonished by a flow of molten metal from under their cooking fire. The stuff was lead, the first discovery of mineral in all the regions west of the Mississippi, and the Hudson's Bay Company was quick to seize advantage from the find. They built a small stone smelter with a pyramid of roof, still standing when I saw the place in 1889, but gone when I returned in 1913. There they were wont to make bullets for use in the Indian trade. They were good bullets, hard, part silver as it happened, but nobody knew that. The Hydahs of Queen Charlotte Islands once made and used gold bullets, rather too soft, they said, but better than none at all.
In his mind old Tschirikov was rather concerned about the lead mine yonder, a long day's march to the north. Storm—these three years past his dear adopted son—was there, with a bullet mold found in the bos'n's locker aboard theBeaver, making some bullets for the Kutenais. A weary while away, weary weeks. The old man had made up his mind to live until Storm came home, rather than trust his funeral to a pack of useless wives.
He spoke many languages, and the blend was thickened into a husky wheeze. Nobody on earth excepting Storm knew what he talked about. The American trapper who squatted in a corner of the room, lacing the web of a snowshoe, heard Fatbald muttering feebly through the soup, something which ended
"—dobra fils delate Klahowya mik, eh, hombre?"
In Russian, French, Chinook and Eskimo, English and Spanish, this, being interpreted, meant: "I fear that my good son has gone to heaven, eh, man?"
"Fine day, sure," responded the trapper indulgently, "and a right smart snap of cold."
The husky dog asleep at Fatbald's feet lifted his gray muzzle, snuffing something new, pricked his ears forward, muttered a rumbling growl, then of a sudden leaped at the door, yelping, "He's coming! Coming!" He did not speak in English, but in Dog, a language of even wider distribution.
Somebody was coming. The trapper went to peer through a little frosted windowpane. Somebody was coming with a sturdy shout to greet the house. There were yelps of a dog team to all the pups at home, the swish of carriole and snowshoes, brisk orders given in the Kutenais, and stampings to shake the snow off moccasins. The husky was yelling out joyful adjectives as he jumped up and down at the door, then as it opened he leaped high for a kiss while the man stooped low to get in under the lintel.
This fellow was by no means the subdued but truculent Bill Fright of three years back. Standing six foot and just beginning to widen at the shoulders, he was lean, hard, hale, and deep-tanned as an Indian. No savage ever whelped had steel-blue eyes like his that flashed and glittered with power, or such a mane of sun-gold hair, or flush of eager blood to light the skin as though with an inner lamp.
He slipped his hands out of the fur mitts, shook off the frost rime from his buckskin shirt so that the heavy shoulder fringes pattered like rain on leaves, then with a grin which showed a white flash of teeth he chucked his beaver cap at Tschirikov. "Hello! hello!" He spoke in Kutenais. "How's fleas, and the little nits, eh, Daddy Fat-face?"
"La porte! la porte!"
"Oh, the frowst!" Storm slammed the door to.
"Storms-all-the-time," the old man wheezed in Kutenais, "you deafen me."
"All right, old chief, we'll have the whelps loose."
He flung open the trade-room door, and out of the freezing store tumbled a heap of children head-over-heels and shrilling Indian war whoops, leaping at him, clamoring the news, the wagers on his first kiss, the games which he must play, and how they wanted dinner. Had he any gifts?
They got him down on the floor, climbed all over him, went through the pockets of his hunting shirt. Yes, there were gifts! For each a little leaden redskin warrior cast in a special mold of his own carving. The four wives had been in violent collisions getting him four meals ready all at once; but now let the food burn while they shared the scrimmage for the toys.
Presently there was silence, because the old man, the wives, and all the offspring watched with enormous solemnity while Storm sat on the floor cross-legged to a bowl of berry pemmican, a dish of three large trouts, and a stew of camas.
In his own corner the American was being fed, apart, not quite as a guest, nor yet as a prisoner. These people would not let him starve or suffer, but they made him doubt the nature of his welcome.
This new arrival, the trapper reckoned, was certainly by his coloring a white man, but in his speech and manners Indian, perhaps the old man's son, undoubtedly the master of the house, honored, obeyed, and loved. Was he husband to these four women, father of all these children? Surely too young.
He seemed to have traveled far, and at his topmost speed, to be ravenous, weary, and now, after the meal and a pipe of wild tobacco, right well disposed towards sleep. He dismissed the women and children to their supper in the kitchen, kissed the old man who was fast asleep in the chair, then crossed to his bed and lay down looking at the fire while he smoked his pipe. It dropped upon the robes.
"Oh, Secret Helper, I come!" he muttered softly.
Through the closed eyelids he felt the flicker of the firelight. He smelled in fresh warm air a fragrance from some burning herb, then heard a low voice at prayer.
"Oh, Holy Spirit in the Sun!
"Hear, Old Man!
"Listen, oh dear Above-people!
"Hear me, Under-water-people!
"I purify my body that my prayers may reach your hearing."
The scene before Storm's eyes had changed. In a moment he had passed to Rain's lodge, more than a hundred miles to the northward.
The firelight flickered now upon the sloping wall of a tipi, and through the skins of the lodge covering poured sunshine, mellowed as though it flowed from gold-stained ancient glass.
Rain knelt on the far side of her hearth fire, and naked down to the loins she let her body sway to the rhythm of the prayer, while she bathed her hands, arms, shoulders, and breast in the smoke of burning herbs.
"I purify myself. O Holy Animals, intercede for me. If you have spirit-power, pray for me that my spirit, O Buffalo, may be strong to overrun all enemies; O Eagle, that it may soar far up above the earth-mists; O Wolf, that it may be subtle to see and understand; O Owl, that it may see far through the darkness; O Deer, that I may run fast and far upon my errands.
"Hear me, O Spirit in the Sun! I ask the Holy Animals, so much stronger, wiser, swifter, more powerful than poor Rain, to plead for me to you, that I may have spirit-strength to help my people when they are in need.
"My Secret Helper! Hiawatha! Men come who are very unhappy. Tell me of their needs, and show me how to help them.
"Send blessings to Storm, dear Spirit. Pity him, and help him. Send him to me, for he needs all my love."
She looked up, across the smoke of the hearth, and there was Storm, who lay on the couch, his shoulders against the back rest, in the chief's place facing the door of the tent. She was ever so glad to see him. "You got home quick," she said. She sat back on her heels, and drew up a sheet of milk-white antelope skin about her shoulders, and the fringe of little dew claws tinkled softly.
"The sun," he answered, "was still two hours high when I got home."
"Your animal must have been very hungry?"
"When it was fed it felt quite sleepy, so I left it and came to you, dear Secret Helper."
"Do you remember," she spoke wistfully, "in the long-ago time when we were little? How seldom we could both leave our poor animals at the same hours! How rare our Dreamland meetings! Oh, the long waitings for you at the Tuft of Moss!"
"Yes, Dream. I'd leave my animal on board of the old barge in London River, but before I made the Tuft of Moss the sun was up over these western mountains, and your mother shaking your animal to turn out for the day's work.
"Then, you remember, I was on board theBeaveroff the Horn, when your nights and mine began to close in together, so that I saw you every night watch below. Ever since I came ashore we've had whole nights together—three years now."
"Don't be so stupid, Storm. The times of the Sun Spirit are not changed. The Ruler cannot change. Only our Sun-power grows."
Now, Storm would hold as dogma that the sun keeps different hours in Oregon and in England, and therefore the Spirit in the Sun must pass from London River to the Kootenay, a matter of six hours. This to Rain's mind was false doctrine, a flagrant heresy. The Holy Spirit in the Sun must shine alike, with equal hours at the same time, upon the unjust in England and on the just west of the Rocky Mountains. Here was a point in theology on which they always quarreled, without being a bit the wiser or one whit the better. Neither had grasped the thought that the Great Spirit is everywhere, and shines even within ourselves, while the good sun keeps appointed seasons, days and hours.
If none of us were theologians, all of us might be Christians.
After the squabble, Rain and Storm agreed that anyway their "medicine" grew stronger. That word may need explaining in its Indian sense. A physician in the French is "médecin," his treatment in the English "medicine." But when a French voyageur would use the word among the Western Indians, they understood quite in a different way, for to them a doctor's drug was magic, so the word "medicine" applied in time to all things magical, mysterious, in contact with worlds unseen.
To Storm and Rain their medicine, which grew stronger day by day, was the power which we call psychic, meaning awareness and activity outside the bodily senses. The gift is common, its cultivation rare, for to these lovers it was given in great strength and quick development. Not knowing how to explain the whole of this deep mystery, I venture only to suggest that Rain's mother, a sacred woman of the Blackfeet, and Storm's mother, a Quaker mystic among the English, had met together in the planes of spirit-being, and by their love were helping these children onward.
"At first," said Rain, "when mother went over the Wolf Trail, I was, oh, so lonely here! You used to come, to comfort me. I only heard your voice, and when I saw you at last you were like a ghost. I saw the lodge poles through you, and was so frightened! Now you grow clear, just like a person, making my couch all rumpled."
"Come, sit beside me, Dream!"
"Not now," she answered gently. "I made the holy rites because two men are coming here."
"Who are they?"
"Two men came up the pass, Blackfeet, and chiefs. They have killed an elk, to bring the meat and skin, a pack-horse load, to hang up at the door of my lodge. They all do that who come, else must I hunt, and they would wait half a day before they saw me. These men have come from the Great Plains, a seven sun's journey, to ask my help in trouble. They pray so earnestly to the Sun! One of them has a daughter, the other a boy, in love, but these poor lovers are parted because the young man is a prisoner with the Sparrowhawks. The fathers come to ask me if he lives. And I must show them how to get the young warrior back. Else will the girl think that her heart is broken, and that is just as bad as a broken heart."
"How far away are these fathers?"
"They will come just before the sun sets. They have so little hope. They do not truly believe that I can help them, but the girl pleaded, and her mother nagged, so of course they had to come. I will send them away in the morning with big hearts. The Sun has pity on them."
"Rain, dear," he asked, "when I got home I found a white man there. I didn't speak and greet him, because I didn't know if he is good. Is he good?"
"I see a white trapper," she said, "and a girl grieving for him because she jilted him, and cannot get him back. She never will—the cat! Her name is Nan. Far in the East she lives, by the salt water—her fingers so tired, hemming shirts all day! How I do pity these poor washed-out squaws of your Race! Slaves they are! Slaves!"
"But the trapper?"
"Oh, him? Made too free with the Kutenais women, so some of my good mountaineers made bold to burn his cabin. He came to your lodge for refuge, the Kutenais at his heels. They wait for you, so angry too!"
"Why do they wait for me?"
"They want to ask you first before they kill him, because, if you say yes, his ghost will haunt you, not them. They are artful, these Kutenais."
"Shall I let them have him?"
"Your guest?"
"Of course not. I can't."
"He has hunted and brought good meat when they were all afraid of famine. He nurses the old Fatbald. The children's spirits plead for him. He will be your friend, that is, at first, dear. I shall be jealous. Yes, I'll be nasty."
"All right. Why did you send me home in such a hurry? The old man seems all right."
"The flame will flicker to-night, and then go out. He willed to live until he could see you, Storm. Don't laugh at him to-night."
"I promise. And when he is dead, Rain, may I come to you on Earth?"
"No, you must settle affairs. The household would starve if you left them now, and the tribe need you badly. Three months must pass before you are free to come."
"Haven't I waited these three years, and all the years before that?"
"Cry-baby! Have I not waited? Besides, I don't think I want to see you in your meat body. No. How often do you bathe?"
"Wheugh! Not in this weather, not in winter. In summer, when it's hot—yes."
"A Blackfoot warrior bathes daily."
"In winter?" He shuddered at the idea.
"Yes, in winter a sweat bath and a roll in the snow. How else could he keep fit for the war trail?"
"Glad I'm not a Blackfoot!"
"Glad we're not married! So there! Storm, you'll bathe every day from now on, or you come not to my lodge, son of a dirty tribe!"
"The English, dirty!"
"Savage, rude, wild, uncouth—with naughty tempers. Now go back to your stupid body, for the Blackfoot chiefs draw near. I hear them. I must pray to the Sun to smooth my temper too."
The fire blazed up strongly with a crackle of curling birch bark, and Storm looked out from his bed to see old Fatbald's chief woman putting on fresh logs.
"Two Bits," he called to her in Kutenais.
She looked round. "Awake?" she asked.
"Dear Two Bits, my Secret Helper is cruel and orders me to have a bath every day. Isn't it awful?"
"Huh! Your Dream must be a Blackfoot. Mark you, it takes more than a daily bath to wash off their dirty deeds."
"You'll get the sweat lodge ready?"
"You'll catch your death," she answered gloomily, "and then of course we'll all starve."
She went out grumbling to get the sweat house ready. But Two Bits always grumbled, and never in her life had risked a bath, having no dirty deeds to wash away.
The old man slept, and Storm lay watching him. Fatbald would awaken presently and demand to have his back scratched.
"Say," the American trapper, determined to be treated no longer as a log on the woodpile, came over to the hearth and stood confronting Storm, "do you talk white?"
Storm sat up yawning, stretched himself, looked at the trapper, laughed, offered his hand. "Sorry," he said, and the English felt heavy, like bullets in his mouth. "English—I half forget—English, I speak no word three years. Talk white, eh? So you're American!" The mother tongue came easier. "I knew an American once, name of Silas."
"Silas, what?"
"Just Silas. Do your tribe have two names? I had two, once."
"Hiram J. Kant's my name."
"I asked no question, did I? You are my guest. I do not ax you why you tried to make free with women of my tribe, or why the men burned you out, or why you took cover here, or why my people wait my leave to kill you."
"How did you know all that? It's more 'en these Injuns know, and I seen they telled you nothin'. They nary looked my way."
"Who told me about Nan?"
The American went white, and shrank against the wall.
"What d'ye mean?" he asked under his breath. "I ain't been asleep—to talk in my sleep since you come."
Storm's eyes made everything else blind dark to the American.
"Far east," he said, "by the Atlantic coast, Nan sits at her window, sewing all day long, shirts, always shirts. Her fingers are stiff with cramp, and she cries and cries."
"What business is that of yours? You leave my private affairs to me. What do you know, anyways?"
"Nothing much, shipmate. It's your affair that you'll take oath to leave our women here alone, or their men kill you when you cross that doorstep. Take oath, swear to God that you leave the women of the Kutenais alone, or you cross the doorstep now."
He went to the doorway, and stood with his hand on the latch.
"You take your choice," he said.
"I ain't panting any," said the American disdainfully, "after your damned homely old squaws."
"On your oath?"'
"Honest to God!"
"See that you keep your word."
The old man stirred, and burbled.
"He's waking up," said Storm. "You take my bed. Well, daddy?" He spoke in Kutenais. "Want your back scratched?"
"Come here, my son."
"Here, daddy. What's up?"
"Secrets, my son, secrets. Bend your head down, listen. Don't tell these women."
"Not a word."
"Speak French. I'm going to leave them. I shall be wafted, wafted, like a thistledown, to my brother's palace at Irkutsk. Then we go, he and I, to Peterborg, to the winter palace, to the court ball—the Bal Masque, my brother as Puncinello—so fat—ho! ho! He is too fat to be good form. But I—don't breathe a word—I go as the Sansculotte, the Revolutionary of the Red Terror, with wild hair, and the tricolor sash. Yes, even the pantaloons—to terrify the Court. Her Imperial Majesty the Tsarevna will faint at the sight of a Sansculotte. Ah! there's the practical joke, to make our Court of Russia expect Madame Guillotine, the madam who thinks us all too tall to be quite in the mode, too tall by a head.
"A Sansculotte, yes, but not without a shirt—no—no. That would be too immoral. Get out a dress shirt with my Mechlin ruffles. And really the striped waistcoat does make most subtle suggestion of a graceful figure. Tatata—quel horreur! Not the rude breeches with iron buckles. Wheu! And these so scratchy, disgustingly coarse gray stockings. Take them away! Burn them! Yes, dove-colored stockinette, and for a graceful contrast the egg-blue swallow-tails with salmon-colored revers. Andcomme la modemy diamond fob, of course—tut tut tut—to illustrate the complexion of a patch here—as though by accident, carelessly,sans gêne. Ah! this black cocked hat with its tricolor plume, and gold tassels above the shoulders—oh, very saucy! Ivan! My quizzing glass! of course. Beast! Why, they'll be the rage next season! Not Sansculotte? Pig! Am I not Orthodox?Noblesse oblige!
"Hark, Storm! Violin, 'cello, harpischord, and flute. Why, 'tis the Herr Professor Beethoven's new minuet! Mad'moiselle in homage, adorable! Thy bridal crown, Pavlova! My wife! My darling—thy love pours through me as Neva bathes her isles. No star dare shine where thy light gleams. Rose of the nightless summer. Oh, petal fingers thrill my hand! Am I not shadow to enhance thy sunshine? And in my reverent homage bow before thee.
"The music changes. 'Tis the Emperor's hymn. A most fatiguing homemade tune. And here come their Imperial Majesties the Tsar and Tsarevna, advancing through the lane of courtiers. She wears the Orlov diamonden corsage, but don't you think this old Russian court dress rather dowdy? Nicholas has the new side-whiskers. I must remember. I really must ask my barber if—— What fun, what a joke! Olga, my Little Fur Seal, I shall present you as my wife—my bride in hairy sealskin breeches—Eskimo! The Tsarevna and the Grand Duchesses will faint in heaps, and order my head chopped off. All Peterborg convulsed at my last joke. Now, don't you scratch my face, dear. No. Not here! Why, these insipid dolls in diamonds and starch are not real flesh and blood, passion and tenderness, as you are, my little savage. But really you shouldn't scratch my face at a court ball.Démodé, my dear,outré. You hold my gloves instead, for the zakouska. We will have cognac and one red mushroom, eh?
"Oh, dear me! Paradise of course, my dear Storm, and all the fountains playing, but who invites these old Haidah wives of mine and the Kutenais harem as well? They must not meet, or there'll be such a row. And for heaven's sake don't let them see my Little Fur Seal, or any of them meet Pavlova. Good gracious, here's my old Samoyed wife as well! What a reunion! How badly arranged! They'll never get on together. Don't let my past wives catch me in Heaven—it's really too disgusting. I am busy. Tell them I haven't the honor of their acquaintance. Olga! Be reasonable. None of them have any manners. Yes, I admit they fail to do me justice, biting, clawing, screeching. Canaille! Hags! Oh, not at all a good selection to meet me in Paradise. The arrangements here are really deplorable! Help! Help! Woman, that's my face——
"Ah! Brother! Is that you?"
The dying man shoved Storm aside, reached out his arms, his face most strangely boyish. "Alexei!" he said. "Let's play at wives and husbands!"
Storm saw the spirit departing from the worn-out, ruined body of his friend.
II
Daily the widows mourned. Ah hai-i-i ahee-ee! for the White Chief, Many Wives hai-ai-ya-hai! Whose medicine was so strong that the hair grew out at the wrong end of his head? Ya-a-a-hai! Whose body needed the tribe, the dogs, and carrioles lashed abreast, to carry awai-i-i-ya-hai-i-i. Yow-ow-ow-o! And he wanted to be buried up a tree-ee-ee-hee! Aye, yow-ow-ow! Ahooo-oo-boohoo-oo-oo-oo-ahai-i!
At meals, or otherwise when ordered by the white men to shut up, and hold their row-ow-ow-aeou! they became placid, even moderately cheerful, and squabbled a little in the kitchen about the division of Fatbald's property.
It was at such an interval that Storm took Hiram into the trade room where one's breath made clouds. They sat on bales of furs considering a pack of sulphur from the Cascade volcanoes, a sack of willow charcoal, and ten alforgas of wood ash washed, strained, and dried into gray niter with a nice gun-powder perfume. These the American approved, but he demanded black lead to waterproof the gunpowder, when made, "Unless," he said, "you want it for liquid face paint."
As for Storm's cake of explosive, made already and with great pride set out for inspection: "Shucks," said the trapper, "ef that ain't the complete benighted, effete, old-country Britisher! Want it as mush for breakfast, or to drown kittens in?
"And yet, I dunno. It's shorely a safety gunpowder this, all right. No danger of going off bang—just mammie's pap warranted safe for children."
"Make the stuff yourself then," said Storm indignantly.
"That's the proposition," answered the American; "and what do I get?"
"I'll replace the outfit them Injuns burned. You 'elps yourself."
"Done!"
The American had out a clasp knife, and whittled the edge of a packing case.
"And, say! When you auctions off them widders——"
"They're not my widders."
"Eh? Not your widders yet? Waal, now I kind of thought you was fell heir to them widders. Marrying all four?"
"None."
"'Cause ef they come reasonable I'm open to dicker for Two Bits."
"Hiram, hadn't you better wake up?"
"Eh? Now I kinder reckoned I shorely was awake."
"This widder Two Bits owns this place."
"Well, did you hear me crying? I don't weep none."
"The Head Chief of the Lower Kutenais, young Sitting Wolf, happens to be a widower. He's going to marry Two Bits."
"When she's through mourning for Many Wives, eh? Got it all fixed. Now I sort of reckon the lady ain't having any. She's set her hat at me."
"And Sitting Wolf? He had your winter quarters burned because you looked at the women. He's jealous. His friend must have no other friend 'cepting himself. His first wife looked sideways at a man—he killed both. The man who looks at Two Bits is taking risks. Don't get athwart his hawse. Don't foul his bows if you want to keep afloat."
"All right—all right. How much will Sitting Wolf take to be sort of Running Wolf over the sky line?"
"I think," Storm answered him, "it's much more like a case of Running Hiram."
"You mean he'll chase me out of the doggone country?"
"He mentioned the idea, and the tribe woted in the affirmitude."
Here they were interrupted by a young warrior, a messenger from Sitting Wolf and the tribal council, requesting Storm to attend them.
"We'll be right along," said Hiram.
But Storm looked at the American's hair, which was cropped at the neck. "I wouldn't," he said earnestly.
"What's bitten you?" asked Hiram.
"A man with short hair ain't axed to sit with Injuns in council. Wait till your hair grows, and you're asked to come."
"Is that so? Waal, of all the——"
Storm followed the messenger to a lodge covered with mats of rushes. There in the chief's place opposite the door was Sitting Wolf, dressed in his finest robe, and on his left in order of their rank the leaders of the septs, very grave and formal. The white man was asked to take his seat on the women's side of the lodge.
In front of the chief lay a bundle which he now opened, making a prayer for each of the many coverings disclosed, until amid a breathless hush—as when at the Roman Mass the Host is revealed to the people—he took up the sacred pipe. Its bowl of red sandstone came from the pipe-stone quarry in far-away Michigan, and the stem, ancient, charged with mysterious power, was hung with eagle feathers. The messenger, kneeling in homage, received the medicine pipe, charged the bowl with tobacco, and after praying, lighted it with a coal from the hearth.
Sitting Wolf stood to perform the culminating rite. He was a young man in those days, by all accounts a gallant gentleman, lightly built, graceful of bearing, his clear-cut face austere, now made beautiful by reverence, by faith as he prayed. Filling his mouth with smoke and blowing it in homage, he greeted first the Spirit in the Sun, then by turn the Spirits of the Four Winds, and lastly Mother Earth. Afterwards each of the leaders smoked in turn, once, and Storm last of all, before the pipe was returned and covered up.
Before the end of this long ritual the sun had gone down behind the westward heights, the hearth fire burned low, and the Indians were huddled in their robes of elk or bison while Storm, with only his deer-skin hunting dress, felt chilled to the bones. With the covering of the pipe, Sitting Wolf ceased to be priest celebrant and was the chief, jealous, envious, with something in his leathery dark face sinister, boding. Storm knew that his own heirship to old Tschirikov stripped Two Bits of great wealth, and the chief, who intended to marry the widow, had been brooding over her losses.
"We have purified our bodies," began the chief indifferently, as one who patters a set form of words, "with prayer have cleansed our hearts, and with smoke of the sacred pipe-have cleared our heads for counsel. Now for the leaders here, and for the tribe, I speak to you Storm, adopted son and sole heir of him who has passed. He was our friend, but never a priest, a chief, or leader in our tribe. Having a sit-beside-him wife, he lived with other women out of wedlock, according to the custom of his people, which by our law is very wrong.
"He came of a tribe beyond the western sea, you come of a tribe beyond the eastern sea, and you have different customs. The question of the council is, will you obey our laws?"
"Aye."
Sitting Wolf lifted his eyebrows as though surprised, turned down the corners of his lips as if he were disappointed. If this white man obeyed the tribal law, he could not well be fined or his property made forfeit.
"Storm," he said, "we have watched you these three snows. We see, all of us here, that in your tribe beyond the eastern sea, you came of a bad father."
The challenge would have been insulting to an Indian, but Storm assented easily.
"Aye," he said—"aye."
"Poor chap!" was the inner thought, "Thinks I'm robbing him of a trade house full of furs, three hundred ponies in pasture, five canoes, no end of saddles and harness, the dog teams, and carrioles."
"Aye," he said, "a bad father."
"I speak as chief," continued the envious Sitting Wolf, and his upward glance was full of menace now. "I speak for your good.
"We know that your father was bad because your riding is a sin, and the Sun clouds his face at the sight. Your seat in a canoe wakes the winds to howl. Your feet on the trail break sticks and stumble over roots to frighten away the game and affront the Holy Animals. You have an ill-trained nose which cannot smell a real bear at ten paces. Your sight may be long and keen, but you have never learned to note the thing which moves at a distance. Your arrows are a danger to us, and with the medicine iron your bullets hit the sky, offending the Above Spirits. Your fishing amuses the fish, but affronts the Under-water Spirits. You never pray for the help of the Holy Animals. You say you do your best. You try, but one who does not succeed becomes a danger to his comrades whether in running buffalo or on the war trail. Until you can feed and defend a woman and help in the tribe's defense, you are not fit to marry among my people. We live too near the Lodge of the Hunger Spirit to take such risks as that. Later I shall speak more of my mind, but first the medicine man has words to say."
Storm was not at all pleased. Truth is void of manners, and yet has a front and a back, an outside and an inside. Here was only the outside of Truth spoken in anger, with ill-veiled intention of enmity, by one who had always seemed to be a friend.
Now spoke the withered medicine man, kindly, fatuous Beaver Tail, who saw another aspect of the Truth, and loved a platitude.
"White Man, our chief has spoken, and of course his words are my words. Yet these three winters, friends, and not your enemies, have watched you, and a friend speaks now. Bad was your father, yet you are the son of a good woman."
Storm looked up, and the sullen resentment seemed to vanish from his face.
"Sitting Wolf, as chief," said the old man, "speaks to your father's son. I as priest speak to your mother's son. She gave you strength and staying power. The work you do should kill the strongest of our young men. She gave you also a quick mind, a straight tongue, a good heart. For these, not for your skill as a hunter or warrior, we make you a member of our tribe, and subject to our laws."
"Artful old devil!" was the white man's inner thought. "He wants me subject to the tribal law, so that the chief can claim old Fatbald's property."
"Go on," he said, eager to fathom the plot which underlay these compliments.
"Your Dream," continuedBeaverTail, under his breath, his hands making signs of prayer, "your Secret Helper is a strong and very holy animal. Your medicine is becoming powerful." He smiled engagingly, frankly. "Your white man's cunning is of use to us. We have decided to make you a member of this council."
Storm bent his head in acknowledgment. "Does the old humbug," he wondered, "think he is fooling me? If I'm a member of tribe and council they'll claim that I'm subject to the chief—unfit to hold property unless he adopts me as brother, to look after me, to look after the old man's wealth."
Sitting Wolf had heard the medicine man's talk with ill-concealed impatience. "As member of tribe and council," he said, "open your heart to us, young man, as to the affairs of our friend who has departed."
Swift as a flash of lightning Storm's mind went back to Margate beach of a Sunday afternoon. Once more he was Bill Fright in ragged slacks and jersey, where Dolly, the cuddlesome little 'tweenie, sat between his knees upon the sands. She had cotton gloves to hide her grubby hands, and these must not be touched lest he should soil their new-washed whiteness, though he might kiss the place where the hair tickled just close behind her ear. "No, silly! The left ear!" Then she recited word for word the very latest squabble between her mistress, Lady Travis, and Sir Julian—a cat-and-dog fight, no less.
A tear ran down Storm's cheek. If only to take a penn'orth of shrimps for mother's tea on board thePolly Phemusat the quay side, he would forfeit his share to these painted savages. Stanch friends and earnest instructors had they been: Sitting Wolf in woodcraft, horsemanship, and canoe work, Beaver Tail in the language, the sign talk, herb lore, hypnotic medicine, and the deep things of Kutenais religion. What if the medicine man trapped him in tribal and council membership that the chief might overrule his claim on Fatbald's wealth! These Indians were the only friends he had, or ever could have now, on earth.
He did not think of Rain as of the earth. His body had never dared to worship her, his love was as yet untarnished by any breath of passion. She was of the spirit, and in the spirit beloved, beyond, above all earthly creatures, a priestess serving at the Apse of Ice, a High Place sacred to the All-Father.
He looked at the grave faces of his friends, knowing them all so deeply, loving them so dearly. There were no braver men on earth, none more chaste, religious, hospitable, sweet-tempered, honorable than these large-handed, large-footed, great-hearted mountaineers. He was proud to have their friendship, and yet in the recesses of his soul he was a man, and these were only children, who painted their faces.
One must have lived alone with savages before one realizes that in the most ignorant white man of the Northlands there resides age-long experience, a will which never rests, a high authority and sovereignty commanding their obedience.
Rough on the surface only, Storm in the soul of him was a man of unusual force, with powers far beyond the average of his race. Humbly and simply as he spoke to these Indians his words bit deep, his power gripped their hearts, while still they were unconscious, as he was himself, of anything unusual.
"My words are air, just frosty clouds of air. See." The lodge was so cold that his breath showed white as he spoke. "Only my hands can thank you for all your friendship, all your love. I am a seaman of the big canoes on the salt water. There my hands are trained. But here, on these plains and forests and high snows, it needs the training of a lifetime up from childhood to be a hunter and warrior as you are hunters, as you are warriors. Three snows are not enough to train a man."
"How!" they muttered their approval—"how!"
"Hear, then, Chief Sitting Wolf. Hear, Beaver Tail, my teacher. Hear, my friends. I speak from a full heart, and the fool tears tell you I'm not a man yet fit to sit among men, or to ride for buffalo out there beyond the World Spine, or to walk on the war trail, or to keep a wife.
"You go soon, most of you, to join with the Flatheads, Nez Percés, Pend d'Oreilles, Cœur d'Alènes, perhaps even a few Yakimas. Your fit men will ride together in force across the World Spine to the Great Plains, to run the buffalo bulls of the spring hunting, perhaps to fight the Blackfeet. Your women will ride to dry the meat and dress the robes.
"The rest of the tribe will go in your canoes along the Lake and the West Arm, and the river of the Kutenais to the Mother of Rivers, and downstream to the Great Falls. There they will join the fishing tribes, under the Salmon Chief. They will catch the salmon, trade at Fort Colville, feast, dance, gamble. They take the women to smoke the fish. They take the children; for the babies, even the dogs, are fit. I shall be left behind, less than the least, worse than a dog."
The chief looked sulky and aggrieved, the medicine man was clearing his throat to make a soothing speech. One of the leaders asked Storm to be his brother at the hunting. Another was muttering, "Shame! shame!" All were uncomfortable. "Come to the point!" growled Sitting Wolf.
And Storm was laughing at their disquietude. "No need," he said more cheerfully, "for the dog to freeze."
He threw some wood on the fire, then wrapped a robe about his shoulders.
"I am here," continued Storm, "to speak for him that was my father. What has the little law of your petty tribe to do with a chief among the Russians? By the law of the Russian tribe his sit-on-the-right woman, Two Bits, gets the trading house and the lodge furnishings. By the law of the Russians the four widows have taken equal shares of the pony herd and harness, the canoes and paddles, the dog teams and carrioles. He who marries one of these widows will be rich.
"Again I speak for my dead father. He was a Russian, I am an Englishman. Russia and England are the left arm and the right arm of mankind, enfolding the whole earth. And where the fingers meet, the Kutenais tribe is a flea caught under a finger nail of the English. By the law of both Russians and English I am heir to the great chief who made me his son.
"The trade room is full of furs, and these are mine."
Sitting Wolf leaned forward staring, snarling in his throat, but Storm went on, looking him straight in the eyes and laughing at him. "Enough," he said incisively, "to load the canoes of the tribe!—Silence! I speak!—and at Fort Colville, to buy guns for all your hunters. Do you object to having your hunters armed?"
If a shell had exploded among them these Indians would have sat quite still while Death selected his prey; and now, at the burst of Storm's words, they kept their quietude, their dignity. Only they turned their eyes reproachfully upon their chief. Their breathing seemed to stop, but no face changed. In sheer relief the chief relaxed against the backrest, and a queer smile, shy, friendly, as of a dog to his master, sought Storm's approval.
Before they sent for Storm the members of the council had been agreed that this white man was unfit to marry, hunt, or fight, and least of all to hold great property. They had placed him beneath the level of their dogs, and in return he gave them a gun to every hunter. Their chief would not have done so.
Never again would famine camp among their lodges, and war could not invade their mountain stronghold. The tribes allied with them for hunting buffalo—East Kutenais, Flatheads, Nez Perces, Pend d'Oreilles, Cœur d'Alènes, Spokanes, Yakimas combined, could never attack with arrows a people armed with guns. Best armed of all the tribes, they should ride safely into the barred hunting grounds of the powerful Blackfoot Confederation. Truly this dog had fangs!
"I thought you would be pleased," said the white man easily, as he stirred the smoldering fire until it blazed. "But there are points you do not think of until I speak about them. This trading of furs for guns needs a white man's brain to match against the Hudson's Bay Company, whose trader would get the best of any Indian. I shall send my white man, Hiram Kant, whom you call Hunt-the-girls."
The grave Indians were smiling as they heard that new name for the trapper.
"You would have shot and wasted him, but I need him, and kept him for this trading. I want one of you chiefs to go with Hunt-the-girls and see that you get the guns here to this camp—or kill him. Only a chief shall do this, because Hunt-the-girls is a chief, as all of you know in your hearts, all of you sitting here. You shall choose who is to go, to help him, or shoot him as the case may be.
"But of these medicine irons. They are only sticks, dead rubbish unless you have the medicine powder, and the medicine balls. Long ago I knew that my father was dying, and that I should prepare this gift. For that reason I made, as you know, a carriole load and a canoe load of bullets. I tried, you may remember, long ago, to make the powder, but my medicine was no good. For this kind of work Hunt-the-girls has better medicine than mine, so I let him make the powder. He gets a trapper's outfit for his pay.
"You shall not have the powder and ball to blow away and waste. They shall belong to Two Bits, and she will sell them to you in trade for furs. The higher the price she charges for ball and powder, the less will be thrown away in idle shooting. These are my orders. If you don't like them, I'm ready to fight anybody who wants shooting, or I'll take on the crowd—as you please.
"Now, I have one thing more to say. I will have Two Bits rich and powerful in the tribe because she has more sense than any of you, and she will keep Sitting Wolf out of mischief. You cannot! When the chief is jealous he goes mad, and flies at the throat of his nearest friend. Two Bits will tame him—already he eats out of her hand.
"That's all, I think."
For some minutes the Indians were lost in thought, or deep in prayer.
"My brother," asked the chief at last, "where is your share?"
"What share," answered Storm, "can I carry on my back? How many horses, how many canoes, can I carry on my back through the woods? That much is my share."
"You take nothing?"
"Before I left salt water, my friends of the big canoe gave me a gun, a belt, a wallet, a pouch, a knife—yes, and one other thing I have never shown you, a secret thing which is my medicine. I will ask you, my brothers, to give me a supply of ball and powder, a robe, and your good will."
"Where do you go?"
"When all is done and the ice breaks, I go into the Wilderness. You have often told me about Rain, the Sacred Woman of the Blackfeet. Men of all nations go to her lodge for counsel in their sorrow, sickness, or peril. I go to make my offering at the holy lodge, and seek the guidance of the Sacred Woman."
I—RENUNCIATION
When the sun wears the snow thin, the butter-cups underneath feel the light and the warmth, so they have faith, melting their way up through the edges of the drifts until they reach the glory of the day. Then the ice breaks, roaring down the river, shatters and founders on the lake, while the birds proclaim the summer to the valleys, avalanches thunder in the hills, because it is Easter, the time of the Resurrection.
The American trapper was much surprised at having behaved himself so nicely as to win Storm's friendship and the hearty good will of the tribe. He was quite touched by the treatment he met with. The trapping outfit, lost when they burned him out of winter quarters, had been most lavishly replaced in payment for his gunpowder. He said he felt good. He helped to ballast the canoes with bullets, even to stow the cargo of powder and furs for Fort Colville. And yet he had misgivings.
The Kutenais bark canoe is curiously fashioned with a long horn or ram at either end below the water line. Because its natural position is bottom upwards, it is not popular. Nobody really enjoys it except the Flatbow Indians of Flatbow Lake. And yet it has one merit: one can spell Kutenai in seventy-six recognized orthodox ways and always pronounce the word Flatbow. Still Hunt-the-girls saw the loaded canoes and heard of the cataracts, and to him the spelling and pronunciation were mere details. He was quite frank about it. He flatly refused the journey. He would be doggoned and several other disagreeable things would happen to him before he would go trading to a British Fort. He had no sort of use for Britishers anyways, having whipped 'em at Bunker Hill—wherever that was—and kep' 'em on the dead run ever since. He didn't give a continental—whatever that might be—about Injuns, which wasn't good unless they was dead, and hadn't ought to be allowed out with guns for shooting the whites. Moreover, he'd heard tell of a crick up North a-ways, which was plumb spoiled with beaver dams, as needed clearing out with his little set of traps. Two Bits would loan him her dugout. There was no two ways about it. "And I'm due," he told Storm, "to roll my tail in the mawning."
Now the four widows, resolved that the trader who represented the tribe at Fort Colville should be dressed to do them credit, had made a deerskin hunting shirt, leggings and moccasins soft as silk, golden-tawny, perfumed with wood smoke. The deep fringes about the shoulders and along the seams, whose pattering throws off snow to keep the leather dry, the decoration of porcupine quills, dyed lemon, plum bloom, indigo, and vermilion, in sacred patterns which charm away disease, wounds, or death, made this gift beautiful, the most precious that love could offer. When Hunt-the-girls refused to trade for the tribe the widows brought their offering to Storm, and, cut to the quick, the trapper declared it was rotten anyway.
Storm sat in Fatbald's chair before the fire and let the women lay the hunting dress upon his knees. "Get out!" he said to Hunt-the-girls. "Get out of my camp—you!"
And Hunt-the-girls left in a rage. Storm heard him swearing at the men while he got his dugout canoe afloat and loaded for the North. Then the women saw that their friend wanted to be alone, so they left him.
"Rain!" he whispered. "My Dream! Rain!"
"Storm," she answered out of the air, "I heard, dear."
"How long?" he asked—"how long?" And tears were running down his face.
"We have waited," she answered, "all our lives. Dearest, you are not obliged to go to the Fort of the Stone-hearts."
"That's all you know," he said indignantly.
"But they'll arrest you for murder!"
"What of that! If I let these silly savages trade for guns, they'll waste the furs on imitation jewelry, sham silk handkerchiefs, liquor, all sorts of foolishness. They'll come back with two or three old fukes, and say that arrows are better. Of course I'll have to go."
He heard a chirp like that of a squirrel, cheeky, truculent.
"You're laughing at me," he said peevishly.
"T-t. T-t. T-t. Krr-aw-aw! Storm, dear, your mother is with me."
"Humph! What does she want?"
"She says that long ago, in the big-canoe-on-the-salt-water, you had an enemy."
"Silas? Oh, we were pretty good friends after."
"Yes. When you loved your enemy. Then, when you came within three suns' journey of my lodge, you stayed three years to nurse a fat old man."
"How could I help that? It wasn't my fault."
"That you didn't pass him by on the other side? He died though, and left you the richest man in all the mountain tribes."
"What was the good? I couldn't carry all that, and come to you."
"Your mother asks what you will do with this dress."
Storm had given away a fortune without one pang of regret, but he was filled now with a sick longing for this gift from the four widows. To give it up? Oh, well, it would please his mother, make Rain happy. "It's all one to me," he said quite cheerfully. "And after all, I ain't no hunter that I should swagger about in such a kit. Old clothes are good enough for the likes o' me. But then, Rain, there's them widders. They'd cry their eyes out!"
He heard Rain singing her happy song, the squirrel song. Then she spoke as though she were crying.
"Storm!"
"Yes."
"We'll make a low-down savage of you, a Redskin brave like my brother Heap-of-dogs."
"All right. I wasn't much use as a white man, and my tribe here say I'll never make an Indian."
"You gave everything away. That's Indian."
"Nothing to brag about."
"Take all your old clothes and everything you've got except your hunting weapons, and hang them up as a sacrifice to the Sun Spirit. That's Indian."
"Right."
"Had your bath to-day?"
"Of course."
"That's a good Indian! Now swim across the river in the running ice. A Blackfoot thinks nothing of that."
"I wasn't raised for a pet."
"Go naked into the woods, eat no food, pray till your Secret Helper comes to you. Every Indian does that before he's a warrior."
"I won't be beat."
"To-morrow at this hour swim back across the river, call the tribe together, and ask them to pray for you to the Sun, the Moon, and Morning Star.
"Go to the Council Lodge, and you shall use the big-turnip smoke to purify your body. The chief is to open the bundle of the medicine pipe, and after the ceremony the medicine man will dress you in these new clothes which the widows made of love, prayers, and the honor of the tribe to the glory of the Sun. It is full of spiritual power to guard you from evil, but your mother says that the dress is not completed until you reach Fort Colville."
II—COMMUNION
Naked and hungry, torn by the thorns, and bruised, his feet bleeding on the rough ground, Storm climbed to keep himself warm until he stood among the last trees. They were like torches, gaunt, funereal, their feet in the old gray snow, their heads among the stars waiting until the moon should rise and kindle them. Far down beneath, the howls of the timber wolves cleft the still deeps of night. Storm leaned against a tree facing the south, awed by the silence to the verge of terror. And then through the silence there came a voice more beautiful than he had ever heard on earth:
Spirit in the Sun,I thank Thee for my trainingIn sorrow and adversity, in want and peril,Which have brought me nearer to Thee;For the happy adventures of my life,The beauty of the earth,The revelations of Thy mighty power,And all the love which has enfolded me.
"Who prays?" cried Storm. "Who says the prayer?"
He looked about him, and found he was not alone, for Rain was on her knees close by, her mother, Thunder Feather, his mother, Catherine, the three of them busy kindling a little fire. The man whose voice he had heard stood just beyond them, a figure of radiant light and more than human stature, wearing a ceremonial robe of milk-white deerskin and a single eagle plume in his hair, the token of chiefship. Storm looked up very humbly at the Spirit whose face had so grave, so sweet a majesty.
A glance of the great chief's eyes commanded him to look at the scene surrounding them.
The trees had faded into mist. Now they were gone, and the snow lay unbroken, level, a headland from whose edges, near on either side, the walls went down into deep immensities of space. On the far side of this abyss, all round the east, the south, and the west, mountains were taking substance in slow revelation of walls inimitably deep, broken by five small glaciers. Precipice immeasurably high, scored here and there by cornices of clear green ice, shouldered the starlit snow fields, from whence there soared seven peaks of hewn and graven starlight.
As he watched, these mountains began to glow with an inner light, each of one clear color, the whole a spectrum enclosing the level hilltop. From where the three women knelt, a thin blue smoke ascended, as from an altar.
Storm turned again to the chief whose mysterious power had made this vision.
"Who are you, sir?" he asked.
"In my last earth-life," answered the chief, "my name was Hiawatha. It used to be a custom among my people that a young man seeking to have the rank of a warrior gave away all his property, except his weapons. Then having bathed, and left every impurity behind him, he went naked into the wilderness, and there fasted until his Secret Helper came to instruct him. My son, you have followed the custom of my people. Will you accept me as your Secret Helper?"
"Thank you, sir."
"The dress of a brave is something more than clothing. It is the outward sign of his training for war, his obedience to his leader, his cheery endurance of hardships, his gift to his tribe of all that he is, all that he has, and all he can do, his dedication not only of his life, but also of his death."
Storm bent his head in token that, understanding, he stood in readiness.
"Under what leader shall you serve?"
"I don't brag," said Storm, "or even talk about that. I suppose you've got to know. I was one of four soldiers, we were Romans, on execution fatigue, and we hanged a man. Well, He's my leader."
Hiawatha made the sign of the cross.
"And mine," he said, "Warrior!"
Then Storm knew that he was no longer naked, but clad in the splendid dress whose earthly counterpart he should put on for the first time to-morrow.
"This Easter morning," said Hiawatha, "before the day breaks, your wife and your mother here have asked me, Storm, to tell you a few things about my Indian people."
They sat down in comfort round the fire, the three women on the chief's right, Storm on his left, after the Indian manner. Rain lighted Hiawatha's pipe, then that of her man.
"I am the cracked earth," said Storm cheerily, "which prays for rain."
"It seems to me," the chief's retort was prompt, "that a cracked mouth makes fun of our holy animals."
"They seem so silly."
"What, even in your Bible?"
Storm thought for a moment, concerning the four beasts full of eyes, within and without. There were the jolliest horses. There was the symbolism of the sheep, of the lamb.
"Truths," Hiawatha spoke with reverence, "veiled in allegory, illustrated by symbols."
"But are there animals, real ones?"
"Many. There is, for instance, one Spirit who has charge of the buffalo. The group-consciousness of all the buffalo, their herd-awareness, which you know as instinct, is a part of his mind that warns the buffalo herds of coming storms, of changing seasons, and leads them to winter pastures where the bunch grass stands out clear from the thin snow. To this buffalo spirit my people address their prayers, asking him to guide them also in search for food, and in his pity to plead for them in their need to the Spirit in the Sun.
"Such prayers give them spiritual strength. Now, sonny, which will give you spiritual power—to make fun which hurts your wife, or to learn the lessons which she had from me?"
"Oh, damn the 'oly animals!" said Storm in his heart. "Old Daddy swore I'd never be a bargeman. Silas claimed he couldn't make a sailor of me. Even these Injuns despise me. I know I'm no good; I'm nothing."
He had forgotten that in the spirit-realms no secret thought is hidden. Now Rain winked at her mother, Thunder Feather, and Hiawatha, seeing that, nearly betrayed his laughter, which would give such pain if it were seen; but Catherine crept behind them and sat beside her son. "They're only a pack of savages," she whispered. "I 'aven't seen no 'oly animals neither."
Hiawatha made signs to the Indian women, composed his face to severity, and in the manner of a schoolmaster addressed himself to Storm.
"Storms-all-of-a-sudden, what is a savage?" he asked with Indian gravity.
"Oh, I dunno!" The white man was sulky, ashamed, and moaning to himself because his pride was wounded.
"A dog," said Hiawatha, "has only four fingers, so that he cannot hold or aim a gun to shoot at other people. A savage has four fingers and a thumb, so you see he must be rather better than a dog, because he can handle a gun, to shoot his neighbors when he is not pleased. A white man is still better because he can make the gun. In his rich country he finds the medicine stones, copper, tin, and iron for making tools. With the tools to strengthen his hands he can coin money, forge weapons, and build ships. As he labors his mind grows, his will increases, his intellect is strengthened, until he becomes as greedy as a pike, swift as a horse, and like the buffalo he tramples down the flowers, for none can resist his rush. He rules the seas, he occupies the lands, he wields dominion over mankind, and having the whole earth for his possession, dies, leaving it behind, divested of all that he had. All that he is goes to the spirit-lands, where the dogs pity him. The dog's unselfish love is worth more in the spirit-realms than the money, the weapons, the ships of his rich master. Dogs and savages have not much to be selfish about on earth, but only the hearts of little children."
Storm and his mother were not so proud of their blood as they had been; but Rain and Thunder Feather looked complacent as Hiawatha again took up his legend.
"When I lived on earth, my son, our Iroquois towns were not so very savage. London has lately copied our municipal police. While your doctors were bleeding their patients to death, ours were far advanced in hypnotic medicine, and among the Indian drugs were the salicylates, quinine, coca, and jalap. Our Indian farming gave to man tobacco, corn and potatoes. Of our monuments I dare not boast, for the tremendous pyramids of Mexico were an heresy, seeing that the body of man is the real temple of the Holy Spirit; and the palaces, however vast and lovely, were seats of tyranny.
"At the time of my last earth-life your little England was ruled by a sickly but very good and able sovereign, Queen Elizabeth. Philip the Second ruled Europe for the Pope, Suleiman the Great had command of the Mediterranean and held a splendid Empire for Mahomet. A still wealthier and better-ordered empire was held for the Prophet by Akbar the Magnificent, who reigned over Hindustan. Greatest and most stable of all was the throne of China. In every case the princes were tyrants, the people what we should call war slaves.
"I believe that Iceland was first of Republics—but half the people there were only slaves.
"In my little nation, the Iroquois, only the women could own lands or houses, only the mothers could elect the President. Women and men sat together in congress.
"As President, it was my dream to put an end to war. For that ideal of an everlasting peace I called four other nations into counsel. They made me President of the Five Nations, the Federated Republic of the Iroquois.
"Here in the west there were many visitors from other lands, Polynesians, Chinese, and Japanese. They say that our first news of Europe came with the Saint Quetzal-Coatl to the Toltec nation, and to his memory they built a temple at Cholula four times as large as the Great Pyramid in Egypt. To my own people came the hero Leif Ericson, and he was followed by many Norsemen who traded with us or hewed out cargoes of hardwood timber.
"Five centuries later, Columbus came, but he never visited North America. His people brought us horses, but also they carried with them germs of disease, of pestilences which are sweeping away almost the whole Red Indian race."
"Sweeping us away?" asked Rain.
"Yes."
Thunder Feather lifted the death wail, mourning for her people.