Hiawatha sheltered Rain in his arms:
"Be brave," he said. "The bodies of our people are wasted and destroyed with strange diseases not to be healed by our medicine. Our tribes are driven from their farms, their fisheries, and their hunting grounds, crowded into the west, forced to make war against each other in order to get meat, resorting in despair to savage crimes and eating human flesh, our wild herds slaughtered, grass eaten, lands stolen, faith betrayed, until only a last remnant shall be left on the earth."
"On earth," Rain answered bravely. "But we are a spirit-race which cannot die."
Again the sacred woman Thunder Feather sent up her desolate cry for the lost nations.
But Hiawatha clasped Rain to his heart. "I love your courage," he said under his breath, "but still I warn you never to let there be anger in your heart against the white man or towards your husband. Promise me."
"I promise."
"Catherine," said Hiawatha, "Storm, Rain, Thunder Feather, I tell you on this Easter morning: The seed is not quickened except it die, and the race crucified shall rise again."
Once more the wailing of the old priestess shook their hearts, and she began to sing the death-song of her race.
Beware, ye base, relentless Ghost Invaders!I see your bones lie naked on the prairie,And such a frightful Death as yet you know notShall flap his wings in triumph o'er your women—So shall your black deeds make your souls accursedAnd God shall blast your spirits to destruction!
"Oh! Thunder Feather," said Hiawatha gently, "bad words come back like fleas to bite you in bed. You make your nights all scratches. Cover your head with your robe, and pray the Spirit Porcupine to smooth your quills, my dear.
"It is lucky for you, Storms-all-of-a-sudden, that in the Blackfoot custom a son-in-law and mother-in-law are never allowed to meet, so if your wife's prickly mother tries to haunt you, tell Thunder Feather to mind her manners."
The old woman had been glaring vindictively at the white man, but now, discovered, she had a rather sheepish grin to hide under her robe.
"Chief," said Rain, turning away from her malicious little old mother, "my man and I have often been over the Wolf Trail in our dreams. Oh, but my dear man is so stupid. I cannot make him understand how spirit-animals and spirit-men speak all one language as we do—thought-flashings. He is so blind and deaf to natural things that animals are shy, and cannot flash their thoughts to him, no, not even his horse along the lead rope when we ride together. Yet we have ridden up there the dearest spirit-horses who died gallant deaths on earth. We have raced with the herds of spirit-buffalo on prairies gay with fairy flowers. We sat in my father's lodge, and Thunder Feather with us, while we smoked the everyday pipe, or used the medicine pipe for the great prayers. We worshiped together in the Medicine Lodge. We played with the spirit-children. Oh, but my man is so dull that he still fears Death!"
"My daughter," said Hiawatha, "only the most awful sorrow can awake your man until he is fully alive. Then will the animals converse with him as they do with us, the little children will teach him as they teach us, and he will see how our nature worship is part of a great faith. Words cannot teach, only experience.
"Now we must tell him about the race-death."
"I would," said Rain, "that all my people were past the race-death, safe in our Happy Hunting grounds from Windmaker's tempests, Coldmaker's blizzards, from the magicians of the Hunger Lodge, the peril of wild rivers, the hatreds, wounds, and pain, the pestilence, the wailing of the mourners."
"The lily," said Hiawatha, "has her roots in the dirt, but her white vesture is not soiled whose warp and weft are sunshine and clear rain, her home the winds invisible.
"So stands the Indian Spirit seeded on earth, but flowering in the heavens."
And after that there was silence.
Storm looked about him, and found that he was alone. Around him were trees like torches, gaunt, funereal, their feet in old gray snow. At the foot of one of these he crouched naked, famished, shivering, his feet bruised, his limbs benumbed and scarred with wounds which seemed to have been bleeding. Far down across the forest he saw the icy river, and beyond, thin threads of smoke went up from the lodges of the Kutenais camp. Cramped and in pain he stood, remembering that he must observe the rite of purification, and how he should put on the sacred dress of a warrior. Mother said that this must be completed at Fort Colville. What, then, was lacking?
So he set forward upon this adventure.
III—THE SWORD
Some time in the third decade of the nineteenth century certain voyageurs of the Hudson's Bay brigades made their homes in the Rocky Mountains. They were Iroquois warriors, devoutly Christian, were fit messengers. The fiery Cross is not carried very far by smug pastors who let the flame die out, but, brandished by knights-errant such as these Iroquois, it kindled the mountaineer Nez Percés, Flatheads, Cœur d'Alènes, and Pend d'Oreilles, and like a forest fire the Faith swept through the hills. Not satisfied, but craving for more light, the Nez Percés dispatched a couple of young warriors as their envoys on foot through countries held by hostile nations to visit the white men's lands, and beg the Big Father at Washington to send them Black-robes.
The White-tie missions responded, forwarding a brace of Methodist ministers who settled on the Lower Columbia where the tribes were tame, the lands fertile, and prospects favorable in godliness and possibly real estate. Later a couple of Presbyterian White-ties came to the mountains, with their courageous wives, and were welcomed by an assemblage of the tribes, thousands of mounted warriors at full gallop, a display of frantic joy and terrifying grandeur. The ladies fainted, and their husbands were properly shocked by naked, painted, plumed, and yelling savages. For some few years this intensely respectable mission showed off their sober paces, their small proprieties to ferocious idealists, wild saints of the Silent Places. In the end, utterly disillusioned, the Nez Percés took the scalps of the missionaries as the only useful asset of the mission.
If one cannot lighten one's darkness with sun rays, a rushlight is better than nothing, so the pony tribes were still quite patient with their White-tie medicine men when in May, 1839 Storm came with a following of his Kutenais to trade for guns at Fort Colville. Upon the morning after his arrival he brought his people to a church parade in progress outside the stockade. The gate, of course, was closed, and in the covered gallery above a sentry lounged to watch proceedings through the loopholes, while on a bastion to the left a gun was manned commanding the curtain wall, just to make sure. The fish-eating tribes assembled for the salmon run were not more dangerous than an average mothers' meeting, but some of the mounted Indians had come to trade, and Storm's Kutenais might prove excitable. So in this congregation the salmon fishers were squatted in the sunshine, the Kutenais standing aloof, as aristocrats who observe the savor of the commonalty, and the haughty mountaineers remained on horseback. Under the bastion stood a group of American trappers, long-haired, dressed like the fighting Indians in buckskin, chewing cable-twist tobacco and spitting with an air of absolute detachment, spectators not devotees.
The White-tie medicine man, in blacks, attired like the Reverend Mr. Stiggins or dear Brother Chadband, despite the repulsive dress, parsonic voice, and pious mannerisms, had a suggestion of rough-neck about him, something manful, real, earnest, a glitter of the eyes, a smile. He served out Presbyterian views on Predestination as though he thought the stuff important. Certainly he pleased the Hudson's Bay officers, who sat with their native wives on adze-hewn benches, all in their Sunday swallow-tails, nursing top hats, Scots to a man, alert to the shrewd and pawky argument. As to the native interpreters, sound on fish, but hazy as theologians, each of them preached a sermon of his own, which, had he known, would have horrified the missionary. Here and there in the congregation were grubby naked boys conducting dog fights, groups of mothers exchanging the latest gossip, and stolid babies lashed to their board cradles making the most of the sunshine. The fleas were not wasting time.
Long afterwards when Storm told his mother about that service: "Tea ain't much good," was his summing-up, "unless you've boiled the water."
After dinner Mr. James Douglas went for a walk, a Sabbath stroll taken in civilized dress, tall beaver hat, gloves, his mother's New Testament in his left hand, a cane in his right—the sort of things to remind an exile of Home. His close-cropped mutton-chop whiskers and clean-shaven chin, clear-cut features, gray eyes, stern jaw, belonged, one would suppose, to city life, to business management; but the soul of him, despite all such appearances, in defiance of the uttermost self-discipline, was kin to the wild solitude of the frontier. Yet of all frontiersmen Storm was the one man with vision keen enough to discern Black Douglas as he was, and, when they happened to meet beside the farm, he offered his hand to the factor as to an equal.
"Beastly familiar. Confound these Yankee trappers!" So Douglas felt as he pulled up short and took a pace backward. "And yet no trapper would sport a single straight-up eagle pinion worn at the back of the head. This fellow claims my hand as an Indian, as a chief!"
Against the verdure of the meadows, in clear sunshine, this creature was certainly most beautiful. Deep tan, sun-lighted mane, and buckskin dress appeared all dusty gold save for the flashing blue of his clear eyes. The stature, strength, grace, dignity, commanding power of the fellow made the factor catch his breath as he asked:
"Who are you? Surely, I've seen you somewhere. Not—not Bill Fright?"
"They call me Storm, now. The Kutenais call me Storms-all-of-a-sudden."
"H'm. As Justice of the Peace, I'm supposed to want young Fright for parricide."
White teeth flashed as the man laughed. "And you might get me," he answered, "with, say, five hundred men—or even hold me, until my Kutenais had time to raise the tribes."
Then as the shadow of a passing cloud will soften the hard brightness of the snows, the youngster's laughing, triumphant manhood became all tenderness. "You said as you'd make a man of me," he added under his breath and very humbly. "I owe all this to you. I'm not running away or asking for a fight, Mr. Douglas, or even bragging; but if you should ever 'appen to want a friend—my heart is good towards you."
"Thank you, thank you. I might be glad of that. One never knows. Will you shake hands, Mr. Storm?"
"Rather!"
Storm felt without resentment that the great man condescended, as to a servant, yet tried to put an inferior at ease. Accepting that as natural, he wiped his paw on his deerskin leggings before he would venture to shake hands.
"I never thought to meet you, sir, upcountry, but I wants 'elp for my tribe, and your trader here at Colville is—well—cultus!" He snarled the word, for which the factor snubbed him.
They turned along the pathway by the river, and for the next few minutes cut and thrust were sharp as they came to business.
"Well, what can I do for you?" asked Douglas.
"You wants pelts. You may need help of a fighting tribe."
"Well?"
"One armed mountain tribe is worth more to you in trade and war than all the fishing Injuns in the world."
"Perhaps," was the dry response, "or they might take their trade to the American Fur Company, and use our guns to blackmail our brigades."
"Depends on who runs the tribe."
"It does. How's Tschirikov?"
"Dead."
"Left everything to you?"
"Alow and aloft."
"You run the Lower Kutenais now?"
"Yes. Do you trust me?"
"Personally, yes. But the Company is here on business. When we're attacked, it's time enough to serve out guns to our men."
"Who don't know butt from barrel, and can't hit a house from inside."
"There's something in that. At the same time, Mr. Storm, we have not found your Lower Kutenais especially reliable for trade."
"They're true as steel!"
"No doubt. Perhaps twenty years back, or even more, Lieut. Tschirikov, late of the Russian Navy, came down the coast from Russian America with a schooner-load of sea otter. Had he gone west to China with that cargo he might have done much better, but still, that was not our business. The pelts were, so far as we know, honestly come by. We bought them. He took trade goods, and set off upcountry, to start a trading post among the Kutenais. Quite naturally we expected to buy his furs. We got none."
Storm grinned amiably, and Douglas probed a little deeper now.
"Once or twice when I was passing with our brigades, I camped with the good old fellow and offered to talk pelts. He would change the subject at once. I never found out what sort of business he was—well, concealing in our Territory. I thought, to tell you the plain truth, Storm, that it might be worth while to send you, to find out Tschirikov's game."
Storm laughed until the tears came.
"It ain't no sort of secret," he said at last. "According to old Fatbald that load of sea otter and fur seal was worth at Pekin about a million pounds."
"Say half."
"Well, you got 'em cheap at twenty thousand pounds' worth of trade goods."
"Reasonably cheap, yes."
"For trade goods as any Injun tribe is better without."
"Of all the confounded impudence!"
"Better without, and you know it as well as I does. Is trade rum and sham silk handkerchiefs the cargo as makes any nation strong to defend their 'unting grounds, or rich to tide through famines?"
"Well, perhaps not, perhaps not. More useful merchandise would rot on our hands for want of buyers. We are traders, not philanthropists—or dreamers."
"So Fatbald warned the Injuns. Called 'em fools for trading. They traded with him, though, until the bales of furs crowded him into a tipi. He sold them pelts to the Upper Kutenais in trade for 'orses. His pony herds filled all the pastures up above our lake. They bred. He sold them ponies to our Lower Kutenais, for furs of course. In twenty years he's made that low-down fishing tribe into hunters, fighting mountaineers, able to 'old their own, and defend their 'omes. The little kiddies, what used to starve to death if the salmon run came late, is fat as butter now. Our people rides level with the Upper Kutenais and the Flatheads, runs buffalo out on the Blackfoot plains. They're rich. They're respected. They has peace because they don't buy no more rubbish from either you nor them Americans."
"Fatbald the First," said the factor sarcastically, "being gathered to his portly forefathers, King Storm ascends the throne, whose little finger is heavier than the old monarch's thigh. At least, my late friend, however reticent, was not insulting." Then, with a malicious smile, "Your Majesty has, I hear, a few loads of pelts here, eh?"
"You're making fun of me," said Storm, uneasy, ruffled, a little truculent. "Go on! Your medicine is bad, but it ain't strong. Go on."
"I might venture to point out," said Douglas, "that your manners at the shop-counter are not ingratiating."
"I seen some Yakimas play 'umble Injun in front of your Colville trader. Their trade prayer and their rum-dance don't makehimwhat you calls infatuating. I played big chief, but all the brains he has for politics won't fill a hollow tooth. Carries a mighty head of sail, and forgets he's anchored! No-head is a big noise and a big smell, but you're a chief, and so I comes to you."
The factor chuckled. This was worth keeping for Mrs. Douglas.
"When I was your prisoner," said Storm, "at Fort Vancouver, I seen the furs beat once a week for dust and moth. I done that these three snows, and my skins are prime."
"Bravo!"
"But No-head forks his tongue, so he lost my trade. Besides, he asks too much and gives too little. The American Fur Company, so them trappers tell me, ain't so far south as all that."
"I see. Of course you want ball and powder?"
"None. I make both."
"What!"
"Tons."
"Oh yes, I remember now. Of course, our lead mine is on Lake Kootenay. But then the trader here has orders not to lend our bullet molds to anybody."
"I found a bullet mold," said Storm, "in the bos'n's locker aboard of theBeaver. I don't lend mine, neither."
Again the factor showed some little irritation.
"You seem," he said testily, "to have more brains than Dr. McLoughlin and I had reckoned on. But it's all damned nonsense. Make powder!Wecan't! The thing's impossible."
"Well," said Storm, enjoying this, "the couple of hundredweights I bring with me ain't much to offer for sale to people as was here before Christ."
"Does it go off?"
"You might care to try, Mr. Douglas. And the bullets. I'm using 'em as ballast under the cargoes of pelts. I'm here trading for guns. The only question, sir, is this—do I trade at Fort Colville or down south?"
Guns! This was a leader of men, chief of a tribe quite strong enough, under his discipline, to take and loot Fort Colville for the guns.
"And why do you want trade guns?"
"I have a range of mountains," answered Storm. "See—here—I'll show you."
Old Beaver-tail had mapped the country for him, and like an Indian, Storm squatted on his heels making lines on the dust of the trail with a dry twig. "The river of the Kutenais," he said, "starts here."
In the heart of the Rockies, within a mile or so of the Canadian Pacific Railway, snows on ten-thousand-foot Alps drain to the southward, down tangled steeps of forest, calling from stream to stream along the hillsides, a shrill assembly of many waters, source of a white-maned torrent roaring through deep gorges. Purling over gravels, hurling round short curves, and undercutting cliffs, the river widens out among pine-crested isles, and spreads in beaver-flooded jungle. Then it snakes through meads of wild flowers, and coils like a serpent by miles of widening prairie, glittering in the sunshine.
"'Ere," said Storm, "across these pastures it swings, being here ten bowshots distant from the head source of the Columbia. The Kootenay River wagers ponies to little dogs on the path towards the sun, but the Columbia says its prayers and hits the trail nor'west. Both is beaten, for here's my range of mountains walling off the west, miles high snows, hundreds of miles in length."
Look at the maps and see how very few large rivers manage to flow to the westward against the terrific eastward trend of the earth's surface.
"At last," said Storm, "the Columbia finds a way round the norrard end of my Alps, and the Kootenay sneaks around the southern foothills. Each makes a hairpin bend. They've both got lost in the woods, so the Columbia flows due south, and the Kootenay due north. Here on the Kootenay is our herd camp, that's the bulrush swamps, and there's my trading post on the only bit of gravel which doesn't flood in summer. And here's our hundred-mile lake.
"By this time the Kootenay cools off and gets lonesome, so it finds a hollowed lip 'ere at the West Arm, and goes ramping down big falls to the Columbia. This way!' says he, 'due west!' but the old Columbia knows what's best, and keeps straight on down through them lava deserts, and the big volcanoes."
"Your mountains form the island, then?" said the factor.
Storm looked up at Douglas, and his face had a yearning, hungry ferocity reminding the factor of a mother wolf guarding her cubs.
"When I gets my guns," he said, "I can 'old that range of Alps agin the world. But you wants trade. Well, here's the World Spine, and them Blackfoot prairies. Here's the Flatheads down south past Tobacco Plains. Here's the Shushwap tribes nor'west of us. There's trade enough."
He stood up facing Douglas. "Who gets the trade?" he asked—"you or them Americans?"
"You'll be trader?"
"No. Fatbald's widow Two Bits owns the post, not me. She got more brains than me when it comes to trading, and she's wife of the Head Chief Sitting Wolf, my friend."
"I see," said Douglas thoughtfully. "And you? Where do you come into this? When you've given everything away, what then, King Storm?"
"What then?"
Storm's mood changed always with bewildering suddenness. Within this brief conversation he had been cordial, truculent, grateful, shrewd, poetic, whimsical, wistful, ferocious, and now astounded Douglas by showing the reserve of an English gentleman intruded upon by strangers. This forlorn bargee and ordinary seaman, fugitive from justice, had an extraordinary air of breeding. "I don't understand you," he said, and turned away, as though to end the interview.
"My dear chap," said the administrator, treating Storm, for the first time, as an equal, "I really must beg your pardon. Your private affairs——"
Storm swung around sharply.
"'Ow about them guns?"
"Oh, I must see our resident officer. You'll count on my good offices?"
"Thank you."
"But when I spoke so bluntly just now, I was only wondering, Storm, if I can do you a good turn, somehow. We white men stick together out here, eh? And your life must be rather lonely."
Storm had a quizzing, twisty sort of smile. He did not know what impulse moved him, or realize that his mother, invisible, but most urgent and determined for his good, guided his mind, directed his hand as he pointed to the New Testament in the factor's hand, and said outright:
"I wants that!"
"What?"
"That book, sir. The New Testament."
"I brought it out with me," said the factor, "to read here under the trees. You want to see it? Here. It was my mother's copy," he added.
Storm took it in his hands, but looked away across the sun-bright river. "My mother's! I left my mother's behind," he said. "You see, it was under her pillow when daddy knifed her. I couldn't go down into the cabin to fetch it then. I just couldn't. Now she says—says she—I got to ax you for this."
"Man! She's dead. She can't be speaking."
"Why not? She hain't so dead as all that. She says there is no death. She told me I'd got to come here to Fort Colville because—to complete my outfit. It hain't complete, she says, without—without that book."
"The Word of God," said Douglas. "No outfit is complete without that weapon. Take it, my boy. You're welcome. It is the sword of the Spirit."
IV—THE TRAIL
Alone upon the river bank, under a tree, Storm opened the book. So long a time had passed since he had last seen the written word, the white man's greatest magic, that all he could do was to spell out letters and make syllables aloud, forgetting the beginnings of a line before he reached its end. So reading he fell into a doze, and presently into deep sleep, dreaming true. In his dream he stood once more among funereal and torchlike pines upon a level tract of old gray snow. There were the tracks quite fresh of a white man's boots, which following, he came to the edge of the snow-clad plateau. Thence he looked down a thousand feet or so of corkscrew trail among dark junipers, and at the foot of the hill he saw Rain's sacred tipi. The tracks led down the trail, and halfway to the tipi lurched a man who carried pack and gun. Storm recognized the beaver cap, the deerskin hunting shirt, the breeches with long fringes down the seams, the long boots gone over at the heels. So there went the only white man save himself in all the Kutenais, for this was American trapper Hunt-the-girls. Evening was closing in, and down there the hearth fire made Rain's tipi glow, while a thin thread of smoke went up as from an altar. So Hunt-the-girls would seek for hospitality at the Sacred Lodge.
In his dream Storm went directly to the lodge, where he saw Rain at her evensong. Storm would not venture to make his presence known at such a time, but stood behind her joining his prayer to hers. A few days more, after a lifetime of waiting and years of self-denial, he would come there in the body, to be joined with Rain in wedlock. Both of them prayed that the time might be shortened until they were man and wife.
When Hunt-the-girls came to the tipi he drew aside the door flap and entered. He seemed a little daunted at finding a woman at prayer, but presently Rain stood up, gave him a kindly greeting, helped to take off his pack, then let him have tobacco to smoke while she made supper. They talked a little in the Kutenais, of the weather, the trails, the hunting, and the beaver, but all the while the white man, fascinated, enthralled, gazed at the woman, desire in his eyes, while she, kneeling at the work, her back turned, grew more and more uneasy. Storm saw her loose the dagger in her belt sheath, and tried to let Rain know that he was present, but could not reach her mind. He wanted with all his might to restrain the white man, to frighten him, to drive him away, or even in the last resort to kill, but Storm's spiritual presence might have no influence upon the material body of this felon, nor hands invisible defend the woman he loved, in the extremity of her peril. She was praying in desperation. At her summons her mother, Thunder Feather, and Storm's mother, Catherine, were present instantly, and presently the great spirit Hiawatha. These joined Storm, and by agreement all of them bent their wills to daunt the trapper, while they inspired Rain to coolness, skill, and daring in her defense.
The mad beast passion had called up demons also until a crowd of evil spirits urged the trapper on so that Rain's friends could not avail to hold him from his purpose. The trapper leaped at Rain, flung her headlong beside the little fire on the hearth, then dragged her across the floor, laying her on the bison robes against the back rest. There they fought long, desperately, until at last Rain's strength failed. She seemed to have fainted, yet her eyelids parted almost invisibly as she got ready. Only she opened her eyes wide when she struck, driving the dagger home into the white man's lungs. It seemed but a minute later that she dragged the wounded man abreast of the hearth fire, rolled him face downwards across the belt of red-hot coals, and stood holding him there with her foot, until the awful vengeance was accomplished.
Then Storm remembered her words of long ago: "If a woman will not defend her honor, with her weapons defend her honor, with all that she is, all that she has, defend her honor, then let her not think that she shall dare the Wolf Trail. She shall not climb the Wolf Trail to the land of the Blessed Spirits."
So be it. Her honor was defended, and avenged. Henceforth he who had offended her, if he should live, so long as he should live should have but one name, No-man.
And the dream faded.
* * * * * * *
The dusk had fallen, the lamp was alight in the chief factor's room at the Fort.
"My dear," said Douglas to his Indian wife, "I've given my New Testament to Storm of the East Kutenais."
The woman wondered at him.
"After all," Douglas explained, "what could I do? We've got the big Bible with us and I'm sure my mother would have given him that little Testament, as of course I did. You'll laugh at what I say, but if you'd seen him there, a sort of spirit, all dusty sunshine, his eyes dreaming, seeing things unearthly, as he looked across the blaze of light on the water! My dear! why, his face was inspired."
"Hush! Some one at the door," said Mrs. Douglas, who was undressing to go to bed. "Who can it be, so late?"
The factor opened the door, and Mrs. Douglas hid herself behind it. Storm stood there, deathly-pale, shaking all over, holding on to the lintel overhead.
"I want you," he said huskily. "My wife's in danger. I got to go at once."
"You've had a message?"
"Yes. From her mother, Thunder Feather. I'm starting now with the three best canoe men. But I can't leave my Injuns in the lurch about them guns. You got to do the trading for me, with this Fort Colville man?"
"I?" asked the factor.
"You. I trust you. You're straight."
"The Hudson's Bay Company is not exactly crooked."
"It's you I trust. You'll do it?"
"Gladly," said Douglas.
"Fatbald's widow, Two Bits, Sitting Wolf's woman, will come to you in the morning. Or you can send for her."
He was gone, and Douglas stood in the doorway listening as Storm ran towards the river and his canoe.
The Indian would rather not be fed from the Great Horn Spoon of the Pale-face. North of the Medicine Line we have kept faith with him, in cold frugality and aggravating meanness. Southward in the Land of Promises we showed him the whole art and practice of Humbug, sometimes massacred a tribe or so, were always liable to break out, and yet had generous moods or even dealt a little sunshine now and then to warm starved hearts. The Indian likes Canada least.
We wear hats, not for an occasional ceremony, but all the time, as though we never desisted from making magic. That is uncanny, not quite human.
The Indian likes a fight as much as anybody, and afterwards a scalp is the very best trophy. But he always took that trophy in war, not, like the white frontiersman, in peace, or for fun, or as a collector of curiosities. In other ways, too, the white man is ferocious. When, on a hard trip, the Indians are done for and lie down to die, the white man gets up and kicks them. I have done that myself. The white man's purpose goes on until he is dead, and afterwards. He is much fiercer even than the poor embittered Apaches. He is fierce in cold blood. He laughs.
All this is to illustrate the emotions of Falls-in-two, Wags-his-tail, and Last-one-to-swim-home-with-fodder, the three best canoe men of the Kutenais.
They did not like the white man Storms-all-of-a-sudden, who kept two of them at the paddles, one resting, and worked without sleep himself for seventy hours on end. When he caught them trying to cook a meal, he kicked the fire out. Of course, they could kill him easily, but when they rejoined the tribe Two Bits would have a few words to say about that. Brave they were to a fault, but when old Two Bits "turned her wolf loose," naught could avail but absence.
A white man wears a hat and can work without rest or food, such being his sun-power; but an over-strained Indian's nerve breaks, and, though he may seem to get well, he will not live long afterwards. So, at the cataract from which he had his name, Falls-in-two explained this mystery to Storms-all-of-a-sudden. It made Storm worse than ever.
At the upper portage the three Indians prayed that the sun would burn him and powder him up for black face-paint. Most certainly the prayer had some effect, for the heat became extreme, and in the late afternoon when they reached the place where the city of Nelson stands, the white man, so said Wags-his-tail, just fell down dead. They were too tired to help. They let him stay dead until midnight.
* * * * * * *
Storm had lost himself among heaps of clinkers and beds of cinders. There were drifts of ashes flung by an icy wind in the gray gloom, a gale of ashes blowing through his body, cold which wrenched his heart, clutched his throat, strangled him. He could not find Rain's enemy, the man who had ruined his wife, and robbed her of her honor. The plain reached away forever without shelter or refuge or any hope. There was no hope. There was no life in him or warmth except from the burning of murderous hatred for Rain's enemy.
"I have a soul," he shouted, "to offer in exchange if I may have my enemy. Give me my enemy!"
There was no answer to his cry, no echo from the desert, only more furious wind, and deepening of gray darkness, drift in which he floundered, sinking, cold beyond endurance.
Again he shouted, offering his soul for help in the finding of Rain's enemy.
That time he heard the echo, derisive, hollow, flung by unseen cliffs, crashing from wall to wall, from height to height, far up to summits remote, and empty silence. Presently his knee struck a chain suspended in the ash drift. Its cold tore the skin from his hands, but he could not lower it to climb over or lift it to get under. He hauled himself along by the chain as though it were a life line, knowing that the name of it was Despair. And by the chain of Despair he came at last to the foot of the cliffs, just where a pathway went up, broad, of easy gradient, quartering the precipice. He knew that the name of that path was Hope, but he could not tell whither it led. Only it saved him from the gale of drifting ashes, and it seemed to lead him away from Hate, wherein there is no shelter, or succor, or deliverance. He went on a long way, but always the path narrowed, shrinking against the cliffs; and whereas it had been easy, it was now steep, aye, and perilous, for it shelved to the edge, of slippery loose flakes which slithered over and fell. He stood breathless, listening for the stones to reach the bottom to reassure him, but they fell, and fell without end. Now he dared go no farther upon that narrow shelving way lest he should miss a foothold in the dark, to slither as the stones did, and go suddenly mad, to leap, turning over and over in Space, falling into the Silence. He would have gone down the path, but that he dared not turn round. He went on, clinging to the wall, peering into the gloom, looking for footholds.
So Thunder Feather found him, and barred his path. She said that Rain lay up yonder at the point of death. She must come down this trail to find Storm because he had failed her, in her extremity had failed her.
The words were echoed by clanging walls, with cap and crash of thundering calls and answers, far up the heights until the sound was lost in Silence.
And in the disorder of her grief the mother railed at Storm. "You think yourself a man," she cried, "a warrior!" The echoes crashed and thundered to every word. "Your woman bids you keep away from your lodge these three snows past, and you obey, you cur! What woman ever made could love or reverence a thing that obeys her like a dog at the lodge door!
"Three winters married and never seen your woman! O craven dog-face! The squaw is master in your lodge, and you whimpering outside, unfit, unworthy to enter, not man enough to go in, Betrayer of Manhood. He arms a tribe with guns to protect his woman's mountains, while he dare not guard her honor."
She leaned forward, and spat in his face.
"It's just as well," she said, "you were not there to meet that warrior, to spoil your woman's aim when she launched the arrow, or afterwards where she finished him.
"He lies outside the lodge writhing, moaning, there in his blood, craving for water. I sat unseen, invisible, beside him, making sure of his agony, drinking his anguish. Rain's vengeance has not failed, as yours fails, coward. Her vengeance is the one thing saved, the only thing which has not failed in our downfall, all that we have left. He will never have power to harm another woman.
"And so you think you'll climb this trail up to the Hunting Grounds among the blessed dead! You will, but it will be a land of strangers for such as you, who shirked."
Father and Uncle Joey stood behind her, and they also jeered.
In all Storm's life that was the moment of deepest humiliation, for while he knelt upon the ledge, broken with misery, Thunder Feather, his chief assailant, turned on these evil spirits like a tigress. She terrified them, driving them away.
Afterwards when she came back, she crouched down on a jutting crag, covered her head with her robe, and mourned for the overthrow of all she had loved on earth.
"What brought you here?" Storm asked, for his heart went out to her.
"I'm finding the trail," she said, "to make it easier for Rain when she dies, and comes here—she who avenged her honor. I will set up her lodge, and bide with her."
Not sin, but love, had brought this unhappy spirit down to Hell, love upside down, grotesquely changed to hate, to venomous curses and exulting vengeance, but love nevertheless, love eternal, love triumphant. Ignoring his own misery, thrusting self away, Storm had the heart to pity Thunder Feather, sought clumsily enough and hopelessly to give her the comfort which he lacked himself.
How strange it was that, all unnoticed, humble mosses grew in the cracks of the rock, putting forth tiny forlorn green flowers. There was even a trickle of water flowing across the shelf.
Why, there was light enough now to see far up the gray, stupendous walls on either side, although the abyss beneath was hardly visible. The water caught the light, and Storm saw it, letting the trickle flow into his hands, although his thirst had become so terrible that he could not keep still, but let it run away between his fingers. He tried again, but this time to get water for the woman. She cursed him, cross-grained as ever, but she drank, and went on cursing his attempts to give her comfort where there could be none. She tried to drive him away, but he was busy drinking and took no notice. She was glad in her heart that he stayed, that he still tried to give her something to hope for. If she had come down the trail, it must be possible for him to help her up again.
It was then that Catherine came, calling for Thunder Feather, feeling her way down into the gloom of the abyss. She found the woman at her son's feet, mourning.
Storm looked up wondering at his mother's radiance, which lighted the gray walls on either side. Then she bent down and kissed him on the forehead.
"Silly old Thunder Feather!" she said with all the clear-cut, brisk decisiveness of the trained nurse, "talketh nonsense and knoweth it is rubbish, and grinneth when found out, as she doth now. Ugh! Look at her!"
Thunder Feather tried to conceal the grin under her robe.
"Pay thee no heed," said Catherine. "For, if she meant a tenth part of that which she saith, her portion would be perdition, albeit her spirit dwelleth in Rain's tent."
Storm dared not ask about Rain.
"I've just left Rain," said mother, "asleep and asking for thee. Thou must not come, son."
"Why?"
"Because if thee comes in the spirit she will leave her body to meet thee, and then she won't get back again. Dost thee want her to croak? Then don't be silly. Come in thy body like a man, so that thy wife seeth thee in the flesh and cleaveth to the earth-life for thy sake. The poor thing prays for death. Make her pray for life. Now promise. S'elp you Bob!"
"S'elp me Bob."
"That's right." The sensible old woman turned briskly to Thunder Feather. "Dost gloat on Hell, eh? Come back to thy child or—or I'll smack thee black and blue."
The Indian spirit got up, favored Storm with a demure wink, and meekly followed Catherine back to duty.
* * * * * * *
Despite his mother's comforting words, the taunts of Thunder Feather had bitten so very deeply that Storm awakened, yelling. He raved to the three Indians that he had failed his wife in her need, and they, supposing him to be unmarried, thought he had gone crazy.
Ill as he was from yesterday's touch of the sun, he roused them again at daybreak, and drove them heartlessly on that last day's journey of seventy miles by water. Yet as a gale breaks into squalls, and flaws into calm, so he became inconstant, with moods of furious haste followed by hours when he dared not go on. He might not find Rain alive. So at the outlet of the main lake he let his men cook breakfast; at the Warm Springs they all had a bath; at Kaslo Point landed for supper; and it was not until night was far advanced that they came dead weary to the head of navigation on Hamill Creek.
After a dreamless night Storm found himself fit for travel. At dawn he bathed, said his prayers, cooked breakfast, and finished eating by the time the three Indians awakened. They sat up, each in his robe, and offered thanks to Morning Star that they were to go no farther with this madman. They watched him stow his New Testament and some jerked buffalo beef into the robe which he packed and slung by shoulder cords upon his back.
"Chiefs," observed Falls-in-two, "great medicine men, and even warriors may fulfill a vow, or in grave need venture to take this Ghost Trail. I'll bet you my canoe you don't get back."
"Yes," said Last-one-to-swim-home-with-the-fodder, "my beaver-mother warned me in my dream. 'My beaver-child,' she said, 'you were born lazy, which is incurable, but if you ever do recover, don't attempt the Ghost Trail. But if you do go, prepare yourself with fasting, purification, the beaver bundle ceremonial, and the sacrifice of all your property to the Sun-spirit.' I would not like that part."
"My father," remarked young Wags-his-tail, "did walk this Ghost Trail, to fulfill a vow. The ghosts ate him, and we never found anything except his skull. Yes, and his tail-bone," he added cheerfully.
Storm was laughing as he belted on the hatchet, took up his gun, and offered his hand to his friends.
"We will pray for you," said Falls-in-two grudgingly, "but it's not much use in this case."
"Your scouting is bad," said Last-one-to-swim-home-with-the-fodder. "My dream says you'll get bushed. The best way is not to go."
"Your hunting," said Wags-his-tail, "will make you so thin that the ghosts won't think you're meat. You may get through to the sacred woman's lodge."
Thus thoroughly cheered, Storm took the Ghost Trail, which was very faintly blazed through the dense timber.
For a white man, he was not so bad a tracker. He knew a blaze on a tree, however much the bark had overgrown the slash. He knew that mosses and lichens denote the north side of either tree or rock, that a slope leads down to water, that deer tracks are guides in crossing a valley, but that elk slot shows the best route following a stream. The man who knows these things, even when tired or flustered, is not very easily bushed. Besides, when his mind was quiet, kindly spirits were able to guide his course, as they always will if one lets them.
For the first few hours he went in great contentment. Farther on, within the foldings of the foothills, he looked down a thousand feet or more upon the white earth-shaking torrent, whose northern bank was precipice unscalable. The southern incurved slope of the cañon, to which he clung like a fly on a wall, became more perilous as he advanced, for the moss was strewn with slippery pine needles, while here and there it was clad with snow, thawed, and then glazed by frost, so that he had to hew out a tread for every step. No sunlight ever falls upon that hillside, where the Douglas firs are a couple of hundred feet high, and fallen trunks perhaps thirty feet in girth lie rotting, sliding, not to be climbed, most dangerous to pass lest they break loose. Uphill the whole slope was ice-clad, downhill the stretches of open ground were more and more abrupt, and as the day waned, frozen, slippery as glass. Storm worked on, desperate because the sun was setting and soon it would be dark. It was then in the dusk that he met the grizzly, an old man bear, a giant, lean from the winter's fast, morosely hunting tree grubs for a scanty meal. He reared up from his work on the butt of a fallen tree, angry at being disturbed, barring Storm's way, determined to have meat.
Storm's stomach flopped over, so he said, for he was terrified.
"Brother," he pleaded nervously, "my woman is wounded, and I'm going to her. Have pity, and let me off! Brother, do you believe in the Sun Spirit? See this gun! If I trust in that I'm a rotten shot, but if I trust in the Sun Spirit——"
The man whirled the gun round his head and launched it flying down into the cañon.
"Now, God," he cried, "it's Your turn!"
The bear dropped on all fours, and with a snarl of defiance over his left shoulder dared Storm to follow him.
"Spirit in the Sun! Thanks!" cried Storm. "That gun is Yours."
So he followed the bear, who knew the way down to the river, where there was ground level enough for camping. He went upstream a little, out of sight from the gun, lest he be tempted to steal it back again.
So in the dusk he made a little fire, ate dried meat, hung up the remainder beyond the reach of roving porcupines, and slept. For fear lest the bear come back to eat his body, he dared not leave it, but mother came in his dream to say he had done well. And Rain was better.
The river was at its very lowest, but even then it makes one's flesh creep to think of crossing Hamill Creek. Of course the change of weather that night to steady slopping rain made bathing no wetter than walking, and, since the fellow swam like a duck, he might as well land on the north bank. Anybody else would have drowned, but somehow he got across to the sunlit side of the gorge.
The trouble about the north side is that it is streaked with the tracks of snowslides, where avalanche has swept away the giant timber, and in its place grows grass. When a horse falls into that grass one can see by movements of the foliage where his four legs are waving for assistance, but one cannot chop one's way to him, or by any means get down to the rescue. As to the flowers, there is one, the giant hemlock, whose blossom can just be reached up to by a mounted man. Yet, when one comes to think, this jungle of late summer might be quite easily passable in May.
A bull elk was ramping down the gorge rutting, who belled for his mate, very crazy. When he came upon Storm he lowered his antlers, and charged, but the man who had put the fear into a real bear was not to be alarmed by any stag.
"Can't you see I'm not a cow? Get out of my way!" said Storm.
The elk propped with his four legs to a halt, stood for a moment at gaze, and turned off, shattering through the underbrush.
And presently a gray wolf, who was tracking the elk, showed himself to Storm, rather shyly. Indians are comrades, but this one was off color.
"Brother," said the man, "your people and mine are at peace. Good hunting!"
"Not armed!" said the wolf to himself. Then he whimpered softly, for he was hungry, and the man might help him to meat.
"Show me the way," said Storm, "and I'll give you my dry meat. Take me to my wife."
The Indians know that wolves have sometimes not only hunted with people, but also shown them the way, and Storm's power was very strong since his encounter with the grizzly. He followed the wolf up the gigantic hills until at dusk he came to a little level field of old gray snow where gaunt funereal pines like torches stood in the dripping rain, the mournful rain. The snow had been disturbed and there were tracks of unshod horses, who would not come up here unless they were ridden. Here, where the snow had melted through, the sodden ground showed ashes of a camp fire, pitted by big raindrops from the trees. This tree whose branches dripped into the ashes was hung with clothes, torn by the wind to rags, bundles, weapons, ornaments, offerings to the Sun. It was a place of sacrifice, dedicated. And the wolf had fled without his reward of meat:
"Surely," thought Storm, "I've been here before. Aye, in this life I've sat beside that fire."
He peered through a veil of rain into the violet gloom. "If it were only clear enough!" he thought. "There is the Apse of Ice!"
He walked to the eastward edge of the platform and looked down the hillside, precipitous, flecked with dark juniper bushes. A thousand feet below he could see a level mead where there were horses grazing, and there in the pasture close against the hill was a tipi. That was her lodge!
Risking his neck on slippery ground and snowdrift, he rushed that hillside, leaping, sliding, rolling, falling, catching at bushes, then scrambling to his feet and quartering zigzag downwards until, breathless and frantic, he pulled himself up short behind the tipi. It showed no smoke, no firelight.
He groped his way in the dark, round to the eastward side where the closed square flap of the doorway faced the valley. There he tripped over something, and reaching out his hands to save himself, he found the body of a man, of Rain's enemy whom he had come to kill. To all Indians the place was holy, the priestess a sacred woman. The tribes would burn the man who dared molest her. This was no Indian. These sodden clothes, a serge shirt, duck overalls, long boots, were those of a white man. There was but one white man in these mountains, Hiram Kant, the American trapper, known to the Indians as Hunt-the-girls, who had "heard of a crick up north a-ways, plumb spoiled with beaver dams."
Storm's groping fingers found the wound. The touch of it made him retch, for this man was wounded—horribly. Rain's vengeance had struck. And Thunder Feather had given to this trapper Hunt-the-girls a new name—"No-man."
If he had only been dead! But this thing was alive, delirious, muttering, moaning for water. "And it wouldn't be decent to kill—until I gets him well enough to fight me. I suppose I got to——"
Sick, faint, reeling, Storm groped in the dark until he found by the tent door an elk paunch used as a bucket, and half full of water. He poured some into No-man's mouth.
And all the while there were words, dimly remembered words, which would run in Storm's head:
"If thine enemy hunger!"
"Well? Let him hunger!" said Storm out loud. "I got to find Rain first."
Still feeling sick, he groped at the door flap, unfastened it, wrenched it aside, and reeled into the lodge. He could not hear properly, for the drumming of raindrops on the skin wall drowned any sound, although he had a sense which made his flesh creep of something stirring, of deadly menace waiting in the darkness.
Then with a sense of horror he remembered that Rain knew no word of English nor he of Blackfoot. In Dreamland, where all languages are as one, they used to talk of that, and how when they met on earth—yes, he was to sing the melody she loved best.
His mouth was dry. He could not sing. He was too frightened. He must! Yes; while he knelt down groping for the fire sticks which always, in an Indian tipi, lay just within the doorway on the left——
Now 'ere's to hold Tom Bow-oh-oh-le-hing,The darling of our crew-hoo.
Would she remember? His shaking hands had found the fire sticks. With fumblings at his belt pouch, he got out flint, steel, and tinder, struck down brisk showers of sparks——
Faithful be-low, he did his doo-hoo-hootyBut death has broached him too-oo-oo-hoo-hoo—
He blew at the tinder until it kindled——
De-heth has broached hi-im too.
"That's right!" The fire stick caught, and showed him a torch, which he lighted. "How's that? Eh?" He looked up triumphant, and then, with narrowing eyes, peered out across the lodge.
What should he know about Red Indian grief, of Blackfoot rites which mourned for murdered honor? The priestess had bled nearly to death, had starved her body these four days, and only remained alive because the guardian spirits gave her power.
They said that Storm was coming. Who could mistake that blundering white man's rush down the hillside, that muttering of oaths when he fell over No-man's body, that funny dear old melody?
Had she not loved so fiercely she could not have hated his coming with such frantic intensity. That he should break into the place where she hid her misery!
Purity fierce as fire, anger which struck like lightning, pride ferocious, a wild heart savage as this terrific wilderness, all that had made her overwrought, hysterical, half mad, found their expression now as she crouched kneeling, her bow drawn, her arrow ready, her staring eyes waiting until the light showed the target, and then she steadied her aim directly at his heart.
Storm saw the woman he had worshiped from childhood, married in Dreamland, his wife whom now the torch revealed to him for the first time on earth—a terrible, avenging fury.
As a horseman speaks of his horse, so had this woman spoken of her animal, her earthly body, which, be it beautiful or be it disfigured, was a thing apart from herself, which he had never seen, or loved, or thought about.
It is not the lamp which gives light, or the oil, or the wick, but the flame. So the earthly body inspires passion, while Love is of the soul, burning, spiritual, not of the Earth or of Time, but of the Heavens eternal. And Death can only make the dull flame clear, shining above the level of the earth mists, in regions where Love is regnant, omnipotent, omniscient, eternal. The human love which lights our way on earth is to that mighty power, like the small twinkle in a sunlit dew-drop.
So Storm saw dimly by the flickering torchlight the disfigured body, but clearly radiantly the untarnished soul. His love was not of the Earth, or of Time, or Space or any limitation, but the divine spark which kindled his manhood, not to be quenched by any illusion of the senses. And as to the threatened death, what was that to him except a quick awakening from this earth-dream!
Long ago in Dreamland Rain had launched an arrow through Storm's heart, but by his faith he had been saved from any pain or injury from the wound. Laughing at that old memory, he said, "I still believe"; and, just as he had then, so now he stretched out his arms.
His hair was draggled with the wet, his deerskin dress was soaked, dank, clinging to his body; but neither the drenching, the cold, nor his weariness could lower the flash of his eyes or hide the love which lighted his face as he knelt there, not come to affront her privacy, but to show Rain that he, her lover, her husband, had come at last to protect and succor her. She understood.
The bow relaxed, the arrow dropped, she reached out her arms to him, her lips rendered thanksgiving; but now that the strain was ended, the wounded, starving woman swayed helplessly, the flush gone from her face, the light from her eyes. And she fell forward.
Storm dropped the torch. The tipi was all in darkness, and there was no sound save the steady pattering of rain on the taut skins overhead.
I
Europe has two groups of languages, the Aryan and the Basque, but the North Americans had ten, with hundreds of tribal dialects. Only the nations on the northwest coast had a trade jargon to unite their isolated villages.
The Indian of the hunting tribes made his whole life the exercise of a religion expressed in endless ceremonial, even the songs and dances being forms of prayer. The song was derived from the notes of birds and beasts, the ritual and the dance were a careful mimicry of the wild creatures, and the whole art of pantomine gave to the Indian extraordinary expressiveness, variety, and grace in gesture. So North America had what Europe lacked, the basis for a language of signs, in universal use, breaking down tribal barriers, welding all nations into one brotherhood. The population was so small, its tribes were so far apart, that war was informal, a hunting for trophies to please the girls, not a campaigning for conquest; but the sign talk made an immense telegraphy which carried news from hill to hill across the wilderness, scout's warning to the home camp, signal of tribe to tribe guiding the hunt, as well as an instrument in diplomacy, a vehicle for treaties.
So far back as they remembered their life, Rain had instructed Storm in the ways of her people, and they could spend hours together conversing in the hand talk without one spoken word. Their first earthly meeting occurred on a dark night when the fire was out; but when they had light to see by, they talked as deaf and dumb folk do among ourselves. Even when Storm learned Blackfoot, they would revert to the graceful, happy game, as one might turn for fun from prose to poetry.
Think, then, of Storm on his knees enjoying a bright fire, and the haggard priestess sitting up affronted because he had bedded No-man down on the other side of the tipi. "That thing, No-man," she sig- naled, "profanes my lodge. Chuck him out!" No-man! Such was the name which Thunder Feather had called the white man Hunt-the-girls, her daughter's enemy.
"Don't fuss," he answered, "here's your soup all steaming, and I'm Old Squaw who smacks the children to make them good inside. You shan't have any soup until you agree to be good."
Rain wanted that soup.
No-man did not want soup. He was Hiram J. Kant, a free-born American citizen, what had a right to die if he pleased.
"Not at all," said Storm. "You got no right to sneak out of a fight."
"What fight?"
"I'm Rain's husband."
"Some liar," said No-man with admiration.
"You're going to fight me, Hiram," Storm added, "knives, guns, or teeth, but you'll fight."
"Eh?" The American became quite cheerful with something to look forward to.
"Gimme that soup!"
Both patients were acutely disagreeable. Rain determined to finish murdering No-man the moment she felt well enough, while the trapper had but one motive for living, a duel with his nurse. Moreover, all three of them had to be fed. So the nurse went hunting with No-man's gun or Rain's arrows daily to get meat, just at the height of the season when the animals were either in love or looking after their children. No-man wanted rainbow trout, Rain said fish were unclean. Storm could not catch them anyway, and only the little fishes enjoyed the joke. The camas lilies made the pastures blue as a sunlit lake, and Rain turned rabid vegetarian, but Storm had never learned to use the rooting stick, shaped like a packing needle. The bulbs came up in broken bits. As to the cooking of them in a grass-lined pit, with a fire on top, that really needs a bit of practice, and Rain's explanations in the hand talk were merely an aggravation of his worries. His nursing was rough, his surgery a peril, his hunting a failure, his cookery a besetting sin, his housekeeping an outrage on decency, and in short his conduct of affairs most stimulating. Both patients in self-defense made hasty convalescence.
The worker, arraigned by his conscience and condemned by his fellows as a failure, sees but one side of life, while on the other spirits invisible may be praising his service as one of immortal beauty. The wise women, Catherine and Thunder Feather, saw the excellence of Storm's deeds, but also the error in his thoughts which brought his work to naught. He supposed his honor to demand a duel with No-man, while Rain's desire was wholly set on murder, and the trapper lived but for the single motive of a fair fight to the death with his only friend. Such thoughts were not curative to the sick or helpful to the nurse, but liable to end in some unpleasantness. Catherine and Thunder Feather prayed for help to Hiawatha.
He came, not to Rain's tipi, but to her place of sacrifice, that hill which like an altar stood in the middle of the Apse of Ice. He called the children to him, and when they arrived borne, in their dream, through the hush of the night, they found him. Remote and spectral under the moonlight, the walls went up to spires of frosty silver, and at their feet five glaciers crouched, half seen through a veil of mist.
"May the Light defend us," said Hiawatha, "from spiritual perils and in earthly danger."
Rain sat on his right hand, Storm on his left, their hearts at rest.
"I come to tell you about certain angels."
The story-teller's duty is to amuse and interest the folk, setting forth real and golden truth, not of events as though he were historian, not of philosophy as though he were a scholar, not of religion as though he were a priest, but of human character, adventure, humor, tragedy, and fun. He is the jester in a fool's cap, motley, and bells, but it would be a poor joke to trap the unwary reader with a sermon. That would be dishonest and the book a swindle.
Yet I did love Hiawatha's sermons, sitting with Rain and Storm to listen, moved as they were moved, crying a little at times or laughing with them, resolved as they were resolved to be more kindly, not quite such a prig, forgiving as they forgave a fallen enemy, and living as they lived on this earth the life immortal.
We are so busy gabbling and fussing that our guardian angels cannot get a word in edgeways unless we are asleep. And then we don't remember. The soul remembers. I deem the world would all go mad but for the good things which happen in the night, while the bodies of the dream-folk rest.
So Hiawatha's sermons shall make a separate volume, a better one than this, and for the time it is enough to specify that through this teaching Rain and Storm forgave No-man his trespass, hoping to be for-given some of their own pet sins.
Long after his children had gone back to their lodge, the Guardian Spirit of the New Race sat by the altar fire peering into the future, the great and terrible days to come. He saw his people play the Game of Life not for the zest of it, but for greed of the counters. In that game, as seen from the spirit planes, the winner is he who gives away the counters, the piteous loser he who stakes his soul to get them, but presently leaving the table, finds his gains no longer a currency in regions where a million of them will not buy so much as a drop of water.
II
When Rain was well enough she made clothes for No-man, but would not as yet speak to him or go near him. Storm was the nurse. He did the hunting also, but his wife sun-dried the meat and dressed the skins. He fished, but she did the cooking; he dug wild vegetables which his wife prepared and stored. When the berry season came he thrashed the sarvis, cherry, and cranberry bushes, while Rain sifted, cured, and stored the fruit for winter. She had many a hard day's work besides to entertain the clients, who came hundreds of miles for healing or for counsel. They had to be fed, bedded down, and listened to for patient hours far into the night.
When there was time, the day's work finished and the gear repaired, if light enough remained of a summer evening, Storm read the Bible spelling it out laboriously and aloud in English, then translating phrase by phrase into his broken Blackfoot and the sign talk.
As rendered, it was something of this kind:
"Jesus went up to the medicine lodge."
Rain could see the camp of the Jews: herders watching their pony herd up on the prairie, and down in the meadow, miles wide and miles long, was the ring of the tribal tipis, in one immense ellipse. There the squaws were busy flenching skins, or sitting in a merry group to piece together the covering of a lodge. The little naked Jew boys chased and roped dogs or went on a make-believe buffalo hunt shooting with blunted arrows. The little girls were moving a doll's camp, or cooking a let's-pretend feast. Out in the open arena stood a row of society lodges for the Pharisee, Sadducee, and Scribe societies where they painted themselves and dressed for ceremonials. The Crazy Dogs, or camp police, were called the "Roman soldiers," much too stuck-up to mix with the other societies.
In the very middle was the medicine lodge, an enclosure of sheltering branches which sloped all inward towards the sacred lodge pole. Close by was the booth where the sacred woman fasted, and there was a shelter with a sweat lodge for the three high priests.
"Jesus went up to the medicine lodge, and found a lot of dog-faced persons who sold birds and trade goods for sacrifice to the Sun-Spirit."
"Shame! Shame!" cried Rain.
"So He threw them out, and pitched the trade goods after them."
"Of course," said Rain, approving heartily.
"He said the holy tipi is a place for prayer, but you have made it an All-Thieves-Society Lodge.
"Then a lot of blind and lame Indians came to the medicine lodge for help. So He mended them.
"But when the big chiefs and medicine men saw that——"
"I see," said Rain. "If He mended the poor people for nothing, they wouldn't have to pay all their ponies and robes to be cured by the medicine men. He was spoiling the medicine business. Of course they didn't understand that He was really Morning Star, the only Son of the Big Spirit. Nobody except Scarface could ever scout the way for the people over the terrible Wolf Trail. O Scarf ace, Star of the Daybreak, Christ our Chief, lead us through the darkness upon that Path of Stars."
On the other side of the hearth fire, No-man lay in torment, half mad with pain, disturbed all day and far into each night by the tireless labor and worship. After a couple of months his nerves were torn to rags. He became hysterical. One morning, while Rain was down at the bathing place, and Storm spelling out an epistle to the people of Salonica, the patient called a halt.
"Say," he drawled, "see here. Whar I was brung up, 'way East, my folks they got religion. They took it bad, at one of them camp meetings, whar more souls is made than saved. See?
"They was mean as snakes to start with, an' if they lost five cents they raised the death wail. But when they got Religion the way they'd slander the unconverted neighbors and whine about their own souls! I cleared. You couldn't see my tail for dust.
"I'm shorely disabled, and heap sick, but I'm what's left of a man, and you're a white-livered skunk with cold feet, which daresn't meet me, either with knives, guns, or teeth."
There was just enough truth in No-man's words to stab, to torture, sufficient injustice to enrage Storm almost to the point of murder. And he had fallen so far short of his own ideals. A fugitive from justice because he was afraid to face the gallows; an outcast of the master race contented in his shame to be a sham Indian among savages; a frontiersman, but so poor a specimen compared with this wounded trapper; a Christian yet angry, jealous, full of spiritual pride mixed up with devilish hatred. He doubted if he was really fit to live.
His heart cried, "Is this man right? Am I unfit to live?"
No-man got to his knees unsteadily and swayed with weakness as he took up the weapon and loaded. His head swam. He fumbled with tremulous fingers, muttering that there wasn't room for two men in Rain's tipi. Then he turned himself round, confronting Storm, who sat with the Book clasped in his hands.
"Whar's yo' gun?"
"My gun?"
Storm's mind flashed back to his interview with a real bear, a much more formidable enemy than this, and how his faith proved then of better avail than any medicine iron.
"Perhaps," he thought more cheerfully, "if I hadn't been no good at all, that grizzly would have got me."