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The Project Gutenberg EBook Romany Of The Snows, v4, by Gilbert Parker
#11 in our series by Gilbert Parker
Contents:
Little Babiche
At Point O' Bugles
The Spoil Of The Puma
The Trail Of The Sun Dogs
The Pilot Of Belle Amour
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**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts**
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*****These EBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers*****
Title: Romany of the Snows, Continuation of "Pierre and His People", v4
Author: Gilbert Parker
Release Date: July, 2004 [EBook #6183]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on August 31, 2002]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ROMANY OF THE SNOWS, V4, BY PARKER ***
This eBook was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net>
[NOTE: There is a short list of bookmarks, or pointers, at the end of the
file for those who may wish to sample the author's ideas before making an
entire meal of them. D.W.]
A ROMANY OF THE SNOWS
BEING A CONTINUATION OF THE PERSONAL HISTORIES OF "PIERRE AND HIS PEOPLE"
AND THE LAST EXISTING RECORDS OF PRETTY PIERRE
By Gilbert Parker
Volume 4.
LITTLE BABICHE
AT POINT O' BUGLES
THE SPOIL OF THE PUMA
THE TRAIL OF THE SUN DOGS
THE PILOT OF BELLE AMOUR
LITTLE BABICHE
"No, no, m'sieu' the governor, they did not tell you right. I was with
him, and I have known Little Babiche fifteen years--as long as I've known
you. . . . It was against the time when down in your world there they
have feastings, and in the churches the grand songs and many candles on
the altars. Yes, Noel, that is the word--the day of the Great Birth.
You shall hear how strange it all was--the thing, the time, the end of
it."
The governor of the great Company settled back in a chair, his powerful
face seamed by years, his hair grey and thick still, his keen, steady
eyes burning under shaggy brows. He had himself spent long solitary
years in the wild fastnesses of the north. He fastened his dark eyes on
Pierre, and said: "Monsieur Pierre, I shall be glad to hear. It was at
the time of Noel--yes?"
Pierre began: "You have seen it beautiful and cold in the north, but
never so cold and beautiful as it was last year. The world was white
with sun and ice, the frost never melting, the sun never warming--just
a glitter, so lovely, so deadly. If only you could keep the heart warm,
you were not afraid. But if once--just for a moment--the blood ran out
from the heart and did not come in again, the frost clamped the doors
shut, and there was an end of all. Ah, m'sieu', when the north clinches
a man's heart in anger there is no pain like it--for a moment."
"Yes, yes; and Little Babiche?"
"For ten years he carried the mails along the route of Fort St. Mary,
Fort O'Glory, Fort St. Saviour, and Fort Perseverance within the circle-
just one mail once a year, but that was enough. There he was with his
Esquimaux dogs on the trail, going and coming, with a laugh and a word
for anyone that crossed his track. 'Good-day, Babiche' 'Good-day,
m'sieu'.' 'How do you, Babiche?' 'Well, thank the Lord, m'sieu'.'
'Where to and where from, Babiche?' 'To the Great Fort by the old trail,
from the Far-off River, m'sieu'.' 'Come safe along, Babiche.' 'Merci,
m'sieu'; the good God travels north, m'sieu'.' 'Adieu, Babiche.' 'Adieu,
m'sieu'.' That is about the way of the thing, year after year. Sometimes
a night at a hut or a post, but mostly alone--alone, except for the dogs.
He slept with them, and they slept on the mails--to guard: as though
there should be highwaymen on the Prairie of the Ten Stars! But no, it
was his way, m'sieu'. Now and again I crossed him on the trail, for have
I not travelled to every corner of the north? We were not so great
friends, for--well, Babiche is a man who says his aves, and never was a
loafer, and there was no reason why he should have love for me; but we
were good company when we met. I knew him when he was a boy down on the
Chaudiere, and he always had a heart like a lion-and a woman. I had seen
him fight, I had seen him suffer cold, and I had heard him sing.
"Well, I was up last fall to Fort St. Saviour. Ho, how dull was it!
Macgregor, the trader there, has brains like rubber. So I said, I will
go down to Fort O'Glory. I knew someone would be there--it is nearer the
world. So I started away with four dogs and plenty of jerked buffalo,
and so much brown brandy as Macgregor could squeeze out of his eye!
Never, never were there such days--the frost shaking like steel and
silver as it powdered the sunlight, the white level of snow lifting and
falling, and falling and lifting, the sky so great a travel away, the air
which made you cry out with pain one minute and gave you joy the next.
And all so wild, so lonely! Yet I have seen hanging in those plains
cities all blue and red with millions of lights showing, and voices,
voices everywhere, like the singing of soft masses. After a time in that
cold up there you are no longer yourself--no. You move in a dream. "Eh
bien, m'sieu', there came, I thought, a dream to me one evening--well,
perhaps one afternoon, for the days are short--so short, the sun just
coming over a little bend of sky, and sinking down like a big orange
ball. I come out of a tumble of little hills, and there over on the
plains I saw a sight! Ragged hills of ice were thrown up, as if they'd
been heaved out by the breaking earth, jutting here and there like
wedges--like the teeth of a world. Alors, on one crag, shaped as an
anvil, I saw what struck me like a blow, and I felt the blood shoot out
of my heart and leave it dry. I was for a minute like a pump with no
water in its throat to work the piston and fetch the stream up. I got
sick and numb. There on that anvil of snow and ice I saw a big white
bear, one such as you shall see within the Arctic Circle, his long nose
fetching out towards that bleeding sun in the sky, his white coat
shining. But that was not the thing--there was another. At the feet of
the bear was a body, and one clawed foot was on that body--of a man. So
clear was the air, the red sun shining on the face as it was turned
towards me, that I wonder I did not at once know whose it was. You
cannot think, m'sieu', what that was like--no. But all at once I
remembered the Chant of the Scarlet Hunter. I spoke it quick, and the
blood came creeping back in here." He tapped his chest with his slight
forefinger.
"What was the chant?" asked the governor, who had scarce stirred a
muscle since the tale began. Pierre made a little gesture of
deprecation. "Ah, it is perhaps a thing of foolishness, as you may
think--"
"No, no. I have heard and seen in my day," urged the governor.
"So? Good. Yes, I remember, you told me years ago, m'sieu'. . . .
"The blinding Trail and Night and Cold are man's: mine is the trail
that finds the Ancient Lodge. Morning and Night they travel with
me; my camp is set by the pines, its fires are burning--are burning.
The lost, they shall sit by my fires, and the fearful ones shall
seek, and the sick shall abide. I am the Hunter, the Son of the
North; I am thy lover where no man may love thee. With me thou
shalt journey, and thine the Safe Tent.
"As I said, the blood came back to my heart. I turned to my dogs, and
gave them a cut with the whip to see if I dreamed. They sat back and
snarled, and their wild red eyes, the same as mine, kept looking at the
bear and the quiet man on the anvil of ice and snow. Tell me, can you
think of anything like it?--the strange light, the white bear of the
Pole, that has no friends at all except the shooting stars, the great ice
plains, the quick night hurrying on, the silence--such silence as no man
can think! I have seen trouble flying at me in a hundred ways, but this
was different--yes. We come to the foot of the little hill. Still the
bear not stir. As I went up, feeling for my knives and my gun, the dogs
began to snarl with anger, and for one little step I shivered, for the
thing seem not natural. I was about two hundred feet away from the bear
when it turned slow round at me, lifting its foot from the body. The
dogs all at once come huddling about me, and I dropped on my knee to take
aim, but the bear stole away from the man and come moving down past us at
an angle, making for the plain. I could see his deep shining eyes, and
the steam roll from his nose in long puffs. Very slow and heavy, like as
if he see no one and care for no one, he shambled down, and in a minute
was gone behind a boulder. I ran on to the man--"
The governor was leaning forward, looking intently, and said now: "It's
like a wild dream--but the north--the north is near to the Strangest of
All!"
"I knelt down and lifted him up in my arms, all a great bundle of furs
and wool, and I got my hand at last to his wrist. He was alive. It was
Little Babiche! Part of his face was frozen stiff. I rubbed out the
frost with snow, and then I forced some brandy into his mouth, good old
H.B.C. brandy,--and began to call to him: 'Babiche! Babiche! Come
back, Babiche! The wolf's at the pot, Babiche!' That's the way to call
a hunter to his share of meat. I was afraid, for the sleep of cold is
the sleep of death, and it is hard to call the soul back to this world.
But I called, and kept calling, and got him on his feet, with my arm
round him. I gave him more brandy; and at last I almost shrieked in his
ear. Little by little I saw his face take on the look of waking life.
It was like the dawn creeping over white hills and spreading into day.
I said to myself: What a thing it will be if I can fetch him back!
For I never knew one to come back after the sleep had settled on them.
It is too comfortable--all pain gone, all trouble, the world forgot, just
a kind weight in all the body, as you go sinking down, down to the
valley, where the long hands of old comrades beckon to you, and their
soft, high voices cry, 'Hello! hello-o!'" Pierre nodded his head
towards the distance, and a musing smile divided his lips on his white
teeth. Presently he folded a cigarette, and went on:
"I had saved something to the last, as the great test, as the one thing
to open his eyes wide, if they could be opened at all. Alors, there was
no time to lose, for the wolf of Night was driving the red glow-worm down
behind the world, and I knew that when darkness came altogether--darkness
and night--there would be no help for him. Mon Dieu! how one sleeps in
the night of the north, in the beautiful wide silence! . . . So,
m'sieu', just when I thought it was the time, I called, 'Corinne!
Corinne!' Then once again I said, 'P'tite Corinne! P'tite Corinne!
Come home! come home! P'tite Corinne!' I could see the fight in the
jail of sleep. But at last he killed his jailer; the doors in his brain
flew open, and his mind came out through his wide eyes. But he was blind
a little and dazed, though it was getting dark quick. I struck his back
hard, and spoke loud from a song that we used to sing on the Chaudiere--
Babiche and all of us, years ago. Mon Dieu! how I remember those days--
"'Which is the way that the sun goes?
The way that my little one come.
Which is the good path over the hills?
The path that leads to my little one's home--
To my little one's home, m'sieu', m'sieu'!'
"That did it. 'Corinne, ma p'tite Corinne!' he said; but he did not look
at me--only stretch out his hands. I caught them, and shook them, and
shook him, and made him take a step forward; then I slap him on the back
again, and said loud: 'Come, come, Babiche, don't you know me? See
Babiche, the snow's no sleeping-bunk, and a polar bear's no good friend.'
'Corinne!' he went on, soft and slow. 'Ma p'tite Corinne!' He smiled to
himself; and I said, 'Where've you been, Babiche? Lucky I found you, or
you'd have been sleeping till the Great Mass.' Then he looked at me
straight in the eyes, and something wild shot out of his. His hand
stretched over and caught me by the shoulder, perhaps to steady himself,
perhaps because he wanted to feel something human. Then he looked round
slow-all round the plain, as if to find something. At that moment a
little of the sun crept back, and looked up over the wall of ice, making
a glow of yellow and red for a moment; and never, north or south, have I
seen such beauty--so delicate, so awful. It was like a world that its
Maker had built in a fit of joy, and then got tired of, and broke in
pieces, and blew out all its fires, and left--ah yes--like that!
And out in the distance I--I only saw a bear travelling eastwards."
The governor said slowly:
And I took My staff Beauty, and cut it asunder, that I might break
My covenant which I had made with all the people.
"Yes--like that." Pierre continued: "Babiche turned to me with a little
laugh, which was a sob too. 'Where is it, Pierre?' said he. I knew he
meant the bear. 'Gone to look for another man,' I said, with a gay look,
for I saw that he was troubled. 'Come,' said he at once. As we went, he
saw my dogs. He stopped short and shook a little, and tears came into
his eyes. 'What is it, Babiche?' said I. He looked back towards the
south. 'My dogs--Brandy-wine, Come-along, 'Poleon, and the rest--died
one night all of an hour. One by one they crawl over to where I lay in
my fur bag, and die there, huddling by me--and such cries--such cries!
There was poison or something in the frozen fish I'd given them. I loved
them every one; and then there was the mails, the year's mails--how
should they be brought on? That was a bad thought, for I had never
missed--never in ten years. There was one bunch of letters which the
governor said to me was worth more than all the rest of the mails put
together, and I was to bring it to Fort St. Saviour, or not show my face
to him again. I leave the dogs there in the snow, and come on with the
sled, carrying all the mails. Ah, the blessed saints, how heavy the sled
got, and how lonely it was! Nothing to speak to--no one, no thing, day
after day. At last I go to cry to the dogs, "Come-along! 'Poleon!
Brandy-wine!"--like that! I think I see them there, but they never bark
and they never snarl, and they never spring to the snap of the whip....
I was alone. Oh, my head! my head! If there was only something alive
to look at, besides the wide white plain, and the bare hills of ice, and
the sun-dogs in the sky! Now I was wild, next hour I was like a child,
then I gnash my teeth like a wolf at the sun, and at last I got on my
knees. The tears froze my eyelids shut, but I kept saying, "Ah, my great
Friend, my Jesu, just something, something with the breath of life!
Leave me not all alone!" and I got sleepier all the time.
"'I was sinking, sinking, so quiet and easy, when all at once I felt
something beside me; I could hear it breathing, but I could not open my
eyes at first, for, as I say, the lashes were froze. Something touch me,
smell me, and a nose was push against my chest. I put out my hand ver'
soft and touch it. I had no fear, I was so glad I could have hug it, but
I did not--I drew back my hand quiet and rub my eyes. In a little I can
see. There stand the thing--a polar bear--not ten feet away, its red
eyes shining. On my knees I spoke to it, talk to it, as I would to a
man. It was like a great wild dog, fierce, yet kind, and I fed it with
the fish which had been for Brandy-wine and the rest--but not to kill it!
and it did not die. That night I lie down in my bag--no, I was not
afraid! The bear lie beside me, between me and the sled. Ah, it was
warm! Day after day we travel together, and camp together at night--ah,
sweet Sainte Anne, how good it was, myself and the wild beast such
friends, alone in the north! But to-day--a little while ago--something
went wrong with me, and I got sick in the head, a swimming like a tide
wash in and out. I fall down-asleep. When I wake I find you here beside
me--that is all. The bear must have drag me here.'"
Pierre stuck a splinter into the fire to light another cigarette, and
paused as if expecting the governor to speak, but no word coming, he
continued: "I had my arm around him while we talked and come slowly down
the hill. Soon he stopped and said, 'This is the place.' It was a cave
of ice, and we went in. Nothing was there to see except the sled.
Babiche stopped short. It come to him now that his good comrade was
gone. He turned, and looked out, and called, but there was only the
empty night, the ice, and the stars. Then he come back, sat down on the
sled, and the tears fall. . . . I lit my spirit-lamp, boiled coffee,
got pemmican from my bag, and I tried to make him eat. No. He would
only drink the coffee. At last he said to me, 'What day is this,
Pierre?' 'It is the day of the Great Birth, Babiche,' I said. He made
the sign of the cross, and was quiet, so quiet! but he smile to himself,
and kept saying in a whisper: 'Ma p'tite Corinne! Ma p'tite Corinne!'
The next day we come on safe, and in a week I was back at Fort St.
Saviour with Babiche and all the mails, and that most wonderful letter
of the governor's."
"The letter was to tell a factor that his sick child in the hospital at
Quebec was well," the governor responded quietly. "Who was 'Ma p'tite
Corinne,' Pierre?"
"His wife--in heaven; and his child--on the Chaudiere, m'sieu'. The
child came and the mother went on the same day of the Great Birth. He
has a soft heart--that Babiche!"
"And the white bear--so strange a thing!"
"M'sieu', who can tell? The world is young up here. When it was all
young, man and beast were good comrades, maybe."
"Ah, maybe. What shall be done with Little Babiche, Pierre?"
"He will never be the same again on the old trail, m'sieu'!"
There was silence for a long time, but at last the governor said, musing,
almost tenderly, for he never had a child: "Ma p'tite Corinne!--Little
Babiche shall live near his child, Pierre. I will see to that."
Pierre said no word, but got up, took off his hat to the governor, and
sat down again.
AT POINT O' BUGLES
"John York, John York, where art thou gone, John York?"
"What's that, Pierre?" said Sir Duke Lawless, starting to his feet and
peering round.
"Hush!" was Pierre's reply. "Wait for the rest. . . . There!"
"King of my heart, king of my heart, I am out on the trail of thy
bugles."
Sir Duke was about to speak, but Pierre lifted a hand in warning, and
then through the still night there came the long cry of a bugle, rising,
falling, strangely clear, echoing and echoing again, and dying away. A
moment, and the call was repeated, with the same effect, and again a
third time; then all was still, save for the flight of birds roused from
the desire of night, and the long breath of some animal in the woods
sinking back to sleep.
Their camp was pitched on the south shore of Hudson's Bay, many leagues
to the west of Rupert House, not far from the Moose River. Looking north
was the wide expanse of the bay, dotted with sterile islands here and
there; to the east were the barren steppes of Labrador, and all round
them the calm, incisive air of a late September, when winter begins to
shake out his frosty curtains and hang them on the cornice of the north,
despite the high protests of the sun. The two adventurers had come
together after years of separation, and Sir Duke had urged Pierre to fare
away with him to Hudson's Bay, which he had never seen, although he had
shares in the great Company, left him by his uncle the admiral.
They were camped in a hollow, to the right a clump of hardy trees, with
no great deal of foliage, but some stoutness; to the left a long finger
of land running out into the water like a wedge, the most eastern point
of the western shore of Hudson's Bay. It was high and bold, and,
somehow, had a fine dignity and beauty. From it a path led away north to
a great log-fort called King's House.
Lawless saw Pierre half rise and turn his head, listening. Presently he,
too, heard the sound-the soft crash of crisp grass under the feet. He
raised himself to a sitting posture and waited.
Presently a tall figure came out of the dusk into the light of their
fire, and a long arm waved a greeting at them. Both Lawless and Pierre
rose to their feet. The stranger was dressed in buckskin, he carried a
rifle, and around his shoulder was a strong yellow cord, from which hung
a bugle.
"How!" he said, with a nod, and drew near the fire, stretching out his
hands to the blaze.
"How!" said Lawless and Pierre.
After a moment Lawless drew from his blanket a flask of brandy, and
without a word handed it over the fire. The fingers of the two men met
in the flicker of flames, a sort of bond by fire, and the stranger raised
the flask.
"Chin-chin," he said, and drank, breathing a long sigh of satisfaction
afterwards as he handed it back; but it was Pierre that took it, and
again fingers touched in the bond of fire. Pierre passed the flask to
Lawless, who lifted it.
"Chin-chin," he said, drank, and gave the flask to Pierre again, who did
as did the others, and said "Chin-chin" also.
By that salutation of the east, given in the far north, Lawless knew that
he had met one who had lighted fires where men are many and close to the
mile as holes in a sieve.
They all sat down, and tobacco went round, the stranger offering his,
while the two others, with true hospitality, accepted.
"We heard you over there--it was you?" said Lawless, nodding towards
Point o' Bugles, and glancing at the bugle the other carried.
"Yes, it was I," was the reply. "Someone always does it twice a year: on
the 25th September and the 25th March. I've done it now without a break
for ten years, until it has got to be a sort of religion with me, and the
whole thing's as real as if King George and John York were talking. As I
tramp to the point or swing away back, in summer barefooted, in winter on
my snowshoes, to myself I seem to be John York on the trail of the king's
bugles. I've thought so much about the whole thing, I've read so many of
John York's letters--and how many times one of the King's!--that now I
scarcely know which is the bare story, and which the bit's I've dreamed
as I've tramped over the plains or sat in the quiet at King's House,
spelling out little by little the man's life, from the cues I found in
his journal, in the Company's papers, and in that one letter of the
King's."
Pierre's eyes were now more keen than those of Lawless: for years he had
known vaguely of this legend of Point o' Bugles.
"You know it all," he said--"begin at the beginning: how and when you
first heard, how you got the real story, and never mind which is taken
from the papers and which from your own mind--if it all fits in it is all
true, for the lie never fits in right with the square truth. If you have
the footprints and the handprints you can tell the whole man; if you have
the horns of a deer you know it as if you had killed it, skinned it, and
potted it."
The stranger stretched himself before the fire, nodding at his hosts as
he did so, and then began:
"Well, a word about myself first," he said, "so you'll know just where
you are. I was full up of life in London town and India, and that's a
fact. I'd plenty of friends and little money, and my will wasn't equal
to the task of keeping out of the hands of the Jews. I didn't know what
to do, but I had to go somewhere, that was clear. Where? An accident
decided it. I came across an old journal of my great-grandfather, John
York,--my name's Dick Adderley,--and just as if a chain had been put
round my leg and I'd been jerked over by the tipping of the world, I had
to come to Hudson's Bay. John York's journal was a thing to sit up
nights to read. It came back to England after he'd had his fill of
Hudson's Bay and the earth beneath, and had gone, as he himself said on
the last page of the journal, to follow the king's buglers in 'the land
that is far off.' God and the devil were strong in old John York.
I didn't lose much time after I'd read the journal. I went to Hudson's
Bay house in London, got a place in the Company, by the help of the
governor himself, and came out. I've learned the rest of the history of
old John York--the part that never got to England; for here at King's
House there's a holy tradition that the real John York belongs to it and
to it alone."
Adderley laughed a little. "King's House guards John York's memory, and
it's as fresh and real here now as though he'd died yesterday; though
it's forgotten in England, and by most who bear his name, and the present
Prince of Wales maybe never heard of the roan who was a close friend of
the Prince Regent, the First Gentleman of Europe."
"That sounds sweet gossip," said Lawless, with a smile; "we're waiting."
Adderley continued: "John York was an honest man, of wholesome sport,
jovial, and never shirking with the wine, commendable in his appetite,
of rollicking soul and proud temper, and a gay dog altogether--gay, but
to be trusted, too, for he had a royal heart. In the coltish days of the
Prince Regent he was a boon comrade, but never did he stoop to flattery,
nor would he hedge when truth should be spoken, as ofttimes it was needed
with the royal blade, for at times he would forget that a prince was yet
a man, topped with the accident of a crown. Never prince had truer
friend, and so in his best hours he thought, himself, and if he ever was
just and showed his better part, it was to the bold country gentleman who
never minced praise or blame, but said his say and devil take the end of
it. In truth, the Prince was wilful, and once he did a thing which might
have given a twist to the fate of England. Hot for the love of women,
and with some dash of real romance in him too, else even as a prince he
might have had shallower love and service,--he called John York one day
and said:
"'To-night at seven, Squire John, you'll stand with me while I put the
seal on the Gates of Eden;' and, when the other did not guess his import,
added: 'Sir Mark Selby is your neighbour--his daughter's for my arms to-
night. You know her, handsome Sally Selby--she's for your prince, for
good or ill.'
"John York did not understand at first, for he could not think the Prince
had anything in mind but some hot escapade of love. When Mistress
Selby's name was mentioned his heart stood still, for she had been his
choice, the dear apple of his eye, since she had bloomed towards
womanhood. He had set all his hopes upon her, tarrying till she should
have seen some little life before he asked her for his wife. He had her
father's Godspeed to his wooing, for he was a man whom all men knew
honest and generous as the sun, and only choleric with the mean thing.
She, also, had given him good cause to think that he should one day take
her to his home, a loved and honoured wife. His impulse, when her name
passed the Prince's lips, was to draw his sword, for he would have called
an emperor to account; but presently he saw the real meaning of the
speech: that the Prince would marry her that night."
Here the story-teller paused again, and Pierre said softly, inquiringly:
"You began to speak in your own way, and you've come to another way--like
going from an almanac to the Mass."
The other smiled. "That's so. I've heard it told by old Shearton at
King's House, who speaks as if he'd stepped out of Shakespeare, and
somehow I seem to hear him talking, and I tell it as he told it last year
to the governor of the Company. Besides, I've listened these seven years
to his style."
"It's a strange beginning--unwritten history of England," said Sir Duke
musingly.
"You shall hear stranger things yet," answered Adderley. "John York
could hardly believe it at first, for the thought of such a thing never
had place in his mind. Besides, the Prince knew how he had looked upon
the lady, and he could not have thought his comrade would come in between
him and his happiness. Perhaps it was the difficulty, adding spice to
the affair, that sent the Prince to the appeal of private marriage to win
the lady, and John York always held that he loved her truly then, the
first and only real affection of his life. The lady--who can tell what
won her over from the honest gentleman to the faithless prince? That
soul of vanity which wraps about the real soul of every woman fell down
at last before the highest office in the land, and the gifted bearer of
the office. But the noble spirit in her brought him to offer marriage,
when he might otherwise have offered, say, a barony. There is a record
of that and more in John York's Memoirs which I will tell you, for they
have settled in my mind like an old song, and I learned them long ago.
I give you John York's words written by his own hands:
"'I did not think when I beheld thee last, dearest flower of the world's
garden, that I should see thee bloom in that wide field, rank with the
sorrows of royal favour. How did my foolish eyes fill with tears when I
watched thee, all rose and gold in thy cheeks and hair, the light falling
on thee through the chapel window, putting thy pure palm into my
prince's, swearing thy life away, selling the very blossoms of earth's
orchards for the brier beauty of a hidden vineyard! I saw the flying
glories of thy cheeks, the halcyon weather of thy smile, the delicate
lifting of thy bosom, the dear gaiety of thy step, and, at that moment,
I mourned for thy sake that thou wert not the dullest wench in the land,
for then thou hadst been spared thy miseries, thou hadst been saved the
torture-boot of a lost love and a disacknowledged wifedom. Yet I could
not hide from me that thou wert happy at that great moment, when he swore
to love and cherish thee, till death you parted.
"Ah, George, my prince, my king, how wickedly thou didst break thy vows
with both of us who loved thee well, through good and ill report--for
they spake evil of thee, George; ay, the meanest of thy subjects spake
lightly of their king--when with that sweet soul secretly hid away in
the farthest corner of thy kingdom, thou soughtst divorce from thy later
Caroline, whom thou, unfaithful, didst charge with infidelity. When, at
last, thou didst turn again to the partner of thy youth, thy true wife in
the eyes of God, it was too late. Thou didst promise me that thou
wouldst never take another wife, never put our dear heart away, though
she could not--after our miserable laws--bear thee princes. Thou didst
break thy promise, yet she forgave thee, and I forgave thee, for well we
knew that thou wouldst pay a heavy reckoning, and that in the hour when
thou shouldst cry to us we might not come to thee; that in the days when
age and sorrow and vast troubles should oppress thee, thou wouldst long
for the true hearts who loved thee for thyself and not for aught thou
wudst give, or aught that thou wert, save as a man.
"'When thou didst proclaim thy purpose to take Caroline to wife, I
pleaded with thee, I was wroth with thee. Thy one plea was succession.
Succession! Succession! What were a hundred dynasties beside that
precious life, eaten by shame and sorrow? It were easy for others, not
thy children, to come after thee, to rule as well as thee, as must even
now be the case, for thou hast no lawful child save that one in the
loneliest corner of thy English vineyard--alack! alack! I warned thee
George, I pleaded, and thou didst drive me out with words ill-suited to
thy friend who loved thee.
"'I did not fear thee, I would have forced thee to thy knees or made thee
fight me, had not some good spirit cried to my heart that thou wert her
husband, and that we both had loved thee. I dared not listen to the
brutal thing thou hintedst at--that now I might fatten where I had
hungered. Thou hadst to answer for the baseness of that thought to the
King of kings, when thou wentest forth alone, no subject, courtier,
friend, wife, or child to do thee service, journeying--not en prince,
George; no, not en prince! but as a naked soul to God.
"'Thou saidst to me: "Get thee gone, John York, where I shall no more see
thee." And when I returned, "Wouldst thou have me leave thy country,
sir?" thou answeredst: "Blow thy quarrelsome soul to the stars where my
farthest bugle cries." Then I said: "I go, sir, till thou callest me
again--and after; but not till thou hast honoured the child of thy honest
wedlock; till thou hast secured thy wife to the end of her life against
all manner of trouble save the shame of thy disloyalty." There was no
more for me to do, for my deep love itself forbade my staying longer
within reach of the noble deserted soul. And so I saw the chastened
glory of her face no more, nor evermore beheld her perfectness.'"
Adderley paused once more, and, after refilling his pipe in silence,
continued:
"That was the heart of the thing. His soul sickened of the rank world,
as he called it, and he came out to the Hudson's Bay country, leaving his
estates in care of his nephew, but taking many stores and great chests of
clothes and a shipload of furniture, instruments of music, more than a
thousand books, some good pictures, and great stores of wine. Here he
came and stayed, an officer of the Company, building King's House, and
filling it with all the fine things he had brought with him, making in
this far north a little palace in the wilderness. Here he lived, his
great heart growing greater in this wide sinewy world, King's House a
place of pilgrimage for all the Company's men in the north; a noble
gentleman in a sweet exile, loving what he could no more, what he did no
more, see.
"Twice a year he went to that point yonder and blew this bugle, no man
knew why or wherefore, year in, year out, till 1817. Then there came a
letter to him with great seals, which began: 'John York, John York,
where art thou gone, John York?' There followed a score of sorrowful
sentences, full of petulance, too, for it was as John York foretold, his
prince longed for the 'true souls' whom he had cast off. But he called
too late, for the neglected wife died from the shock of her prince's
longing message to her, and when, by the same mail, John York knew that,
he would not go back to England to the King. But twice every year he
went to yonder point and spoke out the King's words to him: 'John York,
John York, where art thou gone, John York?' and gave the words of his own
letter in reply: 'King of my heart, king of my heart, I am out on the
trail of thy bugles.' To this he added three calls of the bugle, as you
have heard."
Adderley handed the bugle to Lawless, who looked at it with deep interest
and passed it on to Pierre. "When he died," Adderley continued, "he left
the house, the fittings, and the stores to the officers of the Company
who should be stationed there, with a sum of money yearly, provided that
twice in twelve months the bugle should be blown as you have heard it,
and those words called out."
"Why did he do that?" asked Lawless, nodding towards the point.
"Why do they swing the censers at the Mass?" interjected Pierre. "Man
has signs for memories, and one man seeing another's sign will remember
his own."
"You stay because you like it--at King's House?" asked Lawless of
Adderley.
The other stretched himself lazily to the fire and, "I am at home," he
said. "I have no cares. I had all there was of that other world; I've
not had enough of this. You'll come with me to King's House to-morrow?"
he added.
To their quick assent he rejoined: "You'll never want to leave. You'll
stay on."
To this Lawless replied, shaking his head: "I have a wife and child in
England."
But Pierre did not reply. He lifted the bugle, mutely asking a question
of Adderley, who as mutely replied, and then, with it in his hand, left
the other two beside the fire.
A few minutes later they heard, with three calls of the bugle from the
point afterwards, Pierre's voice: "John York, John York, where art thou
gone, John York?"
Then came the reply:
"King of my heart, king of my heart, I am out on the trail of thy
bugles."
THE SPOIL OF THE PUMA
Just at the point where the Peace River first hugs the vast outpost hills
of the Rockies, before it hurries timorously on, through an unexplored
region, to Fort St. John, there stood a hut. It faced the west, and was
built half-way up Clear Mountain. In winter it had snows above it and
below it; in summer it had snow above it and a very fair stretch of trees
and grass, while the river flowed on the same, winter and summer. It was
a lonely country. Travelling north, you would have come to the Turnagain
River; west, to the Frying Pan Mountains; south, to a goodly land. But
from the hut you had no outlook towards the south; your eye came plump
against a hard lofty hill, like a wall between heaven and earth. It is
strange, too, that, when you are in the far north, you do not look
towards the south until the north turns an iron hand upon you and refuses
the hospitality of food and fire; your eyes are drawn towards the Pole by
that charm--deadly and beautiful--for which men have given up three
points of the compass, with their pleasures and ease, to seek a grave
solitude, broken only by the beat of a musk-ox's hoofs, the long breath
of the caribou, or the wild cry of the puma.
Sir Duke Lawless had felt this charm, and had sworn that one day he would
again leave his home in Devon and his house in Pont Street, and, finding
Pierre, Shon M'Gann, and others of his old comrades, together they would
travel into those austere yet pleasant wilds. He kept his word, found
Shon M'Gann, and on an autumn day of a year not so long ago lounged in
this hut on Clear Mountain. They had had three months of travel and
sport, and were filled, but not sated, with the joy of the hunter. They
were very comfortable, for their host, Pourcette, the French Canadian,
had fire and meat in plenty, and, if silent, was attentive to their
comfort--a little, black-bearded, grey-headed man, with heavy brows over
small vigilant eyes, deft with his fingers, and an excellent sportsman,
as could be told from the skins heaped in all the corners of the large
hut.
The skins were not those of mere foxes or martens or deer, but of
mountain lions and grizzlies. There were besides many soft, tiger-like
skins, which Sir Duke did not recognise. He kept looking at them, and at
last went over and examined one.
"What's this, Monsieur Pourcette?" he said, feeling it as it lay on the
top of the pile.
The little man pushed the log on the fireplace with his moccasined foot
before he replied: "Of a puma, m'sieu'."
Sir Duke smoothed it with his hand. "I didn't know there were pumas
here."
"Faith, Sir Duke--"
Sir Duke Lawless turned on Shon quickly. "You're forgetting again, Shon.
There's no 'Sir Dukes' between us. What you were to me years ago on the
wally-by-track and the buffalo-trail, you are now, and I'm the same also:
M'Gann and Lawless, and no other."
"Well, then, Lawless, it's true enough as he says it, for I've seen more
than wan skin brought in, though I niver clapped eye on the beast alive.
There's few men go huntin' them av their own free will, not more than
they do grizzlies; but, bedad, this French gintleman has either the luck
o' the world, or the gift o' that man ye tould me of, that slew the wild
boars in anciency. Look at that, now: there's thirty or forty puma-
skins, and I'd take my oath there isn't another man in the country that's
shot half that in his lifetime."
Pourcette's eyes were on the skins, not on the men, and he did not appear
to listen. He sat leaning forward, with a strange look on his face.
Presently he got up, came over, and stroked the skins softly. A queer
chuckling noise came from his throat.
"It was good sport?" asked Lawless, feeling a new interest in him.
"The grandest sport--but it is not so easy," answered the old man. "The
grizzly comes on you bold and strong; you know your danger right away,
and have it out. So. But the puma comes--God, how the puma comes!" He
broke off, his eyes burning bright under his bushy brows and his body
arranging itself into an attitude of expectation and alertness.
"You have travelled far. The sun goes down. You build a fire and cook
your meat, and then good tea and the tabac. It is ver' fine. You hear
the loon crying on the water, or the last whistle of the heron up the
pass. The lights in the sky come out and shine through a thin mist--
there is nothing like that mist, it is so fine and soft. Allons. You
are sleepy. You bless the good God. You stretch pine branches, wrap in
your blanket, and lie down to sleep. If it is winter and you have a
friend, you lie close. It is all quiet. As you sleep, something comes.
It slides along the ground on its belly, like a snake. It is a pity if
you have not ears that feel--the whole body as ears. For there is a
swift lunge, a snarl--ah, you should hear it! the thing has you by the
throat, and there is an end!"
The old man had acted all the scenes: a sidelong glance, a little
gesture, a movement of the body, a quick, harsh breath--without emphatic
excitement, yet with a reality and force that fascinated his two
listeners. When he paused, Shon let go a long breath, and Lawless looked
with keen inquiry at their entertainer. This almost unnatural, yet
quiet, intensity had behind it something besides the mere spirit of the
sportsman. Such exhibitions of feeling generally have an unusual
personal interest to give them point and meaning.
"Yes, that's wonderful, Pourcette," he said; "but that's when the puma
has things its own way. How is it when these come off?" He stroked the
soft furs under his hand.
The man laughed, yet without a sound--the inward, stealthy laugh, as from
a knowledge wicked in its very suggestiveness. His eyes ran from Lawless
to Shon, and back again. He put his hand on his mouth, as though for
silence, stole noiselessly over to the wall, took down his gun quietly,
and turned round. Then he spoke softly:
"To kill the puma, you must watch--always watch. You will see his yellow
eyes sometimes in a tree: you must be ready before he springs. You will
hear his breath at night as you pretend to sleep, and you wait till you
see his foot steal out of the shadow--then you have him. From a mountain
wall you watch in the morning, and, when you see him, you follow, and
follow, and do not rest till you have found him. You must never miss
fire, for he has great strength and a mad tooth. But when you have got
him, he is worth all. You cannot eat the grizzly--he is too thick and
coarse; but the puma--well, you had him from the pot to-night. Was he
not good?"
Lawless's brows ran up in surprise. Shon spoke quickly:
"Heaven above!" he burst out. "Was it puma we had betune the teeth?
And what's puma but an almighty cat? Sure, though, it wint as tinder
as pullets, for all that--but I wish you hadn't tould us."
The old man stood leaning on his gun, his chin on his hands, as they
covered the muzzle, his eyes fixed on something in his memory, the vision
of incidents he had lived or seen.
Lawless went over to the fire and relit his pipe. Shon followed him.
They both watched Pourcette. "D'ye think he's mad?" asked Shon in a
whisper. Lawless shook his head: "Mad? No. But there's more in this
puma-hunting than appears. How long has he lived here, did he say?"
"Four years; and, durin' that time, yours and mine are the only white
faces he has seen, except one."
"Except one. Well, whose was the one? That might be interesting. Maybe
there's a story in that."
"Faith, Lawless, there's a story worth the hearin', I'm thinkin', to
every white man in this country. For the three years I was in the
mounted police, I could count a story for all the days o' the calendar
--and not all o' them would make you happy to hear."
Pourcette turned round to them. He seemed to be listening to Shon's
words. Going to the wall, he hung up the rifle; then he came to the fire
and stood holding out his hands to the blaze. He did not look in the
least mad, but like a man who was dominated by some one thought, more
or less weird. Short and slight, and a little bent, but more from habit
--the habit of listening and watching--than from age, his face had a
stern kind of earnestness and loneliness, and nothing at all of insanity.
Presently Lawless went to a corner and from his kit drew forth a flask.
The old man saw, and immediately brought out a wooden cup. There were
two on the shelf, and Shon pointed to the other. Pourcette took no
notice. Shon went over to get it, but Pourcette laid a hand on his arm:
"Not that."
"For ornamint!" said Shon, laughing, and then his eyes were arrested by
a suit of buckskin and a cap of beaver, hanging on the wall. He turned
them over, and then suddenly drew back his hand, for he saw in the back
of the jacket a knife-slit. There was blood also on the buckskin.
"Holy Mary!" he said, and retreated. Lawless had not noticed; he was
pouring out the liquor. He had handed the cup first to Pourcette, who
raised it towards a gun hung above the fireplace, and said something
under his breath.
"A dramatic little fellow," thought Lawless; "the spirit of his
forefathers--a good deal of heart, a little of the poseur."
Then hearing Shon's exclamation, he turned.
"It's an ugly sight," said Shon, pointing to the jacket. They both
looked at Pourcette, expecting him to speak. The old man reached to the
coat, and, turning it so that the cut and the blood were hid, ran his
hand down it caressingly. "Ah, poor Jo! poor Jo Gordineer!" he said;
then he came over once more to the fire, sat down, and held out his hands
to the fire, shaking his head.
"For God's sake, Lawless, give me a drink!" said Shon. Their eyes met,
and there was the same look in the faces of both. When Shon had drunk,
he said: "So, that's what's come to our old friend, Jo: dead--killed or
murdered--"
"Don't speak so loud," said Lawless. "Let us get the story from him
first."
Years before, when Shon M'Gann and Pierre and Lawless had sojourned in
the Pipi Valley, Jo Gordineer had been with them, as stupid and true a
man as ever drew in his buckle in a hungry land, or let it out to munch
corn and oil. When Lawless returned to find Shon and others of his
companions, he had asked for Gordineer. But not Shon nor anyone else
could tell aught of him; he had wandered north to outlying goldfields,
and then had disappeared completely. But there, as it would seem, his
coat and cap hung, and his rifle, dust-covered, kept guard over the fire.
Shon went over to the coat, did as Pourcette had done, and said: "Is it
gone y'are, Jo, wid your slow tongue and your big heart? Wan by wan the
lads are off."
Pourcette, without any warning, began speaking, but in a very quiet tone
at first, as if unconscious of the others:
"Poor Jo Gordineer! Yes, he is gone. He was my friend--so tall, and
such a hunter! We were at the Ding Dong goldfields together. When luck
went bad, I said to him: 'Come, we will go where there is plenty of wild
meat, and a summer more beautiful than in the south.' I did not want to
part from him, for once, when some miner stole my claim, and I fought, he
stood by me. But in some things he was a little child. That was from
his big heart. Well, he would go, he said; and we came away."
He suddenly became silent; and shook his head, and spoke under his
breath.
"Yes," said Lawless quietly, "you went away. What then?"
He looked up quickly, as though just aware of their presence, and
continued:
"Well, the other followed, as I said, and--"
"No, Pourcette," interposed Lawless, "you didn't say. Who was the other
that followed?"
The old man looked at him gravely, and a little severely, and continued:
"As I said, Gawdor followed--he and an Indian. Gawdor thought we were
going for gold, because I had said I knew a place in the north where
there was gold in a river--I know the place, but that is no matter. We
did not go for gold just then. Gawdor hated Jo Gordineer. There was a
half-breed girl. She was fine to look at. She would have gone to
Gordineer if he had beckoned, any time; but he waited--he was very slow,
except with his finger on a gun; he waited too long.
"Gawdor was mad for the girl. He knew why her feet came slow to the door
when he knocked. He would have quarrelled with Jo, if he had dared;
Gordineer was too quick a shot. He would have killed him from behind;
but it was known in the camp that he was no friend of Gordineer, and it
was not safe."
Again Pourcette was silent. Lawless put on his knee a new pipe, filled
with tobacco. The little man took it, lighted it, and smoked on in
silence for a time undisturbed. Shon broke the silence, by a whisper to
Lawless:
"Jo was a quiet man, as patient as a priest; but when his blood came up,
there was trouble in the land. Do you remimber whin--"
Lawless interrupted him and motioned towards Pourcette. The old man,
after a few puffs, held the pipe on his knee, disregarding it. Lawless
silently offered him some more whisky, but he shook his head. Presently,
he again took up the thread:
"Bien, we travelled slow up through the smoky river country, and beyond
into a wild land. We had bully sport as we went. Sometimes I heard
shots far away behind us; but Gordineer said it was my guess, for we saw
nobody. But I had a feeling. Never mind. At last we come to the Peace
River. It was in the early autumn like this, when the land is full of
comfort. What is there like it? Nothing. The mountains have colours
like a girl's eyes; the smell of the trees is sweet like a child's
breath, and the grass feels for the foot and lifts it with a little soft
spring. We said we could live here for ever. We built this house high
up, as you see, first, because it is good to live high--it puts life in
the blood; and, as Gordineer said, it is noble to look far over the
world, every time your house-door is open, or the parchment is down from
the window. We killed wapiti and caribou without number, and cached them
for our food. We caught fish in the river, and made tea out of the brown
berry--it is very good. We had flour, a little, which we had brought
with us, and I went to Fort St. John and got more. Since then, down in
the valley, I have wheat every summer; for the Chinook winds blow across
the mountains and soften the bitter cold.
"Well, for that journey to Fort St. John. When I got back I found Gawdor
with Gordineer. He said he had come north to hunt. His Indian had left,
and he had lost his way. Gordineer believed him. He never lied himself.
I said nothing, but watched. After a time he asked where the gold-field
was. I told him, and he started away--it was about fifty miles to the
north. He went, and on his way back he come here. He say he could not
find the place, and was going south. I know he lied. At this time I saw
that Gordineer was changed. He was slow in the head, and so, when he
began thinking up here, it made him lonely. It is always in a fine land
like this, where game is plenty, and the heart dances for joy in your
throat, and you sit by the fire--that you think of some woman who would
be glad to draw in and tie the strings of the tent-curtain, or fasten the
latch of the door upon you two alone."
Perhaps some memory stirred within the old man, other than that of his
dead comrade, for he sighed, muffled his mouth in his beard, and then
smiled in a distant way at the fire. The pure truth of what he said came