Man-Size

by Raine, William MacLeod

  And here was the girl that he loved, vivid, vital, full of charm. The swift deftness and grace of her movements enticed him. The inflections of her warm, young voice set his pulses throbbing as music sometimes did. An ardent desire of her flooded him. She was the most winsome creature under heaven—but she was not for him.

  Matapi-Koma sat at the head of the table, a smiling and benignant matron finished in copper. She had on her best dress, a beaded silk with purple satin trimmings, brought by a Red River cart from Winnipeg, accompanied with a guarantee from the trader that Queen Victoria had none better. The guarantee was worth what it was worth, but Matapi-Koma was satisfied. Never had she seen anything so grand. That Angus McRae could afford to buy it for her proved him a great chief.

  Jessie waited on the table herself. She set upon it such a dinner as neither of her guests had eaten in years. Venison broiled to a turn, juicy, succulent mallard ducks from the cold storage of their larder, mashed potatoes with gravy, young boiled onions from Whoop-Up, home-made rubaboo of delicious flavor, hot biscuits and wild-strawberry jam! And finally, with the tea, a brandy-flavored plum pudding that an old English lady at Winnipeg had taught Jessie how to make.

  Onistah ate lying on the couch. Afterward, filled to repletion, with the sense of perfect contentment a good dinner brings, the two young men stuffed their pipes and puffed strata of smoke toward the log rafters of the room. Jessie cleared the table, then sat down and put the last stitches in the gun-case she had been working at intermittently for a month. It was finished, but she had not till now stitched the initials into the cloth.

  As the swift fingers of the girl flashed back and forth, both men watched, not too obviously, the profile shadowed by the dark, abundant, shining hair. The picture of her was an intimate one, but Tom's tricky imagination tormented him with one of still nearer personal association. He saw her in his own house, before his own fireside, a baby clinging to her skirt. Then, resolutely, he put the mental etching behind him. She loved his friend Beresford, a man out of a thousand, and of course he loved her. Had he not seen her go straight to his arms after her horrible experience with West?

  Matapi-Koma presently waddled out of the room and they could hear the clatter of dishes.

  "I told her I'd help her wash them if she'd wait," explained Jessie. "But she'd rather do them now and go to bed. My conscience is clear, anyhow." She added with a little bubble of laughter, "And I don't have to do the work. Is that the kind of a conscience you have, Mr. Morse?"

  "If I were you my conscience would tell me that I couldn't go and leave my guests," he answered.

  She raked him with a glance of merry derision. "Oh, I know how yours works. I wouldn't have it for anything. It's an awf'lly bossy one. It's sending you out to the Barrens with Win Beresford just because he's your friend."

  "Not quite. I have another reason too," he replied.

  "Yes, I know. You don't like West. Nobody does. My father doesn't—or Fergus—or Mr. Whaley—but they're not taking the long trail after him as you are. You can't get out of it that way."

  She had not, of course, hit on the real reason for going that supplemented his friendship for the constable and he did not intend that she should.

  "It doesn't matter much why I'm going. Anyhow, it'll be good for me. I'm gettin' soft and fat. After I've been out in the deep snows a month or so, I'll have taken up my belt a notch or two. It's time I wrestled with a blizzard an' tried livin' on lean rabbit.[7]"

  [Footnote 7: Rabbit is about the poorest meat in the North. It is lean and stringy, furnishes very little nourishment and not much fat, and is not a muscle-builder. In a country where, oil and grease are essentials, such food is not desirable. The Indians ate great quantities of them. (W.M.R.)]

  Her gaze swept his lean, hard, compact body. "Yes, you look soft," she mocked. "Father said something of that sort when he looked at that door there you came through."

  Tom had been watching her stitching. He offered a comment now, perhaps, to change the subject. It is embarrassing for a modest man to talk about himself.

  "You're workin' that 'W' upside down," he said.

  "Am I? Who said, it was a 'W'?"

  "I guessed it might be."

  "You're a bad guesser. It's an 'M.' 'M' stands for McRae, doesn't it?"

  "Yes, and 'W' for Winthrop," he said with a little flare of boldness.

  A touch of soft color flagged her cheeks. "And 'I' for impudence," she retorted with a smile that robbed the words of offense.

  He was careful not to risk outstaying his welcome. After an hour he rose to go. His good-bye to Matapi-Koma and Onistah was made in the large living-room.

  Jessie followed him to the outside door.

  He gave her a word of comfort as he buttoned his coat, "Don't you worry about Win. I'll keep an eye on him."

  "Thank you. And he'll keep one on you, I suppose."

  He laughed. That reversal of the case was a new idea to him. The prettiest girl in the North was not holding her breath till he returned safely. "I reckon," he said. "We'll team together fine."

  "Don't be foolhardy, either of you," she cautioned.

  "No," he promised, and held out his hand. "Good-bye, if I don't see you in the mornin'."

  He did not know she was screwing up her courage and had been for half an hour to do something she had never done before. She plunged at it, a tide of warm blood beating into her face beneath the tan.

  "'M' is for Morse too, and 'T' for Tom," she said.

  With the same motion she thrust the gun-case into his hand and him out of the door.

  He stood outside, facing a closed door, the bit of fancy-work in his mittens. An exultant electric tingle raced through his veins. She had given him a token of friendship he would cherish all his life.

  CHAPTER XXXI

  THE LONG TRAIL

  For four days Whaley lay between life and death. There were hours when the vital current in him ebbed so low that McRae thought it was the beginning of the end. But after the fifth day he began definitely to mend. His appetite increased. The fever in him abated. The delirium passed away. Just a week from the time he had been wounded, McRae put him on the cariole and took him to town over the hard crust of the snow.

  Beresford returned from Fort Edmonton a few hours later, carrying with him an appointment for Morse as guide and deputy constable.

  "Maintiens le droit," said the officer, clapping his friend on the shoulder. "You're one of us now. A great chance for a short life you've got. Time for the insurance companies to cancel any policies they may have on you."

  Morse smiled. He was only a deputy, appointed temporarily, but it pleased him to be chosen even in this capacity as a member of the most efficient police force in the world. "Maintiens le droit" was the motto of the Mounted. Tom did not intend that the morale of that body should suffer through him if he could help it.

  Angus McRae had offered his dog-train for the pursuit and Beresford had promptly accepted. The four dogs of the Scotch trapper were far and away better than any others that could be picked up in a hurry. They had stamina, and they were not savage and wolfish like most of those belonging to the Indians and even to the Hudson's Bay Company.

  Supplies for the trip had been gathered by Morse. From the Crees he had bought two hundred pounds of dried fish for the dogs. Their own provisions consisted of pemmican, dried caribou meat, flour, salt, tea, and tobacco.

  All Faraway was out to see the start. The travelers would certainly cover hundreds and perhaps thousands of miles before their return. Even in that country of wide spaces, where men mushed far when the rivers and lakes were closed, this was likely to prove an epic trip.

  Beresford cracked the long lash and Cuffy leaned forward in the traces. The tangle of dogs straightened out and began to move. A French voyageur lifted his throat in a peculiar shout that was half a bark. Indians and half-breeds snowshoed down the street beside the sled. At the door of the McRae house stood Angus, his wife, and daughter.

  "
God wi' you haith," the trapper called.

  Jessie waved a scarf, and Beresford, who had spent the previous evening with her, threw up a hand in gay greeting.

  The calvacade drew to the edge of the woods. Morse looked back. A slim figure, hardly distinguishable in the distance, still stood in front of the McRae house fluttering the scarf.

  A turn in the trail hid her. Faraway was shut out of view.

  For four or five miles the trappers stayed with them. It was rather a custom of the North to speed travelers on their way in this fashion. At the edge of the first lake the Indians and half-breeds said good-bye and turned back.

  Morse moved onto the ice and broke trail. The dogs followed in tandem—Cuffy, Koona, Bull, and Caesar. They traveled fast over the ice and reached the woods beyond. The timber was not thick. Beyond this was a second lake, a larger one. By the time they had crossed this, the sun was going down.

  The men watched for a sheltered place to camp and as soon as they found one, they threw off the trail to the edge of the woods, drawing up the sledge back of them as a wind-break. They gathered pine for fuel and cut balsam boughs for beds. It had come on to snow, and they ate supper with their backs to the drive of the flakes, the hoods of their furs drawn over their heads.

  The dogs sat round in a half-circle watching them and the frozen fish thawing before the fire. Their faces, tilted a little sideways, ears cocked and eyes bright, looked anxiously expectant. When the fish were half-thawed, Morse tossed them by turn to the waiting animals, who managed to get rid of their supper with a snap and a gulp. Afterward they burrowed down in the snow and fell asleep.

  On the blazing logs Beresford had put two kettles filled with snow. These he refilled after the snow melted, until enough water was in them. Into one kettle he put a piece of fat caribou meat. The other was to make tea.

  Using their snowshoes as shovels, they scraped a place clear and scattered balsam boughs on it. On this they spread an empty flour sack, cut open at the side. Tin plates and cups served as dish.

  Their supper consisted of soggy bannocks, fat meat, and tea. While they ate, the snow continued to fall. It was not unwelcome, for so long as this lasted the cold could not be intolerable. Moreover, snow makes a good white blanket and protects against sudden drops in temperature.

  They changed their moccasins and duffles and pulled on as night-wear long buffalo-skin boots, hood, mufflers, and fur mits. A heavy fur robe and a blanket were added. Into these last they snuggled down, wrapping themselves up so completely that a tenderfoot would have smothered for lack of air.

  Before they retired, they could hear the ice on the lake cracking like distant thunder. The trees back of them occasionally snapped from the cold with reports that sounded like pistol shots.

  In five minutes both men were asleep. They lay with their heads entirely covered, as the Indians did. Not once during the night did they stir. To disarrange their bedding and expose the nose or the hands to the air would be to risk being frozen.

  Morse woke first. He soon had a roaring fire. Again there were two kettles on it, one for fat meat and the other for strong tea. No fish were thawing before the heat, for dogs are fed only once a day. Otherwise they get sleepy and sluggish, losing the edge of their keenness.

  They were off to an early start. There was a cold head wind that was uncomfortable. For hours they held to the slow, swinging stride of the webs. Sometimes the trail was through the forest, sometimes in and out of brush and small timber. Twice during the day they crossed lakes and hit up a lively pace. Once they came to a muskeg, four miles across, and had to plough over the moss hags while brush tangled their feet and slapped their faces.

  Cuffy was a prince of leaders. He seemed to know by some sixth sense the best way to wind through underbrush and over swamps. He was master of the train and ruled by strength and courage as well as intelligence. Bull had ideas of his own, but after one sharp brush with Cuffy, from which he had emerged ruffled and bleeding, the native dog relinquished claim to dominance.

  The travelers made about fifteen miles before noon. They came to a solitary tepee, built on the edge of a lake with a background of snow-burdened spruce. This lodge was constructed of poles arranged cone-shaped side by side, the chinks between plastered with moss wedged in to fill every crevice. A thin wisp of smoke rose from an open space in the top.

  At the sound of the yelping dogs a man lifted the moose-skin curtain that served as a door. He was an old and wrinkled Cree. His face was so brown and tough and netted with seams that it resembled a piece of alligator leather. From out of it peered two very small bright eyes.

  "Ugh! Ugh!" he grunted.

  This appeared to be all the English that he knew. Beresford tried him in French and discovered he had a smattering of it. After a good many attempts, the soldier found that he had seen no white man with a dog-train in many moons. The Cree lived there alone, it appeared, and trapped for a living. Why he was separated from all his kin and tribal relations the young Canadian could not find out at the time. Later he learned that the old fellow was an outcast because he had once shown the white feather in a battle with Blackfeet fifty years earlier.

  Before they left, the travelers discovered that he knew two more words of English. One was rum, the other tobacco. He begged for both. They left him a half-foot of tobacco. The scant supply of whiskey they had brought was for an emergency.

  Just before night fell, Morse shot two ptarmigan in the woods. These made a welcome addition to their usual fare.

  Though both the men were experienced in the use of snowshoes, their feet were raw from the chafing of the thongs. Before the camp-fire they greased the sore places with tallow. In a few days the irritation due to the webs would disappear and the leg muscles brought into service by this new and steady shuffle would harden and grow fit.

  They had built a wind-break of brush beside the sled and covered the ground with spruce boughs after clearing away the snow. Here they rested after supper, drying socks, duffles, and moccasins, which were wet with perspiration, before the popping fire.

  Beresford pulled out his English briar pipe and Tom one picked from the Company stock. Smoke wreathed their heads while they lounged indolently on the spruce bed and occasionally exchanged a remark. They knew each other well enough for long silences. When they talked, it was because they had something to say.

  The Canadian looked at his friend's new gun-case and remarked with a gleam in his eye:

  "I spoke for that first, Tom. Had miners on it, I thought."

  The American laughed sardonically. "It was a present for a good boy," he explained. "I've a notion somebody was glad I was mushin' with you on this trip. Maybe you can guess why. Anyhow, I drew a present out of it."

  "I see you did," Beresford answered, grinning.

  "I'm to look after you proper an' see you're tucked up."

  "Oh, that's it?"

  "That's just it."

  The constable looked at him queerly, started to say something, then changed his mind.

  CHAPTER XXXII

  A PICTURE IN A LOCKET

  It was characteristic of McRae that he had insisted on bringing Whaley to his own home to recuperate. "It's nursin' you need, man, an' guid food. Ye'll get baith at the hoose."

  The trader protested, and was overruled. His Cree wife was not just now able to look after him. McRae's wife and daughter made good his promise, and the wounded man thrived under their care.

  On an afternoon Whaley lay on the bed in his room smoking. Beside him sat Lemoine, also puffing at a pipe. The trapper had brought to the ex-gambler a strange tale of a locket and a ring he had seen bought by a half-breed from a Blackfoot squaw who claimed to have had it eighteen years. He had just finished telling of it when Jessie knocked at the door and came into the room with a bowl of caribou broth.

  Whaley pretended to resent this solicitude, but his objection was a fraud. He liked this girl fussing over him. His attitude toward her was wholly changed. Thinking of her as a white gir
l, he looked at her with respect.

  "No more slops," he said. "Bring me a good caribou steak and I'll say thank you."

  "You're to eat what Mother sends," she told him.

  Lemoine had risen from the chair on which he had been sitting. He stared at her, a queer look of puzzled astonishment in his eyes. Jessie became aware of his gaze and flashed on him a look of annoyance.

  "Have you seen a ghost, Mr. Lemoine?" she asked.

  "By gar, maybeso, Miss Jessie. The picture in the locket, it jus' lak you—same hair, same eyes, same smile."

  "What picture in what locket?"

  "The locket I see at Whoop-Up, the one Pierre Roubideaux buy from old

  Makoye-kin's squaw."

  "A picture of a Blackfoot?"

  "No-o. Maybe French—maybe from the 'Merican country. I do not know."

  Whaley took the pipe from his mouth and sat up, the chill eyes in his white face fixed and intent. "Go back to Whoop-Up, Lemoine. Buy that locket and that ring for me from Pierre Roubideaux. See Makoye-kin—and his squaw. Find out where she got it—and when. Run down the whole story."

  The trapper took off a fur cap and scratched his curly poll.

  "Mais—pourquois? All that will take money, is it not so?"

  "I'll let you have the money. Spend what you need, but account for it to me afterward."

  Jessie felt the irregular beat of a hammer inside her bosom. "What is it you think, Mr. Whaley?" she cried softly.

  "I don't know what I think. Probably nothing to it. But there's a locket. We know that. With a picture that looks like you, Lemoine here thinks. We'd better find out whose picture it is, hadn't we?"