by John Buchan
Lew’s embarrassment had returned. His words came slowly, and he kept his eyes on the hot ashes.
‘It happened that I’d a lot of travelling to do by my lone – one trail took three months when I was looking for some lost gold-diggers. For two years I hadn’t much guiding.’
‘You were with Mr Walter Derwent, weren’t you?’
‘Yeah. Mr Derwent’s a fine little man and my very good friend. But mostly I was alone and I was thinkin’ a lot. Dad brought us up well, for he was mighty religious, and I got to puzzling about my soul. I had always lived decent, but I reckoned decent living wasn’t enough. Out in the bush you feel a pretty small thing in the hands of God. There was a book of Dad’s I had a fancy for, The Pilgrim’s Progress, and I got to thinking of myself as the Pilgrim, and looking for the same kind of thing to happen to me. I can see now it wasn’t sense, but at the time it seemed to me I was looking at a map of my own road. At the end there was the River for the Pilgrim to cross, and I got to imagining that the River was the Sick Heart. I guess I was a bit loony, but I thought I was the only sensible man, for what did it matter what the other folks were doing, running about and making money, and marrying and breeding, when there was this big business of saving your soul?
‘Then Mr Galliard got hold of me. He was likewise a bit loony, but his daftness and mine was different, for he was looking for something in this world and, strictly speaking, I was looking for something outside the world. He didn’t know what I wanted, and I didn’t worry about him. But as it fell out he gave me the chance I’d been looking for, and we took the trail together. I behaved darned badly, for I wasn’t sane, and by the mercy of God you and Johnny found the man I deserted … I pushed on like a madman and found the Sick Heart, and then, praise God, my daftness left me.
‘I don’t know what I’d expected. A land flowing with milk and honey, and angels to pass the time of day! What opened my eyes was when I found there was no living thing in that valley. That was uncanny, and gave me the horrors. And then I considered that that great hole in the earth was a grave, a place to die in but not to live in, and not a place either for an honest man to die in. I’m like you, I’m sworn to die on my feet.’
Lew checked himself with a glance of apology.
‘I had to get out,’ he said, ‘and I had to get you out, for there’s no road to Heaven from the Sick Heart. What did I call it? – a by-road to Hell!’
‘You are cured?’ Leithen asked.
‘Sure I am. I’m like a man getting better of a fever. I see things in their proper shape and size now, and not big as mountains and dancing in the air. I’ve got to save my soul, and that’s to be done by a sane man, and not by a loony, and in a man’s job. I’m the opposite to King David, for God’s goodness to me has been to get me away from yon green pastures and still waters, back among the rocks and the jack-pines.’
22
IN two days, said Lew, they should make Johnny’s camp and Galliard. But he would not talk about Galliard. He left that problem to the Omnipotence who had solved his own.
The man was having a curious effect on Leithen, the same effect on his spirit that food had on his body, nourishing it and waking it to a faint semblance of life. The blizzard died away, and there followed days of sun, when a rosy haze fell on the hills, and the air sparkled with frost crystals. That night Leithen was aware that another thought had stabbed his dull mind into wakefulness.
When he left England he had reasoned himself into a grim resignation. Life had been very good to him, and, now that it was ending, he made no complaint. But he could only show his gratitude to life by maintaining a stout front to death. He was content to be a pawn in the hands of the Almighty, but he was also a man, and, as Lew put it, must die standing. So he had assumed a task which interested him not at all, but which would keep him on his feet. That task he must conscientiously pursue, but success in it mattered little, provided always he relaxed no effort.
Looking back over the past months, he realised that his interest in it, which at first had been a question of mere self-coercion, was now a real thing. He wanted to succeed, partly because of his liking for a completed job, and partly because the human element had asserted itself. Galliard was no longer a mathematical symbol, a cipher in a game, but a human being and Felicity’s husband, and Lew was something more, a benefactor, a friend.
It was the remembrance of Lew that convinced Leithen that a change had come over his world of thought. He had welcomed the North because it matched his dull stoicism. Here in this iron and icy world man was a pigmy and God was all in all. Like Job, he was abashed by the divine majesty and could put his face in the dust. It was the temper in which he wished to pass out of life. He asked for nothing – ‘nut in the husk, nor dawn in the dusk, nor life beyond death.’ He had already much more than his deserts! And what Omnipotence proposed to do with him was the business of Omnipotence; he was too sick and weary to dream or hope. He lay passive in all-potent hands.
Now there suddenly broke in on him like a sunrise a sense of God’s mercy – deeper than the fore-ordination of things, like a great mercifulness … Out of the cruel North most of the birds had flown south from ancient instinct, and would return to keep the wheel of life moving. Merciful! But some remained, snatching safety by cunning ways from the winter of death. Merciful! Under the fetters of ice and snow there were little animals lying snug in holes, and fish under the frozen streams, and bears asleep in their lie-ups, and moose stamping out their yards, and caribou rooting for their grey moss. Merciful! And human beings, men, women, and children, fending off winter and sustaining life by an instinct old as that of the migrating birds. Lew nursing like a child one whom he had known less than a week – the Hares stolidly doing their jobs, as well fitted as Lew for this harsh world – Johnny tormented by anxiety for his brother, but uncomplainingly sticking to the main road of his duty … Surely, surely, behind the reign of law and the coercion of power there was a deep purpose of mercy.
The thought induced in Leithen a tenderness to which he had been long a stranger. He had put life away from him, and it had come back to him in a final reconciliation. He had always hoped to die in April weather when the surge of returning life would be a kind of earnest of immortality. Now, when presently death came to him, it would be like dying in the spring.
23
THAT night he spoke of plans. The laborious days had brought his bodily strength very low, but some dregs of energy had been stirring in his mind. His breath troubled him sorely, and his voice had failed, so that Lew had to come close to hear him.
‘I cannot live long,’ he said.
Lew received the news with a stony poker face.
‘Something must be settled about Galliard,’ he went on. ‘You know I came here to find him. I know his wife and his friends, and I wanted a job to carry me on to the end … We must get him back to his own people.’
‘And who might they be?’ Lew asked.
‘His wife … His business associates. He has made a big place for himself in New York.’
‘He didn’t talk like that. I never heard him mention ’em. He hasn’t been thinkin’ much of anythin’ except his old-time French forebears, especially them as went North.’
‘You went to Clairefontaine with him?’
‘Yeah. I wasn’t supposed to tell, but you’ve been there and you’ve guessed it. It was like comin’ home for him, and yet not comin’ home. We went to a nice place up the stream and he sat down and grat. Looked like it had once been his home, but that his home had shifted and he’d still to find it. After that he was in a kind of fever – all the way to the Arctic and then on here. He found that his brother and his uncle had died up there by the Ghost River.’
‘I know. I saw the graves.’
Lew’s eyes opened. ‘You and Johnny went there? You stuck mighty close to our trail … Well, up to then Galliard had been the daft one. I could get no sense out of him, and most of the time he’d sit dreaming like an old squaw by the fire
. After Fort Bannerman it was my turn. I don’t rightly remember anything he said after that, for I wasn’t worryin’ about him, only about myself and that damned Sick Heart … What was he like when you found him?’
‘He was an ill man, but his body was mending. His mind – well, he’d been lost for three days and had the horrors on him. But I won’t say he was cured. You can have the terror of the North on you and still be under its spell.’
‘That’s so. It’s the worst kind.’
‘He kept crying out for you. It looks as though you were the only one that could release him. Your madness mastered his, and now that you are sane again he might catch the infection of your sanity.’
Lew pondered. ‘It might be,’ he said shortly.
‘Well, I’m going out, and it’s for you to finish the job. You must get him down country and back to his friends. I’ve written out the details and left them with Johnny. You must promise, so that I can die with an easy mind.’
For a little Lew did not speak.
‘You’re not going to die,’ he said fiercely.
‘The best authorities in the world have told me that I haven’t the ghost of a chance.’
‘They’re wrong, and by God we’ll prove them wrong!’ The blue eyes had a frosty sternness.
‘Promise me, anyhow. Promise that you’ll see Galliard back among his friends. You could get him out, even in winter?’
‘Yeah. We can get a dog-team from the Hares’ camp if he isn’t fit for the trail. And once at Fort Bannerman we can send word to Edmonton for a plane … If it’s to do you any good I promise to plant the feller back where he belongs. But you’ve got to take count of one thing. He must be cured right here in the bush. If he isn’t cured before he goes out he’ll never be cured. It’s only the North can mend what the North breaks.’
24
NEXT day Leithen collapsed utterly, for the strength went from his legs, and his difficult breathing became almost suffocation. The business of filling the lungs with air, to a healthy man an unconscious function, had become for him a desperate enterprise where every moment brought the terror of failure. He felt every part of his decrepit frame involved, not lungs and larynx only, but every muscle and nerve from his brain to his feet. The combined effort of all that was left of him to feed the dying fires of life. A rough sledge was made and Lew and the Hare dragged him laboriously through the drifts. Fortunately they had reached the windswept ridges, where the going was easier. Twenty-four hours later there was delivered at Johnny’s camp a man who looked to be in the very article of death.
Part Three
I had a singular feeling at being in his company. For I could hardly believe that I was present at the death of a friend, and therefore I did not pity him.
PLATO, Phaedo 58
1
IN the middle of January there was a pause in the sub-zero weather, and a mild wind from the west made the snow pack like cheese, and cleared the spruce boughs of their burden. In front of the hut some square yards of flat ground had been paved by Johnny with stones from the brook, and, since the melting snow drained fast from it, it was dry enough for Leithen to sit there. There was now a short spell of sun at midday, and though it had no warmth it had light, and that light gave him an access of comfort.
He reminded himself for the thousandth time that a miracle had happened, and that he was not in pain. His breath was short, but not difficult. He was still frail, but the utter overwhelming weakness had gone.
As yet he scarcely dared even to hint to himself that he might get well. His reason had been convinced that that was impossible. There had been no doubts in the minds of Acton Croke and young Ravelston … Yet Croke had refused to be too dogmatic. He had said, ‘in the present position of our knowledge.’ He had admitted that medical science was only beginning to understand the type of tuberculosis induced by gas-poisoning. Technicalities had begun to recur to Leithen’s memory: Croke’s talk of ‘chronic fibrous infection,’ and ‘broncho-pulmonary lesions.’ Sinister-sounding phrases, but he remembered, too, reading or hearing somewhere that fibrous areas in the lungs could be walled off and rendered inert. That meant some sort of cure, at any rate a postponement of death.
Lew and the Hares had no doubt about it. ‘You’re getting well,’ the former repeated several times a day. ‘Soon you’ll be the huskiest of the lot of us.’ And the Indians had ceased to look at him furtively like something stricken. They ignored him, which was a good sign, for they knew better than most the signs of the disease which had decimated their people.
Lew’s nursing had been drastic and tireless. Leithen’s recollections of his arrival in camp from the Sick Heart River were vague, for he had been in a stupor of weakness. He remembered his first realisation that he was under a roof – the smoke from the fire which nearly choked him – alternate over-doses of heat and cold – food which he could not swallow – horrid hours of nausea. And then his memories were less of pain and weakness than of grim discomfort. Lew’s tyrannical hand had been laid on him every hour. He was made to eat food when he was retching, or at any rate to absorb the juices of it. His tongue was like a stick, and he longed for cold water, but he was never allowed it. He was wrapped in blankets like a mummy and kept in the open air when frost gummed his lips like glue, and every breath was like swallowing ice, and the air smote on his exposed face like a buffet.
He bore it dumbly, wretched but submissive. He might have been in a clinic, for he had surrendered his soul – not to a parcel of doctors and nurses, but to one fierce backwoodsman. Lew was life incarnate, and the living triumphed over what was half dead. The conscious effort involved in every hour of his past journey was at an end. He was not called on for decisions; these were made for him, and his mind sank into a stagnation which was almost painless.
Then strange things began to happen. He was stirred out of his apathy by little stabs of feeling which were remotely akin to pleasure. The half-raw meat seemed to acquire a flavour; he discovered the ghost of an appetite; he actually welcomed his morning cup of tea. He turned on his side to sleep without dismal forebodings about his condition when he woke … His beard worried him, for in his old expeditions he had always shaved regularly, and one morning, to his immense surprise, he demanded his razor, and with Lew’s approval shaved himself clean. He made a messy business of it, and took a long time over it, but the achievement pleased him. Surely the face that he looked at in the mirror was less cadaverous, the eyes less leaden, the lips less pallid, the texture of the skin more wholesome!
There was one memorable morning when, the intense cold having slackened, Lew stripped him to the buff, and he lay on a pile of skins before the fire while one of the Hares massaged his legs and arms. After that he took tottering walks about the hut, and one midday ventured out to the little platform. Presently Lew made him take daily exercise and in all weathers.
He was becoming conscious, too, of his surroundings. First came the hut. Assuredly Johnny was no slouch at hut-making. The earthen floor had been beaten flat and smooth by the Hares, whose quarters were a little annexe at one end. The building was some sixty feet square, but the floor space within was oblong, since four bunks had been built into one side. The walls were untrimmed spruce logs, and the roof was the same, but interwoven and overlaid with green boughs. Every chink in both walls and roof was filled with moss or mud. Johnny had constructed a fireplace of stones, with a bottle-shaped flue made of willow saplings puddled with clay. The fire was the special charge of the smaller Hare, and was kept going night and day to supplement the stove.
Warmth was a simple matter, but, though Leithen did not know it, food soon became a problem. Lew and Galliard had had scanty supplies, for they had set out on their journey with fevered brains. Johnny and the Hares had back-packed a fair amount, but the bulk of what they had brought from Fort Bannerman was cached at the Hares’ camp or at Lone Tree Lake. It had been Johnny’s intention to send the hares back to bring up the reserves with a dog-team, and in the meantime to s
upplement the commissariat by hunting. He was a good shot, Lew was a famous shot, and the Indians were skilled trappers. That was well enough for the first weeks after Lew and Leithen joined them. There were ptarmigan and willow grouse to be got in the bush, and the woodland caribou, still plump from his autumn guzzling, whence came beef tea and under-done steaks for Leithen, and full meals of flesh for all.
But in the tail-end of December for ten days a blizzard blew. It came out of the north-east and found some alleyway into the mountains, for these gave no protection, so that it raged as fiercely as in the open barrens. The cold was not great, and it was therefore possible to keep the fire low and prevent the back smoke from choking the hut. But there was little fresh air for Leithen, though in the gaps of the storm Lew carried him out of doors and brought him back plastered like a snow man. There were three days when a heavy weight of snow fell, but for the rest it was rather a carnival of the winds, which blew sometimes out of a clear sky, swirling the fallen snow in a tourmente, and sometimes filled every aisle of the woods with thick twisting vapours.
Hunting was all but impossible – whether in the driving snow or in the Scots-mist type of weather the visibility was nil. Leithen was aware that the men were out, for often he was left alone, and in the few light hours there was never more than one at home, but his mind was still dull and he had no curiosity about what they were doing. It was as well, for he did not notice the glum faces and the anxious eyes of the others. But he did notice the change in his food.
He had come to like the fresh, bitter flavour of the half-raw caribou meat. That was his staple fare, that and his carefully measured daily dose of tomato juice; he rarely tasted Johnny’s flap-jacks. Now there was little fresh meat, and instead he was given pemmican, which he swallowed with difficulty, or the contents of one of the few remaining tins.