by John Buchan
The effluence of death seemed to be wafted to his nostrils over the many thousand miles of land and sea. He smelt the stench of incinerators and muddy trenches and bloody clothing. The odour of the little presbytery was like that of a hospital ward.
But it did not sicken him. Rather it braced him, as when a shore-dweller who has been long inland gets a whiff of the sea. It was the spark which fired within him an explosive train of resolution.
There was a plain task before him, to fight with Death. God for His own purpose had unloosed it in the world, ravening over places which had once been rich in innocent life. Here in the North life had always been on sufferance, its pale slender shoots fighting a hard battle against the Elder Ice. But it had maintained its brave defiance. And now one such pathetic slip was on the verge of extinction. This handful of Hares had for generations been a little enclave of life besieged by mortality. Now it was perishing, hurrying to share in the dissolution which was overtaking the world.
By God’s help that should not happen – the God who was the God of the living. Through strange circuits he had come to that simple forthright duty for which he had always longed. In that duty he must make his soul.
There was a ring of happiness in his voice. ‘You have me as a helper,’ he said. ‘And Mr Galliard. And Lew and Johnny. Between us we will save your Hares from themselves.’
Lew’s face set, as if he had heard something which he had long feared.
‘You mean we’ve got to feed ’em?’
Leithen nodded. ‘Feed them – body and mind.’
Lew’s eyebrows fell.
‘You coming out in the woods with us? I guess that’s the right thing for you.’
‘No, that’s your job, and Johnny’s. I stay here.’
Lew exploded. Even in the dimness his eyes were like points of blue fire.
‘Hell!’ he cried. ‘You can’t do it. You jest can’t do it. I was afeared you’d have that dam’ foolish notion. Say, what d’you think life here would be like for you? You’re on the road to be cured, but you ain’t cured yet. Come out with me and Johnny and you’ll be living healthy. We won’t let you do too much. It’s a mighty interesting job hunting moose in their ravages and you’ll get some fine shooting. We’ll feed you the kind of food that’s good for you, and at night we’ll make you as snug as a wintering bear. I’ll engage by the spring you’ll be a mighty strong man. That’s good sense, ain’t it?’
‘Excellent good sense. Only it’s not for me. My job is here.’
‘Man, I tell you it’s suicide. Fair suicide. I’ve seen plenty cases like yours, and I’ve seen ’em get well and I’ve seen ’em die. There’s one sure way to die and that’s to live in a shack or among shacks, and breathe stinking air and be rubbing shoulders with sick folks, and wearing your soul out trying to put some pep into a herring-gutted bunch of Indians. You’ll be sicker than ever before a week is out, and a corp in a month, and that’ll be darned little use to anybody.’
Lew’s soft rich voice had become hoarse with passion. He got up from his seat and stood before Leithen like a suppliant, with his hands nervously intertwining.
‘You may be right,’ Leithen said. ‘But all the same I must stay. It doesn’t matter what happens to me.’
‘It matters like hell,’ said Lew, and there was that in his voice which made the presbytery a solemn place, for it was the cry of a deep affection.
‘This is a war and I obey orders. I’ve got my orders. In a world where Death is king we’re going to defy him and save life. The North has closed down on us and we’re going to beat the North. That is to your address, Galliard.’
Galliard was staring at him with bright comprehending eyes.
‘In this fight we have each got his special job. I’m in command, and I hand them out. I’ve taken the one for myself that I believe I can do best. We’re going to win, remember. What does my death matter if we defeat Death?’
Lew sat down again with his head in his hands. He raised it like a frightened animal at Leithen’s next words.
‘This is my Sick Heart River. Galliard’s too, I think. Maybe yours, Lew. Each of us has got to find his river for himself, and it may flow where he least expects it.’
Father Duplessis, back in the deep shadows, quoted from the Vulgate psalm, ‘Fluminis impetus laetificat civitatem Dei.’
Leithen smiled. ‘Do you know the English of that, Lew? There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God. That’s what you’ve always been looking for.’
16
THE place was suddenly bright, for the door had opened. A wave of icy air swept out the frowst, and Leithen found himself looking into a radiant world, rimmed with peaks of bright snow and canopied by a sky so infinitely far away that it had no colour except that of essential light.
It was the old chief, conducted by Johnny. Zacharias was a very mountain of a man, and age had made him shapeless while lumbago had bent him nearly double. He walked with two sticks, and Johnny had to lower him delicately to a seat. The Hares were not treaty Indians, but nevertheless he wore one of the soup-plate Victorian silver medals, which had come to him through a Cree grandmother. His heavy face had a kind of placid good sense, and age and corpulence had not dimmed the vigour of his eye.
He greeted Leithen ceremonially, realising he was the leader of the newcomers. He had a few words of English, but Johnny did most of the interpreting. He sat with his hands on his knees, like a schoolboy interviewed by a headmaster, but though his attitude suggested nervousness his voice was calm.
‘We are a ver’ sick people,’ he repeated several times. It was his chief English phrase.
What he had to tell was much the same story that Johnny had brought to the mountain camp. But since then things had slipped further downhill. There had been more deaths of children and old people, and even of younger men. They did not die of actual starvation, but of low diet and low spirits. Less than half a dozen went hunting, and not many more brought in fuel, so there was little fresh meat and too little firewood. People sat huddled in icy shacks in all the clothes they could find, and dreamed themselves into decay. The heart had gone out of them. The women, too, had ceased to scold and upbraid, and would soon go the way of their men-folk.
‘Then our people will be no more,’ said Zacharias grimly.
Leithen asked what help he could count on.
‘There is myself,’ said the chief, ‘and this good Father. I have three sons who will do my bidding, and seven grandsons – no, five, for two are sick. There may be a few others. Say at the most a score.’
‘What would you advise?’
The old man shook his head.
‘In our fathers’ day the cure would have been a raid by Chipewyans or Dog-ribs! Then we would have been forced to be up and doing or perish. A flight of arrows is the best cure for brooding. Now – I do not know. Something harsh to get the sullenness out of their bones. You are a soldier?’
‘The Father and I served in the same war.’
‘Good! Soldiers’ ways are needed. But applied with judgment, for my people are weak and they are also children.’
Leithen spoke to the company.
‘There are a score of us for this job then. Mr Galliard and I stay here. Lew and Johnny go hunting, and will take with them whom they choose. We shall need all the dog-teams we can get to bring back meat and cordwood. But first there are several jobs to be done. You’ve got to build a shack for Mr Galliard and myself. You’ve got to get a mighty big store of logs, for a fire must be kept burning day and night.’
He was addressing Lew, whose eyes questioned him.
‘Why? Because these people must be kept in touch with life, and life is warmth and colour. A fire will remind them that there is warmth and colour in the world … Tomorrow morning we will have a round-up and discover exactly what is the size of our job … You’ve made camp, Johnny? Mr Galliard and I will be there by supper-time. Now you and Lew go along and get busy. We’ve got a lot to do in the ne
xt few days.’
The door opened again and disclosed the same landscape of primitive forms and colours, its dazzle a little dimmed by the approach of evening.
This second glimpse had a strange effect on Leithen, for it seemed to be a revelation of a world which he had forgotten. His mind swooped back on it and for a little was immersed in memories. Zacharias was hoisted to his feet and escorted down the hill. Father Duplessis prepared a simple meal. There was a little talk about ways and means after Lew left, Galliard questioning Leithen and getting answers. Yet all the time the visualising part of Leithen’s mind was many thousands of miles away in space and years back in time.
The stove had become too hot, so the door was allowed to remain half open, for the year had turned, and the afternoon sun was gaining strength. So his eyes were seeing a segment of a bright coloured world. The intense pure light brought a flood of pictures all linked with moments of exultant physical vigour. Also with friendships. He did not probe the cause, but these pictures seemed to imply companionship. In each Archie Roylance, or Clanroyden, or Lamancha was just round the corner waiting … There was a July morning, very early, on the Nantillons glacier, on his way to make a traverse of the Charmoz which had once been famous. There was a moonlit night on an Aegean isle when he had been very near old mysteries. There were Highland dawns and twilights – one especially, when he sat on a half-submerged skerry watching for the wild geese – an evening when Tir-nan-og was manifestly re-created. There were spring days and summer days in English meadows, Border bent with the April curlews piping, London afternoons in May with the dear remembered smells fresh in his nostrils … In each picture he felt the blood strong in his veins and a young power in his muscles. This was the man he once had been.
Once! He came out of his absorption to realise that these pictures had not come wholly through the Ivory Gate. He was no longer a dying man. He had been reprieved on the eve of execution, and by walking delicately the reprieve might be extended. His bodily strength was like a fragile glass vessel which one had to carry while walking on a rough road; with care it might survive, but a jolt would shatter it … No, that was a false comparison. His health was like a small sum of money, all that was left of a big fortune. It might be kept intact by a stern economy, or it might be spent gallantly on a last venture.
Galliard and Father Duplessis were sitting side by side and talking earnestly. He caught a word of the priest’s: ‘Dieu fait bien ce qu’il fait’ and remembered the quotation. Was it La Fontaine? He laughed, for it fitted in with his own mood.
He had found the right word both for Galliard and himself. They were facing the challenge of the North, which a man must accept and repel or submit to servitude. Lew and Johnny and their kind did not face that challenge; they avoided it by walking humbly; they conciliated it by ingenious subterfuges; its blows were avoided and not squarely met, and they paid the price; for every now and then they fell under its terrors.
He was facing, too, the challenge of Death. Elsewhere in the world the ancient enemy was victorious. If here, against all odds, he could save the tiny germ of life from its maw he would have met that challenge, and done God’s work.
Leithen’s new-found mission for life gave him a happy retrospect over his own career. At first, when he left England, he had looked back with pain at the bright things now forbidden. In his first days in the North his old world had slipped from him wholly, leaving only a grey void which he must face with clenched teeth and with grim submission. He smiled as he remembered those days, with their dreary stoicism. He had thought of himself like Job, as one whose strength lay only in humbleness. He had been crushed and awed by God.
A barren creed! He saw that now, for its foundation had been pride of defiance, keeping a stiff neck under the blows of fate. He had been abject but without true humility. When had the change begun? At Sick Heart River, when he had a vision of the beauty which might be concealed in the desert? Then, that evening in the snow-pit had come the realisation of the tenderness behind the iron front of Nature, and after that had come thankfulness for plain human affection. The North had not frozen him, but had melted the ice in his heart. God was not only all-mighty but all-loving. His old happinesses seemed to link in with his new mood of thankfulness. The stream of life which had flowed so pleasantly had eternity in its waters. He felt himself safe in the hands of a power that was both God and friend.
Father Duplessis was speaking, and Galliard was listening earnestly. He seemed to be quoting the New Testament – ‘Heureux sont les morts qui meurent dans le Seigneur.’
He had been inhuman, Leithen told himself, with the dreary fortitude of a sick animal. Now whatever befell him he was once again in love with his fellows. The cold infernal North magnified instead of dwarfing humanity. What a marvel was this clot of vivified dust! … The universe seemed to spread itself before him in immense distances lit and dominated by a divine spark which was man. An inconsiderable planet, a speck in the infinite stellar spaces; most of it salt water; the bulk of the land rock and desert and austral and boreal ice; interspersed mud, the detritus of aeons, with a thin coverlet of grass and trees – that vegetable world on which every living thing was in the last resort a parasite! Man, precariously perched on this rotating scrap-heap, yet so much master of it that he could mould it to his transient uses and, while struggling to live, could entertain thoughts and dreams beyond the bounds of time and space! Man so weak and yet so great, the chief handiwork of the Power that had hung the stars in the firmament!
He was moved to a strange exaltation. Behind his new access of strength he felt the brittleness of his body. His stock of vigour was slender indeed, but he could spend it bravely in making his soul. Most men had their lives taken from them. It was his privilege to give his, to offer it freely and joyfully in one last effort of manhood. The North had been his friend, for it had enabled him, like Jacob, to wrestle with the dark angel and extort a blessing.
The presbytery had warmed up, and Galliard had fallen asleep. He slept with his mouth shut, breathing through his nose, and the sleeping face had dignity and power in it. It would be no small thing to release this man from ancestral fears and gird him for his task in the world. In making his own soul he would also give back Galliard his. He would win the world too, for now the great, shining, mystic universe above him was no longer a foe but a friend, part with himself of an eternal plan.
Father Duplessis’ voice broke in on his meditation and seemed to give the benediction words. He was reading his breviary, and broke off now and then to translate a sentence aloud in his own tongue. – ‘Car celui qui voudra sauver sa vie la perdra; et celui qui perdra sa vie pour I’amour de moi, la retrouvera.’
17
From a report by Corporal S——, R.C.M.P., Fort Bannerman, to Inspector N——, R.C.M.P., Fort Macleod.
‘PURSUANT to instructions received, I left Fort Bannerman on the 21st day of April, accompanied by Constable F——, and after some trouble with my dog-team arrived at the Hares’ winter camp on Big Hare Lake at 6.30 p.m. on the 22nd. The last part of the journey was in the dark, but we were guided by a great blaze coming apparently from the camp which was visible from the outlet of the lake. At first I thought the place was on fire, but on arrival found that this evening bonfire had become a regular custom.
‘Rumours of distress among the Hares had reached Fort Bannerman during the winter. Father Wentzel, on his return to the Fort, had predicted a bad time, and Father Duplessis, who replaced him, had sent an urgent message asking not only for supplies of food but for someone to go up and advise. I duly reported this to you, and received your instructions to take an early opportunity of visiting the camp. This opportunity I was unable to find for several months, since the Force was short-handed, owing to the departure of men to the provost company in France, and, as you are aware, I was compelled to make two trips to Great Bear Lake in connection with the dispute at the Goose Bay Mine. So, as stated above, I could not leave Fort Bannerman until the 21st in
st.
‘Constable F— and I were put up by Father Duplessis, and I received from him a satisfactory account of the condition of the Hare tribe. They are now in good health, and, what is more important, in good heart, for it seems that every now and then they get pessimism, like the measles, and die of it, since it prevents their looking for food. It appeared that they had had a very bad bout in the winter, of the risk of which Father Wentzel had warned us. Up to the beginning of February they were sitting in their huts doing nothing but expecting death, and very soon getting what they expected. A schedule attached to this report gives the number of deaths, and such details as could be ascertained.
‘The Hares were saved by an incident which I think is the most remarkable I have ever heard of in my long experience of the Territory. In the early fall a party went into the Mackenzie mountains, travelling up the Big Hare River to a piece of country which has been very imperfectly explored. Or rather, two parties who ultimately joined hands. The party consisted of an American gentleman named Galliard, a New York business man, and an Englishman named Leithen. It had with it two Hare Indians, and as guides the brothers Frizel. The Frizels, Lew and Johnny, are men of high character and great experience. They both served with distinction in the—— Battalion of the Canadian Expeditionary Force in the last war, and have long been favourably known to the Police. The younger, until recently, was a game warden at the National Park at Waskesieu.
‘I received further information about the Englishman, Leithen. It appears that he was Sir Edward Leithen, a famous London lawyer and a British Member of Parliament. He was suffering from tuberculosis, and had undertaken the expedition with a view to a cure. The winter in the high mountains, where the weather has been mild for a Mackenzie River winter, had done him good, and he was believed to be on the way to recovery.