The Honor of the Big Snows
Page 6
CHAPTER VI
DAYS OF TRIUMPH
One afternoon, in the beginning of the mush-snow, a long team of rakishMalemutes, driven by an Athabasca French-Canadian, raced wildly intothe clearing about the post. A series of yells, and the wild crackingof a thirty-foot caribou-gut whip, announced that the big change was athand--that the wilderness was awakening, and life was drawing near.
The entire post rushed out to meet the new-comer--men and dogs, thelittle black-and-tan children, and even Williams' fat and lethargicwife. For a few moments there was a scene of wild disorder, of fightingMalemutes buried under a rush of angry huskies, while men shouted, andthe yelling Frenchman leaped about and cut his caribou-gut in viciousslashes over the wolfish horde around his heavily laden sledge.
Partial order being restored, Mukee and Per-ee took charge of thesnarling Malemutes, and, surrounded by Williams' men, the trapperstalked to the company's office. He was Jean de Gravois, the mostimportant man in the Fond du Lac country, for whose good-will thecompany paid a small bonus. That he had made a record catch even thechildren knew by the size of the packs on his sledge and by the swaggerin his walk.
Gravois was usually one of the last to appear at the annual gatheringof the wilderness fur-gatherers. He was a big man in reputation, as hewas small in stature. He was known as far west as the Peace River, andeastward to Fort Churchill. He loved to make his appearance at the postin a wild and picturesque rush when the rest of the forest rovers werethere to look on, and to envy or admire. He was one of the few of hiskind who had developed personal vanity along with unerring cunning inthe ways of the wild. Everybody liked Gravois, for he had a big soul inhim and was as fearless as a lynx; and he liked everybody, includinghimself.
He explained his early arrival by announcing in a nonchalant mannerthat after he had given his Malemutes a day's rest he was going on toFort Churchill, to bring back a wife. He hinted, with a punctuatingcrack of his whip, that he would make a second visit, and a moreinteresting one, at just about the time when the trappers were there inforce.
Jan Thoreau listened to him, hunching his shoulders a little at theother's manifest air of importance. In turn, the French-Canadianscrutinized Jan good-naturedly. Neither of them knew the part whichJean de Gravois was to play in Jan's life.
Every hour after the half-breed's arrival quickened the pulse ofexpectancy at the post. For six months it had been a small and solitaryunit of life in the heart of a big desolation. The first snow hadsmothered it in a loneliness that was almost the loneliness ofdesertion. With that first snow began the harvest days of the people ofthe wilderness. Far and wide they were busy along their trap-lines,their lonely shacks hidden in the shelter of thick swamps, in deepchasms and dense forests. For six months the short days and the longnights had been days and nights of fur-gathering.
During those months the post was silent. It lived and breathed, butthat was all. Its life, for Williams and the few people whom thecompany kept with him, was a life of waiting. Now the change was athand. It was like the breath of spring to the awakening wilderness. Theforest people were moving. Trap-lines were being broken, shacksabandoned, sledge-dogs put to harness. On the day that Jean de Gravoisleft for Hudson's Bay, the company's supplies came in from FortChurchill--seven toboggans drawn by Eskimo dogs, laden with flour andcloth; fifty pounds of beads, ammunition, and a hundred other things tobe exchanged for the furs that would soon be in London and Paris.
Fearfully Jan Thoreau ran out to meet the sledges. There were sevenIndians and one white man. Jan thrust himself close to look at thewhite man. He wore two revolver-holsters and carried an automatic.Unquestionably he was not a missionary, but an agent of the companywell prepared to care for the company's treasure.
Jan hurried back to the cabin, his heart bubbling with a strange joy.
"There ees no missioner, Melisse!" he cried triumphantly, droppingbeside her, his face glowing with the gladness of his tidings. "Youshall be good and beautiful, lak HER, but you shall not be baptize bymissioner! He has not come!"
A few minutes later Cummins came in. One of his hands was torn andbleeding.
"Those Eskimo dogs are demons!" he growled. "If they knew how to standon their legs, they'd eat our huskies alive! Will you help me withthis?"
Jan was at work in an instant, bandaging the wounded hand.
"It ees not deep," he said; and then, without looking up, he added:"The missioner did not come."
"No," said Cummins shortly. "Neither has the mail. He is with that."
He did not notice the sudden tremble of Jan's fingers, nor did he seethe startled look that shot into the boy's down-turned eyes. Janfinished his bandaging without betraying his emotion, and went backwith Cummins to the company's store.
The next morning, two Chippewayans trailed in with a team of mongrelcurs from the south. Thereafter Cummins found but little time to devoteto Melisse. The snow was softening rapidly, and the daily increasingwarmth of the sun hastened the movement of the trappers. Mukee's peoplefrom the western Barren Lands arrived first, bringing with them greatloads of musk-ox and caribou skins, and an army of big-footed,long-legged Mackenzie hounds that pulled like horses and wailed likewhipped puppies when the huskies and Eskimo dogs set upon them.
From east and west and south all trails now led to the post. By the endof the third day after the arrival of the company's supplies, a babelof fighting, yelling, ceaselessly moving discord had driven forth thepeace and quiet in which Cummins' wife had died. The fighting anddiscord were among the dogs, and the yelling was a necessary humanaccompaniment. Half a hundred packs, almost as wild and as savage asthe wolves from whom half of them possessed a strong inheritance ofblood, were thrown suddenly into warring confusion.
All the dogs were fighters except the big, soft-throated Mackenziehounds, with the slow strength of oxen in their movements, and thequarter-strained and half-strained mongrels from the south; and uponthese unfortunates the others preyed. Packs of fierce Labrador dogs,never vanquished except by death, came from close to Hudson's Bay. Teamafter team of the little yellow and gray Eskimo dogs, as quick withtheir fangs as were their black and swift-running masters with theirhands and feet, met the much larger and darker-colored Malemutes fromthe Athabasca. Enemies of all these, fighting, snapping, and snarling,with the lust of killing deep born in them from their wolf progenitors,packs of fierce huskies trailed in from all sides.
There was no cessation in the battle of the fangs. It began with thefirst brute arrivals. It continued from dawn through the day, andaround the campfires at night. There was never an end to the strifebetween the dogs, and between the men and the dogs. The snow wasstained and trailed with blood, and the scent of it added greaterfierceness to the wolf-breeds. Half a dozen battles were fought to thedeath each day and night. Those that died were chiefly the south-bredcurs--mixtures of mastiff, Great Dane, and sheep-dogs--and the fatallyslow Mackenzie hounds.
From its towering height the sentinel spruce frowned down upon thesavage life that had come to outrage the grave it guarded. Yet beyondall this discord and bloody strife there was a great, throbbing humanhappiness--a beating of honest hearts filled to overflowing with thejoys of the moment, a welding of new friendships, a renewal of oldones, a closer union of the brotherhood that holds together all thingsunder the cold gray of the northern skies.
There were no bickerings among the hunters, no anger of man against manin the fierce voices that emphasized the slashing cuts of thecaribou-whips. If the fangs of a Hudson's Bay husky let out thelife-blood from the soft throat of a Mackenzie hound, it was a matterof the dogs, and not of their owners. They did not quarrel.
One day a fierce Eskimo pack cornered a giant husky under the bigspruce, and slew him. When Cummins came from the company's store in theafternoon, he saw a number of men, with bared heads, working about thegrave. He drew near enough to see that they were building around it abarricade of saplings; and his breath choked him as he turned to thecabin and Melisse. He noticed, too, that no fires were
built near thespot consecrated to the memory of the dead woman; and to his cabin thepaths in the snow became deeper and wider where trod the wild forestmen who came to look upon the little Melisse.
These were days of unprecedented prosperity and triumph for the baby,as they were for the company. The cabin was half filled with strangethings, for all who came gave something to Melisse. There were polarbears' teeth, brought down by the little black men who in turn had gotthem from the coast people; strange gods carved from wood; bits of fur,bushy fox tails, lynx paws, dried fruits, candy bought at fabulousprices in the store, and musk--always and incessantly musk--fromMukee's people of the west barrens.
To Jan this homage to Melisse was more than gratifying. It formed abond between him and Cummins' people. His heart went out to them, andhe went more freely among them, and made friends.