The Honor of the Big Snows Read online

  CHAPTER IV

  THE PROBLEM

  In the days that followed, there came other things which Jan could notunderstand, and which he made no great effort to understand. He talkedlittle, even to Cummins. He listened, and his eyes would answer, or hewould reply with strange, eery little hunches of his shoulders, whichruffled up his hair. To the few simple souls at the post, he broughtwith him more than his starved body from out of the unknown wilderness.This was the chief cause of those things which he could not understand.

  No man learned more of him than had Cummins. Even to Mukee, his historywas equally simple and short. Always he said that he came from out ofthe north--which meant the Barren Lands; and the Barren Lands meantdeath. No man had ever come across them as Jan had come; and at anothertime, and under other circumstances, Cummins and his people would havebelieved him mad.

  But others had listened to that strange, sweet music that came to themfrom out of the forest on the night when the woman died, and they, likeCummins, had been stirred by thrilling thoughts. They knew little ofGod, as God is preached; but they knew a great deal about Him in otherways. They knew that Jan Thoreau had come like a messenger from theangels, that the woman's soul had gone out to meet him, and that shehad died sweetly on John Cummins' breast while he played. So the boy,with his thin, sensitive face and his great, beautiful eyes, became apart of what the woman had left behind for them to love. As a part ofher they accepted him, without further questioning as to who he was orwhence he came.

  In a way, he made up for her loss. The woman had brought something newand sweet into their barren lives, and he brought something new andsweet--the music of his violin. He played for them in the evening, inthe factor's office; and at these times they knew that Cummins' wifewas very near to them and that she was speaking to them through thethings which Jan Thoreau played.

  Music had long passed out of their lives. Into some, indeed, it hadnever come. Years ago, Williams had been at a post where there was anaccordion. Cummins had heard music when he went down to civilizationfor his wife, more than two years ago. To the others it was mysterywhich stirred them to the depths of their souls, and which revealed tothem many things that had long been hidden in the dust of the past.

  These were hours of triumph for Jan in the factor's office. Perched ona box, with his back to the wall, his head thrown back, his black eyesshining, his long hair giving to his face a half savage beauty, he wasmore than king to the grim-visaged men about him. They listened,movelessly, soundlessly; and when he stopped there was still neithermove nor sound until he had wrapped his violin in its bear-skin and hadreturned to John Cummins and the little Melisse. Jan understood thesilence, and took it for what it meant.

  But it was the audience in the little cabin that Jan liked best, and,most of all, he loved to have the little Melisse alone. As the days ofearly spring trapping approached, and the wilderness for a hundredmiles around the post was crisscrossed with the trails of the Cree andChippewayan fur-seekers, Cummins was absent for days at a time,strengthening the company's friendships, and bargaining for the catchthat would be coming to market about eight weeks later.

  This was a year of intense rivalry, for the Revillons, Frenchcompetitors of the company, had established a post two hundred miles tothe west, and rumor spread that they were to give sixty pounds of flourto the company's forty, and four feet of cloth to the yard. This meantaction among Williams and his people, and the factor himself plungedinto the wilderness. Mukee, the half-Cree, went among his scatteredtribesmen along the edge of the barrens, stirring them by the eloquenceof new promises and by fierce condemnation of the interlopers to thewest. Old Per-ee, with a strain of Eskimo in him, went boldly behindhis dogs to meet the little black people from farther north, who camedown after foxes and half-starved polar bears that had been carriedbeyond their own world on the ice-floes of the preceding spring. YoungWilliams, the factor's son, followed after Cummins, and the rest of thecompany's men went into the south and east.

  The exodus left desolate lifelessness at the post. The windows of thefireless cabins were thick with clinging frost. There was no movementin the factor's office. The dogs were gone, and wolves and lynx sniffedcloser each night. In the oppression of this desertion, the few Indianand half-breed children kept indoors, and Williams' Chippewayan wife,fat and lazy, left the company's store securely locked.

  In this silence and lifelessness Jan Thoreau felt a new andever-increasing happiness. To him the sound of life was a thing vibrantwith harshness; quiet--the dead, pulseless quiet of lifelessness--wasbeautiful. He dreamed in it, and it was then that his fingersdiscovered new things in his violin.

  He often sent Maballa, the Indian woman who cared for Melisse, togossip with Williams' wife, so that he was alone a great deal with thebaby. At these times, when the door was safely barred against theoutside world, it was a different Jan Thoreau who crouched upon hisknees beside the cot. His face was aflame with a great, absorbingpassion which at other times he concealed. His beautiful eyes glowedwith hidden fires, and he whispered soothing, singsong things to thechild, and played softly upon his violin, leaning his black head fardown so that the baby Melisse could clutch her appreciative fingers inhis hair.

  "Ah, ze sweet leetle white angel!" he would cry, as she tugged andkicked. "I luf you so--I luf you, an' will stay always, ah' play zeviolon! Ah, mon Dieu, you will be ze gr-r-r-eat bea-utiful white angellak--HER!"

  He would laugh and coo like a mother, and talk, for at these times JanThoreau's tongue was as voluble as his violin.

  Sometimes Melisse listened as if she understood the wonderful things hewas telling her. She would lie upon her back with her eyes fixed uponhim, her little red fists doubled over his bow, or a thumb thrust intoher mouth. And the longer she lay like this, gazing at him blankly, themore convinced Jan became that she was understanding him; and his voicegrew soft and low, and his eyes shone with a soft mist as he told herthose things which John Cummins would have given much to know.

  "Some day you shall understand why it happened, sweet Melisse," hewhispered, bringing his eyes so near that she reached up an inquiringfinger to them. "Then you will luf Jan Thoreau!"

  There were other times when Jan did not talk, but when the baby Melissetalked to him; and these were moments of even greater joy. With thebaby wriggling and kicking, and making queer noises in her tiny cot, hewould sit silently upon his heels, watching her with the pride andhappiness of a mother lynx in the first tumbling frolics of her kittens.

  Once, when Melisse straightened herself for an instant, and halfreached up her tiny arms to him, laughing and cooing into his face, hegave a glad cry, crushed his face down to hers, and did what he had notdared to do before--kissed her. There was something about it thatfrightened the little Melisse, and she set up a wailing that sent Jan,in a panic of dismay, for Maballa. It was a long time before heventured to kiss her again.

  It was during this fortnight of desolation at the post that Jandiscovered the big problem for himself and John Cummins. In the lastdays of the second week, he spent much of his time skirting the edge ofthe barrens in search of caribou, that there might be meat in plentywhen the dogs and men returned a little later. One afternoon, hereturned early, while the pale sun was still in the sky, laden with themeat of a musk-ox. As he came from the edge of the forest, his slenderbody doubled over under the weight of his pack, a terrifying sightgreeted him in the little clearing at the post.

  Upon her knees in front of their cabin was Maballa, industriouslyrolling the half-naked little Melisse about in a soft pile of snow, anddoing her work, as she firmly believed, in a most faithful and thoroughmanner. With a shriek, Jan threw off his pack and darted toward herlike a wild thing.

  "Sacre bleu--you keel--keel ze leetle Melisse!" he cried shrilly,snatching up the half-frozen child, "Mon Dieu, she ees not papoose! Sheees ceevilize--ceevilize!" and he ran swiftly with her into the cabin,flinging back a torrent of Cree anathema at the dumbly bewilderedMaballa.

  Jan left the rest
of his musk-ox to the wolves and foxes. He went outinto the snow, and found half a dozen other snow-wallows in which thehelpless Melisse had taken her chilling baths. He watched Maballa witha new growing terror, and fifty times a day he said to her:

  "Melisse ees not papoose! She ees ceevilize--lak HER!" And he wouldpoint to the lonely grave under the guardian spruce.

  At last Maballa went into an ecstasy of understanding. Melisse was notto be taken out and rolled in the snow; so she brought in the snow androlled it over Melisse!

  When Jan discovered this, his tongue twisted itself into sounds soterrible, and his face writhed so fiercely, that Maballa began tocomprehend that thereafter no snow at all, either out doors or in, wasto be used in the physical development of the little Melisse.

  This was the beginning of the problem, and it grew and burst forth inall its significance on the day before Cummins came in from thewilderness.

  For a week Maballa had been dropping sly hints of a wonderful thingwhich she and the factor's half-breed wife were making for the baby.Jan had visions of a gorgeous garment covered with beads and gaudybraid, which would give the little Melisse unending delight. On the daybefore Cummins' arrival, Jan came in from chopping wood, and went tothe cot. It was empty. Maballa was gone. A sudden fear thrilled him tothe marrow, and he sprang back to the cabin door, ready to shriek outthe Indian woman's name.

  A sound stopped him--the softest, sweetest sound in all the world toJan Thoreau--and he whirled around like a cat. Melisse was smiling andmaking queer, friendly little signals to him from the table. She wasstanding upright, wedged in a coffin-shaped thing from which only hertiny white face peered out at him; and Jan knew that this was Maballa'ssurprise, Melisse was in a papoose-sling!

  "Melisse, I say you shall be no papoose!" he cried, running to thetable. "You ees ceevilize! You shall be no papoose--not if twen't'ous'nd devil come tak Jan Thoreau!"

  And he snatched her from her prison, flung Maballa's handiwork out intothe snow, and waited impatiently for the return of John Cummins.