The Honor of the Big Snows Read online

  CHAPTER V

  LOVE PATCHES

  Cummins returned the next day--not that his work among the wildtrappers to the south was finished, but because he had suffered a hurtin falling from a slippery ledge. When Jan, from his wood-chopping inthe edge of the forest, saw the team race up to the little cabin and astrange Cree half carry the wounded man through the door, he spedswiftly across the open with visions of new misfortune before him.

  What he saw when he reached the door was reassuring. Cummins was uponhis knees beside the cot, his big shoulders hunched over, and Melissewas welcoming him with her whole vocabulary of sound. The injury toCummins' leg was not serious; and not being serious, it was accepted asa special incident of Providence by Jan, for the new thoughts that hadcome into his head were causing him great uneasiness.

  He lost no time in revealing his fears, after Maballa had been sent tothe factor's wife. With graphic gesture he told of what had happened.Cummins hobbled to the door to look upon the wallows in the snow, andhobbled back to the table when Jan ran there in excited imitation ofthe way in which he had found the little Melisse in Maballa's sling.

  "She ees ceevilize!" finished Jan hotly. "She ees not papoose! She mus'be lak--HER!" His great eyes shone, and Cummins felt a thickening inhis throat as he looked into them and saw what the boy meant. "Maballamak papoose out of Melisse. She grow--know not'ing, lak papoose, talklak papoose--"

  Jan's feelings overwhelmed his tongue. His shining hair rumpled thicklyabout his face as he leaned anxiously toward Cummins; and Cummins, inturn, stared down in dumb perplexity upon the joyful kickings andwrigglings of the growing problem.

  "Ees she not ceevilize?" demanded Jan ecstatically, bending his blackhead over her. "Ah, ze sweet Melisse!"

  "Yes, she must be like HER, Jan--just as good and just as sweet andjust as beautiful," interrupted Cummins gently.

  There was a quick intaking of his breath as he hobbled back to his owncot, leaving Jan at play with the baby.

  That night, in the dim, sputtering glow of an oil-lamp, John Cumminsand Jan Thoreau solemnly set to work to thrash out the great problemthat had suddenly entered into their existence. To these two there wasno element of humor in what they were doing, for into their keeping hadbeen given a thing for which God had not schemed them. The woman, hadshe been there, would have laughed at them, and in a dozen gentlebreaths might have told them all that the world held in secret betweenmother and child; but, leaving them, she had passed on to themsomething that was life, like herself, and yet mystery.

  Had fate given Maballa to Melisse for a mother there would have been nomystery. She would have developed as naturally as a wolf-whelp or alynx-kitten, a savage breath of life in a savage world, waxing fat insnow-baths, arrow-straight in papoose-slings, a moving, natural thingin a desolation to which generations and centuries of forebears hadgiven it birthright. But Melisse was like her mother. In the dreams ofthe two who were planning out her fate, she was to be a reincarnationof her mother. That dream left a ray of comfort in Cummins' breast whenhis wife died. It stirred happy visions within Jan. And it ended with aserious shock when Maballa brought into their mental perspective ofthings the possibilities of environment.

  So far as Cummins knew, there was not a white woman nearer than FortChurchill, two hundred miles away. In all that region he knew of onlytwo full-white men, and they were Williams and himself. The babyMelisse was hopelessly lost in a world of savagery; honest, loyal,big-souled savagery--but savagery for all that, and the thought of itbrought the shadows of fear and foreboding to the two into whose livesthe problem had just come.

  Long into the night they talked seriously of the matter, while Melisseslept; and the longer they talked, the greater loomed the problembefore them. Cummins fancied that he already began to see signs of thetransformation in Melisse. She was passionately fond of the gaudythings Maballa gave her, which was a sign of savagery. She was charmedby confinement in the papoose-sling, which was another sign of it; andshe had not died in the snow-wallows--which was still another.

  So far back as he could remember, Cummins had never come intofinger-touch of a white baby. Jan was as blissfully ignorant; so theydetermined upon immediate and strenuous action. Maballa would beceaselessly watched and checked at every turn. The Indian childrenwould not be allowed to come near Melisse. They two--John Cummins andJan Thoreau--would make her like the woman who slept under the sentinelspruce.

  "She ees ceevilize," said Jan with finality, "an' we mus' keep herceevilize!"

  Cummins counted back gravely upon his fingers. The little Melisse wasfour months and eighteen days old!

  "To-morrow we will make her one of those things with wheels--like thebaby-wagons they have in the South," he said. "She must not go in thepapoose-slings!"

  "An' I will teach her ze museek," whispered Jan, his eyes glowing."That ees ceevilize!"

  Suddenly an eager light came into Cummins' face, and he pointed to acalico-covered box standing upon end in a corner of the room.

  "There are the books--HER books, Jan," he said softly, the tremblingthrill of inspiration in his voice. He limped across the room, droppedupon his knees before the box, and drew back the curtain. Jan kneltbeside him. "They were HER books," he repeated. There was a sobbingcatch in his throat, and his head fell a little upon his breast."Now--we will give them--to Melisse."

  He drew the books out, one by one, his fingers trembling and his breathcoming quickly as he touched them--a dozen worn, dusty things, holdingwithin them more than John Cummins would ever know of the woman he hadlost. These volumes of dead voices had come with her into thewilderness from that other world she had known. They breathed thepathos of her love from out of their ragged pages, mended in a hundredplaces to keep them from falling into utter ruin. Slowly the mangathered them against his breast, and held them there silently, as hemight have held the woman, fighting hard to keep back his grief.

  Jan thrust a hand deeper into the box, and brought forth somethingelse--a few magazines and papers, as ragged and worn as the books. Inthese other treasures there were pictures--pictures of the things incivilization, which Jan had never seen, and which were too wonderfulfor him to comprehend at first. His eyes burned excitedly as he held upa gaudily covered fashion paper to John Cummins.

  "Theese are picture for Melisse!" he whispered tensely. "We teachher--we show her--we mak her know about ceevilize people!"

  Cummins replaced the books, one at a time, and each he held tenderlyfor a moment, wiping and blowing away the dust gathered upon it. At thelast one of all, which was more ragged and worn than the others, hegazed for a long time. It was a little Bible, his wife's Bible,finger-worn, patched, pathetic in its poverty. The man gulped hard.

  "She loved this, Jan," he said huskily. "She loved this worn, old bookmore than anything else, and little Melisse must love it also. Melissemust be a Christian."

  "Ah, yes, ze leetle Melisse mus' love ze great God!" said Jan softly.

  Cummins rose to his feet and stood for a moment looking at the sleepingbaby.

  "A missionary is coming over from Fort Churchill to talk to ourtrappers when they come in. She shall be baptized!"

  Like a cat Jan was on his feet, his eyes flashing, his long, thinfingers clenched, his body quivering with a terrible excitement.

  "No--no--not baptize by missioner!" he cried. "She shall be good, an'love ze great God, but not baptize by missioner! No--no--no!"

  Cummins turned upon him in astonishment. Before him Jan Thoreau stoodfor a minute like one gone mad, his whole being consumed in a passionterrible to look upon. Lithe giant of muscle and, fearlessness that hewas, Cummins involuntarily drew back a step, and the mainspring ofinstinct within him prompted him to lift a hand, as if to ward off aleaping thing from his breast.

  Jan noted the backward step, the guarded uplift of hand, and with anagonized cry he buried his face in his hands. In another instant he hadturned, and, before Cummins' startled voice found words, had opened thedoor and run out into the night. Th
e man saw him darting swiftly towardthe forest, and called to him, but there was no response.

  There was a hot fire burning in Jan's brain, a blazing, writhingcontortion of things that brought a low moaning from his lips. He rantirelessly and swiftly until he sank down upon the snow in a silentplace far from where he had left John Cummins. His eyes still blazedwith their strange fire upon the desolation about him, his fingersclenched and unclenched themselves, digging their nails into his flesh,and he spoke softly to himself, over and over again, the name of thelittle Melisse.

  Painting itself each instant more plainly through the tumult of hisemotions was what Jan had come to know as the picture in his brain.Shadowy and indistinct at first, in pale, elusive lines of mentalfabric, he saw the picture growing; and in its growth he saw first thesoft, sweet outlines of a woman's face, and then great luring eyes,dark like his own--and before these eyes, which gazed upon him withoverwhelming love, all else faded away from before Jan Thoreau. Thefire went out of his eyes, his fingers relaxed, and after a littlewhile he got up out of the snow, shivering, and went back to the cabin.

  Cummins asked no questions. He looked at Jan from his cot, and watchedthe boy silently as he undressed and went to bed; and in the morningthe whole incident passed from his mind. The intangible holds butlittle fascination for the simple folk who live under the ArcticCircle. Their struggle is with life, their joys are in its achievement,in their constant struggle to keep life running strong and red withinthem. Such an existence of solitude and of strife with nature leavessmall room for curiosity. So the nature of John Cummins led him toforget what had happened, as he would have forgotten the senselessrunning away of a sledge-dog, and its subsequent return. He saw notragedy, and no promise of tragedy, in the thing that had occurred.

  There was no recurrence of the strange excitement in Jan. He gave nohint of it in word or action, and the thing seemed to be forgottenbetween the two.

  The education of the little Melisse began at once, while the post wasstill deserted. It began, first of all, with Maballa. She stared dumblyand with shattered faith at these two creatures who told her ofwonderful things in the upbringing of a child--things of which she hadnever so much as heard rumor before. Her mother instincts were aroused,but with Cree stoicism she made no betrayal of them.

  The leather-tanned immobility of her face underwent no whit of changewhen Cummins solemnly declared that the little Melisse was about tobegin teething. She sat grimly and watched them in silence when betweenthem, upon a bearskin stretched on the floor, they tried vainly topersuade Melisse to use her feet.

  It was great fun for Melisse, and she enjoyed it immensely; so that asthe days passed, and the post still remained deserted, John Cummins andJan Thoreau spent much of their time upon their knees. In their eyes,the child's progress was remarkable. They saw in her an unceasingphysical growth, and countless symptoms of forthcoming mentaldevelopment. She delighted to pull the strings of Jan's violin, whichwas an unmistakable token of her musical genius. She went intoecstasies over the gaudy plates in the fashion paper. She fingered themin suggestive and inquiring silence, or with still more suggestivegrunts, and made futile efforts to eat them, which was the greatesttoken of all.

  Weeks passed, and Williams came in from the southern forests. Mukeefollowed him from the edge of the barrens. Per-ee returned from theEskimo people, three-quarters starved and with half of his dogs stolen.From the north, east, west, and south the post's fur-rangers trailedback. Life was resumed. There was a softness in the air, a growingwarmth in the midday sun. The days of the big change were near. Andwhen they came, John Cummins and Jan Thoreau, of all the factor'speople, wore patches at their knee.