Title: The King Of Beaver, and Beaver Lights - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899
Author: Catherwood, Mary Hartwell
Language: English
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THE KING OF BEAVER AND BEAVER LIGHTS

From “Mackinac And Lake Stories”, 1899

By Mary Hartwell Catherwood



THE KING OF BEAVER


Success was the word most used by the King of Beaver. Though he stood
before his people as a prophet assuming to speak revelations, executive
power breathed from him. He was a tall, golden-tinted man with a head
like a dome, hair curling over his ears, and soft beard and mustache
which did not conceal a mouth cut thin and straight. He had student
hands, long and well kept. It was not his dress, though that was careful
as a girl’s, which set him apart from farmers listening on the benches
around him, but the keen light of his blue eyes, wherein shone the
master.

Emeline thought she had never before seen such a man. He had an
attraction which she felt loathsome, and the more so because it drew
some part of her irresistibly to him. Her spirit was kin to his, and she
resented that kinship, trying to lose herself among farmers’ wives and
daughters, who listened to their Prophet stolidly, and were in no danger
of being naturally selected by him. This moral terror Emeline could not
have expressed in words, and she hid it like a shame. She also resented
the subservience of her kinspeople to one no greater than herself. Her
stock had been masters of men.

As the King of Beaver slowly turned about the circle he encountered this
rebel defying his assumption, and paused in his speaking a full minute,
the drowsy farmers seeing merely that notes were being shifted and
rearranged on the table. Then he began again, the dictatorial key
transposed into melody. His covert message was to the new maid in the
congregation. She might struggle like a fly in a web. He wrapped her
around and around with beautiful sentences. As Speaker of the State
Legislature he had learned well how to handle men in the mass, but
nature had doubly endowed him for entrancing women. The spiritual part
of James Strang, King and Prophet of a peculiar sect, appealed to
the one best calculated to appreciate him during the remainder of his
exhortation.

The Tabernacle, to which Beaver Island Mormons gathered every Saturday
instead of every Sunday, was yet unfinished. Its circular shape and
vaulted ceiling, panelled in the hard woods of the island, had been
planned by the man who stood in the centre. Many openings under the
eaves gaped windowless; but the congregation, sheltered from a July sun,
enjoyed freely the lake air, bringing fragrance from their own fields
and gardens. They seemed a bovine, honest people, in homespun and
hickory; and youth, bright-eyed and fresh-cheeked, was not lacking. They
sat on benches arranged in circles around a central platform which held
the Prophet’s chair and table. This was his simple plan for making his
world revolve around him.

Roxy Cheeseman, Emeline’s cousin, was stirred to restlessness by the
Prophet’s unusual manner, and shifted uneasily on the bench. Her short,
scarlet-cheeked face made her a favorite among the young men. She had
besides this attraction a small waist and foot, and a father who was
very well off indeed for a Beaver Island farmer. Roxy’s black eyes, with
the round and unwinking stare of a bird’s, were fixed on King Strang, as
if she instinctively warded off a gaze which by swerving a little could
smite her.

But the Prophet paid no attention to any one when the meeting was
over, his custom being to crush his notes in one hand at the end of
his peroration, and to retire like a priest, leaving the dispersing
congregation awed by his rapt face.

The two cousins walked sedately along the street of St. James village,
while their elders lingered about the Tabernacle door shaking hands.
That primitive settlement of the early ‘50’s consisted of a few houses
and log stores, a mill, the Tabernacle, and long docks, at which
steamers touched perhaps once a week. The forest partially encircled it.
A few Gentiles, making Saturday purchases in a shop kept by one of their
own kind, glanced with dislike at the separating Mormons. The shouts
of Gentile children could also be heard at Saturday play. Otherwise a
Sabbath peacefulness was over the landscape. Beaver Island had not a
rugged coastline, though the harbor of St. James was deep and good. Land
rose from it in gentle undulations rather than hills.

Emeline and Roxy walked inland, with their backs to the harbor. In
summer, farmers who lived nearest St. James took short-cuts through the
woods to meeting, and let their horses rest.

The last house on the street was a wooden building of some pretension,
having bow-windows and a veranda. High pickets enclosed a secluded
garden. It was very unlike the log-cabins of the island.

“He lives here,” said Roxy.

Emeline did not inquire who lived here. She understood, and her question
was--

“How many with him?”

“All of them--eight. Seven of them stay at home, but Mary French travels
with him. Didn’t you notice her in the Tabernacle--the girl with the
rose in her hair, sitting near the platform?”

“Yes, I noticed her. Was that one of his wives?”

Roxy waited until they had struck into the woods path, and then looked
guardedly behind her.

“Mary French is the youngest one. She was sealed to the Prophet only two
years ago; and last winter she went travelling with him, and we heard
she dressed in men’s clothes and acted as his secretary.”

“But why did she do that when she was his wife according to your
religion?”

“I don’t know,” responded Roxy, mysteriously. “The Gentiles on the
mainland are very hard on us.”

They followed the track between fragrant grapevine and hickory, and the
girl bred to respect polygamy inquired--

“Do you feel afraid of the Prophet, Cousin Emeline?”

“No, I don’t,” retorted the girl bred to abhor it.

“Sometimes I do. He makes people do just what he wants them to. Mary
French was a Gentile’s daughter, the proudest girl that ever stepped in
St. James. She didn’t live on the island; she came here to visit. And he
got her. What’s the matter, Cousin Emeline?”

“Some one trod on my grave; I shivered. Cousin Roxy, I want to ask you a
plain question. Do you like a man’s having more than one wife?”

“No, I don’t. And father doesn’t either. But he was obliged to marry
again, or get into trouble with the other elders. And Aunt Mahala is
very good about the house, and minds mother. The revelation may be plain
enough, but I am not the kind of a girl,” declared Roxy, daringly, as
one might blaspheme, “that cares a straw for the revelation.”

Emeline took hold of her arm, and they walked on with a new sense of
companionship.

“A great many of the people feel the same way about it. But when the
Prophet makes them understand it is part of the faith, they have to keep
the faith. I am a reprobate myself. But don’t tell father,” appealed
Roxy, uneasily. “He is an elder.”

“My uncle Cheeseman is a good man,” said Emeline, finding comfort in
this fact. She could not explain to her cousin how hard it had been
for her to come to Beaver Island to live among Mormons. Her uncle had
insisted on giving his orphan niece a home and the protection of a male
relative, at the death of the maiden aunt by whom she had been brought
up. In that day no girl thought of living without protection. Emeline
had a few thousand dollars of her own, but her money was invested, and
he could not count on the use of it, which men assumed a right to have
when helpless women clustered to their hearths. Her uncle Cheeseman was
undeniably a good man, whatever might be said of his religious faith.

“I like father myself,” assented Roxy. “He is never strict with us
unless the Prophet has some revelation that makes him so. Cousin
Emeline, I hope you won’t grow to be taken up with Brother Strang, like
Mary French. I thought he looked at you to-day.”

Emeline’s face and neck were scarlet above her black dress. The Gentile
resented as an insult what the Mormon simply foreboded as distasteful to
herself; though there was not a family of that faith on the island who
would not have felt honored in giving a daughter to the Prophet.

“I hate him!” exclaimed Emeline, her virgin rage mingled with a kind of
sweet and sickening pain. “I’ll never go to his church again.”

“Father wouldn’t like that, Cousin Emeline,” observed Roxy, though her
heart leaped to such unshackled freedom. “He says we mustn’t put our
hand to the plough and turn back. Everybody knows that Brother Strang
is the only person who can keep the Gentiles from driving us off the
island. They have persecuted us ever since the settlement was made. But
they are afraid of him. They cannot do anything with him. As long as he
lives he is better than an army to keep our lands and homes for us.”

“You are in a hard case betwixt Gentiles and Prophet,” laughed Emeline.

Yet the aspects of life on Beaver Island keenly interested her. This
small world, fifteen miles in length by six in breadth, was shut off
by itself in Lake Michigan, remote from the civilization of towns. She
liked at first to feel cut loose from her past life, and would have had
the steamers touch less often at St. James, diminishing their chances of
bringing her hateful news.

There were only two roads on the island--one extending from the harbor
town in the north end to a village called Galilee at the extreme
southeast end, the other to the southwest shore. Along these roads farms
were laid out, each about eighty rods in width and a mile or two in
length, so that neighbors dwelt within call of one another, and the
colony presented a strong front. The King of Beaver could scarcely have
counselled a better division of land for the linking of families. On one
side of the Cheesemans had dwelt an excellent widow with a bag chin,
and she became Elder Cheeseman’s second wife. On the other side were the
Went-worths, and Billy Wentworth courted Roxy across the fence until
it appeared that wives might continue passing over successive boundary
lines.

The billowy land was green in the morning as paradise, and Emeline
thought every day its lights and shadows were more beautiful than the
day before. Life had paused in her, and she was glad to rest her eyes
on the horizon line and take no thought about any morrow. She helped her
cousin and her legal and Mormon aunts with the children and the cabin
labor, trying to adapt herself to their habits. But her heart-sickness
and sense of fitting in her place like a princess cast among peasants
put her at a disadvantage when, the third evening, the King of Beaver
came into the garden.

He chose that primrose time of day when the world and the human spirit
should be mellowest, and walked with the farmer between garden beds to
where Emeline and Roxy were tending flowers. The entire loamy place sent
up incense. Emeline had felt at least sheltered and negatively happy
until his voice modulations strangely pierced her, and she looked up and
saw him.

He called her uncle Brother Cheeseman and her uncle called him Brother
Strang, but on one side was the mien of a sovereign and on the other the
deference of a subject. Again Emeline’s blood rose against him, and she
took as little notice as she dared of the introduction.

The King of Beaver talked to Roxy. Billy Wentworth came to the line
fence and made a face at seeing him helping to tie up sweet-peas. Then
Billy climbed over and joined Emeline. They exchanged looks, and each
knew the mind of the other on the subject of the Prophet.

Billy was a good safe human creature, with the tang of the soil about
him, and no wizard power of making his presence felt when one’s back
was turned. Emeline kept her gray eyes directed towards him, and talked
about his day’s work and the trouble of ploughing with oxen. She was
delicately and sensitively made, with a beauty which came and went like
flame. Her lips were formed in scarlet on a naturally pale face. Billy
Wentworth considered her weakly. He preferred the robust arm outlined by
Roxy’s homespun sleeve. And yet she had a sympathetic knowledge of men
which he felt, without being able to describe, as the most delicate
flattery.

The King of Beaver approached Emeline. She knew she could not escape the
interview, and continued tying vines to the cedar palisades while the
two young islanders drew joyfully away to another part of the garden.
The stable and barn-yard were between garden and cabin. Long variegated
fields stretched off in bands. A gate let through the cedar pickets to
a pasture where the cows came up to be milked. Bees gathering to their
straw domes for the night made a purring hum at the other end of the
garden.

“I trust you are here to stay,” said Emeline’s visitor.

“I am never going back to Detroit,” she answered. He understood at once
that she had met grief in Detroit, and that it might be other grief than
the sort expressed by her black garment.

“We will be kind to you here.”

Emeline, finishing her task, glanced over her shoulder at him. She did
not know how tantalizingly her face, close and clear in skin texture as
the petal of a lily, flashed out her dislike. A heavier woman’s rudeness
in her became audacious charm.

“I like Beaver Island,” she remarked, winding the remaining bits of
string into a ball. “‘Every prospect pleases, and only man is vile.’”

“You mean Gentile man,” said King Strang. “He is vile, but we hope to
get rid of him some time.”

“By breaking his fish-nets and stealing his sailboats? Is it true that
a Gentile sail-boat was sunk in Lake Galilee and kept hidden there until
inquiry ceased, and then was raised, repainted, and launched again, a
good Mormon boat?”

He linked his hands behind him and smiled at her daring.

“How many evil stories you have heard about us! My dear young lady, I
could rejoin with truths about our persecutions. Is your uncle Cheeseman
a malefactor?”

“My uncle Cheeseman is a good man.”

“So are all my people. The island, like all young communities, is
infested with a class of camp-follow-ers, and every depredation of these
fellows is charged to us. But we shall make it a garden--we shall make
it a garden.”

“Let me train vines over the whipping-post in your garden,” suggested
Emeline, turning back the crimson edge of her lip.

“You have heard that a man was publicly whipped on Beaver Island--and he
deserved it. Have you heard also that I myself have been imprisoned by
outsiders, and my life attempted more than once? Don’t you know that in
war a leader must be stern if he would save his people from destruction?
Have you never heard a good thing of me, my child?”

Emeline, facing her adversary, was enraged at the conviction which the
moderation and gentleness of a martyr was able to work in her.

“Oh yes, indeed, I have heard one good thing of you--your undertaking
the salvation of eight or nine wives.”

“Not yet nine,” he responded, humorously. “And I am glad you mentioned
that. It is one of our mysteries that you will learn later. You have
helped me greatly by such a candid unburdening of your mind. For you
must know that you and I are to be more to each other than strangers.
The revelation was given to you when it was given to me in the
Tabernacle. I saw that.”

The air was thickening with dusky motes. Emeline fancied that living
dark atoms were pressing down upon her from infinity.

“You must know,” she said, with determination, “that I came to Beaver
Island because I hated men, and expected to see nothing but Mormons
here--”

“Not counting them men at all,” indulgently supplemented the King of
Beaver, conscious that she was struggling in the most masculine presence
she had ever encountered. He dropped his voice. “My child, you touch me
as no one has touched me yet. There is scarcely need of words between
us. I know what I am to you. You shall not stay on the island if you do
not wish it. Oh, you are going to make me do my best!”

“I wish you would go away!”

“Some Gentile has hurt you, and you are beating your bruised strength on
me.”

“Please go away! I don’t like you. I am bound to another man.”

“You are bound to nobody but me. I have waited a lifetime for you.”

“How dare you talk so to me when you have eight wives already!”

“Solomon had a thousand. He was a man of God, though never in his life
was there a moment when he took to his breast a mate. I shall fare
better.”

“Did you talk to them all like this?”

“Ask them. They have their little circles beyond which they cannot go.
Have you thoughts in common with your cousin Roxy?”

“Yes, very many,” asserted Emeline, doggedly. “I am just like Cousin
Roxy.”

“You have no mind beyond the milking and churning, the sewing and
weaving?”

“No, I have no mind beyond them.”

“I kiss your hands--these little hands that were made to the finest uses
of life, and that I shall fill with honors.”

“Don’t touch me,” warned Emeline. “They can scratch!”

The King of Beaver laughed aloud. With continued gentleness he explained
to her: “You will come to me. Gentile brutes may chase women like
savages, and maltreat them afterwards; but it is different with you and
me.” He brought his hands forward and folded them upright on his breast.

[Illustration: Always prayed this prayer alone 124]

“I have always prayed this prayer alone and as a solitary soul at
twilight. For the first time I shall speak it aloud in the presence of
one who has often thought the same prayer: O God, since Thou hast shut
me up in this world, I will do the best I can, without fear or favor.
When my task is done, let me out!”

He turned and left her, as if this had been a benediction on their
meeting, and went from the garden as he usually went from the
Tabernacle. Emeline’s heart and eyes seemed to overflow without any
volition of her own. It was a kind of spiritual effervescence which she
could not control. She sobbed two or three times aloud, and immediately
ground her teeth at his back as it passed out of sight. Billy and Roxy
were so free from the baleful power that selected her. They could chat
in peace under the growing darkness, they who had home and families,
while she, without a relative except those on Beaver Island, or a friend
whose duty it was to shelter her, must bear the shock of that ruinous
force.

The instinct that no one could help her but herself kept her silent
when she retired with Roxy to the loft-chamber. Primitive life on Beaver
Island settled to its rest soon after the birds, and there was not a
sound outside of nature’s stirrings till morning, unless some drunken
fishermen trailed down the Galilee road to see what might be inflicted
on the property of sleeping Mormons.

The northern air blew fresh through gable windows of the attic, yet
Emeline turned restlessly on her straw bed, and counted the dim
rafters while Roxy slept. Finally she could not lie still, and slipped
cautiously out of bed, feeling dire need to be abroad, running or riding
with all her might. She leaned out of a gable window, courting the moist
chill of the starless night. While the hidden landscape seemed strangely
dear to her, she was full of unspeakable homesickness and longing for
she knew not what--a life she had not known and could not imagine, some
perfect friend who called her silently through space and was able to
lift her out of the entanglements of existence.

The regular throbbing of a horse’s feet approaching along the road at
a brisk walk became quite distinct. Emeline’s sensations were suspended
while she listened. From the direction of St. James she saw a figure
on horseback coming between the dusky parallel fence rows. The sound of
walking ceased in front of the house, and presently another sound crept
barely as high as the attic window. It was the cry of a violin, sweet
and piercing, like some celestial voice. It took her unawares. She
fled from it to her place beside Roxy and covered her ears with the
bedclothes.

Roxy turned with a yawn and aroused from sleep. She rose to her elbow
and drew in her breath, giggling. The violin courted like an angel,
finding secret approaches to the girl who lay rigid with her ears
stopped.

“Cousin Emeline!” whispered Roxy, “do you hear that?”

“What is it?” inquired Emeline, revealing no emotion.

[Illustration: Brother Strang serenading 134]

“It’s Brother Strang serenading.”

“How do you know?”

“Because he is the only man on Beaver who can play the fiddle like
that.” Roxy gave herself over to unrestrained giggling. “A man fifty
years old!”

“I don’t believe it,” responded Emeline, sharply.

“Don’t believe he is nearly fifty? He told his age to the elders.”

“I haven’t a word of praise for him, but he isn’t an old man. He doesn’t
look more than thirty-five.”

“To hear that fiddle you’d think he wasn’t twenty,” chuckled Roxy. “It’s
the first time Brother Strang ever came serenading down this road.”

He did not stay long, but went, trailing music deliciously into the
distance. Emeline knew how he rode, with the bridle looped over his bow
arm. She was quieted and lay in peace, sinking to sleep almost before
the faint, far notes could no longer be heard.

From that night her uncle Cheeseman’s family changed their attitude
towards her. She felt it as a withdrawal of intimacy, though it
expressed reverential awe. Especially did her Mormon aunt Mahala take
little tasks out of her hands and wait upon her, while her legal aunt
looked at her curiously. It was natural for Roxy to talk to Billy
Wentworth across the fence, but it was not natural for them to share
so much furtive laughter, which ceased when Emeline approached. Uncle
Cheese-man himself paid more attention to his niece and spent much time
at the table explaining to her the Mormon situation on Beaver Island,
tracing the colony back to its secession from Brigham Young’s party in
Illinois.

“Brother Strang was too large for them,” said her uncle. “He can do
anything he undertakes to do.”

The next Saturday Emeline refused to go to the Tabernacle. She gave no
reason and the family asked for none. Her caprices were as the gambols
of the paschal lamb, to be indulged and overlooked. Roxy offered to stay
with her, but she rejected companionship, promising her uncle and aunts
to lock herself within the cabin and hide if she saw men approaching
from any direction. The day was sultry for that climate, and of a vivid
clearness, and the sky dazzled. Emeline had never met any terrifying
Gentiles during her stay on the island, and she felt quite secure in
crossing the pasture and taking to the farm woods beyond. Her uncle’s
cows had worn a path which descended to a run with partially grass-lined
channel. Beaver Island was full of brooks and springs. The children had
placed stepping-stones across this one. She was vaguely happy, seeing
the water swirl below her feet, hearing the cattle breathe at their
grazing; though in the path or on the log which she found at the edge
of the woods her face kept turning towards the town of St. James, as the
faces of the faithful turn towards Mecca. It was childish to think
of escaping the King of Beaver by merely staying away from his
exhortations. Emeline knew she was only parleying.

The green silence should have helped her to think, but she found herself
waiting--and doing nothing but waiting--for what might happen next. She
likened herself to a hunted rabbit palpitating in cover, unable to reach
any place of safety yet grateful for a moment’s breathing. Wheels rolled
southward along the Galilee road. Meeting was out. She had the caprice
to remain where she was when the family wagon arrived, for it had been
too warm to walk to the Tabernacle. Roxy’s voice called her, and as she
answered, Roxy skipped across the brook and ran to her.

“Cousin Emeline,” the breathless girl announced, “here comes Mary French
to see you!”

Emeline stiffened upon the log.

“Where?”

Roxy glanced behind at a figure following her across the meadow.

“What does she want of me?” inquired Emeline. “If she came home with the
family, it was not necessary to call me.”

“She drove by herself. She says Brother Strang sent her to you.”

Emeline stood up as the Prophet’s youngest wife entered that leafy
silence. Roxy, forgetting that these two had never met before, slipped
away and left them. They looked at each other.

“How do you do, Mrs. Strang?” spoke Emeline.

“How do you do, Miss Cheeseman?” spoke Mary French.

“Will you sit down on this log?”

“Thank you.”

Mary French had more flesh and blood than Emeline. She was larger and
of a warmer and browner tint--that type of brunette with startling black
hair which breaks into a floss of little curls, and with unexpected
blue eyes. Her full lips made a bud, and it only half bloomed when she
smiled. From crown to slipper she was a ripe and supple woman. Though
clad, like Emeline, in black, her garment was a transparent texture over
white, and she held a parasol with crimson lining behind her head. She
had left her bonnet in her conveyance.

“My husband,” said Mary French, quiet and smiling, “sent me to tell you
that you will be welcomed into our family.”

Emeline looked her in the eyes. The Prophet’s wife had the most
unblenching smiling gaze she had ever encountered.

“I do not wish to enter your family. I am not a Mormon.”

“He will make you wish it. I was not a Mormon.”

They sat silent, the trees stirring around them.

“I do not understand it,” said Emeline. “How can you come to me with
such a message?”

“I can do it as you can do it when your turn comes.”

Emeline looked at Mary French as if she had been stabbed.

“It hurts, doesn’t it?” said Mary French. “But wait till he seems to
you a great strong archangel--an archangel with only the weakness of
dabbling his wings in the dirt--and you will withhold from him nothing,
no one, that may be of use to him. If he wants to put me by for a while,
it is his will. You cannot take my place. I cannot fill yours.”

“Oh, don’t!” gasped Emeline. “I am not that sort of woman--I should
kill!”

“That is because you have not lived with him. I would rather have him
make me suffer than not have him at all.”

“Oh, don’t! I can’t bear it! Help me!” prayed Emeline, stretching her
hands to the wife.

Mary French met her with one hand and the unflinching smile. Her flesh
was firm and warm, while Emeline’s was cold and quivering.

“You have never loved anybody, have you?”

“No.”

“But you have thought you did?”

“I was engaged before I came here.”

“And the engagement is broken?”

“We quarrelled.”

Mary French breathed deeply.

“You will forget it here. He can draw the very soul out of your body.”

“He cannot!” flashed Emeline.

“Some one will kill him yet. He is not understood at his best, and he
cannot endure defeat of any kind. When you come into the family you must
guard him from his enemies as I have constantly guarded him. If you ever
let a hair of his head be harmed--then I shall hate you!”

“Mrs. Strang, do you come here to push me too! My uncle’s family,
everything, all are closing around me! Why don’t you help me? I
loathe--I loathe; your husband!”

Mary French rose, her smile changing only to express deep tenderness.

“You are a good girl dear. I can myself feel your charm. I was not so
self-denying. In my fierce young girlhood I would have removed a rival.
But since you ask me, I will do all I can for you in the way you desire.
My errand is done. Good-by.”

“Good-by,” said Emeline, restraining herself.

She sat watching the elastic shape under the parasol move with its
shadow across the field. She had not a doubt until Mary French was gone;
then the deep skill of the Prophet’s wife with rivals sprung out like a
distortion of nature.

Emeline had nearly three weeks in which to intrench herself with doubts
and defences. She felt at first surprised and relieved. When her second
absence from the Tabernacle was passed over in silence she found in
her nature an unaccountable pique, which steadily grew to unrest. She
ventured and turned back on the woods path leading to St. James many
times, each time daring farther. The impulse to go to St. James came on
her at waking, and she resisted through busy hours of the day. But the
family often had tasks from which Emeline was free, and when the desire
grew unendurable she knelt at her secluded bedside in the loft, trying
to bring order out of her confused thoughts. She reviewed her quarrel
with her lover, and took blame for his desertion. The grievance which
had seemed so great to her before she came to Beaver Island dwindled,
and his personality with it. In self-defence she coaxed her fancy,
pretending that James Arnold was too good for her. It was well he had
found it out. But because he was too good for her she ought to go on
being fond of him at a safe distance, undetected by him, and discreetly
cherishing his large blond image as her ideal of manhood. If she had not
been bred in horror of Catholics, the cloister at this time would have
occurred to her as her only safe refuge.

These secret rites in her bedroom being ended, and Roxy diverted from
her movements, she slipped off into the woods path, sometimes running
breathlessly towards St. James.

The impetus which carried Emeline increased with each journey. At first
she was able to check it in the woods depths, but it finally drove her
until the village houses were in sight.

When this at last happened, and she stood gazing, fascinated, down the
tunnel of forest path, the King of Beaver spoke behind her.

Emeline screamed in terror and took hold of a bush, to make it a support
and a veil.

“Have I been a patient man?” he inquired, standing between her and her
uncle’s house. “I waited for you to come to me.”

“I am obliged to go somewhere,” said Emeline, plucking the leaves and
unsteadily shifting her eyes about his feet. “I cannot stay on the
farm all the time.” Through numbness she felt the pricking of a sharp
rapture.

The King of Beaver smiled, seeing betrayed in her face the very vertigo
of joy.

[Illustration: You will give yourself to me now 142]

“You will give yourself to me now?” he winningly begged, venturing
out-stretched hands. “You have felt the need as I have? Do you think
the days have been easy to me? When you were on your knees I was on
my knees too. Every day you came in this direction I came as far as I
dared, to meet you. Are the obstacles all passed?”

“No,” said Emeline.

He was making her ask herself that most insidious question, “Why could
not the other have been like this?”

“Tell me--can you say, ‘I hate you,’ now?”

“No,” said Emeline.

“I have grown to be a better man since you said you hated me. The
miracle cannot be forced. Next time?” He spoke wistfully.

“No,” Emeline answered, holding to the bush. She kept her eyes on the
ground while he talked, and glanced up when she replied. He stood with
his hat off. The flakes of sun touched his head and the fair skin of his
forehead.

He moved towards Emeline, and she retreated around the bush. Without
hesitating he passed, making a salutation, and went on by himself to
St. James. She watched his rapid military walk furtively, her eyebrows
crouching, her lips rippling with passionate tremors. Then she took to
flight homeward, her skirts swishing through the woods with a rush like
the wind. The rebound was as violent as the tension had been.

There were few festivities on Beaver Island, the Mormon families living
a pastoral life, many of them yet taxed by the struggle for existence.
Crops shot up rank and strong in the short Northern summer. Soft cloud
masses sailed over the island, and rain-storms marched across it with
drums of thunder which sent reverberations along the water world. Or
fogs rolled in, muffling and obliterating homesteads.

Emeline stayed in the house, busying herself with the monotonous duties
of the family three days. She was determined never to go into the woods
path again without Roxy. The fourth day a gray fog gave her no choice
but imprisonment. It had the acrid tang of smoke from fires burning
on the mainland. About nightfall the west wind rose and blew it back,
revealing a land mantled with condensed drops.

Emeline put on her hat and shawl to walk around in the twilight. The
other young creatures of the house were glad to be out also, and Roxy
and Roxy’s lover talked across the fence. Emeline felt fortified
against the path through the woods at night; yet her feet turned in that
direction, and as certainly as water seeks its level she found herself
on the moist elastic track. Cow-bells on the farm sounded fainter and
farther. A gloom of trees massed around her, and the forest gave up all
its perfume to the dampness.

At every step she meant to turn back, though a recklessness of night
and of meeting the King of Beaver grew upon her. Thus, without any
reasonable excuse for her presence there, she met Mary French.

“Is that you, Miss Cheeseman?” panted the Prophet’s youngest wife.

Emeline confessed her identity.

“I was coming for you, but it is fortunate you are so far on the way.
There is a steamboat at the dock, and it will go out in half an hour.
I could not get away sooner to tell you.” Mary French breathed heavily
from running. “When the steamboat came in the captain sent for my
husband, as the captains always do. I went with him: he knows how I
dread to have him go alone upon a boat since an attempt was made last
year to kidnap him. But this time there was another reason, for I
have been watching. And sure enough, a young man was on the steamboat
inquiring where he could find you. His name is James Arnold. The captain
asked my husband to direct him to you. You will readily understand why
he did not find you. Come at once!”

“I will not,” said Emeline.

“But you wanted me to help you, and I have been trying to do it. We
easily learned by letter from our friends in Detroit who your lover was.
My husband had me do that: he wanted to know. Then without his knowledge
I stooped to write an anonymous letter.”

“To James Arnold?”

“Yes.”

“About me?”

“About you.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I said you were exposed to great danger on Beaver Island, among the
Mormons, and if you had any interested friend it was time for him to
interfere.”

“And that brought him here?”

“I am sure it did. He was keenly disappointed at not finding you.”

“But why didn’t he come to the farm?”

“My husband prevented that. He said you were on Beaver Island three or
four weeks ago, but you were now in the Fairy Isle. It was no lie. He
spoke in parables, but the other heard him literally. We let him inquire
of people in St. James. But no one had seen you since the Saturday you
came to the Tabernacle. So he is going back to Mackinac to seek you.
Your life will be decided in a quarter of an hour. Will you go on that
steamboat?”

“Throw myself on the mercy of a man who dared--dared to break his
engagement, and who ought to be punished and put on probation, and then
refused! No, I cannot!”

“The minutes are slipping away.”

“Besides, I have nothing with me but the clothes I have on. And my
uncle’s family--think of my uncle’s family!”

“You can write to your uncle and have him send your baggage. I dare not
carry any messages. But I thought of what you would need to-night, and
put some things and some money in this satchel. They were mine. Keep
them all.”

Emeline took hold of the bag which Mary French shoved in her hand. Their
faces were indistinct to each other.

“For the first time in my life I have deceived my husband!”

“Oh, what shall I do--what shall I do?” cried the girl.

A steamer whistle at St. James dock sent its bellow rebounding from
tree to tree in the woods. Emeline seized Mary French and kissed her
violently on both cheeks. She snatched the bag and flew towards St.
James.

“Stop!” commanded the Prophet’s wife.

She ran in pursuit, catching Emeline by the shoulders.

“You sha’n’t go! What am I doing? Maybe robbing him of what is necessary
to his highest success! I am a fool--to think he might turn back to me
for consolation when you are gone--God forgive me such silly fondness!
I can’t have a secret between him and myself--I will tell him! You shall
not go--and cause him a mortal hurt! Wait!--stop!--the boat is gone!
It’s too late!”

“Let me loose!” struggled Emeline, wrenching herself away.

[Illustration: Let me loose! 148]

She ran on through the woods, and Mary French, snatching at garments
which eluded her, stumbled and fell on the damp path, gathering dead
leaves under her palms. The steamer’s prolonged bellow covered her
voice.

Candles were lighted in St. James. The Tabernacle spread itself like a
great circular web dark with moisture. Emeline was conscious of running
across the gang-plank as a sailor stooped to draw it in. The bell was
ringing and the boat was already in motion. It sidled and backed away
from its moorings.

Emeline knelt panting at the rail on the forward deck. A flambeau
fastened to the wharf bowed its light to the wind as the boat swung
about, showing the King of Beaver smiling and waving his hand in
farewell. He did not see Emeline. His farewell was for the man whom
he had sent away without her. His golden hair and beard and blue eyes
floated into Emeline’s past as the steamer receded, the powerful face
and lithe figure first losing their identity, and then merging into
night. What if it was true that she was robbing both him and herself of
the best life, as Mary French was smitten to believe at the last moment?
Her Gentile gorge rose against him, and the traditions of a thousand
years warred in her with nature; yet she stretched her hands towards him
in the darkness.

Then she heard a familiar voice, and knew that the old order of things
was returning, while Beaver Island, like a dream, went silently down
upon the waters.

Some years later, in the ‘50’s, Emeline, sitting opposite her husband at
the breakfast-table, heard him announce from the morning paper:

“Murder of King Strang, the Mormon Prophet of Beaver Island.” All the
details of the affair, even the track of the bullets which crashed into
that golden head, were mercilessly printed. The reader, surprised by a
sob, dropped his paper.

“What! Are you crying, Mrs. Arnold?”

“It was so cruel!” sobbed Emeline. “And Billy Wentworth, like a savage,
helped to do it!”

“He had provocation, no doubt, though it is a horrid deed. Perhaps I owe
the King of Beaver the tribute of a tear. He befogged me considerably
the only time I ever met him.”

“You see only his evil. But I see what he was to Mary French and the
others.” “His bereaved widows?” “The ones who believed in his best.”


*****



BEAVER LIGHTS

A magnificent fountain of flame, visible far out on the starlit lake,
spurted from the north end of Beaver Island. It was the temple, in which
the Mormon people had worshipped for the last time, sending sparks and
illumined vapor to the zenith. The village of St. James was partly in
ashes, and a blue pallor of smoke hung dimly over nearly every hill
and hollow, for Gentile fishermen crazed with drink and power and long
arrears of grievances had carried torch and axe from farm to farm. Until
noon of that day all householding families had been driven to huddle
with their cattle around the harbor dock and forced to make pens for
the cattle of lumber which had been piled there for transportation.
Unresisting as sheep they let themselves be shipped on four small armed
steamers sent by their enemies to carry them into exile. Not one of the
twelve elders who had received the last instructions of their murdered
king rose up to organize any defence. Scarcely a month had passed since
his wounding unto death, and his withdrawal, like Arthur, in the arms
of weeping women to that spot in Wisconsin where he had found his sacred
Voree plates or tables of the law. Scarcely two weeks had passed since
news came back of his burial there. And already the Mormon settlement
was swept off Beaver Island.

Used to border warfare and to following their dominating prophet to
victory, they yet seemed unable to strike a blow without him. Such
non-resistance procured them nothing but contempt. They even submitted
to being compelled to destroy a cairn raised over the grave of one
considered a malefactor, carrying the heap stone by stone to throw into
the lake, Gentiles standing over them like Egyptian masters.

Little waves ran in rows of light, washing against the point on
the north side of the landlocked harbor. A primrose star was there
struggling aloft at the top of a rough rock tower. It was the fish-oil
flame of Beaver lamp, and the keeper sat on his doorsill at the bottom
of the light-house with his wife beside him.

The lowing of cattle missing their usual evening tendance came across
from the dock, a mournful accompaniment to the distant roaring of fire
and falling of timbers.

“Do you realize, Ludlow,” the young woman inquired, slipping her hand
into her husband’s, “that I am now the only Mormon on Beaver Island?”

“You never were a very good Mormon, Cecilia. You didn’t like the breed
any better than I did, though there were good people among them.”

“Will they lose all their cattle, Ludlow?”

“The cattle are safe enough,” he laughed. “The men that are doing this
transporting will take the cattle. None of our Mormon friends will ever
see a hoof from Beaver Island again.”

“But it seems robbery to drive them off and seize their property.”

“That’s the way King Strang took Beaver from the Gentiles in the first
place. Mormons and Gentiles can’t live together.”

“We can.”

“I told you that you were a poor Mormon, Cecilia. And from first to last
I opposed my family’s entering the community. Tithes and meddling sent
my father out of it a poor man. But I’m glad he went before this; and
your people, too.”

She drew a deep breath. “Oh yes! They’re safe in Green Bay. I couldn’t
endure to have them on those steamers going down the lake to-night. What
will become of the community, Ludlow?”

“God knows. They’ll be landed at Chicago and turned adrift on the world.
I’m glad they’re away from here. I’ve no cause to love them, but I was
afraid they would be butchered like sheep. Your father and my father,
if they had still been elders on the island, wouldn’t have submitted, as
these folks did, to abuse and exile and the loss of everything they
had in the world. I can’t understand it of some of them. There was Jim
Baker, for instance; I’d have sworn he would fight.”

“I can understand why he didn’t. He hasn’t taken any interest since his
second marriage.”

“Now, that was a nice piece of work! I always liked Jim the best of any
of the young men until he did that. And what inducement was there in the
woman?”

The light-house keeper’s wife fired up. “What inducement there was for
him ever to marry Rosanne I couldn’t see. And I know Elizabeth Aiken
loved him when we were girls together.”

“And didn’t Rosanne?”

“Oh--Rosanne! A roly-poly spoiled young one, that never will be a woman!
Elizabeth is noble.”

“You’re fond of Elizabeth because she was witness to our secret marriage
when King Strang wouldn’t let me have you. I liked Jim for the same
reason. Do you mind how we four slipped one at a time up the back stairs
in my father’s house that night, while the young folks were dancing
be-low?”

“I mind we picked Elizabeth because Rosanne would be sure to blab, even
if she had to suffer herself for it. How scared the poor elder was!”

“We did him a good turn when we got him to marry us. He’d be on one of
the steamers bound for nowhere, to-night, instead of snug at Green
Bay, if we hadn’t started him on the road to what King Strang called
disaffection.”

The light-house keeper jumped up and ran out on the point, his wife
following him in nervous dread.

“What is the matter, Ludlow?”

Their feet crunched gravel and paused where ripples still ran in,
endlessly bringing lines of dimmer and dimmer light. A rocking boat was
tied to a stake. Anchored and bare-masted, farther out in the mouth of
the bay, a fishing-smack tilted slightly in rhythmic motion. While they
stood a touch of crimson replaced the sky light in the water, and great
blots like blood soaking into the bay were reflected from the fire. The
burning temple now seemed to rise a lofty tower of flame against the
horizon. Figures could be seen passing back and forth in front of
it, and shouts of fishermen came down the peninsula. The King’s
printing-office where the _Northern Islander_ was once issued as a daily
had smouldered down out of the way. It was the first place to which they
had set torch.

“I thought I heard some one running up the sail on our sail-boat,” said
the light-house keeper. “No telling what these fellows may do. If they
go to meddling with me in my little Government office, they’ll find me
as stubborn as the Mormons did.”

“Oh, Ludlow, look at the tabernacle, like a big red-hot cheese-box on
the high ground! Think of the coronation there on the first King’s Day!”

The light-house keeper’s wife was again in imagination a long-limbed
girl of fifteen, crowding into the temple to witness such a ceremony as
was celebrated on no other spot of the New World. The King of Beaver,
in a crimson robe, walked the temple aisle, followed by his council, his
twelve elders, and seventy ministers of the minor order. In the presence
of a hushed multitude he was anointed, and a crown with a cluster of
projecting stars was set on his golden head. Hails and shouts, music of
marching singers and the strewing of flowers went before him into the
leafy July woods. Thus King’s Day was established and annually observed
on the 8th of July. It began with burnt-offerings. The head of each
family was required to bring a chicken. A heifer was killed and
carefully cut up without breaking a bone; and, while the smoke of
sacrifice arose, feasting and dancing began, and lasted until sunset.
Firstlings of flocks and the first-fruits of orchard and field were
ordained the King’s; and he also claimed one-tenth of each man’s
possessions. The Mosaic law was set up in Beaver Island, even to the
stoning of rebellious children.

The smoke of a sacrificed people was now reeking on Beaver. This
singular man’s French ancestry--for he was descended from Henri de
L’Estrange, who came to the New World with the Duke of York--doubtless
gave him the passion for picturesqueness and the spiritual grasp on
his isolated kingdom which keeps him still a notable and unforgotten
figure.

“It makes me feel bad to see so much destruction,” the young man said to
his wife; “though I offered to go with Billy Wentworth to shoot Strang
if nobody else was willing. I knew I was marked, and sooner or later I
would disappear if he continued to govern this island. But with all
his faults he was a man. He could fight; and whip. He’d have sunk every
steamer in the harbor to-day.”

“It’s heavy on my heart, Ludlow--it’s dreadful! Neighbors and friends
that we shall never see again!”

The young man caught his wife by the arm. They both heard the swift beat
of footsteps flying down the peninsula. Cecilia drew in her breath and
crowded against her husband. A figure came into view and identified
itself, leaping in bisected draperies across an open space to the
light-house door.

“Why, Rosanne!” exclaimed the keeper’s wife. She continued to say “Why,
Rosanne! Why, Rosanne Baker!” after she had herself run into the house
and lighted a candle.

She set the candle on the chimney. It showed her rock-built domicile,
plain but dignified, like the hollow of a cavern, with blue china on
the cupboard shelves and a spinning-wheel standing by the north wall. A
corner staircase led to the second story of the tower, and on its lowest
step the fugitive dropped down, weeping and panting. She was peculiarly
dressed in the calico bloomers which the King of Beaver had latterly
decreed for the women of his kingdom. Her trim legs and little feet,
cased in strong shoes, appeared below the baggy trousers. The upper part
of her person, her almond eyes, round curves and features were full
of Oriental suggestions. Some sweet inmate of a harem might so have
materialized, bruising her softness against the hard stair.

“Why, Rosanne Baker!” her hostess reiterated.


Cecilia did not wear bloomers. She stood erect in petticoats. “I thought
you went on one of the boats!”

“I didn’t,” sobbed Rosanne. “When they were crowding us on I slipped
among the lumber piles and hid. I’ve been hid all day, lying flat
between boards--on top where they couldn’t see me.”

“Suppose the lumber had been set on fire, too! And you haven’t had
anything to eat?”

“I don’t want to eat. I’m only frightened to death at the wicked
Gentiles burning the island. I couldn’t stay there all night, so I got
down and ran to your house.”

“Of course, you poor child! But, Rosanne, where’s your husband?”

The trembling creature stiffened herself and looked at Cecilia out of
the corners of her long eyes. “He’s with Elizabeth Aiken.”

The only wife of one husband did not know how to take hold of this
subject.

“But your father was there,” she suggested. “How could you leave your
father and run the risk of never seeing him again?”

“I don’t care if I never see him again. He said he was so discouraged he
didn’t care what became of any of us.”

Cecilia was going to plead the cause of domestic affection further,
but she saw that four step-mothers could easily be given up. She turned
helplessly to her husband who stood in the door.

“Poor thing! Ludlow, what in the world shall we do?”

“Put her to bed.”

“Of course, Ludlow. But will anybody hurt you to-morrow?”

“There are two good guns on the rack over the chimney. I don’t think
anybody will hurt me or her either, to-morrow.”

“Rosanne, my dear,” said Cecilia, trying to lift the relaxed soft body
and to open the stairway door behind her. “Come up with me right off. I
think you better be where people cannot look in at us.”

Rosanne yielded and stumbled to her feet, clinging to her friend. When
they disappeared the young man heard her through the stairway enclosure
sobbing with convulsive gasps:

“I hate Elizabeth Aiken! I wish they would kill Elizabeth Aiken! I hate
her--I hate her!”

The lighthouse-keeper sat down again on his doorstep and faced the
prospect of taking care of a homeless Mormon. It appeared to him that
his wife had not warmly enough welcomed her or met the situation with
that recklessness one needed on Beaver Island. The tabernacle began to
burn lower, brands streaming away in the current which a fire makes.
It was strange to be more conscious of inland doings than of that vast
unsalted sea so near him, which moistened his hair with vaporous drifts
through the darkness. The garnet redness of the temple shed a huger
amphitheatre of shine around itself. A taste of acrid smoke was on his
lips. He was considering that drunken fishermen might presently begin to
rove, and he would be wiser to go in and shut the house and put out his
candle, when by stealthy approaches around the lighthouse two persons
stood before him.

“Is Ludlow here?” inquired a voice which he knew.

“I’m here, Jim! Are all the Mormons coming back?”

“Is Rosanne in your house?”

“Rosanne is here; up-stairs with Cecilia. Come inside, Jim. Have you
Elizabeth with you?”

“Yes, I have Elizabeth with me.”

The three entered together. Ludlow shut the door and dropped an iron bar
across it. The young men standing opposite were of nearly the same
age; but one was fearless and free and the other harassed and haggard.
Out-door labor and the skill of the fisheries had given to both depth of
chest and clean, muscular limbs. But James Baker had the desperate
and hunted look of a fugitive from justice. He was fair, of the
strong-featured, blue-eyed type that has pale chestnut-colored hair
clinging close to a well-domed head.

“Yes, Rosanne is here,” Ludlow repeated. “Now will you tell me how you
got here?”

“I rowed back in a boat.”

“Who let you have a boat?”

“There were sailors on the steamer. After I found Rosanne was left
behind I would have had a boat or killed the man that prevented me. I
had to wait out on the lake until it got dark. I knew your wife would
take care of her. I told myself that when I couldn’t find any chance to
land in St. James’s Bay until sunset.”

“She’s been hiding in the lumber on the dock all day.”

“Did any one hurt her?”

“Evidently not.”

The Mormon husband’s face cleared with a convulsion which in woman would
have been a relieving burst of tears.

“Sit down, Elizabeth,” said the lighthouse-keeper. “You look fit to
fall.”

“Yes, sit down, Elizabeth,” James Baker repeated, turning to her with
secondary interest. But she remained standing, a tall Greek figure in
bloomers, so sure of pose that drapery or its lack was an accident
of which the eye took no account. She had pushed her soft brown hair,
dampened by the lake, behind her ears. They showed delicately against
the two shining masses. Her forehead and chin were of noble and
courageous shape. If there was fault, it was in the breadth and height
of brows masterful rather than feminine. She had not one delicious
sensuous charm to lure man. Her large eyes were blotted with a hopeless
blankness. She waited to see what would be done next.

“Now I’ll tell you,” said Baker to his friend, with decision, “I’m not
going to bring the howling Gentiles around you.”

“I don’t care whether they come or not.”

“I know you don’t. It isn’t necessary in such a time as this for you and
me to look back.”

“I told you at the time I wouldn’t forget it, Jim. You stood by me when
I married Cecilia in the teeth of the Mormons, and I’ll stand by you
through any mob of Gentiles. My sail-boat’s out yonder, and it’s yours
as long as you want it; and we’ll provision it.”

“That’s what I was going to ask, Ludlow.”

“If I were you I’d put for Green Bay. Old neighbors are there, my father
among them.”

“That was my plan!”

“But,” Ludlow added, turning his thumb over his shoulder with
embarrassment, “they’re all Gentiles in Green Bay.”

“Elizabeth and I talked it over in the boat. I told her the truth before
God. We’ve agreed to live apart. Ludlow, I never wanted any wife but
Rosanne, and I don’t want any wife but Rosanne now. You don’t know how
it happened; I was first of the young men called on to set an example.
Brother Strang could bring a pressure to bear that it was impossible to
resist. He might have threatened till doomsday. But I don’t know what
he did with me. I told him it wasn’t treating Elizabeth fair. Still, I
married her according to Saints’ law, and I consider myself bound by my
pledge to provide for her. She’s a good girl. She has no one to look to
but me. And I’m not going to turn her off to shift for herself if the
whole United States musters against me.”

“Now you talk like a man. I think better of you than I have for a couple
of weeks past.”

“It ought to make me mad to be run off of Beaver. But I couldn’t take
any interest. May I see Rosanne?”

“Go right up-stairs. Cecilia took her up to put her to bed. The walls
and floors are thick here or she would have heard your voice.”

“Poor little Rosanne! It’s been a hard day for her.”

The young Mormon paused before ascending. “Ludlow, as soon as you can
give me a few things to make the women comfortable for the run to Green
Bay, I’ll take them and put out.”

“Tell Cecilia to come down. She’ll know what they need.”

Until Cecilia came down and hugged Elizabeth silently but most tenderly
the lighthouse-keeper stood with his feet and gaze planted on a braided
rug, not knowing what to say. He then shifted his feet and remarked:

“It’s a fine night for a sail, Elizabeth. I think we’re going to have
fair weather.”

“I think we are,” she answered.

Hurried preparations were made for the voyage. Elizabeth helped Cecilia
gather food and clothes and two Mackinac blankets from the stores of a
young couple not rich but open-handed. The lighthouse-keeper trimmed the
lantern to hang at the mast-head. He was about to call the two up-stairs
when the crunching of many feet on gravel was heard around his tower and
a torch was thrust at one of the windows.

At the same instant he put Elizabeth and Cecilia in the stairway and let
James Baker, bounding down three steps at once, into the room.

Each man took a gun, Ludlow blowing out the candle as he reached for his
weapons.

“Now you stand back out of sight and let me talk to them,” he said to
the young Mormon, as an explosive clamor began. “They’ll kill you,
and they daren’t touch me. Even if they had anything against me, the
drunkest of them know better than to shoot down a government officer.
I’m going to open this window.”

A rabble of dusky shapes headed by a torch-bearer who had doubtless
lighted his fat-stick at the burning temple, pressed forward to force a
way through the window.

“Get off of the flower-bed,” said Ludlow, dropping the muzzle of his gun
on the sill. “You’re tramping down my wife’s flowers.”

“It’s your nosegays of Mormons we’re after having, Ludlow. We seen them
shlipping in here!”

“It’s shame to you, Ludlow, and your own da-cent wife that hard to come
at, by raison of King Strang!”

“Augh! thim bloomers!--they do be makin’ me sthummick sick!”

“What hurts you worst,” said Ludlow, “is the price you had to pay the
Mormons for fish barrels.”

The mob groaned and hooted. “Wull ye give us out the divil forninst
there, or wull ye take a broadside through the windy?”

“I haven’t any devil in the house.”

“It’s Jim Baker, be the powers. He wor seen, and his women.”

“Jim Baker is here. But he’s leaving the island at once with the women.”

“He’ll not lave it alive.”

“You, Pat Corrigan,” said Ludlow, pointing his finger at the
torch-bearer, “do you remember the morning you and your mate rowed in to
the lighthouse half-frozen and starved and I fed and warmed you?”

“Do I moind it? I do!”

“Did I let the Mormons take you then?”

“No, bedad.”

“When King Strang’s constables came galloping down here to arrest you,
didn’t I run in water to my waist to push you off in your boat?”

“You did, bedad!”

“I didn’t give you up to them, and I won’t give this family up to you.
They’re not doing you any harm. Let them peaceably leave Beaver.”

“But the two wives of him,” argued Pat Corrigan.

“How many wives and children have you?”

“Is it ‘how many wives,’ says the hay then! Wan wife, by the powers; and
tin childer.”

“Haven’t you about as large a family as you can take care of?”

“Begobs, I have.”

“Do you want to take in Jim Baker’s Mormon wife and provide for her?
Somebody has to. If you won’t let him do it, perhaps you’ll do it
yourself.”

“No, bedad!”

“Well, then, you’d better go about your business and let him alone. I
don’t see that we have to meddle with these things. Do you?”

The crowd moved uneasily and laughed, good-naturedly owning to being
plucked of its cause and arrested in the very act of returning evil for
good.

“I tould you Ludlow was the foine man,” said the torch-bearer to his
confederates.

“There’s no harm in you boys,” pursued the fine man. “You’re not making
a war on women.”

“We’re not. Thrue for you.”

“If you feel like having a wake over the Mormons, why don’t you get more
torches and make a procession down the Galilee road? You’ve done about
all you can on Mount Pisgah.”

As they began to trail away at this suggestion and to hail him with
parting shouts, Ludlow shut the window and laughed in the dark room.

“I’d like to start them chasing the fox around all the five lakes
on Beaver. But they may change their minds before they reach the
sand-hills. We’d better load the boat right off, Jim.”

In the hurrying Rosanne came down-stairs and found Elizabeth waiting at
the foot. They could see each other only by starlight. They were alone,
for the others had gone out to the boat.

“Are you willing for me to go, Rosanne?” spoke Elizabeth. Her sweet
voice was of a low pitch, unhurried and steady. “James says he’ll build
me a little house in your yard.”

“Oh, Elizabeth!”

Rosanne did not cry, “I cannot hate you!” but she threw herself into
the arms of the larger, more patient woman whom she saw no longer as
a rival, and who would cherish her children. Elizabeth kissed her
husband’s wife as a little sister.

The lights on Beaver, sinking to duller redness, shone behind Elizabeth
like the fires of the stake as she and Cecilia walked after the others
to the boat. Cecilia wondered if her spirit rose against the indignities
of her position as an undesired wife, whose legal rights were not even
recognized by the society into which she would be forced. The world was
not open to her as to a man. In that day it would have stoned her if she
ventured too far from some protected fireside. Fierce envy of squaws who
could tramp winter snows and were not despised for their brief marriages
may have flashed through Elizabeth like the little self-protecting blaze
a man lighted around his own cabin when the prairie was on fire. Why in
all the swarming centuries of human experience had the lot of a creature
with such genius for loving been cast where she was utterly thrown away?

Solitary and carrying her passion a hidden coal she walked in the
footsteps of martyrs behind the pair of reunited lovers.

“Take care, Rosanne. Don’t stumble, darling!” said the man to whom
Elizabeth had been married by a law she respected until a higher law
unhus-banded her.

Cecilia noted the passionate clutch of her hand and its withdrawal
without touching him as he lurched over a rock.

He put his wife tenderly in the boat and then turned with kind formality
to Elizabeth; but Ludlow had helped her.

“Well, bon voyage,” said the lighthouse-keeper. “Mind you run up the
lantern on the mast as soon as you get aboard. I don’t think there’ll be
any chase. The Irish have freed their minds.”

“I’ll send your fishing-boat back as soon as I can, Ludlow.”

“Turn it over to father; he’ll see to it. Give him news of us and
our love to all the folks. He will be anxious to know the truth about
Beaver.”

“Good-bye, Elizabeth and Rosanne!”

“Good-bye, Cecilia!”

A grinding on pebbles, then the thump of adjusted oars and the rush of
water on each side of a boat’s course, marked the fugitives’ progress
towards the anchored smack.

Suspended on starlit waters as if in eternity, and watching the smoke of
her past go up from a looted island, Elizabeth had the sense of a great
company around her. The uninstructed girl from the little kingdom
of Beaver divined a worldful of souls waiting and loving in hopeless
silence and marching resistlessly as the stars to their reward. For
there is a development like the unfolding of a god for those who suffer
in strength and overcome.





*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The King Of Beaver, and Beaver Lights - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899" ***

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