Title: The wolf trail
Author: Pocock, Roger S.
Language: English
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THE WOLF TRAIL

BY

ROGER S. POCOCK

AUTHOR OF "CURLY," ETC.



D. APPLETON AND COMPANY

NEW YORK :: :: MCMXXIII



COPYRIGHT, 1923, BY

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY



PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA



ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The author is deeply indebted to Mr. J. S. M. Ward for permission to
reproduce in this novel a passage from his work, _A Subaltern in
Spirit Land_, published by Messrs. William Rider & Son, Ltd.



CONTENTS


CHAPTER

I. On London River

II. The Voyage of the "_Beaver_"

III. In British Oregon

IV. Kootenay

V. The Whole Armor

VI. The Ghost Trail

VII. The Holy Lodge

VIII. Rising Wolf

IX. The Striking of the Camp

X. The Translation



THE WOLF TRAIL



CHAPTER I

ON LONDON RIVER


I

"To make a dogsnose," the publican explained, "you spices the ale,
so.  You laces it with a dash of rum, thus, then you proceeds to pour
it into this yere metal cone, this way"--he crossed to the
fireplace--"and shoves it in among the coals to mull."

"A great comfort is dogsnose," added Mr. Fright, "especially of a
Sunday after church.  You clears the vimmen off to church, and then
you has the dogsnose."

Presently he took the cone from behind the bars of the grate, and
filled the glasses with mulled beer, distributing the same to his
guests.

With rolled-up shirt sleeves exposing brawny arms, a portly
waistcoat, leather breeches, and top boots, this publican might well
have posed for a portrait of John Bull, and yet his tavern, "The Fox
under the Hill," had other associations, accounting for the
landlord's artful sideways grin and a certain glint of humorous
foxiness.  Moreover, a lifelong devotion to rum had made him more
ruddy than sunburned, his nose inclined to blossom, his eyes to
water, and his hands to tremble.  "A short life, and a merry one!" so
Mr. Fright pledged the company.  His guests appeared to be pleased
with the sentiment, excepting only his brother, Mr. James Fright, the
bargee, who crouched drunk in his window corner.  Brief life was his
portion also, but a diet of gin, instead of making ruddy the face of
man, turns his complexion blue.  The stuff is called blue ruin.

The bargee's only son, Bill, aged at that time eighteen, sat in the
ingle.  He had something of his father's short pugnacious nose, and
chin thrust forward, but his hair was like wavy sunshine, and his
eyes bright blue.  He had a humorous twisty mouth, a freckled,
weather-beaten ruddy skin, a sturdy strength, clean manliness, and
amazing directness both of eyes and speech.  His dress was a raggy
blue jersey, torn slacks, and old sea boots; and he was busy mending
one of them, making a workmanlike job with awl, waxed end, and
bristles.

Warming his tails at the fire stood a guest of the house, a tall man
in pumps, seedy black tights, a frayed blue coat brass-buttoned, a
black satin choker, and his head so large and of such effulgent
baldness that he would have shone out remarkable in any company.  He
was a Mr. Wilkins wanted by the magistrates for stealing pocket
handkerchiefs, and now awaiting a wherry which would convey him
presently to a coal boat, bound for Newcastle.

Of the company in the sanded bar parlor, perhaps only one other
person need be mentioned, Mr. Brown, valet to Isaac Disraeli,
Esquire, upon Adelphi Terrace.

The emigrant spoke feelingly of dogsnose as about to become, if he
might venture to say so, one of the tenderest and most endearing of
those beverages which the forlorn and desolate exile would have
to--ahem--go without, a reminder to the banished heart of that sacred
homeland whose blessed liberties and hard-won--ahem.  The remainder
of the sentiment was confided with tears to a large red bandanna
handkerchief.

"Which liberties," said the publican sternly, crossing his bare
forearms on the bar, "ain't what they're cracked up to be.
Liberties!  Liberties of the Fleet, the Marshalsea, and Newgate!

"It's terventy-one year since me and my brother James there, what's
sitting drunk in the winder, fought at Waterloo.  It's nineteen year
come Lammas I been 'ere.  Nineteen year--so to speak--I been the Fox
under the Hill which sees plentiful, 'ears much, smells a good deal,
but doesn't have nothing votever to talk abart.  Vile I keeps my mask
shut, gennelmen, I saves my brush."

He paused for a reply, but there was none.

"You mark my vords.  'Ere of a Sunday, so to speak, vith my doors
closed during church, and none of you gennelmen being peelers, spies,
nor warmints, speaking to friends I says we's had a durned sight too
many Georges, and too many Villiams reigning over we--the same being
a pack of Germans."

The company seemed to be startled by such frankness.

"A durned sight too many lawyers, too many parsons, too many lords
and landlords, too many masters altogether, vich is a pack o'
willians, 'umbugs, and sponges eating of our wittles wot we earns.
The Prayer Book says as they'd ought to get their own living in that
state of life, whereas they gets most of my living in tithes, rent,
rates, taxes, and plundering of me on every cask of beer."

"Liberty!  Equality!  Fraternity!" cried a voice from the corner by
the clock.  "Hoff vith their bleedin' 'eads!"

"The Froggies did that," said the landlord, "and to the best of their
knowledge and belief they 'ave their reapings and their 'arvest 'ome,
which is the Reign of Terror.

"Then under old Boneyparte, hup comes a new crop of rogues, and we
reaps them.  The more rogues you crops the more comes up.  These
Froggies is excitable, and comes up.  But for us English, vich ain't
extravagent, one 'ead at a time says I, vether it be King Charles or
King Villiam."

Mr. Fright's nephew looked around grinning, to interrupt: "Or
Alexandrina Wictoria by the Grace----"

"Well," said the landlord, "if I was Princess Halexandrina Wictoria,
I'd rather 'ave my 'ead took off than sign all that lot of stuff when
I writes my name.  She done no 'arm to me.  Ven it comes to cropping
'eads, I wotes for Villiam the Fourth."

The nephew must needs interrupt.  "Uncle," said Bill Fright, "does
your 'ead fit?  It may come loose from talking of 'igh treason."

"At that rate," said Mr. Fright, "Jack Ketch vill 'ave 'is 'ands full
hanging the British public.  The general public as a 'ole talks
treason.

"Now I don't say nothing.  Silence is my 'obby.  But if I ever took
to talking--you mark my vords, young feller.  I was in India vith the
Dook--Sir Harthur Vellesley he vas in them days--ven he swiped the
Great Mogul, and sot down plump in Delhi.  Dahn south in them days
vas the Dook's hown brother, the Markvis Vellesley, whopping them
Mahrattas, and setting plump on the Peishwa's nob at Poona.  The Dook
and the Markvis conquers India--and vot does they do abart it?

"Now, young Bill," he turned upon his nephew, "what does them Roman
Generals in your schoolbooks do when they conquers anything?"

"Makes themselves Hemperors," answered Bill as usual, for this
question belonged to the formal proceedings of a Sunday.

"Didn't I say so?"  The publican triumphed.  "And does the Dook and
the Markvis make theirselves Hemperors of Northern and Southern
Hindia?"

Young Bill had finished the cobbling.  He hauled on his thigh boot,
returned his palm thimble, glovers' needle, awl, waxed end, and
beeswax to his trousers pocket, then shifted his position a little to
watch his father, the drunken bargee in the window place.  He always
felt uneasy when Uncle Thomas, whom he dearly loved, was spouting
treason in presence of his father.  Bill did not trust his father,
who seemed to be watching, listening, spying, while he pretended to
be drunk as usual.  The boy glanced up at his uncle anxious to warn
him, but Mr. Thomas Fright could not have been more aggrieved if he
had actually spoken.

"You shut your bleeding trap," growled Uncle Thomas.  "I hain't said
nothing yet.  Well, gemmen, as I vos saying vhen the lad interrupts,
I was vith the Dook in the Peninsula.  His Lordship chases old Soult
and all his Froggies clear acrost Spain from Torres Vedras into
France, 'e did.  Vot does 'e do next?  Does the Dook declare for a
monarchy vith hisself as King o' Spain?  Not on yer life 'e don't.
He got no use for Kings excep' them rotten Georges."

Dangerous talk this.  The bargee in drunken confidences had told his
son Bill plainly that he would peach to the new police and get Uncle
Thomas put away for treason.  And yet Bill could not stop his uncle's
mouth.

Mr. Fright once more took up his parable.

"I vos the Dook's own sergeant trumpeter at the Battle o' Vaterloo,
so I'd ought to know, gents.  Boneyparte believes in being a
Hemperor.  The Dook hain't 'aving any.  Vot does 'e do?  Does 'e lead
Napoleon in chains through Lunnon?  Does 'e declare hisself our
Hemperor--this 'ero who conquers India, Spain, and Boney?  No, 'e
don't.  Hand why?  He hain't no Roman General hain't the Dook.  He
don't believe in Kings no more nor I do, hand ven it comes to hanging
of 'em, gents, I wotes for Villiam!"

So Mr. Thomas Fright continued talking treason.  He spoke of the
universal flogging, good for boys, but not for soldiers, seamen,
convicts, and the like; of merchant sailors kidnaped by the press
gangs to man the navy, of little children down in the coalpits
harnessed as beasts of burden to haul trucks.

Then Bill remembered what mother said about pit owners offending one
of these little ones.  It would be better for such owners to have
millstones tied to their necks, and be flung into the sea.

Uncle Thomas talked of naked women at the anvil forging chains for
convicts; of citizens transported to Botany Bay for poaching a
rabbit, condemned to life imprisonment for a few pounds of debt, or
hanged outright for a five-pound theft.  Such were the liberties for
which Englishmen were asked to give their lives in battle, such was
the Government demanding loyalty.

Bill had heard all that before.  Treason was the religion of
low-caste Englishmen, sedition, privy conspiracy, and rebellion
articles of faith for all men oppressed who loved their country.
Strong yeast that which leavens a healthy state until men and women
are fit for freedom, until the slave becomes a disciplined citizen
trained to the sovereign power, able to heal the maladies of the
commonwealth.  Masters and men alike will tell you any day this
thousand years back that the country is going to the Devil.  All is
well.  But, when they are content, look out for the first symptoms of
decay.

So England, mother of nations, was in labor then, in that year of
grace 1835.  If she is still in sorrow, every drop of blood and every
tear is a seed sown for mankind.  The harvesting shall be in new
achievements of freedom, new sciences, greater arts, enlarging
revelation.

Yet as respectable folk in church let their attention wander from the
sermon, so, while Uncle Thomas preached, Bill thought of other
things.  Especially his mind concentrated upon his father.  Time out
of mind the bargeman, like everybody else, enjoyed a drink when he
got a chance.  Who didn't!  Even mother said it was all right.

Mother always said that she managed father quite easily until Uncle
Joey got hold of him.  And Uncle Joey never knew when to stop.  The
pair of them took to drinking together, more, so said Uncle Thomas,
than was good for anybody.

They were mixed up in business, too, not father's trade of honest
smuggling with the barge between Margate and London, but something
downright crooked.  Father's cargo was bought, but Joey's goods were
stolen.

Anybody could see that father didn't like it.  When they were drunk,
father and Joey were always quarreling.

Then Joey was captured with stolen goods and everybody said that
father gave him away.  Father certainly turned King's evidence
against his brother, so that, excepting Uncle Thomas, nobody would
speak to him.  He drank alone.  He drank harder than ever.

When poor Uncle Joey was hanged, the family in their Sunday clothes
attended the show at Tyburn in a hired wagon.  The rain completely
spoiled their day.

From that time onward--a month it must be now, or even more--while
father was busy drinking himself to death, Bill always saw the
Shadow.  It was not an ordinary shadow.  It was not a shadow cast by
any light.

It was something awful, a blur in the air, shaped like a man, like
Uncle Joey.  It went about with father, glided behind him, stooped
over him.  Father drank because he was frightened of It; and when he
drank It sprang upon him from behind, wrapped Its legs and arms about
him, sucked at him.  Then father craved and screamed for drink, and
drank, always with the awful Thing wrapped round him, sucking him.
Only when he was dead drunk the Shadow stood behind him watching,
waiting.

The ghost of Uncle Joey was murdering father.  Every day the awful
Thing gained power, and sometimes there were horrible fits which
could not be prevented, could not be eased, or stopped.  One could
only watch.

The Shadow was there now.  While Uncle Thomas preached his usual
Sunday sermon of high treason, and father crouched there drunk, the
Thing was standing behind him in the window frame.  It was stooping
over him.  There was going to be another seizure!

"Uncle Thomas!" Bill cried to Mr. Fright, "Uncle Thomas!  Father's
going to be took bad!"

Mr. Fright scowled at his nephew.  Bill had taken of late to seeing
ghosts, or shadows--something unwholesome, anyway.  The less one
noticed or encouraged him the sooner would he return to his natural
ways, and leave the whimsies to his betters, which can afford the
same.

Bill watched the Shadow stooping over father, nearer, nearer--Uncle
Joey's ghost wrapping long arms round father--riding him, and then
passing into him.  There!  The Shadow was gone in.

Bill cried aloud.  "Oh, Uncle, can't you see?  You--you are all
blind?  Look!  Look!"

Just as though the spirit of Uncle Joey had captured father's body,
so it seemed to be Joey who was waking up, yawning, stretching
himself, and rapping knuckles truculent on the table, while in a
hoarse whisper he ordered gin.  Father's way would have been quite
different--a blinking of the eyes, an apologetic grin, a cordial good
morning to the gentlemen present, and a polite inquiry, "Did any one
say gin?"

Surely, any one with eyes in his head could see that this was Uncle
Joey taking a rousing pinch of snuff from the public mull on the
table.  Father never touched snuff, but always chewed twist tobacco.

Father would have been amiable, but Joey was fierce, with a sharp
rasping voice demanding liquor even while he sneezed out the strong
snuff.

Yet nobody seemed to see the change, the menace.  Mr. Fright was
expounding an argument to the bald customer, taking no notice
whatever of the deep-throated growl of the drunkard in the window
place, who now stood up shouting and threatening.

Bill turned to Mr. Fright.  "Uncle Thomas!" he called.  "Look
out!--look out!"

"Vot's up?" asked Uncle Thomas, and went on counting on his fingers
the heads of the argument.  "And thirdly----"

"Look!" Bill screamed his final warning.

Father--or was it Uncle Joey?--had left his seat, was reeling
drunkenly across the room, then banging his fists on the bar,
demanding a bottle of gin, "and look sharp abart it, Marster!"  Uncle
Joey used to call him "Marster," in sarcasm of his successful brother
the publican.

Uncle Thomas waved him away.  "Not a drop," he said over his
shoulder; "you'd better have another sleep, James.  As I was a
saying----"

The drunkard snatched a bottle of rum, splashed out a tumblerful, and
poured it down his throat, then dashed the heavy glass in his
brother's face.

Bill ran to interfere, to restrain his father, but somehow he was
terrified and dared not touch him.  There was something uncanny,
horrible, from which he shrank.

The landlord's forehead showed a long bright gash, then spurting
blood which blinded him, even as he vaulted across the bar.  But the
other, the maniac, had seized an oaken trivet stool, and laid about
him, screaming, froth at his lips, demoniac rage convulsing his
face--was it not Uncle Joey's voice, his face?--while he brought the
weapon down on his brother's head.

The door behind the bar had opened, and Bill's mother stood there, a
gaunt, gray, weather-beaten, haggard woman dressed in rusty black
silk, a poke bonnet, lace mittens, Sunday best; and in her hand was a
Bible stamped on the cover with a large gold cross.  As she came
round the end of the counter, she held out that cross, as though it
could protect her from the maniac, who turned brandishing the stool
to beat her brains out.  Without showing the least fear she held the
cross before his eyes, and at the sight of it he seemed to shrink
away.  He even tried to protect himself with the stool.  He, not the
woman, was afraid, and she pressed him backwards until he came
against the deal table which stood in the middle of the room.

"Get out, you beast--get out, I say--get out, Joey, thou
body-snatching devil!"

It seemed to the people as though James, her husband, died.  The
stool crashed to the floor, the light went out of the man's writhen
face.  The bargeman's body collapsed in a heap.

The woman sank down on the floor, shaking all over in abject terror,
sobbing hysterically.  "Bill," she wailed, "go thou--warm
water--bandages--for Thomas----"

"All right, mother."  Bill bent down, petting her.  "Keep yer hair
on, mother."

She went off in screaming hysterics.



II

In due time Mr. Fright was bandaged and put in the feather bed
upstairs, Mr. James Fright, still unconscious, hoisted on board his
barge and dropped down the cabin hatch, then Bill and his mother
joined the family and their guests in the kitchen, where there was
Sunday dinner.  It was a very proper dinner, of beef roast on the
spit, pudding served in the gravy, potatoes and cabbage in heaps, and
beer by gallons.  Afterwards, while the slavey washed up, and the
diners slept it off, Bill took his mother in the wherry and pulled
across the Thames to the Southwark shore.  It was but a mile walk to
Bedlam, and maybe another mile beyond to open country, but Bill, who
had eaten heartily and wore thigh boots, found it heavy going, while
the woman seemed only refreshed by the slight exercise.  The golden
autumn sunshine, blue pools of shadow under elm trees, the cattle
standing drowsy in the shade, the buzz and murmur of the flies--here
was there peace.  The mother took her seat against an oak tree, the
son lay at her feet, and while the lad was sleeping the woman watched.



III

By most urgent critics I am warned not to be a bigger fool than
nature made me, not to be abrupt where the story changes rhythm, and
by no means to take it for granted that the average reader is a
psychologist.

I promise faithfully, then, that I will not preach, use long words,
or be dull as one who takes himself too seriously.  I only want to
make quite sure that every reader shares with me the tremendous
excitement, wonder, and glory of a theme splendid beyond example.

So please be kind, and glance at a few main facts.

A properly grown man has three bodies: the natural body, the soul (or
body of desires), and the spirit (or body of pure thought).  These
have been likened to the vessel, the oil, and the flame of a lamp.

What, then, is life?  That is the ray of Consciousness.

In sleep the ray lights up the natural brain but does not control it,
so that we have those funny, inconsequent dreams which we remember.

In deep sleep the ray leaves the natural body and lights the
spiritual body (soul and spirit), which is then free.  The spiritual
body may go away and enjoy the most surprising, delightful
adventures--the dreams which fade out as we awaken.  You see, the
natural body was left behind at rest, missed all the fun, and so has
nothing to remember.

In waking meditation and clear vision the ray lights up the spirit.
"I was in the spirit," says St. John, and so begins his Book of the
Revelation.

In the last deep sleep the spiritual body departs from the natural
body, and cannot get back into it.  That shattered or worn-out
machine is scrapped, and the event is the birth of the earth-free
Man.  We call it death.

Now as to the places we go to in deep sleep and at death.  An
ordinary piano has seven octaves or forty-nine notes.  Each of these
is a set of waves in the air, large and slow for the low note, small
and swift for the high note.  We call these waves vibrations.  You
can see the wires vibrate.  The visible earth has three great chords
of vibration, known to us as land, sea, and air.  But the visible
earth is rather like the stone or core of a fruit and the invisible
pulp of that fruit is arranged in layers like the flakes of an onion,
layer on layer, just as in the piano there are forty-nine layers of
vibration.

In deep sleep or at death we enter a group of layers, a world outside
our world, with land, sea, and sky which are clearly visible to the
eyes of the soul.  The soul is keyed to its vibrations.  That world
has many names, the Hades of the Greeks, the Purgatory of the
Catholic Churches, the Astral Plane of the Mystics.

Somewhere in its sixth layer is the country which we call Dreamland,
and close by in its seventh layer is Fairyland.  They are just as
real as London or New York, and we are about to visit them in this
happy story.

Beyond the Astral World are the Heavens Spiritual and the Heavens
Celestial, where dwell spirits only, of just men made perfect, and of
the holy angels.  These also are quite real, but we shall not see
them until we can believe.

How do I know all this?  By reading books which are open to every
student.  But with the deepest humility and the utmost reverence I
give my word of honor that I have seen enough for myself to know that
the books are honest.

Now at last may I speak quite clearly about two people of this story,
Mrs. James Fright the Quakeress, and Bill Fright her son?  Both of
them were seers.  They had the rare gift of "dreaming true," of
remembering the dreams of the deep sleep.  The woman also had won by
clean living, prayer, and meditation the greatest of all human
faculties, the vision of the spirit, the keys of Heaven.

Take then a single example of meditation.

"Come unto Me, all ye that are weary and heavy laden, and I will
refresh you."

The Quakeress took these words into meditation, repeating each phrase
over and over again, until its meaning deepened, broadened out, and
filled her, until she saw the golden aural light of other worlds,
until she entered that Peace which passeth all understanding and
looked out with the eyes of the Spirit upon the Plains of Heaven.

But the story must leave this holy woman, and follow the adventures
of her son.

The boy's body lay at her feet, but Bill himself had stolen away to
the frontier which is between Dreamland on the one side and Fairyland
on the other.  There were certainly fairies about, for as he came
into the glade between the birch woods he hears them ringing the
bellflowers, weaving thin fine threads of blended melodies into one
rhapsody.  The birch fairies, within their native trees, were swaying
to the air of the carillon.  The flower fairies peeped from within
their blossoms, and several squirrels ran chattering down the path
ahead of him to say that he was coming, to tell his Dreamland
comrade, Rain, that he was on his way to keep his tryst with her.

He found Rain kneeling on a tuft of moss, an arrow set in her bow for
aiming practice, and at his coming she sighted directly at his heart.

"Stand!" she said.

He stood quite still.

"Stupid!" she said.

"Why?"

"To obey a maid, and make her think she's master."

"But with an arrow through me?"

"What's the odds?  You left your animal body down there, didn't you?
This astral body cannot die."  She drew the bow until the stone head
of the arrow touched the grip.  "Say after me, I do believe in the
Great Spirit!"

"I does believe in Gawd!"

"And so you cannot die."  She launched the arrow through his heart.

"You still believe?" she said.

"I does believe," he answered, laughing uneasily.

He turned about, and drew the arrow, which had lodged in a tree
behind him.  He gave it back to her.

"Love has no fear," she whispered, and he kissed her.

"My Dream!" he said.

"My Dream!" she answered, and they sat down.  She nestled in his
arms, and there was silence enfolding both of them.

Rain was Red Indian, of the Blackfoot nation, whose home is on the
plains beside the World-Spine.  Maid she was, and yet her dress that
of a warrior, a deerskin hunting shirt, leggings and moccasins all
tawny golden, the leather cut in thongs, long fringes of them about
the shoulders, and along the seams.  Quills dyed vermilion, violet,
and lemon were set in patterns of delicate embroidery upon the
breast, the shoulder straps, and the tongues of the soft skin shoes.
A fringed and broidered quiver of stonehead arrows was slung on her
back, a bag to hold a sacred talisman hung from her belt.

The dress was beautiful to illustrate youth, lithe, wholesome
strength and grace, the clear-cut loveliness of a face colored like
glowing bronze, the fearless gallantry of bearing, the spiritual
purity and power.

The maid lived in the uttermost solitudes of the mountain wilderness,
the lad was a bargee plying on London River.  On earth they were
worlds apart, and had never met, but here in Dreamland were joined
together from earliest childhood in the strong bonds of a love
untarnished by the world.

Bill's Dreamland name was Storms-all-of-a-sudden.

"Storm," she said wistfully, "I was calling and calling you ever so
long."

"I had to wait," he answered.  "After dinner on Sundays mother wants
me.  We go into the fields, and she prays, while I sleeps.  Then I
come quick."

"Storm," she said, "this is the last time that your mother will pray
in the fields down there on earth.  The spirits are calling her home."

"She is to die, then?"

"Her animal body is to die, dear."

"Will she come here?"

"Not here, Storm.  I may see her as she comes through Dreamland, but
she will be asleep, carried by the Radiant Spirits.  She will wake up
in air which we could not breathe, light far too strong for us to
bear, love which outshines the sun.  When you go back, will you tell
her?"

"I shan't remember.  It all fades away when I wake down there--gone.
I remembers nothing."

"When you wake, seize both your mother's hands, and by her power you
will remember.  Afterwards you will not be so lonely, because you
will remember.  You will remember me."  Her face became of a sudden,
wild, savage, ferocious.  "When you meet other women there down on
the earth, you must remember me."

"Dost remember me, Rain, when you awake, down there on the Earth?"

"When men make love to me then I remember you."  Her face had
softened now.  "For you are mine, all mine, dear, and I am yours,
forever and forever, Storm, forever.  But if any man or any woman
come between us two, then I shall kill."

"My mother says," he answered, "'thee shalt not kill.'"

"My mother says," she looked out steadfastly into Space, "that if a
woman will not defend her honor, with her weapons defend her honor,
with all that she is, all that she has defend her honor, then let her
not think that she shall dare the Wolf Trail.  She shall not climb
the Wolf Trail which leads to the land of the Blessed Spirits, but
drift with the poor ghosts who have lost their way in the Sandhills."

"We doesn't call it the Wolf Trail," answered Storm.  "Our people
always calls it the Milky Way."

There is no such thing as Time yonder in Dreamland.  But down on
earth the bright day waned in England.

"I thinks old mother's calling me," said Storm.

"Go to her," answered Rain, "call to her, call as you go to her, and,
as you wake, clutch both her hands, let all her power pour through
you.  So you shall remember."

He stood up.  "Good-by," he said, then shouted as he turned,
"Mother!--mother!"

* * * * * * *

"Mother!"

"What's wrong with thee, son?"

Bill had awakened shouting, "Mother!--mother!" He reached up and
clutched her hands in both his own.  "Rain says I got to tell!"

"'Rain says.'  Who is this Rain?"

"I dreamed as she and me 'ave been together.  We is Rain and
Storm--her and me in love since we was kids."

"Thee dreamest."

"Yes, in Dreamland, all our lives since we was kids.  There's
Fairies, too.  And she sends a message, mammie--a message to you."

"The Rain in Dreamland sends messages by the Storm, to me, dear?
What is this message?"

"Radiant Spirits, carrying of you, mammie, over the Wolf Trail."

"What is the Wolf Trail, son?"

He put his hands to his forehead thinking deeply.  "I forget," he
said.

"Thee hast been dreaming, son."

"Aye, dreaming, that's all, mammie."

But he had not forgotten.  His mother was to die.



IV

The barge lay at the land stage beside the tavern.  Along the
causeway below Adelphi Terrace one entered the underground streets.
These winding tunnels beneath the Adelphi district have several exits
convenient for the thieves and occasional murderers who harbored
there, and the destitute who sheltered in that refuge.  The streets
and cellarages were then a large stable for draught horses and the
milch cows of several dairies, in all a crowded, busy place with
about five hundred inhabitants by day whose custom went to "The Fox
under the Hill."  From his earliest childhood Bill had frequented the
underground town; but when he had the time, as on that Monday
morning, waiting until the tide served, he loved the crowded Strand
up in the daylight.  It was good to loaf there when he ought to have
been at work with sailor jobs on board.

The Strand was a game path once just at the edge of the crumbling
river bank, where the flints went rolling down unto the Thames.  Roan
hairy elephants grazed there, loitering on their way to water in
Fleet Ditch.  Later, along that pathway of the Mammoth, tame kine
went lowing homeward of an evening to the Brython's stockaded village
on Tower Hill.  Afterwards respectable suburban Romans built their
villas there outside the walls of Augusta.  A thousand years later
still the Strand was a stable lane behind the Thames-side palaces of
the Plantagenets.  Then the mews became a cobbled Georgian street
linking the olden cities of London and Westminster, and to-day it is
the main artery of a world capital.

As a thoroughfare it may not claim comparison with the Grand Canal in
Venice or the exquisite Sierpes of old Seville.  It is not, like
Princes Street in Edinburgh, part of a splendid landscape.  It lacks
the spaciousness and verdure of Unter den Linden, the endless
perspective of the Nevski, the glittering wealth of the Rue de la
Paix, the astounding uproar of abysmal Broadway.  Many a provincial
thoroughfare, as the Apollo Bunder in Bombay, or Collins Street in
Melbourne, would put the Strand to shame; yet, second to the Via
Dolorosa, it is a street of memories.

For if the Strand might speak it would tell us about Queen Boadicea
in her scythed chariot, perhaps of St. Paul as a ship's passenger
from Cadiz, of the English Emperor Hadrian on his way to Rome, of
Richard Lionheart home from captivity, the Black Prince leading John
of France his prisoner of war, of Henry V returning thanks for
Agincourt, of Cabot and Columbus, Erasmus, Holbein, of Peter the
Great and Handel and Voltaire, of Cochrane and Mazzini the
Liberators, of Drake and Shakespeare, Milton, Newton, Darwin,
Purcell, of Nelson and Wellington, of Gordon and Allenby, of ever so
many saints, heroes, conquerors and statesmen, discoverers,
explorers, adventurers, pioneers, in every field of service.  How the
old pavements echo to the tramp of horsemen!  Processions march here
of men from the ends of the Earth, bringing the glory with them of
young free Dominions, hundreds of feudatory kingdoms, barbaric states
in tutelage, and savage legions armed in the cause of Peace.  So in
this olden highway it is very pleasant on a sunny day to watch the
passing traffic when one ought to be at work.  And well may we envy
fellows like Bill Fright, who saw the Strand in October, 1835, when
still the shop windows were bowed with little panes of glass, and had
a couple of tallow dips of an evening to light up the modest stock;
when still men wore the dress becoming to their trade; big cargo
wagons, drawn by teams of ten, came rumbling over the cobbles; and
the gay mail coaches with a blare of horns set forth for Portsmouth
or for Liverpool.

There goes Tittlebat Titmouse, Esquire, with little mousy features
inflamed with drink, and bright green driving-gloves, perched in his
high gig.  Here's Mr. Jorrocks, grocer and sportsman, attended by
James Pigg, jostling his way to buy a "hoss" at Aldridge's.  Mr.
Pickwick, author of _Observations on Tadpoles in the Hampstead
Ponds_, comes beaming past us, escorted by his colleagues the poet
Snodgrass, the sportsman Winkle, and the loving Tupman.  Time has
enlarged their waistcoats since the day, now seventeen years ago,
when they set forth upon their memorable journey to observe mankind.
This is the anniversary, and they are on their way to the Adelphi
Hotel, to dine most bountifully.  Mr. Paul Pry, who lives close by at
11 Adam Street, may possibly look in, and say, with one eye round the
corner of the door, "I hope I don't intrude!"

Here comes the Iron Duke, on an Arab whose dam had carried him at
Waterloo.  He has a seat in the saddle, this erstwhile flogging
martinet, and mellow tyrant.  He is attended by a mounted servant.

There is Mr. Pendennis, bound from the Temple to the Courts at
Westminster; and behind him is Mr. Peter Simple, midshipman, guided
by Boatswain Chucks, on his way to report at the Admiralty.

Here are two or three more notables, the Count d'Orsay, and young Mr.
Disraeli the eminent novelist.  What a pair of fops!  Mr. Carlyle is
slouching past, the unkempt, observant historian of the French
Revolution, watching for another such upheaval here in England.
Watch here a day or two and one might see Turner the painter, whose
father's barber shop is just round the corner, Mr. Dickens, Mr.
Gladstone, Mr. Tennyson, and other blithe young fellows whose
troubles are still to come.

The vision fades, and one can only see a solitary figure leaning
against a post, a bareheaded youngster in a ragged jersey and sea
boots, Bill Fright, whose barge is laden down beside the Fox, ready
to clear with the ebb.  So we must follow him as he slouches down Ivy
Lane to the barge.



V

The barge _Polly Phemus_ belonged to Mr. Thomas Fright the publican,
who found her a convenience for smuggling schnapps and cognac from
certain caverns at Epple Bay upriver to his cellars.  Mr. James
Fright his brother was registered as master, but if entrusted with
the cash for port dues would invest the same in gin for his own
personal comfort.  Now Mrs. Fright kept the cash account with
Quakerish precision, and an excessive frankness, making such entries
as "Bribe to peeler Addock, 2d.; squaring Mr. Wimpole, the Customs
Officer, 2/--; to Mr. Dyker for brandy smuggled, 206/-2d."

"If her account book were ever captured--my hat!" said Mr. Thomas.

In consideration for not broaching cargo, Mr. James had three bottles
of gin per voyage, duly shown in petit cash %.  For abstinence from
pawning the anchor, sails, or ship stores he had two bottles of gin
per voyage.  Yet shipments being in advance of his performance, when
he needed a little refreshment in port he pawned Bill's blanket, or,
on the present occasion, it being Monday, mother's Sunday bonnet.  It
might have been observed that mother had some cotton wound round her
third left finger by way of a keeper to guard her wedding ring.  If
that were pawned while she slept, she would not be a respectable
woman any more at all.

Concerning her husband, not a bad sort of fellow when he was sober,
the wife made no complaint.  She remembered him as a gallant corporal
of horse, with the loveliest little fluffy whiskers and a fine red
coat.  And her parents had objected to his persiflage.  He said
"Damme!"  To put them quite in the wrong, she married him.  So had
she made her bed, and now must lie in it for better or for worse.
Still the slightest expression of sympathy would set her raving; but
then, the dressing of our wounds rather depends upon the sort of
nurse, and if Satan has a hospital in Hades, the publican's
daughters, Miss Fright and Miss Euphemia Fright, may be employed
there as chief and assistant torturers.

When Bill told Uncle Thomas about the stolen bonnet, the
publican--abed with a bandaged head--was not in the best of tempers.
He said it served the woman damn well right for her holy airs and
graces.  "All the same," said he, "your father has most annoying
'abits, vich I resents his deportment of a Sunday, making a shindy in
my bar-parlor.  The next time the press gang comes, Bill, I'll send
you away out of sight, and offer hup your father to the Navy.  He'll
make a good thank offering, and you shall 'ave the barge."

"Mother won't like that," said Bill, somewhat aggrieved, "and I'd be
lonesome vithout no punching block to keep me hexercised.  As to
thishyer _Polly Phemus_, you know my mother is master.  Leave dad to
me--I'll pet him comfortable."'

Mrs. James Fright, as everybody knew on London River, was the real
master of the _Polly Phemus_.  As Bill had grown up from childhood,
each year she found more and more relief from a job beyond her
strength, until now he left to her only a little steering at times
when he entered or left port, or made or shortened sail.  The
sailorizing jobs of sennit and spunyarn, chafing gear, patching the
canvas, renewing rigging, or tarring down he did when he felt
disposed, which was very seldom, but therein father set an example by
doing nothing at all.

On the whole the lad was unselfish, keen, and able, and kept the Ten
Commandments, except the fifth.  For when it came to honoring his
father, he would do so with a clip under the ear or a punch in the
jaw.  Whenever the parent needed a slight hint on points of conduct,
Bill would oblige at once.  So, drunk or partially sober, Mr. James
Fright found it was not expedient to speak unless he was spoken to,
for if he said too much Bill knocked him overboard.  Being a Quaker,
Mrs. Fright would register a diplomatic protest against any sort of
strife; but, as Bill explained, it takes two persons to make an
argument, and the parent never got a word in edge-ways.  One could
not call that even a disagreement, much less a violation of Quaker
principles.  Mrs. Fright being very human, protested outwardly, but
loved Bill all the more because he rebuked an erring husband beyond
her own control.

She took the tiller for the run to Margate, not in her Sunday best,
but in an old sou'wester, a jersey, a homespun skirt, and sea boots.
To do her justice, never a bargee on London River, or even a deep-sea
bo's'n, could pass remarks or exchange amenities without being
presently floored by Mrs. Fright.  Like theirs, her words were
scriptural, but the men were merely profane, whereas the lady's
fulminations were worthy even of the major prophets.  Even so, they
could bear up manfully under her heaviest fire until she crossed her
words, and when she spoke of heathen raging furiously, she had them
furing ragiously in the abomination of detonation, bowling their
trails in the pist of the but.

The fact is she shocked the very worst of them, and it may be added
that Bill took kindly to her scriptural lessons.  He plied a
sixteen-foot sweep to swing the _Polly Phemus_ into the tide while
mother steered until they shot the three bridges, Waterloo,
Southwark, and London.  New built was London Bridge of granite
brought by sea from Aberdeen, and never a stone less than a ton and a
half in weight.  To hit such masonry was bad for barges.  Clear of
the arch Bill stepped the mast in haste, and loosed the brails so
that the big tanned mainsail filled, to give the _Polly Phemus_ her
steerage way.  Then he set the topsail.  Needed was that as she
threaded the narrow channel in the Pool, whence six abreast for miles
on either side the sailing ships lay berthed, and masts in uncounted
thousands formed a forest.  Bill set the headsail and came aft to
take the helm, while mother cooked the belated dinner.  Presently
Bill snuffed the savor of kippers and fried bread which came up out
of the cabin, filling his emptiness with a sort of anguish so greatly
he desired to be fed.  The parent was dining on a bottle of gin,
squat in a corner, droning "Jump, Jim Crow," to the wheeze of his
concertina.  Then he began a convict song, a twopenny broadsheet sold
at the street corners:

  Come Bet my pet, and Sal my pal--a buss and then farewell,
  And Ned, the primest ruffling cove--that ever nail'd a swell
  To share the swag, or chaff the gab--we'll never meet again,
  The hulk is now my bowsing crib--the hold my dossing ken.
  Don't nab the bib my Bet, this chance--must happen soon or later,
  For certain sure it is that trans--portation comes by natur'.
  His Lordship's self upon the bench--so downie his white wig in,
  Might sail with me if friends had he--to bring him up to priggin'.
  And it is not unkimmon fly--in them as rules the nation,
  To make us end with Botany--our public edication?
  But Sal, so kind, be sure you mind--the beaks don't catch you
        tripping;
  You'll find it hard to be for shop--ping sent on board the shipping.
  So tip your mauns[1] before we part--don't blear your eyes and nose,
  Another grip my jolly hearts--here's luck! and off we goes!


[1] Shake hands.


Down Greenwich way, where fishing smacks were moored by dozens above
the Hospital, mother set out the dinner, handing the food and the
beer to Bill as he squatted on the tiller head.  The southwesterly
wind made lively water, and the barge had a bone in her teeth as she
swept down the reaches.  Chill was the air under the purple shadows
of the clouds, warm when the sun shone on the pale green river, the
dark green meadows, and trees in autumn russet or sere gold.  Tall
ships were running free and shaking out more canvas.  Little paddle
steamers crept along inshore sneaking through back-waters, or
crawling inch by inch where the ebb set against them at the
headlands.  There were six hundred steamers in Lloyd's List, but
mother doubted if these would have God's blessing.  They were not
mentioned in the Holy Scripture.  As to railways, and there was one
which ran from Bristol to Paddington within a mile of London, there
could be no good in headlong gallivanting at twenty miles an hour,
disturbing the good kine, affrighting the birds whose songs in God's
great honor were changed to shrieks, and doing away with the horses
which England needs in her defense from the French and other savages.

Bill quite agreed, but all the same, when next they had a freight to
Whitsable, the driver of the Canterbury train had promised him a
journey, firing the engine.

Mother sighed.  "The things of this yere world which shall perish,
draws thee away, my son, from them which endureth forever."

"But I can't see," he answered, "these yere things which ain't
wisible."

"Dost thee think," she answered, looking across the waters, far into
the distance--"dost think I like livin' aboard of this dirty boat,
with me 'ands filthy always, in the sty down there with that pig?
Thinkest thee as I enjoys doing work far past a woman's strength, and
cursing like a bargee when them sea-lubbers fouls me?"

"Don't you?" asked Bill.  "Own up, mum!"

"Humph!"  She glanced at him with one eye, trying not to smile with
that side of her mouth.  "Perhaps," she said, "I be woman enough to
like the last word--and they don't get much change out of me--Christ
forgive a sinner!  But smuggling hain't honest, either, Bill, nor
paying bribes.  I'd like to be honest and live in a house.  But them
as goeth down to the sea in ships and hoccupies their business in
great waters, them see the works of the Lord, and His wonders in the
deep.  Thinkest thee as I sees none of all them wonders, Bill?  Enter
in by the gate of meditation, son, and thee shalt see as I does
things as no words can tell of.  Canst thee not believe thy mother?"

"I never done till yesterday," said Bill, "but all wot I seen in that
dream, when I vos Storm, and Rain she showed me--mammie, I does
believe."

"Wilt be baptized?"

"Yes.  S'elp me bob.  But I'll make a rotten Christian 'cept you
helps me."

Standing with the tiller against his leg he bore up a little to clear
some Barking fishing smacks ahead, then looked down at his mother
where she sat beside the dinner plates and the scraps of food.  The
lad was sensitive, psychic, clairvoyant, and he was conscious of a
strange light which surrounded his mother.  He had grown and
prospered in that mysterious glory.  Her faith, her love, and the
example of her holy life had given him some makings of real manhood.
And he loved her.  He worshiped her.  Aye, but it would be hard to
hand his worship over to a Deity he could not sense, or see, or love.

"She'll think," he said in his heart, "as I'm a bloody failure as a
Christian."

Then he realized he had got to keep a better lookout or he would foul
that smack on the larboard bow.  The golden haze was gone, and down
in the cabin the parent was howling to him to come and drink with
him, to drink up manly.  For the next half-hour, with a thickened
utterance and slurred words, he reviled his son for a mollycoddle, a
milk-sop, a mammie's darling, an 'oly prig, a sneak, a cur, a dirty
coward.  It was unreasonable of mother to refuse point-blank when
Bill asked her to take the tiller while he gave the old man a
licking.  The devoted parent downstairs knew he was perfectly safe
from being reproached.  A string of blasphemies--all he could
remember--addressed to mother, brought his remarks to an end quite
inarticulate followed by loud snores.

Then mother read the Bible aloud.  There were times when, having
fastened her teeth into Jeremiah or Leviticus, she would not let go
even to cook the meals until she had made an end.  Then she was
obstinate and Bill was bored, but this day she read chapters from the
Gospel according to St. John.  Rough was the voice, and many words
were not pronounced correctly.  She blundered through as best she
could, and even so brought tears to the lad's eyes.

Few are the readers who can render the rhythm, the throbbing melody
of this great English text, and fewer still the seers who alone have
power to bring to light its modes of tender fun, of sparkling humor,
of love, of awfulness, abysmal deeps, and heights illimitable.
Wisdom and Understanding, Counsel, Power, Knowledge, Righteousness,
and the Divine Awe, the seven rays of one clear spectrum, blend in
the white light of this great revelation; and Time stands still, for
all the years of Earth are numbered, spreading like ripples on a pool
from this one message of the Word made Flesh.

The flaming sunset faded behind the smoke of London, the rose and
violet of the afterglow waned as the indigo of night veiled all
things earthly, and the heavens opened revealing high eternities of
light, while still the mother spoke to her son, and he sat at the
helm rapt, resolved to consecrate his life to her Master's service.

The wind slept in the high shoulder of the trysail long after the
deep calm fell upon the waters, and still the tide served under the
frosty starlight.  Mother and son had their evening meal together on
the cabin hatch.  Would he have tea?  Why, it was twenty shillings a
pound!  It could not be afforded to feed the likes of him.  Still,
she insisted.  And although tea was an effeminate stuff which working
men were ashamed to drink, Bill had some just for once.  Nobody would
know.  Besides, it was rather nice, but still he hated being a
mammie's pet.

Four miles short of Margate, with the lights of the town in the east,
the tide failed, so to the last of the westerly air Bill luffed, then
let the anchor go, brailed his trysail, took in the topsail and
staysail, and made all snug for the night.  Mother had gone to bed
some time ago, and the parent was dead drunk before the sun set.
Bill stood for some time smoking his father's clay pipe, unbeknown to
mother, peering the while across the shallows to the loom of low
chalk cliffs in Epple Bay.  Here were the caves from which on the
homeward passage the _Polly Phemus_ was to ship certain casks.
Smuggling, of course, and she thought it wasn't honest.  It was a
famous place also for prize fights, and mother hated that also.
Inland, to the right, were one or two lighted windows in the village
of Birchington, and the church clock was striking eleven.  By the
way, he must remember at Margate to warn mother about the port dues
on the Reverend Binks his harpsichord.  Half the strings were
missing, and ninepence ought to be ample.

His boots crunched frost crystals all along the gangway as he went
forward, on the port side lest he should wake his mother.  Then he
dropped down the fore hatch into his little private glory hole, and
pulled the cover close because, as mother said, the night air is so
dangerous.  As to the savor from coils of tarry rope, tallow, damp
clothes, spare sail, and iron-rusted chain, rats' nests, and bilge
water--that was just homely.  He pulled off his boots, said "Our
Father which," by way of a reminder of what was due to mother, turned
in under the spare jib and went to sleep.

A northerly air which cut like knives began to quicken, and little
bitter waves to smack the flanks of the barge.



VI

Storm came to the tuft of moss where he had tryst with Rain, but she
was not there, and though he whistled the love call, she did not
come.  Indeed, the sun had risen then beyond the Rocky Mountains and
Rain was awake eating smoked venison for breakfast before she went to
her hunting.  At such an hour she could not come to Dreamland.  And
since she did not come, Storm felt aggrieved.  He would worry the
Fairy Parson for lack of better sport.

He went up the bed of the sparkling brook which splashes but never
wets one, through the still pool whose ripples flash like rainbows,
and on past the fountain spring which croons a lullaby.  It always
croons one song, but when the fairies tickle it has to chuckle.  It
always chuckles too when the Padre preaches, as he does when he loses
his temper.

The adobe house, although absurdly small, is really most important,
the only parsonage in Fairyland.

The Padre used to be a monk, not by vocation, but by a mistake of his
mother who hoped he was religious, because he was really fit for
nothing else.  Truly he was a born Unnaturalist, devoted from
childhood to Unnatural History, heraldic animals, story-book
monsters, sea serpents, nightmares, and of course all sorts of
elementals, especially the bad ones.  He felt it must be enormous
sport to be a Fiery Dragon and hunt saints.  Indeed he said so.
Moreover, he announced one evening in the refectory that the Abbot
was going to Heaven on Saturday.  "Now God forbid!" said the Abbot,
but on Saturday he went to Heaven.  "Perhaps!" quoth this unholy
monk, "I called it Heaven, because, you see, one must be polite to an
Abbot."

Afterwards the monks as a body resolved that this was a very
uncomfortable Brother, so he was ordered to go and convert the
heathen.

"Not that they ever did me any harm," said he, "but perhaps the
heathen may tell me stories, nice ones--about boiled monks--yes,
boiled with parsley sauce."

And thus among the Red Indians he became an eminent Fairyologist.
Nobody else but an eminent Fairyologist would have been so utterly
unpractical as to go hunting Fairies in the driest corners of the
Great American Desert.  Everybody knows that Fairies like a moist
climate, superstitious inhabitants, and Mozart or Greig to play their
own tunes.

In Death Valley he found no moisture at all, no people whatsoever, or
any music except when the snakes played their rattles.  There he
became very thirsty, lonely, and frightened, so altogether miserable
that one of the rattlesnakes gave him a bite just to cheer him up.

... And he came here to be the Chaplain in Fairyland.  Here, you see,
no matter how badly he preached--and he preached badly even for a
clergyman--he could not possibly do any harm because nobody would
ever take the slightest notice of what he said except when he was
cross.  Then the fountain chuckled.

He built his little adobe house beside the crooning spring, and that
was all right until a female Griffin, eighteen feet long, became his
lady companion for lessons in deportment.  Whenever she was pleased
she wagged her tail, and when she wagged her tail the house came
down.  That is why the new walls are unusually thick, and the inside
so small that the Griffin has to wag her tail outside.  She has got
so far with her lessons that now she puts her paw before her
crocodile mouth before she sneezes--and then the clergyman is not
blown through the window.

She was out mousing when Storm paid his call.  That is, the boy crept
in on all fours while the Padre was busy writing his book, which
nobody will ever read, on Fairyology.  Storm got under the stool and
tickled the Padre's bare ankles with a feather.

"Bless the mosquitos!" said the holy man, "and send them a nourishing
maiden."

Storm tickled again, and the Padre stooped down to slap the
mosquitos, saying "Pax vobiscum."

Storm laughed, the fountain chuckled, and the Padre looked under the
stool.

"Hello!" said he.  "That you?"

"No," answered Storm, "I'm not."

So of course as it wasn't he, the holy man went on with his writing.

Since Rain had warned him of his mother's death, Storm was uneasy,
and in his dream-life frightened of being alone.  So as the Padre
could not be bothered with him he crept into a corner of the cabin,
where it was nearly dark, to brood upon this matter of his mother's
passing.

"When my meat-body," so ran his thought, "is tired out after a long
day's work, and can't be rode any longer, I turns it in for a watch
below.  Sometimes I stays all night in my meat-body, and has funny
mixed-up dreams, the ones which I remembers afterwards.  Sometimes I
gets out of the meat-body and comes straight into this here world
which Rain calls Dreamland.  I've got my dream-body for life in the
dream-world--so that's all clear.

"But suppose my animal-body gets wore out, or dies, or happens to get
killed, so as I'm drove out, and can't get in again--that's what they
calls Death.  It's bound to happen sooner or later, and it doesn't
matter anyway.  The animal body won't be needed any longer, and so it
can be took away, and buried, or burned, or drowned, and there's an
end of that.

"I've got this dream-body, which is just as solid, and comfy.  It
looks just the same, and is a deal more useful.  If I've been good on
earth I'll have a fine time in this dream-world.  If I've been bad
I'll have a rotten time, and it will serve me right.  But as I've
promised mother to be good, and means to be good always, there's
nothing to be afraid of.  So that's all clear.

"The next part ain't so clear.  Rain knows all about everything, and
she says this: On Earth and in Dreamland we have a job, one job, to
grow a soul.  That soul is another body made of thoughts and
feelings.  It's called the spiritual body.  It may be made of good
thoughts and good feelings like mother's, or of bad thoughts and bad
feelings like father's.  When it is grown up, and all ready to sail,
it clears for the port where it belongs.  It leaves this dream-body,
crumbled away into dust or gas, and it goes to the place where it
will be at home.  It is spiritual.  It goes to the home of bad people
in Hell, until it learns to pray, or of good people in Heaven.
Mother is going there, and I'm to be awful lonesome, because I can't
go with her, and I can't follow her there until I've growed a
spiritual body fit to be seen in Heaven by the angels.

"All that is what the Bible means, if we could only understand things
better.  It's what Religion means.  Mother's a Christian, and Rain's
a heathen, but whatever sort of lamp we has to light the way, it's
the same voyage.  If we're good it's fine weather, if we're bad it's
storms, so if a fellow has any sense at all, he'll jolly well do his
best.

"That seems to be all clear."

"Have you quite finished?" asked the Padre.  To look more impressive,
he put horn spectacles upon his thin, high nose, but in order to see
he had to glance over the top of them as he turned to bend his vision
upon Storm, like a reproachful rabbit surveying a rotten turnip.
"Because," he said peevishly, "if you had any sense at all, you'd
know that your loud thoughts disturb me at my work."

Storm had forgotten that here in Dreamland no thoughts can be hidden,
but all are heard by everybody who listens.

"I wants to go with mother," he answered sadly.  "I comes to you for
help 'cause you're a parson."

"Can't be done," said the Padre.  "You haven't got a spirit-body yet.
You're busy growing one and so am I.  That's what we're here for."

"I see."

"I wish I could," sighed the Padre, taking off his spectacles.  "Ah!
That's better.  Well, young man, and how is your temporal body?
Well, I hope?"

"It's having its watch below."

"I mislaid mine"--the Padre seemed to be very unhappy about it--"down
in the southern desert.  The eagles had it.  Poor things!  It was
mere skin and bone, not enough food for a mouse.  And yet I sat on a
rock and watched them squabbling over it.  Poor dears!  I can't think
how they manage to get a meal."

"Ahem!"  There came an affected cough, "Ahem!" outside the doorway.
"Ahem!"  A colossal head appeared, like that of a crocodile, looked
in, and filled the door place.  A red rag of a tongue lolled out on
the starboard side, while the port eye was cocked up, meekly
appealing to the Padre.

"May I come in?"

"No!" said the Padre.  "Go, Julia, and practice deportment, or catch
mice."

"He called me Julia!"  This with both eyes to heaven.  Then the
creature wriggled in a few feet farther, and holding one paw
bashfully to her mouth, "Ahem! ahem!  Deportment is so fatiguing, and
as to mice, you know they are so small.  Oh!"  Her snuff blew Storm
against the wall, and then she sniffed.  "Ah!  Do you know, I think I
could sit up and take a little boy."  She smacked her lips.  "Come
here, little boy!  Come to its Julia, then."

"If she swallers this good little bo-hoy," said Storm, deriding her,
"I'll wager my sheath knife makes tripe of her blanked guts."

"G-o-o-od 'ittle b-o-oy, then ... Goo-oo----"

"Julia, shut up," said the Padre.  "Boys are out of season.  Surely
you must know there's an V in the month.  For shame!  Go away and
powder your face."

The Griffin retreated sobbing.  "Nobody loves me!"  Sniff!  "No-body
loves me!"

"But all the same, young man," said the Padre, "if I were you, Storm,
I'd disappear.  You'd really better go and look after your mother.  I
think she may be needing you, at once."

Storm willed himself back to Earth, and he was there.  He willed back
to the after cabin of the barge, and he was there.



VII

Still in his dream, Storm stood in the after cabin.  He saw his
father held by evil men, struggling to escape, screaming for mercy.
The curved wall of the cabin, the bulkhead forward shutting off the
cargo hold, were like dark mist, form without substance, and through
them and within obscene and awful beasts crowded the air, their red
eyes gloating upon James Fright, who writhed and shrieked, trying to
get back to his body.  That body of his lay sprawled upon the table,
face downwards, arms outstretched.  Uncle Joey was riding father's
body, his legs locked round the loins, his arms with a strangle hold
about the throat, while he looked up at Storm as though disturbed by
his coming.

"Hello! mammie's darling!" he jeered.  "Come to see the fun?  And
then you'll go sneaking to mammie?  Now you watch--all done by
kindness.  One--two--three!  There!"

Uncle Joey entered the vacant body, and father, held by his captors,
was shrieking blasphemies, calling Storm a coward because he did not
come instantly to the rescue.

Storm was not concerned for his father's worries.  He knew that Uncle
Joey was returned from the dead to earth for no good purpose, that he
was dangerous, and that his own mother lay there asleep, helpless at
this demon's mercy.  He sprang to the bunk to guard her, to save her,
but when he looked at the sleeping body he breathed most fervent
thanks to Heaven.  Mother was away in Dreamland.  Only her body lay
there tenantless.  Should he call her?  Nay, not into mortal peril.
He put forth the whole power of his will to keep his mother away,
then turned to fight the demon.

Uncle Joey, clad in the stolen body, rose from the table stiffly,
groping at the air, unable now to see the astral world, to descry
Storm on guard beside the bunk, or James Fright struggling in the
clutches of the men who held him, or the awful monsters of the Pit
which crowded in upon the nightmare scene.  Only he whipped the
sheath knife from his belt and reeled across to the bunk where he saw
Mrs. Fright asleep.  Storm tried to seize Uncle Joey, but his arms
clutched thin air.  The re-embodied demon sprang straight through him
as though through mist, and yelling exultation, shouting with
laughter, he plunged the blade again and again into the woman's body.
Storm could do nothing.  Sick with horror, he leaned against the
panels, but his arm went through them as though they were but mist.

Uncle Joey drew back, still laughing.  "Can you hear?" he shouted.
"Did ye see that, Brother James, as I done your vife in?  You as
brought me to the gallows!  You as peached, and got me hanged.  And
do you think as 'ow you're going to get back into this yere body what
I've stole?  No!  Damn you!  No!"

He drove the knife straight at his own breast, the breast of the
stolen body, struck bone, and lunged again between the ribs.

The rigor of death clutching the hand to the hilt, the body reeling
towards the blow, the stained yellow eyeballs rolling up--that which
had been the living earthly habitation of James Fright went crashing
down.

And there was Uncle Joey, again discarnate, leering in Storm's face
beside the bunk.

"'Ow's that, umpire?  'Ow's that, Mollycoddle?  Hain't that a proper
vengeance worth giving of one's life for?  Hain't I got my own back
for being hanged, and damned before my time?"

But while he spoke, the fear grew in his eyes, the dawning sense of a
most awful doom, for the dense astral matter which encrusted his
spiritual body was crumbling to dust.

Storm watched, appalled, for now the man stood naked, black as coal,
but with a dull red glow of rage, of hate, demoniac, horrible, doomed
to perdition in the act of murder.  But rage changed to terror, for
he was falling, falling down through space, lost in the bottomless
abyss upon whose overhanging, rocky verge Storm knelt, forgetting his
own peril in an agony of prayer for a fellow creature drawn shrieking
down to Hell.

"Mother!" he screamed--"help!"

Across the illimitable deeps of space Storm saw a white light like a
little star, grow nearer, brighter, human in form, gigantic in
stature, shining like the sun, filling the whole night with radiance,
blinding.  He covered his face in awe in terrified reverence.

Beaten to earth by the tremendous rays, his eyes burned by the
splendor, he dared to look at the Angel, and saw his mother at rest
in the strong arms, sheltered against the breast.

Then he felt a hand extended over him; and a sense of blessedness, of
divine love, soothed all his fears, gave him to rest, to sleep.



VIII

In the fore cabin Bill sat up dazed, haunted, terrified by the sense
of something awful.  He shoved the hatch aside, letting the starlight
into the dark forecastle of the barge, then pulled on his boots, and
scrambled up upon the white, dimly glittering frost of the deck.
Stiff with cold, he flogged his arms about his body until his fingers
tingled with pain, and stamped until he felt the blood returning into
his numb feet.  Then he went aft, and opened the cabin hatch.  He
took the flint and steel from his pocket, struck a brisk shower of
sparks into the tinder, kindled a sulphur match, and held the blue
light down.  His mother lay in the bunk, stone dead.  His father's
body lay stretched on the deck, a bloody sheath knife clutched in the
stiff right hand.

Now, of a sudden, the whole memory of the dream glowed in his brain,
and ghastly pale, sweating at the palms of the hands, and at his
neck, he realized the truth.  He dared not go down into that place.
Even as Rain had warned him, he knew that his mother was dead.
Shuddering even at the touch of the woodwork which enclosed the tomb,
he closed the hatchway, then found the dinghy's painter, hauled in,
and dropped into the boat.

The flood tide swept him up the estuary, and the faint shadow of the
barge melted away in the mist under the frosty starlight.



IX

Mr. James Watt, a canny Scots body, ye ken, was the man who changed
the steam engine from a capricious plaything into a working servant
of mankind.  He did not believe in railway locomotives, but his
marine engines were the pride and glory of Messrs. Boulton & Watt, of
Birmingham.  Mr. Fulton, of New York, bought one of them, you may
remember, and used it to run a barge on Hudson River, the first to
ply with passengers, they say.  Mr. Watt did not live to see the
little brigantine _Beaver_ engined at Blackwall yard in 1835, but
that was as good a job as any done by the famous firm.  The boiler
had a steam pressure of seven pounds, and when in later years it
rusted through, the engineer would plug the holes with a pointed
stick and a rag.  And yet that engine lasted and worked well for
fifty-two years, until the warship became a neglected tug and in 1889
was cast away in the cliffs of Stanley Park within the city limits of
Vancouver in British Columbia.

The _Beaver's_ registered tonnage was 110, so her size was that of a
second-rate wooden steam trawler in our modern fishing.  She carried
four brass six-pounder guns, each small enough for a man to lift by
the trunnions.  When she had business with savage tribes, to trade
with them or bombard their villages, she set out boarding nettings,
so she could not be rushed.  The crew numbered thirty, sufficient for
the methods of lick, spit, and polish to which her lickspittle bully
of a Captain, Mr. David Home, devoted his whole soul.

A real live duchess christened the _Beaver_, and if I remember
rightly Mr. Brunel, the engineer, left his work, hard by in the
Thames Tunnel, to witness the cracking of the bottle.  The owners
attended in force, the Governor and Company of Merchant Adventurers
trading into Hudson's Bay, all in top hats, white chokers, and
swallow-tails.  Most likely they cracked quite a lot of bottles.

The engine was in position, but the sponsons, paddle boxes, and
paddles were stored in the forehold for the voyage under sail round
Cape Horn.

At Fort Vancouver on the Columbia River, the capital of Oregon, the
vessel was to be completed by her carpenters, and to be the first
steamer on the Pacific Ocean.

Long afterwards it was, in 1842, that the _Beaver_ carried the great
Sir George Simpson to the founding of Fort Camosun on Vancouver
Island.  When, many years later, the _Beaver_ was sold to become a
tug, her log books were pitched into the loft of an old log barn, the
last remnant of Fort Camosun, hid in a backyard of the city of
Victoria, capital of British Columbia.  I found the rat-eaten log
books there in 1889, and begged the Hudson's Bay Company to preserve
these precious annals.  The memory of them helps my story-telling.



X

The flood tide swept Bill's dinghy up past the Roman fortress of
Reculver, on by Whitstable where oyster smacks lay moored, and thence
towards the Isle of Sheppey and the Thames.  It was only to keep warm
that sometimes he would scull, oar over stern, athwart the stream,
northward to channels with a stronger tide.  Numb with cold, his
heart like lead, not caring where he went, hour by hour he sculled
until he was tired, or rested until he froze, not caring at all what
happened.  The new police would catch him if he went ashore, to
charge him with murdering his parents, and send him to the gallows;
or Uncle Thomas, his owner, would curse him for leaving the barge
derelict, the property in law of the first man who went on board.
Bill did not care now for Uncle Thomas, or anybody alive, but only in
a hard, dry, gnawing grief mourned and was silent.  He did not
believe any more in God, who had allowed his mother to be murdered;
and as to spirits, they were only phantasms of nightmare.  A sullen
hatred of the world, of men, of everything, of life itself, filled
the north wind, the dark spaces of seething water, and the
indifferent stars.  And on towards dawn he sank down on his knees,
his face in his hands, hoping for death, an end of everything.  Yet,
as he afterwards confessed, when the _Beaver's_ dolphin striker
knocked his cap off, and her clipper bows hove the boat's gunwale
under, so that she filled and sank beneath his feet, he fought for
life as keenly as anybody who enjoyed the same.  Groping, so he said,
in the dark for hand and foot holds in the hanging wall, he found the
anchor astrip, and jumped upon the fluke, swarmed up the shank and
chain, then, getting a purchase with one toe in the hawse hole,
vaulted across the bulwark.

The lad on lookout squeaked, and ran for all he was worth, reporting
a ghost up on the starboard bow.



CHAPTER II

THE VOYAGE OF THE "BEAVER"


I

In sailing-ship days we who were seamen and self-respecting did not
join for a voyage while we were sober enough to come on board all of
our own accord.  It would have been bad form.

So, having shipped her joyful mariners, the _Beaver's_ officers and
the afterguard, not more than half-seas over, got the vessel off from
Gravesend as best they could, dropping downtide so far as the ebb
served, then brought her up in the fairway.  They dropped anchor on
the Nore, hoisted a riding light, and posted two comparatively sober
apprentices to keep each other awake and call the mate at dawn.

Bill Fright, being fast asleep in his dinghy, was swept up by the
strong flood, and awakened in haste on finding the boat foul of a
ship's bows and more or less capsized.  He climbed on board, a matter
arranged beforehand by the fairies or other spirits invisible who
look after seafaring boys--they need a deal of looking after,
too--and there is little doubt that his coming scared the anchor
watch.  Finding him, however, to be no mermaid, but somebody wet and
profane, they sought for a hair of the dog which had bitten the crew,
stole a flask from one of the men up forward, gave Bill a drink, and
did not waste such liquor as remained.

At dawn Bill watched the mate, Mr. Dodd, come up to snuff the air,
wrap three turns of brown muffler about his thin neck, button a
monkey jacket across his portly front, and stump about the half-poop
to get warm.  A ship is always at her dirtiest on leaving port; and
of a certainty the deck was filthy apart from the unholy ravel of new
stiff halliards coiled like a knot of snakes.  Bill felt these a
disgrace, and set to work on them of his own accord to straighten out
the loops and flemish down.  Mr. Dodd, supposing him to be a member
of the crew, saw that Bill knew his business.

Meanwhile one 'prentice had gone to the hoodway up forward, the other
to the steerage hatch, and both of them howled like demons down the
ladders.  "Ahoy there!  All hands on deck!"  "Hear the good news!
Oh, rise and shine, my hearties!"  "Show a leg there, cripples, or
the mate will bring you tea in bed.  Ahoy!  Ahoy!  Tumble up for the
rum!  Ahoy!"

The people tumbled up, looking somewhat bilious in the gray light,
and set to scrubbing the frosted deck.  Bill hung the coiled
halliards on their pins and watched the mate the while, a proper
officer who knew his job, one who did not nag or fuss, but let each
man work his best.  "I dunno as I'd mind," Bill thought, "making a
woyage with him."  And he had always longed to go foreign.  But for
mother he would have gone big boating these three years past or more.
And now she was dead.  Why not!

The captain had appeared, a meager, pompous man with a mean face,
stamping in sea boots along the windward side of the half-poop.  Mr.
Dodd gave him a curt salute and took the leeward side.

"Mr. Dodd," said the captain, pointing to Bill, "call that man aft."

The mate signaled Bill to come to the foot of the three steps which
led from the quarter-deck up to the holy place behind the rails.

"Ask this Willie Muggins what the blank he means by getting himself
arrested at Gravesend."

Bill felt surprised, somewhat abashed, not called upon to speak.  Why
did this captain call him Willie Muggins?

"I think, sir," answered the mate respectfully, "that the arrest was
at the instance of Mrs. Willie Muggins.  This lad seems much too
young to be a husband."

"Mr. Dodd," said the captain, "you will be pleased to mind your own
concerns.  You, Muggins, what time did you come aboard?"

These officers on the half-poop were rather terrifying.  Unwashed
since yesterday, with grimy hands, an aching heart, and a frantic
desire for breakfast, Bill felt at a disadvantage.  This captain
also, bully and cur complete, had unlimited power to do him wrong.
The lad's bulldog face turned rigid, his eyes were menacing, his
fists clenched, his body strung for defense as he answered the
captain.

"You sunk my boat," he said, "so you can put me ashore.  As to this
yere Villie Muggins, I'll find him out, and give him your love if you
like."

"Mr. Dodd," asked the captain, "is this man a seaman?"

"To judge by his conduct, yes, sir."

"My man," said Captain Home, "you're signed on as Willie Muggins,
your chest is in the forecastle beside your bunk.  If you don't
answer to your name, you'll be flogged until you do.  Mr. Dodd, put
him to work."

"But----"

"Turn to, lad," said Mr. Dodd.

Bill stood for a moment, feeling the man's kindness, the good will,
the well-meant advice.  He would do anything on earth to please that
mate.

"Aye! aye!" said he quite cheerfully, and turned to.



II

In sailing days the Americans were a maritime people, first among
nations as naval architects.  Their ships were magnificently found,
handled with headlong daring, and broke sea records; indeed, the
young skippers of that time have never been rivaled in seamanship.
The bucko mates aspiring to succeed them were man stealers and slave
drivers well armed, able to cow the boldest seamen in the world.
They did not stick at murder.  So the American ship might be
puritanically Sabbatarian of a Sunday, and even moderately well fed
in rare examples, but, on the whole, she had the reputation of a hell
afloat.  There were cases of the ship's company being driven to
desert, and replaced by shanghaied men at every port, so that for a
three-years' voyage the captain paid no wages.

By comparison the Canadian, and especially the Bluenose or Nova
Scotian shipping, was even more hard-bitten, with man-killing mates
as a speciality.  The British merchant service, like the North
American, was undermanned, and had a reputation also for being
hungry, but it was rather more humane, and the death rate of ships
and men least among maritime nations.  The Norwegian death rate was
highest, the ships being second-hand coffins, ill-found, but handled
with gallant seamanship.  French ships were well designed,
beautifully built, admirably found, but double-manned to make amends
for poor seamanship, and their people liable to sudden panic.
Prussian or "Square-head" seamanship was fairly good, Russian a joke,
the Mediterranean shipping classified as "dago," and the rest as
"nigger."

The pen runs away with the writer.  Blame the pen.  As one descended
from a race of mariners, brought up among retired shellbacks, serving
before the mast just at the end of that great Golden Age of
Seamanship, I cannot but look back.  The life was bitter hard, the
men grim humorists, the ships most gloriously beautiful.  They
thronged the straits of Dover, outward, taut on a fine bowline, or
homeward running free, while purple shadows of the racing clouds
swept green sea pastures, and England faded into silver haze.  The
Channel widened under golden sunshine the gateway of Adventure, and
beyond lay enchanted seas where there were pirates still, dangerous
tribes of savages, lone desert isles, Empires in the making through
remote, obscure campaigns, stampedes to new-found gold fields, and
hardy pioneering of wild lands.  Aye, but there is heartache when
memory lights the corridors of Time, when pictures come to life of
scene and incident in the days when one was young and cared, took the
long odds and lost, fought on, and tried, and won.

According to the Norsemen, who are sea-wise beyond the common run of
mariners, the fore-and-aft sails of schooner, smack, or cutter were
masculine of gender, while the ship's rig with square yards was rated
feminine.  So, the world over, a vessel square-rigged on the
foremast, but schooner rigged on the mainmast, partook in its nature
of both sexes, and was called hermaphrodite.  Such was the brigantine
_Beaver_, but having a cross jack and a topgallant sail on the main,
her conduct as a whole was that of a perfect lady.

When the seamen were thrown into their two divisions, the mate and
the second chose alternately, each trying to pick the best team.  So
the mate chose the larboard watch, and picked out Bill Fright in
preference to the apprentices.

At actual work in making or shortening sail, each man had his proper
station, the stronger seamen on the large sails of the foremast, the
weaker on the smaller canvas aft.  So Bill found his way aft, and
barge-trained as he was, proved from the start the best man on the
trysail and the staysails.  Yet though he would break his heart with
overanxiety to please the mate and prove his manhood, it took him
many weeks to learn the crossjack and topgallant sails, and longer
still to win the leadership, to be first aloft, first at the weather
earning or the bunt, taking the posts of honor on the high swaying
yards.

The builders had left a deal of rubbish in the 'tween decks, which
the crew saved for fuel in the forecastle bogey.  On that first
evening at sea, while the _Beaver_ was threading her way through the
Downs and the Straits of Dover, the larboard watch rested from six
P.M. to eight.  They had firelight and leisure in their dogwatch
below to get the place in order, the bedding in their bunks, and kit
sorted out for use.  Then they sat on the sea chests, and Auld Jock,
the forecastle oracle, delivered a homily to instruct the young.

"Ye'll ken," he said, as he kindled his clay pipe with a coal from
the fire, "that wi' the Scots Ahm Scotch, but when Ahm shipmates wi'
the vulgar, as in the present circumstances, Ah speaks the vulgar
tongue, which is the English, and that withoot a tr-r-ace o' Scottish
accent."

"You bet your sweet socks," observed a Yankee, Silas by name, from
Salem.

"And in pairfect English," continued Jock.  "Ah lays it doon as a
first princeeple, that the vulgar is liable to interrupt: Yankees
especially being constructed like a dog, with an inch of brain to a
fathom of mouth."

"!," said the Yankee, or something to that effect.

"But them as hae the gift of reason," Jock turned his eyes away from
the American, "may have obsairved the hoose flag at oor fore truck, a
white pennant wi' red letters 'H.B.C.,' the which means Here Before
Christ forbye the Hudson's Company goes forth to the uttermost
heathen which can be skinned for furs, and the missionaries do not
follow after.

"And for why?  Them as has brains, instead of"--he glanced at the
Yankee--"of a bucket o' slush, considers the ways of the heathen.
The missionary gives the puir savage a guid conceit of his soul, so
up goes the price of furs.  Whereupon the missionary is not invited,
ye ken, to follow after.

"Whilk this Hudson's Bay Company is Here Before Christ in a second
sense o' standing in front of Him, not being especially relegate to
damnation, but for the maist pairt Presbyterian.  So ye'll tak'
notice, shipmates, that if the Company buys a leaky bucket, the same
is put in soak until the wood swells--and is, in a manner, a
reformed, guid, soond bucket, wi' warranty to haud water.

"So if the Company engages of a liar--like some he-ere present--as I
sees grinning--he'll be richt weel advised to wrop up his girt talent
in a napkin, or put it under a bushel, the while he larns to tell the
truth--in moderation, ye ken.

"And if the Company engages a thief, the same will go to waste for
want o' practice, or he'll be cast oot into a wilderness o' mosquitos
withoot sae much as a hook to fush wi'.

"Ye manna leak, nor lie, nor steal, or ye'll na stay i' the Hudson's
Bay Sairvice ane week.  And as to gettin' fu'----  Well, boys, if I
didna get droonk, for ma stomach's sake, ye ken, I'd be a captain
afloat or a chief trader ashore instead o' wasting guid advice on a
lot o' gumps in a ship's forec'stle.

"The which brings me roond to this lad heare, as is shippit i' the
name o' Willie Muggins, whereas he's no but a lubberly bargee, taking
the wage of an honest able-bodied sailorman.  Coom oot o' that bunk,
Willie, and let me get me een on ye.  So.  Rub oot the grin frae yer
ugly mug, me son, and, juist as if ye were standin' He-ere Befo'
Christ, tak a' that I say to hearrt.

"This Captain Home, a' for his own honor and glory, and to keep his
log book free frae blots and erasures, taks a bargee oot o' London
River, worth ten shillin' a month as a boy, and ca's ye an a-able
seaman at twa pun' ten a month, with anither man's kit to haud for
yer ain, and a bunk among men in the forecastle.

"Weel.  Weel, ye're in luck, ma son, and we'll no grudge ye the luck.
But ye owes it to the captain, and to us, as ye mak' guid a' that
luck.  Ye've got to pu' yer weight as a man which doesn't leak, or
lee, or steal, but does guid honest man's wark as a shipmate, come
cauld, or storm, or wrack, frae heere to Cape Stiff, and roond, and
hame agin, not leaving any ither mon to tak' yer trick at the wheel,
or yer lookout aheid, or yer ain bunt, or earring, or jobs at
sailorizing."

There was something about Bill's eyes told the Scotsman that this lad
would not fail.  Indeed, the youngster was looking not at Jock at
all, but at his mother, who stood behind the seaman just as in life,
nor was she changed by death save for a strange rare glory, love in
her eyes, amusement in her smile, then on her lips a word.  That word
was "Peace!"



III

Auld Jock had likened the Yankee to a dog with an inch of brain and a
fathom of jaw; and of a surety there was some faint suggestion, but
not of a dog exactly.  The retreating forehead, cold eyes, red
eyelids, lean, ravenous jaws, and yellow fangs, the mean and stealthy
smile with upcurved lip, were not quite those of a dog, but rather of
a wolf.  The one barks, and the other snarls, but this man kept
silence watching, waiting.  The Englishmen, the Norwegian, and the
Iroquois Indian would make the best of things or share the worst in
common, but the American would master the lot or go under.  The hours
they wasted he had filled with study.  He would be second officer,
then mate, and a bucko mate at that, then command a ship, and own one
while they were still in the forecastle.  They could play the game,
but he would win.

As yet it had not entered into his mind that he, an American, had
aught to learn from Britishers.  Hatred for the British Government
was part of his heritage, contempt for the British a portion of his
faith.  He would read them a lesson.

As his nation had nothing to learn from Great Britain, so Silas would
have accounted anybody lunatic who claimed that he could be the
better man for a lesson at the hands of these Britishers.  He sat on
the edge of his bunk contemptuous alike of the Scotsman's tolerance
and the boy's simplicity.  Auld Jock had affronted him, and Silas
would get even.  As for Willie Muggins or whatever his tally might
be, here was a sodger, a mere bargee taking a man's pay for a boy's
work.  The shrewd American was too good a seaman to tolerate false
ratings in _his_ watch.  He would take the shine out of Willie
Muggins.  "He'll wish himself dead," said Silas to himself, "before
I'm through with him."



IV

The _Beaver_ and her consort the _Nereid_ lay at Falmouth completing
for their voyage to Oregon.  Captain Home had taken the coach to
London, where he would get his final orders from the Hudson Bay House
and say good-by to his family.  His crew were at work from dawn until
after dark, watering, taking in fuel, loading the ship's stores, and
making all shipshape aloft.  Except for an anchor watch, the people
had the nights in the crowded forecastle, when foul air made the
flame of the slush lamp blue, while in the bunks men lay half
suffocated.  Willie Muggins had been on anchor watch, trying hard to
realize that he was really and truly Bill Fright of the _Polly
Phemus_, and of London River, one who had vowed himself to a
religious life, been in great dreams, beheld tremendous visions.  He
was all adrift, and now in light and troubled sleep haunted by
nightmare.  At last his body, tired out, lapsed into deep sleep, and
his soul dreamed true.

A creature of fairy grace poised on the edge of the bunk, then
settled down to pull his ears, to kiss his upturned nose.

"Oh, Slug!  Wake up!" she said.  "Storm!  Storms-all-of-a-sudden!
Wake up!"

"H'm!" said he in the deep sleep.  "That you, Rain?"

"Why didn't you come, eh, Stupid?"

"I daresn't leave my body.  Mother might come.  She'd miss me."

"Kyai-yo!" she cried.  "Her love would find you, Storm, if you were
hid in the Shadows of the Sandhills."

She looked about her.  "See that man?" she asked, pointing to Silas,
the American.  "He makes bad medicine against you, Storm.  Keep your
temper with him."

"I hate him."

"Love him," she answered, "and he is harmless.  Hate him, and his
hate is stronger than yours.  He'll ruin you."

"How can I love him?"

"First pity him.  He's lonely.  He has no friends.  His medicine is
bad.  The love of a friend could save him from sinking, drowning in
seas of Hate.  Now come to Dreamland."

"Dreamland!" he answered; and the two of them were walking through
the Fairy Glen, with the squirrels running in front to say that they
were coming.

When they came to the Tuft of Moss they found Rain's seat close
guarded by Julia, the lady Griffin, who lay stretched out to a length
of eighteen feet, asleep, with one eye open.  At sight of Rain she
blinked, and wagged eight feet of fine bronze tail with spikes, and a
barbed tip complete.

"How d'ye do?" she minced affectedly.  "I hope I see you well,
ma'am."  Her wicked eye was cocked at Storm, and her jaw slavered.

"If you sniff at him," said Rain, "I'll tell him how old you are."

Being a mature virgin, some fourteen centuries of age, she promised
faithfully to be very good.  "Especially," she added, if I may be
chaperon.  I'd love to feel like a real chaperon.  I'd be vastly
obleeged if I might take you to the Mythological Gardens.

"You know I'm really and truly a Dragon, and it's only to be genteel
that I try to behave like a Griffin.  But, would you believe
it"--with much complaisance Julia surveyed her lion body, alligator
tail, and folded bat wings--"that among my relatives at the
Mythological Gardens I am considered almost plain, not quite of
course, but almost?"

She invited the lovers to take their seats between her folded wings,
which they did.  They knew it would please poor Julia.

"If it were not unbecoming," she simpered, "to a perfect
lady--ahem--I would say 'Hang on with teeth and toenails, or you will
alight--ahem--at the wrong gardens.'  I will now ask you, Lady and
Gentleman, to put twopence in the slot.  It's for the Home, you know,
for Decayed Griffins.  Thank you.  I will next proceed--as
expected--to breathe out a few small flames."

She did, although the flames were neither few nor small, and with a
mighty leap extended her wings, all gloriously iridescent, flapped
powerfully and soared into the skies.  Then her wings seemed asleep
upon the air, with delicate featherings as she steered through space.

As to the landscape down there which floated past at a hundred miles
an hour, I might plead scant time to see, but that other fellows who
have traveled in aeroplanes would sneer at my false pretenses.  Or I
might claim that, were the story told, nobody on earth would believe
one word of it, and that again would be a mean excuse.  It is best to
own up at once to a very well-grown, mature, and lively ignorance.
And yet, there being many sorts of gems, as diamonds or rubies; so
there be divers kinds of ignorance.  Nobody would compare my
ignorance with that of a truly scientific person, shut up in a little
truth-tight compartment, and taking less air and exercise than any
convict.  My darkness is complete and natural.  Concerning the
provinces of Dreamland, Fairyland, and Wonderland I have read _Alice_
(a sound authority), the _Arabian Nights_, which are most explicit,
Malory's _Morte D'Arthur_, Mandeville's _Travels_, Hans Anderson, the
Brothers Grimm, bits of the _Odyssey_, and in fact all the best
authors, who visited lands of glamour in their dreams, and brought us
back their happy memories of truly facts.  But how did they get back?
How tear themselves away?  On questions like these the witnesses are
dumb, the scientists are stumped, and how on earth should I know!
Yet one may console oneself with the comfortable thought that the
more ignorant an author is, the longer the words he is obliged to
use, and the deeper his obscurity of style.  By that measure the
ignorance of Darwin about Biology, of Spencer in Philosophy, of Lodge
on Ether of Space is something really too awful to think about.

In her way, and as Griffins go, Julia was rather a good sort.  She
meant well, but when she set up as a guide to places where she had
never been before, she became like a professional medium, all
whoppers and busters.  Her passengers were not at all particular, but
when she pointed out Sinbad's palace she said it was Asgaard the
gods-home of the Norseman.  Then she showed off a Chinese pagoda as
the Court of King Arthur of England, so Storm called her a liar.  "So
far," she said judicially, "as it is quite becoming to a perfect
lady--I am.  You see, my dears, I know exactly where we are, but the
Mythological Gardens have been removed, and I regret to say mislaid
in the confusion of removal.  House-moving is always a worry, but
think of having to move the whole Mythological Gardens!  It's
perfectly dreadful!"

It is much to be regretted that Julia could not find her way to the
Mythological Gardens, which must be a wonderful show place.

Still, it was a nice excursion until, being very absent-minded, the
poor Griffin turned her head towards home while her body continued in
the old direction.  That is how she managed to breathe a gust of her
largest flames in the faces of her passengers.  Storm was extremely
annoyed....

* * * * * * *



V

An ant heap is a busy community, and has no time to be concerned at
all with the domestic worries of the other ant heaps.  Our world is
absorbed in its worldly affairs, and looks upon other-worldly people
as more or less lunatic for being attracted by the concerns of worlds
remote or planets far removed.  By these analogies we may perceive
that Captain David Home was all the world to Captain David Home.  The
sun which lighted that world was the Hudson's Bay House, from whence
came all good things, to which his prayers were addressed in
duplicate.  The moon which governed the night was Mrs. Home, whose
face was full or peaked or turned away according to his conduct.
There were certain little satellites whose music was not the music of
the spheres as known to the angels in Heaven.  And the rest of
creation was the _Beaver_, peopled by mates and microbes of low
degree, together possibly with rats, cockroaches, weevils, and other
vermin to be kept down.  The adoration of the sun, and moon and the
suppression of low forms of life made up the sum of Captain's Home's
religion.  So shall it be understood that, what with the sun, the
moon, and the microbes, he had no time to be bothered about the
news-sheets, but merely caused a stack of the same to be hoarded for
future use at sea, where they would come in handy when there was
nothing better as food for the mind, for shaving paper, stuffing for
his mattress, and an incentive to the mates.  They might--if they
behaved themselves--be allowed to see what was left next time he had
his berth cleaned.  So after a month or two the mates would read the
news-sheets, use them for shaving paper, stuff mattresses, have their
bunks cleaned, and allow what was left to be seen by the Boatswain,
Chips, Sails, and others in the steerage.  These, having read,
shaved, stuffed, and cleaned out, would pass the ragged remnants
forward to such as could read in the forecastle.  There the very
advertisements and obituaries would be devoured over and over again
by men with starving minds.

Thus it came about that the _Beaver_ was in the tropics, and running
down the "trades" while still the tragedy of the barge _Polly
Phemus_, noted in all the news-sheets, escaped any special attention.
It was an episode remote from the real world of things which matter.
Indeed, from the point of view of deep-sea mariners a barge is a mere
obstruction to traffic on the fairways, while bargees are lubbers of
no account whatever.

The _Beaver_ was a fine sight of a Sunday morning, when after the
decks were holystoned snow-white and breakfast served, she set her
colors out above a cloud of sail, and rigged church with the Union
Jack upon the table.  She had the boatswain whistle the men aft
barefoot all in their best white slacks, their red or chequered
shirts, black silken scarfs, and shiny tarpaulin hats.  In no detail
of pomp and circumstance would the Hudson's Bay Company come short of
the Navy, being authorized by Royal Charter to arm their forts, their
troops, their ships, to wield the Greater and the Lesser Justice,
make treaty with savage peoples or levy war, or, in an Empire three
times as large as the then United States, wield the main powers of a
Sovereign state.  Indeed the old man, standing at the break of the
half-poop, addressed his prayers to the Almighty with a jolly good
word of command.

In those days dinner and supper consisted of boiled salt horse served
in a kid or wooden tub upon the forecastle floor.  The fat joints
went aft.  There was always hard-tack; and tea, not too powerful, was
served morning and evening.  At noon there was lime juice, used by
British merchant ships on long voyages to stave off scurvy.  Sunday
dinner was illustrated with boiled duff of flour and water.  The
Navy, East Indiamen, Hudson's Bay ships, and clippers of the first
flight had plum duff.

Food thus being lavished upon common sailors, mainly because they
could not be put out to graze, they had the Sunday afternoon off duty
excepting one hand to relieve the wheel.

Men on good terms with the cook would sometimes win a mug of hot
fresh water to wash themselves withal, instead of waiting months
perhaps for a deluge of tropic rain.  Clothes were cleaned with sea
water by trailing them overboard.  There was a deal of making and
mending to get the whole kit ready against the cold and storms off
the Cape and the Horn.  Mighty fine was their craftsmanship with
waxed thread, palm thimble, bladed needles, and awls for heavy
sewing; but for delicate artistry of intricately beautiful knotting
the sheath knife lanyard has never been excelled.  The knots took
years to learn.  Men sat in the coil of a halliard or perched upon a
boat, smoking black muck in cutty pipes while they sewed, gossiped,
or spun yarns, though some would read or sleep.  Above them a flaw of
the wind would set the reef points tapping upon sails which slept,
high up against white cloud race or deep azure.  Out beyond the
bulwarks, the indigo of the deeps was maned with diamond-glittering
spray on the swift surges.  On deck was a splendor of swaying light,
and shadow soft as sapphire dissolved.  Bill sat and darned socks,
while Auld Jock read the Bible aloud, or at times expounded the
sacred text, "withoot, ye ken, the verra slichtest trace o' Scottish
accent."

Further aft, in the waist, his back against the weather bulwark,
Silas the Yankee overhauled frayed scraps from the _London
Advertiser_.  "A coroner's inquest held on 28 October at Margate
disclosed particulars, which we summarize, of a peculiarly shocking
affair occurring on board the barge _Polly Phemus_ [sic!].  The
vessel was the property of T. Fright, licensed victualer at the "Fox
under the Hill" tavern by the Adelphi, who appeared in court to make
claim, contra the claimants who testified that they found her
derelict.

"Residents of Margate to whom her cargo had been consigned, were
astonished to hear on the 22nd inst. that the barge, six days overdue
at that port, was reported to be lying at anchor some four miles to
the westward off Epple Bay, in the parish of Birchington.  Proceeding
thither by road they learned, from laborers employed upon the farm
adjacent to Epple Bay, that the barge's dinghy was gone from her
stern, although nobody had been observed to come ashore.  For some
days no smoke had been seen to rise from the cabin funnel, nor had
the vessel shown any sign of life.

"Such unusual circumstances being communicated to the Vicar as
nearest Justice of the Peace, he caused a visit to be paid to the
_Polly Phemus_.  On the cabin floor lay the body, stabbed to the
heart, of the master of the barge, identified by the owner as his
brother James Fright.  In the bunk, attired in a nightdress, lay the
mortal remains of the man's wife, also stabbed to death, but under
circumstances of awful ferocity.  Indeed, the crime appears to be the
deed of a maniac, indifferent to the woman's purse containing two
sovereigns and some silver, her silver watch, and her gold wedding
ring.  The medical evidence pointed to an interval of about six days
between the date of the crime and that of the discovery.  There were
no signs of a struggle, but the fact that the couple had been
drinking heavily was attested by the discovery of no less than six
empty gin bottles under the cabin table.  A sheath knife was found
crusted, blade and hilt, with dried blood.  But the most sinister
aspect of this affair remains to be told.

"The cabin was found locked from the outside, and this fact becomes
of dreadful significance because the fore hatch was discovered to
have been left wide open.  The fore compartment was used as a
store-room, but also occupied by the only son of the deceased couple,
by name Bill Fright.  That he had left in haste was evidenced by the
finding in his spare clothes of six shillings in silver and
elevenpence three-farthings in bronze, apparently forgotten when,
after murdering both his parents, he locked their bodies in the
cabin, and fled from the place in the dinghy.  No trace of him or of
the boat is as yet reported; but the coroner's jury gave their
verdict against him of willful murder, a warrant has been issued for
his apprehension, and the police are understood to have a strong clue
to his present whereabouts.

"He is described as follows: age 18 to 19, height 5 ft. 7 in., build
slight but strong, fair hair, blue eyes, ruddy complexion, features
those of a pug.  Usual dress a ragged blue jersey and slacks, black
silk neckcloth, sea boots.  The Joseph Fright recently executed at
Tyburn was an uncle of this atrocious young scoundrel.  _Verb. sap._"

Silas looked up from his reading and stared at Bill with a malicious
grin.  "I guess," so ran his thought, "as he's the poor orphan right
enough.  Got his Uncle Joseph hanged, and knifed his beloved parents!
He don't brag none of his past life, or talk about his last ship
either, and now it comes to mind as I caught him blubbering--seems he
feels kinder lonesome!

"Off Margate, eh?  So his boat drifts up the flood twenty or thirty
mile until he's off the Nore and fouls our bows, and comes aboard
white as a ghost, his hands all shaking.  Say!  That's why he coiled
them halliards down to hide the trembling.  Waal!

"Calls himself Willie Muggins!

"All the same, I hain't due to be seen giving him away, and him a
shipmate--sort of.  The fellers wouldn't stand for that.  Shucks!
And yet I dunno.  The news might be dragged out of me.  And there's
the mate leaning on the poop rail, curious as monkeys--sees me look
sideways trying to hide the paper, sort o' furtive, acting
mysterious.  What if I ups and axes him!"

Silas went aft, ostentatiously hiding something in his trousers
pocket, looking worried, anxious, as he approached the mate and asked
his permission to speak.

"What's wrong, my man?"

"If you please, mister.  I kinder doubt----No"--he turned away--"I
ain't having any!"

"What on earth's the matter?"

"Oh, nothing 'cept you kin gimme the date as we dropped down on the
tide from Gravesend, sir, to the Nore!"

"October 17th--why?"

Silas appeared to be appalled, stared forward at Bill, pulled out a
corner of the paper, glanced at the date, then looked back over his
shoulder, thanking the mate, and saying it didn't matter anyways.

"What doesn't matter?  Silas, give me that paper!"

"Oh no, sir, not that!  No!  No!"

"I order you to give me that paper!"

Silas used his neckcloth to wipe the sweat from his face.  Of course
he knew that the man at the wheel heard everything.

"Waal, since you got ter have it, I guess I obeys orders, if I breaks
owners.  Here, sir."

Mr. Dodd read the cutting, which to the Yankee's mind appeared to
concern young Willie who sat there darning socks, beyond the galley
door.  The ship had cleared from Falmouth on 1st November, this paper
was dated 29 October, 1835.  A week or so before that a young bargee
had murdered his parents on board the barge _Polly Phemus_, lying not
far from Margate.  That must be on or about the 16th October, perhaps
a day or two earlier.  The murderer had got away in the dinghy.  On
the morning of the 17th young Willie, sweeping upriver in a dinghy,
had fouled the ship's bows and come aboard at dawn.  He had not given
any name, had merely been dubbed Willie Muggins because the skipper
said so.

Mr. Dodd told Silas to send Willie aft, and presently the Yankee
brought the lad.  "Stand out of earshot," said the mate; "go
forward."  Silas went forward, dragging his feet, reluctant to miss
the fun.

There was something ominous in the mate's bearing, and Bill became
uneasy, wondering vaguely which of his many crimes had been found out.

"Sonny," said Mr. Dodd, "what is your real name?"

"Bill Fright, sir."  The lad was smiling now, yet with an inward
dread, for the officer had a queer catch in his voice.  What was this
paper he held and glanced at?

"You worked on a barge," he said.  "What was she called?"

"_Polly Phemus_," came the reluctant answer.  Was this paper
something to do with mother's death?

"Why did you leave her, son?"

Bill's face had clouded; the mate could see a glitter of tears, a
twist of the lips.

"You leave that alone," said the lad in a broken voice.  "It hain't
your business."

"Mine, or the captain's business, Willie.  Wouldn't you rather deal
with me, lad, eh?"

"Well, if you got to know--my father done my mammie in with his belt
knife, and then 'e killed hisself.  I found 'em dead, I did."  The
lad's face was drawn and ghastly now.  "I locked the cabin up----"

"Why?"

"D'ye think I hain't got no pride?  D'ye think I vants strangers
peeping and prying down that 'atch, and smellin' around my fambily
affairs?  Well, I don't."  Then defiantly, "And I doesn't thank you
for interfering neither!"

Mr. Dodd was a man first, an officer when he called to mind his duty.
He saw no insubordination here, but only honesty and manly
self-respect.  He did not know that the old man was listening within
the cabin hatchway.

"Who told you, sir?" Bill challenged, flushing with sudden temper,
his fists clenched, his jaw thrust out, his anger mounting steadily.
"Is that the paper you got from Silas?  Eh?  So that's the game!
I'll see to him."

Shaking with passion the lad flashed round, looked out for Silas, saw
him, and leaped like a wild beast.  "You ... take that!" he yelled,
launching his fist in the Yankee's face, dislodging teeth, then
drawing back for a space to get his full strength into the second
blow.  But the American, snarling with rage and pain, whipped out his
belt knife, and crouching low, ripped upwards with the blade.

"Ma mannie," Jock was saying, "calm yourself," as he tripped the
Yankee headlong into the scappers.  "Belay all that!" he added.  The
Yorkshireman seized the knife, and the Iroquois, with a long leap,
jumped Silas to hold him down.  The negro cook held Bill, who raged
to get at his enemy again, screaming, "Leave go!  Leave go!"

"What's all this?  Now, what's all this about?" Captain Home,
attended by the mate and the boatswain, came surging along the
gangway.  "I'll show who's master here!"  He pointed to Auld Jock,
and ordered the bos'n to "clap that man in irons!"  The bos'n
laughed.  "What, sir!" asked the mate.  "For saving a man's life?"

That brought the captain short with a round turn, baffled.  He was
determined to show his authority, somehow, anyhow.  He rounded on the
mate, would have sent him to his berth under arrest, but for the eyes
of the seamen clustered forward.  Here was menace, a low muttering
not to be disregarded.  This was their affair, a fight between two
shipmates, and all hands were determined to see fair play.

Knowing his business thoroughly, he dared not be less than master.
He was bound to dominate these men, or all of them would treat him
with contempt, as unfit to command a ship.  He must make some
example, and as it happened Silas claimed attention.  He was yelling,
"I charge that man.  I charge that man with murder!"

The captain and all hands had seen him attempting to knife the
youngster.  The Yorkshireman, grinning broadly, held out the weapon.
The bos'n with a broad paw attempted in vain to mask a snort of joy.
Auld Jock, suspecting the savor of a joke cried, "Haec mon!  Wha's
murdering ye?  Wullie?  Aye, mannie!"  Even the captain, angry as he
was, joined his bleak smile to the general roar of laughter.  But the
Yankee held his ground, defying all of them, pointing his accusation.
"I guess," he said in his high nasal drawl, slowly, venomously, "the
joke is on this man's father and mother, murdered!  And there," he
pointed to the paper which the mate still held, "is proof it ain't my
joke."

The mate gave the paper to Captain Home.  "You'd better read this, if
you will, sir."

The captain read, but did not grasp the issue until the mate
explained coincidence of dates, the description which identified the
murderer as Bill Fright, the verdict of a jury, the warrant out.
Cold, stiff, official, Home saw no demerit in this newspaper which
dared to presume the guilt of an untried man.  He looked at the
accused, and in disgust sneered at him, contemptuous, disdainful.
"Murdered your parents, eh?"

Bill turned on Silas, and in the same level voice, quiet, incisive,
he said that all might hear, "Sneaked on your shipmate, eh?  Sneaked
on a shipmate!"  He spat in the man's face.  "Cur!"

Americans have a code of honor not less manful or more loosely held
than the British, but it is different.  The American code is one of
an extraordinary chivalry towards women, children, all who are
unarmed, defenseless, weak, but has no trace of mercy on any
incompetence or false pretenses.  Silas attacked a bargee pretending
to be a seaman, and under a purser's name.  But his method of attack
struck at the roots of the British code the honor of the sportsman
who plays the game to the death, but neither explains, nor complains,
nor carries tales.  Anybody is liable to lose his temper, and in the
heat of anger, without the least intent of homicide, to kill.  Silas
himself had but this moment attempted a comrade's life.  So much was
readily forgiven, but he had sneaked to the mate, and for that there
could be no pardon.  So Bill was put in irons, and consigned to a
cupboard known as the "bos'n's locker."  He was now the pet of the
ship's company.  He might be innocent of parricide, or guilty, as
time and a fair trial would bring to proof, but he was victim of a
sneak.  No officer or man on board the _Beaver_ spoke to Silas after
that, off duty, nor was there conversation in his presence.

As to the captain, he had his consolations.  Whenever, as in this
example, he made an all-round ass of himself, he "logged" the mate
with entry in the ship's log book that Mr. Dodd had used
insubordinate language (signed) D. Home.  There are many such entries
in the oldtime manuscript volume, and, if I remember rightly, Mr.
Dodd did not always limit himself to the use of appropriate language.
Reading between the lines, I suspect that at times he kicked his
commanding officer down the companion ladder.  Two years later, when
Captain Home was drowned in the Columbia River, Dodd took the
command, and his log books are quite free from any trace of
peevishness.

Did Captain Home propose to relinquish the services of an able-bodied
man?  Did he expect Bill to be a prisoner in that cupboard rounding
Cape Horn and to survive the voyage?  Was the captain likely to get
the prisoner transferred to a man-o'-war or to a magistrate in
British territory this side of Oregon?

"Then," asked the mate, "why keep my watch short-handed, sir?  I'll
answer for him that he don't jump overboard."

"Mind your own business, Mr. Dodd."

"Right, sir; you are responsible for this man's life, not I.  But
it's my business, Captain Home, to report to you that the bos'n's
locker is too small to kennel a dog.  There's no air to breathe, and
barely standing room.  It is slow murder, and has put the men in an
ugly mood, a very ugly mood, endangering your life, Captain Home."

"How dare you!  Silence!  Go below, sir.  This is rank mutiny!"'

Next morning, very early, the captain took all that out of the bos'n,
asking what the devil he meant by locking up one of the seamen in
that doghole.



VI

The bos'n's locker must have been, apart from its perfume, cramped as
an upright coffin, for Bill dreamed that he was grandfather's clock
stuck in a corner of the old bar parlor at the "Fox," condemned from
everlasting to everlasting to point out the minutes with one hand,
the hours with the other.  And really there was no room even to point.

Then into his dream swept Rain's beloved presence.

"Hai ya!" cried Rain.  "I wouldn't point if I were you.  I'd stop."

The scene of his dream had changed.  He was in Dreamland.

"I haven't been wound up," he answered sorrowfully, "since we cleared
Ushant.  I'm feeling awful--run down, you know; but if the old man
catches me----"

"Say a prayer to Old Man."  The Indian maid put up her hands most
reverently, for "old man" is a sort of god among her people.
"Whenever you feel hungry, you should say, 'For what I am about to
receive, please, Old Man, make me truly thankful.'"

"What, for hard-tack and water!"

"Yes, you've been bad; but when you're good and say grace prettily,
Old Man will send you something nice to eat, a tongue, or berry
pemmican from the captain's food box."

"Old Man!" said Storm, with scorn.  "I don't hold with them heathen
gods.  Nice sort of a Christian you are!"

"And yet," she purred, "I hear that Christians swear by the Christian
gods Be Jabers, and S'elp-me-Bob, and Strike-me-pink--or are these
holy saints?"

So she began to tease him.

By this time they had traversed the glade which leads into Fairyland,
and as Rain sat for the Tuft of Moss in the Fairy Parliament, of
course she plumped down flop on her constituency.  Moreover, this
dream was taking on a certain strangeness, for the Red Indian maid
was no longer clad in her warrior dress.  All of a sudden she had
changed into a stiff costume of ruff and farthingale in the fashions
of the reign of James I of England, while her copper color took on a
hectic flush, her face became shrunken, and she had a dry cough.  The
fairies, who have nice manners, pretended to take no notice.

"What do you know," said Storm disdainfully, "of how we swear in
England?"

"Gadzooks!" was her joyful answer.  "Sirrah, I do assure you"--this
very primly--"that when I was in England I could swear like a little
gentlewoman.  Hoity-toity!"

The fairies had begun to scent a tale, and they are always ravenous
for stories.

"You wasn't never there!" cried Storm.

She rose from her tuft, to dip him a low curtsy.  Then she began to
speak in the manner of the Devon peasantry.

"What!  Haven't ye heeard as King Powhatan's darter, the Blessed
Pocahontas, be coom a-land i' Devon?  And they du tell as thicky
ma-aid be marriet with Master John Rolfe, the young Planter, aie, an'
has a son by him aie.  Tammas his na-a-me is, and she be coom a' the
way-ay frae Virginia, thicky Lady Rebecca Rolfe so they du sa-ay,
which be her christened na-ame."

Eavesdropping fairies, pretending not to hear, were gathered by
hundreds now to nurse a drooping rosebud.

"H'm!" Storm grunted.  "You've always got some new mare's nest to sit
on."

Yet he was puzzled to find himself arrayed, as Master John Rolfe
might have been, coming ashore from Virginia, his sea boots changed
to tan riding-boots, his trousers to trunk hose, his jersey to a
brown doublet, a stiff, wide linen collar spreading above his
shoulders, and on his head a green top hat with a feather.

"Mare's nest?" said Pocahontas.  "Pillion, you mean, on the crupper,
i' faith, be-hind my little master John Rolfe in his brown doublet,
and his green top-hat, his scabbard bruising my knees, yes, all the
way to Town."

Of course it was only a dream, but still it was queer that he seemed
to be astride a sweaty gray horse, with a perfect little witch of a
woman perched up behind him, poking shy fun as they rode.

"Now they do call me the Lady Rebecca Rolfe--as one might say our
Lady the Queen.  Yiss.  All the simple people at their doors
prick-eared and open-mouthed as we ride by, to see the Redskin lady
coom a' the way from Jamestown at the new Plantations.  And the
gentries come of an evening to our tavern, where we shall lie the
night, with civil welcome, so please you, to the Lady Rebecca Rolfe
who is a Princess Royal."

Thousands of fairies formed the audience now, and as their numbers
gave them confidence, sat unabashed to listen.

"The woman's got bats in her belfry!" said Storm, disgusted.  He sat
in the moss, and gloomed.

"Marry!  Was it not proper to ride pillion, even with him my husband?
Or to have my arm around him, with fingers creeping up under his
jerkin, for it was cruel cold, to pull the fur on his chin?"

Storm gave examples of the latest bargese, but Rain put her fingers
to her ears and went on, most demure.

"Of course my man had his servant to ride behind him, and a Devon
lass, good Betsy, riding cockhorse with our baby son in her arms."

"Take leave of her senses!" was Storm's despairing comment.

"Strewth," she observed, "or so they said in Jamestown, for though I
wore rich stuff under Dacca muslin, with jewels in my hair and
birdplumes, they all held I had married beneath me.  Aye, sirrah,
Powhatan's eldest daughter of the Blood Royal mated to plain Mister,
commoner, so please you.  Albeit, my little widower looked quite
smart, I grant you, in his court suit, a tobacco planter, a gentleman
entitled to sword and spur--by no means the common bargee using foul
speech to a lady.  At least he was never anything low.  Dear no!

"And after all, a Princess is only woman when it comes to mating, and
John was rather nice.  I loved him, so that's all there is to it,
loved him, and love him still, and ever shall do--madly!"

"O-o!" said the lady fairies--"o-h! o-h!"

"Oh, this is too much!" Storm shrieked.  "Shut up!  For Gawd's sake
shut yer mouth!"

"Methinks my little man mislays his manners."

All the gentlemen fairies clapped their tiny hands.

"Who is he?"  Storm ramped up and down in front of her, and the more
he raged, the softer was her stroking.  "Just let me at your little
man this once.  I'll corpse the swine.  I'll tear his hide off over
his ears.  Now out with it!  Who is he?  Where is he?"

"Whom I did swear to love, honor, and obey--more or less, in his
little tantrums, these two hundred years."

"Ah!" gasped the lady fairies.  "Two hundred minutes!"

"Two hundred years?  What d'ye mean?"

"Since you and I were wed, John Rolfe, in our last life, my little
man, two hundred years ago.  Don't you remember, John, how we came
freezing in the bitter east wind into the courtyard at the 'Mermaid
Inn,' so numb with cold that we couldn't get down off the horse.
Don't you remember, dear?  There was a bald vagabond came out of the
bar parlor bearing a posset to warm us--God's charity to poor
travelers.  He told us he acted at the theater.  Why, John, it seems
but yesterday."

"You mean that I----"

"Dear stupid, I mean that you're my little man Master John Rolfe the
planter of Virginia, and I'm your true wife, once called the Blessed
Pocahontas, King Powhatan's daughter, christened i' the name of
Rebecca, known to the Englishry as the Lady Rebecca Rolfe.  I'd know
you again by your naughty temper, John, pug nose, and fighting jaw,
Storms-all-the-time.  Oh! fie upon you!  Can't you remember how you
vexed the Bishop, the Heap Big Medicine Man of London, when we did
lie in his lodge at Brentford?"

"I don't believe one word of it," said Storm.  "It's only one of your
games.  Now, isn't it?"

"Oh, John dear, Matoaka speaks, your Matoaka.  Can't you remember
even that, my birth name?  Why, you would whisper it in the night,
weaving it into sonnets when you thought I was fast asleep!  Oh,
well!" she sighed, "you were not at all clever, John, dear, only a
good, religious gentleman."

She sighed, she turned away, then there came a wicked little twinkle
of her eye, a naughty curl of the lip, showing the sharp teeth--she
would have another nibble!

"If it were only a game, why it does not matter then, I didn't truly
love you in that last life of ours.  Suppose, dear, that it was all
make-believe!  What if I loved another man at the time I wedded you?"

"Ah!" sighed the gentlemen fairies.  "Oh!" gasped the ladies.

"Loved another devil!"

"He was more like a god."

"Hell!"  Storm's jealousy had flamed to greater heights than ever.

"But, dearest, if you were not John Rolfe and I was not your wife,
why fuss?"

"I don't fuss.  I never fuss.  It's you that fusses."  Storm ground
his teeth.  "Who was he?"

"My friend, the dearest friend maid ever had, dread leader and dear
father of all Virginia.  Surely you must remember the mighty
Johnsmith?"

"Never heard tell of him.  Who was this Johnsmith?"

"Why think of the magic Johnsmith book you read to me at Brentford,
all about the paladin--so you called him, this English lad commanding
the Christian guns, crusading against the Paynim Turks.  Big warriors
were these Indians you called Turks, clean fighters, but Johnsmith
made bad medicine against them, new conceits you said of blazing
serpents and fiery flying dragons which burned up the Turkish towns.
His medicine was very powerful.

"You read me how he fought three Turkish war chiefs, Knights was the
word you said, below the stockade called Reigall.  He fought with the
lance and finished with the sword, taking their three heads, and from
the last of them a suit of golden armor.

"You told me how once at the Pass of the Rose Tower this dread chief
armed all his pony soldiers with branches of trees soaked in pitch,
then lighted them like torches and charged a Turkish Army which fled
into the night, thinking the Devil was after them.

"Next of a tribe called Tartars, very bad Indians, more in number
than the leaves of the forest, who killed Johnsmith and all his
warriors in battle.  But Johnsmith came alive again to be a war slave
sold to Turkish squaws.

"From which captivity he did escape by using his chain to club down a
Turkish war lord whose head he chopped off, then took his armor,
sword, and horse for that great ride he made, the ride of a hundred
days back to the Christian tribes.  They hailed him as first of all
their warriors.

"Then of his passage in the little trade ship which fought two
Spanish battleships.  Oh, you must remember how they boarded, and
when they got the fore part of the ship he touched off his powder
barrels there and blew up the forecastle.

"Last of his coming to London, only twenty-five years old, but
passing rich in plunder, first of all warriors on earth in glory, and
so beautiful a man that every woman worshiped him--even as I did."

"Oh well, it's only fairy tales," said Storm resignedly.

"Boo!" said all the fairies.  "Boo-oo-oo!"

"Truly it was like a fairy tale," said Pocahontas, and the fairies
were ever so pleased, "when Johnsmith came into Virginia.

"My father King Powhatan watched that English camp in Virginia, of
wasters led by idiots, who starved and squabbled until the sickness
took their silly voices one by one out into the silence.  'There's
only one man among them,' said my father Powhatan, 'so they landed
him in irons--this fellow they call Johnsmith.'  But we called him
the Great Werowance.  'I'll kill him,' said Powhatan, 'and the rest
of them will blow away like the dead leaves in winter.'

"But Johnsmith had the heart of a saint and the mind of a boy, magic
beyond our biggest medicine men, and such a queer little laugh.  Our
warriors laid his head on a block to club his brains out, but I took
his head in my arms and held on tight, so they must kill me first.
After that he always used to call me his little daughter.

"My father was the biggest of all kings, but Captain Johnsmith was
his master.  Time and again Powhatan tried to get him killed but
Werowance would come and talk it over, smoking with him, laughing at
him.  Once I ran through the woods all night to tell him that
Powhatan's army was coming against his little helpless camp, but
instead of running away he unpacked his goods to give me
presents--oh, such lovely gifts if only I'd dared to take them, to be
caught wearing them.

"Then came the night when the soldiers blew up his boat with
gunpowder, and what was left of him was sent to die in England.  You
swore to me that he died there, or I'd never have married you.  And
yet in my heart I knew all the time, that he lived.  But how was I to
get to England and to him unless I married you?  Well," she sighed,
"it can't be helped.  We're married.

"Verily when we got to England, Johnsmith was alive, but then you see
I was married, to a little man with a temper--and so jealous.  Well,
better jealous than runagate!"

"Go on.  Twist the knife deeper."

She put her little head sideways and chirped like a squirrel, then
made a great pretense that she did no such thing.

All the fairies were poking one another in the ribs, ever so slyly.

"Johnsmith heard of my coming.  The camp crier called it among the
tipis in London town, but who believes what he says!  And then one
day the hero walked in Philpot Lane among the smelly lodges, when who
should he see but Uttamatomahkin, one of Powhatan's counselors, who
went with a stick and a knife, making a notch for every man he met.
Powhatan had ordered him to find out the number of English warriors
there were for killing.  Johnsmith hailed him, making the sign for
peace.

"'Oh, Great Werowance, Master of all the Seas,'" cried
Uttamatomahkin.  "'I come with the Lady Pocahontas, and her husband,
and her baby son to seek you.'"

"So they walked together, the chief notching his stick for every man
they met.  'Now show me God,' said he, supposing that the God of the
English ought to live in their chief village.

"'Nay,' answered Johnsmith, 'but is it really true my little one is
here?'

"They came to the Sachem, Sir Thomas of the English tribe in
Virginia, and asked him about the Princess Pocahontas.

"'I hear,' said the Sachem, 'she is a very civil formal
gentlewoman--though she be squaw in the wigwam of Bear-who-sulks.'"

"You made that up!" Storm snarled.

"I did," said Pocahontas.  "Then Johnsmith put on his chief's dress,
his war bonnet, and best velvet robe.  He brushed his curly beard up,
so, and his mustaches straight out like a wildcat seeking his love.
He rode his painted war horse to the Bishop's tipi, where you and I
were lying, with our small baby boy.

"Now may it please your worship Master Rolfe.  There was little me
tied up with strings like a sacred medicine bundle, in wooden hoops,
and a stomacher stiff as a baby's cradle board, a piccadill collar
stuck out all round with skewers, a tall hat, and high-heeled
moccasins--yes, with red heels tap-tap-tap on a floor like black ice.
Tap-tap-tap--flop, then scramble up to my feet, and tap, tap,
tap--lawks!"

She slithered round the Tuft of Moss, like a cat on glare ice,
pretending to overbalance and recover, wide-eyed, hands outstretched.

Some of the fairies skirled and ran away.

"I couldn't run to him on heels like that.  I couldn't love him
properly in stomacher and farthingale.  I knew he'd hate me in blue,
because I'm yellow, and what could I do but beat the air with a fan
of three plumes or a stick?  He never liked face paint either--men
who kiss nicely object to the taste.  H'm?  No?  But then you don't
kiss nicely like dear Johnsmith.

"On the whole I couldn't bear it.  At the sight of him I tried to run
and couldn't.  So I just turned away, flopped on the floor, and
howled.  Yes, there's your civil formal Lady Rebecca, Royal Squaw,
gentlewoman, and tied up with a husband, sniff, boo-hoo-hoo-oo!
Although he was only a little one."

Storm crouched in the moss a picture of glum despair, and all the
fairies poking fun at him.

"Out with it," he growled.  "You ran away with Johnsmith!"

"Ran away with grand-dad!  He kissed you as if you were his long lost
little one, and took you to walk in the fields, his arm about your
neck, until I'd time to mend the ravages in my face-paint."

Storm looked up, wistfully, humbly.  "I seem to remember," he
whispered.  "Father of Virginia and New England."

"Founder of the United States," said Rain, "for so my spirit-guide
would call him."

"Captain John Smith?  Why didn't you call him by his proper name?"

"Beshrew me I did," she answered indignantly.  "All the time."

"Oh, you little liar!"

* * * * * * *

"I may be a little liar," said the bos'n, "but this is the first I've
heered about it.  Now wake up properly."

The bos'n had brought Bill hard-tack and water for breakfast,
together with a hunk of cold meat pie pinched from the cabin pantry.
He unlocked the handcuffs, and put the food on the small paint-shelf.
"When youse put that inside your belt," said he, "Old Home-sweet-home
says you kin make yourself scarce, and join your watch, my son, the
watch below."



VII

The old man nagged like an old woman and Mr. Dodd looked haggard,
haunted, grew irritable, and hounded the men at their work.  As to
the second mate, he seemed demoralized altogether.  Nor was there
comfort in the forecastle, where the straining bowsprit worked a
passage for the water until all bunks were sodden and men wrung out
wet clothes to put on damp ones after their watch on deck.  The
presence of a sneak made talk unsafe, and there was sullen silence in
that wet, black, freezing hole, while the Cape Horn swell struck like
a battering-ram and freezing sprays lashed high.  Then somehow
Captain Home took exception to a glance or a word from Auld Jock,
flew in a passion, had the man spread-eagled, and gave him three
dozen to show him who was master.

"Rope's end" could not be mentioned after that, or "rope," a word but
seldom used afloat.  It was barred lest that or ever so slight a
reference remind Auld Jock of the outrage.  Delicately tactful,
afraid to take over his duties lest they affront his pride, the
fellows would leave to him the bit of meat which had a trace of fat,
offer all sorts of little courtesies, seek Jock's advice in their
affairs, ask his opinion when a point was argued.  Silas was once
more a member of the mess, apparently quite friends again with Bill,
for in this general mourning all men were brothers.  But on duty
there were no chanteys sung.  The job which had taken five minutes
was now dragged out for an hour; a surly obedience, a scowling
glance, replaced the old alacrity of service, and Captain Home had
remarkably narrow escapes from blocks or marlinespikes which fell
from aloft by accident.

Then at long last, driven far down towards the Antarctic after six
weeks of awful cold, of furious gales, of peril without and
smoldering mutiny within, the ship won round the Horn.  Sheeted with
ice from truck to keelson, she drove before a polar gale straight to
the norrard.  A storm jib, and a close-reefed to'gallant sail kept
her just clear of being jumped by black-browed, white-manned,
hell-bred, mast-high combers, outroaring the Antarctic wind, while
sheeted spray slashed overhead, and on the rolling decks green seas
came aft, waist deep.

Jock and the Iroquois, the two strongest men in the watch, were at
the wheel, the mate standing by lest a kick of the rudder whirl them
into the scuppers.  Forward the rest of the men hung on, half
drowned, Silas and Bill together in the starboard shrouds.  "Say,"
the American had to shout to make himself heard in that uproar, "jest
you keep an eye on the old man, aft there in the rigging.  He knows
he daren't heave to, and if we broach we'll founder; but if he's man
enough he'll set three reefs in the tawps'l and let her rip for Hail
Columbia."

By the fading daylight Bill saw the gleam in this Yankee's eyes, the
smile upon his lips, the triumph of him, caught the exultant laugh,
and for the first time knew that here was indeed a man.  But as it
needs a light to cast a shadow, this new admiration for the Yankee
sharpened Bill's memory of the betrayal, so mean an act of spite.  If
the ship won through to the Columbia, Silas had prospects ahead a
life to live.  If she broached to, if one of these vindictive monster
seas should batter in her ribs, and send her reeling down through the
black deeps beneath, he need not go to Newgate, or be hanged at
Tyburn on a false charge of murdering his mother.  As he looked at
Silas the lad's lips appeared to be drawn, gray, smoldering, while in
his eyes the American saw grief so awful that he turned away.  He was
afraid.

To fear is only human, but the display of it is cowardice, that
meanest selfishness which infects and saps and drains away the
courage of others just when they need their strength.  So Silas,
knowing at the inner-most of his being that he was afraid of Bill, in
spirit terrified, must needs, for his manhood's sake, attempt to
bluff.

"Shucks!  You got a grouch ag'in me still?" he challenged.

"Yes," answered Bill, through his clenched teeth, "I has."

"You'd as lief fight it out?"

"In the second dog watch if we've time," said Bill, "or the middle
watch if we hasn't."

"Right-o.  Where?"

"On the bowsprit end.  We'll 'ave it out with knives."

Silas wished then with all his heart he had not tried to bluff.

"You mean that?" he asked huskily.

"I mean," said Bill, "as I'm afraid to live, and Silas," he stared
into the man's eyes, "you're scared to die!"

"Waal, that's a fact.  I am--leastways to die at such a job as that."

"When you sneaked," said Bill, "your words was murder."

A heavy sea crashed inboard, filled the fore deck, and when the spray
cleared they saw the galley all adrift against the half-poop.

"Bill," said Silas, "I ax your pardon for what I done."

"And I forgives yer, Silas."

"Bill--I see the old man screeching for us."

But Bill saw his mother standing amid the wash and wreckage aft.  She
nodded and smiled to him.  Then she was gone, and the lad went to his
duty about the shattered galley.



VIII

The gale was at its height during the middle watch, but on towards
dawn began to flaw with lulls between the furious squalls, so when
the starboard watch was called the captain had the idlers on deck,
served rum, and set the topsail.  It was a sign that, for Cape Horn
was conquered, and in their victorious mood, with the sudden glow of
liquor warming them, the men forgot the gloom of the long nights, the
piercing cold, drenched clothing, boils, wet berths, the chronic
hunger, and mental weariness from lack of sleep, their burning hatred
of the captain, even the lack of that human kindness which alone
makes life worth living.  The setting of the topsail was a sign of
better days, of favoring winds, of sunshine, warmth, the Happy
Latitudes ahead, water to wash with, a landfall, a seaport, fresh
food, and an all-night's rest.

Until this time Bill's mind had dwelt mainly upon the past, with a
sick yearning for his mother, and for the barge, the only home he had
known, the merry traffic down the Lower Reaches, the stir and throb
of London.  If he thought of the future, it was only with dread of
being taken back, and hanged as a matter of course--yes, just as
Uncle Joey had been turned off at Tyburn.  Now a new impulse filled
him.  Was he such a fool as to be taken back there alive?  "Yes, if
they're smart enough to catch me once I gets ashore!"

He was tailing on the halliard.  For the outrage upon Auld Jock, the
ship's best chantey man, no man would start a stave.  Yet in his mind
was the memory of the Trawling chantey picked up long ago from the
Barking fisherman.  He began to hum the tune, aloud before he knew,
and presently a Shetlander of the starboard watch took up the chorus,
one after another caught the melody, and Bill roared out the bass,
yelped the high grace notes:

  "Now up jumps the Herring--the King of the sea,
  He jump to the tiller--shouts 'Hellum a lee.'

"Chorus, you fellers--

  For it's windy old weather,
  Stormy bad weather,
  And when the wind blow
  We must all pull together!"



IX

At Robinson Crusoe's Island, which is now called Juan Fernandez, the
_Beaver_ put in for water, and there her consort the _Nereid_ joined
company, having been out of sight for a month.

Of course Bill wanted to go ashore with the watering party, so the
old man clapped him in irons lest he attempt an escape.  "Losing your
day's work," said Silas, who came to him at dinner time in the
'tween-decks, and brought food for them both.

Bill yawned.  "Sleep is good," said he.  "I didn't intend to run--at
least, not here."

They sat on the deck with the food between them, to share the salt
meat and biscuit.

"You hadn't oughter run," answered Silas.  "Them Chilian loafers
ashore what thinks they're soldiers ain't worth encouraging.  Set 'em
to hunting you--why, they'd get swelled head mistaking themselves for
white men.  You want to wait until we makes little old North America,
where there's more room."

"You been on this west coast?" said Bill.

"You betcher--droguing hides along them Mexican ports, from San Diego
all the way up north to San Francisco.  Yes, and when I was whaling,
I been to Roosian America.  We watered at New Archangel!"

"Away north?"

"Sure, and in between California and the Roosian fur-trade forts is
the British claims.  That's from San Francisco up to 54° 40"
north--all Hudson's Bay posts, wot we're heading for now.  The
British hain't got no rights to be there anyways, seeing it's U.S.A."

"What rights 'as you got to our forts?"

"Oh, as to that, the English can take their rotten forts away and
bury 'em.  It's the country belongs to us.  We bought it from France.
It's part of Louisiana."

"'Ow abart the moon?"

Silas grinned joyfully.  "Waal," he drawled in his very slow speech,
"it's this a-way.  The President he come along to tell my mother as
he'd like to owe her ten dollars, if she could fix it.  I axed him
about the moon, but I sort o' disremember exactly what he said.
Lemme see.  Why, yes.

"Mr. President, he says, says he, 'Waal, Silas, it ain't lo-cated,
the moon ain't, yet,' says he, 'but when it is lo-cated, you kin bet
yer life no foreigners will be up early enough in the mawning, but
they'll find our stakes in fust.'"

Bill was profoundly impressed, and tried in vain to recollect any
such conversation of his own with King William IV.

"Another time," said Silas thoughtfully, "when the President went
buggy riding with my father, he telled him that when we're good and
ready, we're going to run you British out of Oregon."

* * * * * * *

"--and Padre, Silas says----"

"Is that the dog-faced man?" asked Rain.

"More like a wolf," said Storm.  "Him as is going to give me his gun,
to make up for the way he sneaked."

"Give you his gun?" asked Rain, delighted.

"Yes; it's a good gun too, if I can get a flint for the lock.  If it
had a flint, of course he wouldn't give it me.  Besides, there's no
powder or ball."

"When will he give it?" asked Rain.

"When we gets to the mouth of your river."

"I'll pray to the Sun for a flint," said Rain.

"Padre"--the lad looked up at the fairy clergyman, who was
frightfully busy working at his book--"Silas says that the Americans
is going to run us English out of Oregon."

The padre abandoned his work in despair, swung round on his high
stool, put up his spectacles, and looked over the top of the rims at
these disturbing children who squatted very comfy on the corner,
holding each other's hands.  "Ah! that reminds me," he said.  "Julia
is engaged!"

"Oh!" Rain cried.  "But, Padre, you know there is no marrying here."

"Did I say marrying?" asked the clergyman.  "No, Julia took a fancy
to Lion King-at-Arms, and is engaged, digesting him."  He sighed.
"She has such a temperature!  Ah! yes, and by the way, young Storm, I
have a letter which will interest you."

"Eh?"  Storm jumped to his feet.  "But of course there hain't no
letters in Dreamland."  He sat down again disappointed.

"Pause, my son.  Think it out.  The fairies know all about
everything.  Well, how would they know anything if they never got any
news?  When a letter is destroyed down there on Earth, of course it
comes here by fairy post at once.  This letter"--he grubbed about for
some time in his desk--"Ah! here.  It came I see in 1806, so it's
been quite a long time waiting for you."

"Twenty-eight years!  Nine years before I was born!"

"So matters are arranged.  The little beforehand and the little
behindhand are attributes of the fore-handed fairies.  Now, this
particular letter is in Russian; but there again, pause, and reflect.
It is a thought, my son, and thoughts are things which flash from
mind to mind.  I am speaking Spanish, but you hear in English, and
Rain understands in Blackfoot.  You shall read this Russian letter in
your own language."

Bill wanted the letter, but the padre would lecture, so it couldn't
be helped.

"I see," he continued, "that it went down on board the Russian scow
_Peter Paul_, when she foundered in a gale off Iterup in 1807.  It is
written by a man you are to meet in Oregon, a Lieutenant Tschirikov.
His grandfather, you know, was the great Lieutenant Tschirikov, the
Russian explorer who sailed with Vitus Bering in 1741.  He made the
first landfall when the Russians discovered North America from the
west."

Storm groaned, for at this rate he would never get the letter.

"I'm frightened," said Rain.  "Letters are supernatural, and
fearfully powerful medicine.  Hadn't Storm better pray to the Sun
before he reads?"

"N-no."  The padre thought this over very carefully.  "Lieutenant
Tschirikov is bald, quite bald, and very very fat, so he should be
quite harmless.  The truly dangerous magicians are never bald or fat
like Tschirikov."

"Still, I think," said Rain most fearfully, "dear Storm, you'd better
make a sacrifice to the Sun.  Just hang up something."

Ever obedient to her, Storm jumped up, grabbed the padre's
spectacles, ran out, and hung them on a tree as a sacrifice to the
Sun.  Then he came in again, snatched the letter, and read.  It
seemed to have no bearing upon his affairs, but still one never knows:

  To His EXCELLENCY
    COLONEL THE BARIN ALEXEI ALEXANDROVITCH,,
      GOVERNOR-GENERAL OF EASTERN SIBERIA,
        IRKUTSK.
  ST. PETR, KADIAK ISLAND, RUSSIAN AMERICA,

_July_ 10th, 1806.

VENERABLE BROTHER,--

In the name of all the saints--vodka!  Send barrels!  I languish on
salmon, and Eskimo, inhaling the latter, for so far I have been
mercifully delivered from the necessity of eating any.  They are
suffocating.

I pray you salute the Immaculate Ruin, our Aunt, and kiss her on my
behalf.  Thus I shall have done my duty, but not suffered.

Oh for the delights of your Excellency's palace, and a clean shirt!

How I envy you the very least of those perquisites and assumptions of
plunder which ever flow into your treasury, pickings worthy a
minister of state.  But at the least I am solvent, for so long as I
can blow my own trumpet I shall never be destitute, having Her
Excellency--Salute!--yourself--General Salute!--and the Immaculate
Ruin--nine guns!--to borrow from.  In default of roubles I repay, as
you perceive, in compliments.

Baranov, you know, spent last summer in extending the Company's
operations to a point a few thousands versts or so from here, and far
to the eastward of Mt. St. Elias.  Here's to St. Elias!  I was with
him--not Elijah, you stupid--in the _St. Paul_, my present command,
and he had all the natives that could be mustered, in some three
hundred skin canoes.  Most of them, by the way, were drowned in Icy
Bay, but when Baranov makes an omelet he likes to hear the eggs
splash.  We founded a post in the country of the Sitka tribes, and
called it New Arkangel.  On our return westward in the autumn, we
left behind some twenty-three men as garrison, but they have
foolishly allowed themselves to be done to death.  So we sail in a
few days to massacre the Sitkas, the only amusement there is to look
forward to at present.

Meanwhile I have put in for repairs here at St. Petr; and beyond some
little diversion of which it is the purpose of this present writing
to advise you, I have little to do except play cards with the priest,
and listen to the oddest lot of legends that ever came out of a
monastery.  Yum!  Yum!

I do not suppose that you care to hear about the conditions of the
country and the fur trade, or I would regale you with an account of
all the hunters drowned, stabbed, or starved since I last wrote.
Nay, I will not weary you with commonplaces.  It is enough that men
such as ourselves of the first fashion are condemned to be bored all
day with the affairs of the canaille, without letting them intrude
upon our private correspondence.  Verily our revered grandparent
deserved to be exterminated and heavily fined for his idiocy in
discovering such a country.

As a matter of fact, however, I am not writing to amuse either myself
or you, but to tell you how I managed to fall out with Baranov.  As
the insolent old fool has written to Golovnin and others to get me
sent home in disgrace.  I want your Excellency to have his paws
burned.  How such a base-born, red-haired, shopkeeping, bald-headed,
shriveled-up he-bear came to be Governor of Russian America I cannot
imagine.

Well, early in June I arrived at Ounalashka, in the Aleutian Islands,
with supplies from Petropavlovsk; found the Governor there, and began
to unload.  From the first I heard of little else but the charms of
Olga--the Little Fur Seal--they called her--daughter of a big Aleut
chief from Oumnack.  I entertained the old gentleman on board the St.
Paul, until he grew mellow with my particular vodka, now, alas! no
more.  Olga sat in a corner with her big dark eyes fixed on me, her
red lips just a little parted, and her black hair streaming down on
either side of her face: only a savage, of course, but one cannot
expect court ladies from the entourage of Her Imperial Majesty.  When
I thought the chief was in a sufficiently amiable humor--you could
have buttoned his grin behind his neck--I asked how many skins he
required for his very plain daughter.  Not that I wanted her.  But
still I felt some curiosity.  It would not be good for his morals to
encourage his avarice.

To which he replied that all my skins wouldn't buy her, because the
great lord Baranov demanded her for wife.  Now the Governor has more
skins than I have hairs; but I have wisdom, and wisdom is better than
many skins; so I told the chief that if he would give me Olga I would
tell him all about everything.  You know I picked up ventriloquism at
the Naval College, so that when the chief derided me, voices were
heard laughing at him from under his chair, out of the vodka bottles,
in the beams overhead and all over the cabin.  He said I was a great
doctor, and knew everything; but how could he give me Olga when he
had also promised her to Ivan, a young chief in the village?
Moreover, she was in love with a fourth party.  I told him that I was
very wise, and that I loved Olga.

Now, to make a long story short, I disposed of the pretenders as
follows: The fourth party I won over by giving him an old cocked hat
and a broken sword, together with the degree of Sublime Exaltation in
the Ancient and Hereditary Order of Mystical Gluttons.  The
initiation was a most imposing ceremony.  I read the ritual from the
ship's big medicine book, and in token of the ancient and hide-bound
traditions of the Order, encased his head in plaster of Paris and
painted his nose red.  After marching thrice round the cabin on all
fours we concluded the ceremony with an oath, whereby he is bound to
present himself in person at Irkutsk, and there to deliver letters
credential to His Excellency the Venerable and Supreme Grand Master
of the Order, take him into his arms, rub noses in token of amity and
a joyful heart, and to receive the appointment of Minister of Stolen
Goods in the government of the province.  He sails in the ship of my
little friend Hans Schlitz, and I hereby commend him to your
brotherly love.

Now for the third party, Ivan, the young Chief: I sent him to Baranov
in the dead of the night to ask why he has red hair; but instead of
having his mind enriched with the important revelations which were to
have been uttered by the Governor on hearing this mystic password, my
poor friend Ivan had his body decorated with quite other forms of
enrichment, and was found next morning on top of the church belfry
with one eye and three fingers missing and his nose pointing round
the corner.  Baranov is inclined, at times, to be a little playful.

The fourth party being under your Excellency's care, and the third
suitor ignominiously rejected by the Little One as damaged goods, I
had now to compensate her father for not getting Baranov's skins.
Wherefore I proceeded to instill the most subtle wisdom into the head
of my future father-in-law.  I taught him a little sleight of hand,
and some card tricks; showed him how to run a sword through his body
by means of a tin tube in the shape of a half belt, invented for him
a beautiful system of fortune telling, and gave him the ship's
speaking trumpet with which to bellow at the people through his big
medicine mask.  I showed him the effects of phosphorus upon the face
at night, and how even white people turn black when painted with
nitrate of silver.  But the most polite of his new accomplishments is
the ventriloquism--a trick which he has raised to the dignity of a
fine art.  Suffice it to say that I qualified that savage to become
such an intolerable nuisance that he is to-day the recognized terror
of all Aliaska, and possesses more skins than even Baranov could have
offered for his daughter.

But alas for all my virtue and my discretion!  Just as I had won the
Little Fur Seal, for whose sake Baranov piled up his skins in vain,
the young Aleut Chief was undergoing repairs, and the fourth party
proceeding to rub noses with your Excellency at Irkutsk, the old
chief came to me, crouched down on the cabin floor, and began to wail.

I took him by the scruff, rattled his teeth, and ordered him to speak.

"She's gone," he moaned--"gone away in the night, and left her poor
old father all alone!"

I hauled him on deck by the ear, kicked him overboard, and went to
Baranov.  Our sorrows had made us brethren, and we wept.  We were
sampling a small keg of brandy, to assuage our anguish, when in came
Ivan, with his nose bandaged up and his tongue hanging out, to mourn
with us.

In proof of our sympathy we gave him some of the brandy, and as we
three sat together mingling our tears with our spirits, a rude little
boy came in and laughed at us.  Olga, he said, was his sister, and
had whispered to him last night, before she went away that _any one
who wanted Fur Seal would have to hunt_!  She said also that she was
going to St. Petr on Kadiak Island, and bade him tell nobody of the
fact, particularly Captain Tschirikov.

Baranov rose from his chair with a most absurd assumption of dignity,
and said: "Captain Tschirikov, you will at once beach the _St. Paul_
for repairs in the East Cove, and superintend the work in person.
Ivan, you will report to me at nine o'clock this evening, and receive
dispatches for Attoo Island.  Boy, consider yourself entered on the
books of the Company as my body servant, and be ready by to-morrow
morning to go with me to Kadiak Island."

Dismissing Ivan and the boy, I told Baranov that I intended to beach
my ship for repairs, not in the East Cove but at St. Petr, where
there are better facilities.  He at once ordered me under arrest.  I
replied that I was not accustomed to receive indignities at the hands
of tradesmen, that as a naval officer I was responsible to no
civilian, and only refrained from calling him out because he was not
a gentleman.  Leaving him speechless with rage, I boarded my vessel,
slipped and buoyed my cable, and squared away for Kadiak.

A Russian does not sleep when he is out wife-hunting, and you have
only to hold in remembrance the black eyes of my Little Fur Seal to
realize that I was not many days in reaching her hiding place.  I
landed at St. Petr with my whole starboard watch, and proceeded to
search the village.  Just as one of my men entered a house, he called
to me, but I reached the front door only in time to see something
flutter out at the back.  Giving chase, I had the Little Fur Seal
safe in my arms within a hundred yards of the house.  We have hunted
bears together, O my brother, and faced them when they were defending
their cubs; but a she-bear in the spring is a lamb compared to Olga.
She scratched, kicked, bit, screamed; she tried to plunge a long
knife into me, and when I took that from her, clutched my hair.
Wherefore I do beseech thee, Alexei Pavlovitch, as thou dost honor
the memory of our sire, to send for a wig to Petersburg--just a
little wig, with a becoming queue, in the latest mode of the _vielle
noblesse_, in size about the same as you wear on full-dress
occasions.  Have this consigned to the care of Hans Schlitz at
Petropavlovsk.

When I got her down to the boat the Little One began to sulk; and
except for some little scratching as we got her up over the ship's
side, she sulked on consistently until supper time.  I felt like a
brute as, after a solitary meal in the cabin, I smoked my pipe before
turning in.  I was conscious all the time of the glare from her black
eyes.  Whenever I tried to make friends they flashed upon me like
twin stars; while once in my bunk I had an uncomfortable presentiment
that, presently finding me asleep, she would cut me off in the flower
of my youth with a big butcher knife.  But reflecting that it is much
wiser to sleep than to lie awake imagining vain things, and greatly
solaced by the memory of having seen Baranov's vessel beating her way
up the harbor, I partly closed my eyes, and dozed a little.

As luck would have it, I was just sufficiently awake to note that the
Little One, believing me to be asleep, was stirring.  To give her
confidence, I snored comfortably and, unsuspected by her, watched
every movement.  How pretty she looked as she stood in the faint glow
of the candlelight, and then moved slowly towards me, almost
imperceptibly and softly as a panther!  Picture to yourself, Alexei,
the gentle swaying of her limbs, the tangled mass of shadowy hair,
the brilliant eyes, the full red lips!  Outside I could hear
Baranov's crew letting their anchor go, and taking in their canvas.
I thought also, with a sense of pleasure, of Ivan stealing slowly
along the coast in his canoe towards us.  Then, brother, conceive my
delight as I saw her creep past the locker upon which lay the knife
without even stretching out her hand towards it.  A moment later I
felt that she was bending over me; her breath played upon my face,
her lips drew closer and closer, until at last they rested upon my
cheek, leaving there the imprint of the sweetest small round kiss
that ever sent a thrill of joy through the heart of man.

_The Little Fur Seal was mine!_

  Your affectionate brother,
        NICOLAI.


In the padre's little adobe house Storm finished reading, and at once
the fairies, peeping round the edge of the door and the window, made
grand pretense that they had not heard.

"Padre," asked Rain, "what's bald?"

The holy man lowered his head to show the shaven tonsure.  "That,"
said he.

"Oh!" said Rain.  "I never saw a bald before.  We don't have any in
the Blackfoot nation."  Tears came to her eyes and made them glisten.
"And fat," she said.  "Poor Nicolai!  Poor Little Fur Seal!  Storm,
when you meet him in the Oregon be kind to him and comfort him for
the fat and bald.  And give her my love too."

"If I remember," answered Storm.

* * * * * * *

And Bill awakened because the bos'n knelt beside him with a lantern,
taking off the handcuffs.  The _Beaver_ was at sea.



CHAPTER III

IN BRITISH OREGON


I

What is a Christian?  Is he one who professes the Faith?  I have my
doubts.  The Holy Inquisition professed belief, and generously burned
the bodies of the orthodox in order to save their souls.

Perhaps He accepts as Christian all who do the will of His Father by
loving God and their neighbors.  I dare hold that these are the
Christians whom Christ believes in.  Throughout a varied and
misguided life I have found the sort of Christians who love God and
their neighbors, both in the cities and the countryside; but they
seemed most numerous in the fighting forces at war, the fishing
vessels, the deep-sea shipping, the cow camps, the remote gold
fields, and the forlorn outposts of trappers, rangers, scouts,
explorers, pioneers.  Such Christians did not always clean their
teeth, or wash behind their ears, their conversation would have
shocked their mothers and all angels; but then one doubts if the
fisherman of Galilee had any table manners, and if Peter, James, and
John called on a modern bishop, they would certainly be sent to the
back door.

Is this too long a sermon?  Skip, then!

Nowhere are men so jammed as in a deep-sea forecastle, or piled on
top of one another for so long a time, so plagued by rats, bugs,
damp, cold, and gloom, with such a suffering from lack of sleep,
fresh water, decent food, pure air, and privacy.  And nowhere do men
learn a more whole-hearted charity towards others, and liberality,
such a complete unselfishness, so grand a Christianity of mind.  In
foul weather everybody saves a shipmate's life, say, once a day, and
nobody expects a word of thanks.

The fellow who does not matter one way or the other is called Hi!
The chap who provides any sport, puts up a good fight, or makes
friends worth having generally earns a nickname and as a rule will
answer to it, cheerily or with his fists, according to his nature.
Murderer Bill, as his shipmates called young Fright, took his
nickname without resentment.  So one may address the most frightful
insults to a dog in such a tone of voice that he wags his tail
delighted.

If anybody wanted to have trouble, Murderer Bill made haste to
provide.  He fought several battles, and had a reputation for
pugnacity.  Yet to anybody who treated him half decently he proved a
loyal friend in thought, word, and deed, the least selfish man on
board, recklessly generous.  No doubt was ever thrown upon his
courage, he had a natural bent for seamanship, and fully held his
ground as able seaman.  In the larboard watch his special chum,
towards the end, was Silas, Auld Jock his instructor, and the rest
were friends.  There was no man on board more generally liked.

And when the _Beaver_ came safe inside the breakers on the Columbia
bar, the captain had Murderer Bill haled down from aloft by the
bos'n, clapped in irons, and once again consigned to the 'tween-decks
as a prisoner.  The ship's company as a whole determined to get even
with the captain.

Thus Rain's prayer to the Sun came to be answered.  The mate lent a
flint which fitted the lock of Silas's gun.  A bullet mold was found
in the bos'n's locker and plenty of lead in the ballast for a supply
of bullets.  When the ship's magazine was opened for the salute to
Fort Vancouver, a bag of powder strayed.  The Iroquois made the belt
and pouches, Auld Jock gave a hunting knife, somebody stole a lens
from the captain's telescope to serve as a burning glass for making
fire.  The Yorkshireman gave a wallet with flint, steel, and tinder.
There was a purse filled by subscription.  It was certain that, when
Murderer Bill escaped to the woods, he would not go empty handed, but
doubtful rather whether he might need a wagon to carry his equipment.



II

To have a luminous mind concerning Fort Vancouver it is better not to
get the place mixed with Vancouver Island, or with the modern seaport
of Vancouver upon the adjacent mainland.  The old capital of British
Oregon--a city stands there now--was on the northern bank of the
Columbia where a natural park of pasturage and timber sloped upwards
from the river.  Upstream the valley was barred by lofty forests, and
from north to south no less than seven white immense volcanoes
appeared to float above a sea of mist.

The village on the river bank had three dozen log cabins, very neatly
kept by Indian housewives, their men being Shetlanders and Orkneymen,
French-Canadians and Métis, Kanakas and Iroquois.  The offspring
attended school, where Solomon Smith taught American, singing,
deportment, and morality.  Behind the village rose the stockade 20
feet high, quadrangular, and in extent 750 feet by 450.  It was not
really a fort, having neither bastions, galleries, guns, nor even
loopholes, for indeed a wooden popgun would suffice to terrorize the
Chinooks.  Facing the main gate was the chief factor's house, a
French-Canadian manor, its white veranda trellised for vines which
yielded purple grapes.  Between two flights of steps forming a
horseshoe stood a 24-pounder gun, with a mortar on either side, and
pyramids of shot, to frighten children away from the geranium beds.
On either side of the great house extended the officers' mess,
anteroom, library, a range of officers' quarters, and houses for the
guests.  Fronting these were the big warehouses, store, ration house,
hospital, and shops for the artificers, the tailor, the turner, the
cobbler, the smith who made fifty hatchets a day in his spare time,
the bakers who supplied hard biscuits to the Company's ships, and the
Indians who beat the furs each week to rid them of moth and dust.  On
the lawn which covered the main square stood the bell-house and the
flag-staff.  Outside the stockade was the stead, with a threshing
floor worked by oxen, the orchard where all the trees had props to
help them carry their load, and the farm of seven hundred acres.
Beyond was pasturage where the sheep yielded twelve-pound fleeces,
and the growing herd of cattle was kept sacred for the future
prosperity of Oregon.  Downstream a couple of miles an Hawaiian
herder tended the pigs in the oak woods.  Upstream was the sawmill
which furnished cargoes of lumber to the Sandwich Islands.  In all
that husbandry the figs and lemons were the only failures; but Mr.
Bruce, the gardener, had an exchange of seeds with the Duke of
Devonshire's place over at Chiswick-on-Thames, and yielded to no man
in strawberries or Juan Fernandez peaches.  Outlying this capital of
the fur trade was old Astoria, an American fort bought by the Company
during the American-British War of 1812, but now in ruins.  A white
man lived there to tend the four-acre garden and report the arrival
of ships.  On Puget Sound was Fort Nisqually, and farther up the
coast Forts Langley, McLoughlin, Simpson, and Stickeen, which last
had been leased from the Russians.  Up the Columbia Valley was Fort
Walla Walla, from whence a trail went eastward a couple of thousand
miles to the United States, then spreading steadily up the Missouri
Valley.  Northward of Walla Walla was Fort Okanagan, which had
stockaded outposts on the Spokane River, Lake Pend d'Oreille and
Flathead River, with others farther on in what is now Canadian
territory.  Fort Colville, near the present boundary, and on the main
stream of the Columbia, was second only to the capital, and thence
the annual brigade of cargo boats went by river to Hudson's Bay.
Southward of Vancouver about two hundred miles there was an outpost,
and beyond that, six hundred miles or so, was the little Mexican
presidio of San Francisco.

In theory the country was held jointly by Great Britain and the
United States, but in fact it was British Oregon.  The Hudson's Bay
voyageurs retired, who farmed in the Willamette, were hardly as yet a
colony, nor did the Company project large settlements to disturb the
Indians or the fur trade.  The time was a golden age of progress,
prosperity, sane government, and unbroken peace, the sole creation of
one man, Chief Factor David McLoughlin, Father of Oregon.

This gentleman was Irish on the father's and French-Canadian on the
mother's side, Canadian born, and held a degree in medicine from the
Faculty of Paris.  He stood six feet six inches, powerfully built,
strikingly handsome, with long hair iron-gray.  One would compare
him, in stern probity, with Washington, in charm with Lincoln, but
not by any means with lesser men than these.  His enemies testify to
his hospitality, his delight fulness as a host, his generosity.
People who came out of the wilderness or from the sea were charmed
with the officers' mess, with its willow-pattern crockery salved in
1825 from a wrecked Chinese junk, the English cut glass, the bright
silver, the flowers, the gracious ease, the sparkling conversation.
And after dinner, Dr. McLoughlin, who had one glass of wine when a
ship came in, would ring the bell for Bruce the gardener, who
presented him with the snuff box.  The pinch of snuff was a
solemnity, a signal which sent the officers to their work, and the
guests for a ride, or in wet weather to the library.

The pioneer serpents in this Paradise were the Reverend Herbert
Beaver, Church of England chaplain, and Mrs. Beaver, the first white
woman in Oregon.  Beaver had been an army chaplain in the West
Indies, a fox-hunting vicar at home, always more horse-proud than
church-proud.  He was a little man of light complexion, a feminine
voice, an oratorical manner, flippant and arrogant, who hunted every
morning and baptized the heathen in drill time all the afternoon.  He
was appalled by the discovery that each of the twenty officers, the
doctor included, had an Indian woman in quarters, a half-breed
family, not married.  It did not occur to him that the Indian
marriage was sacred to the Indians, and that himself was the first
priest with power to celebrate the Christian rite for the men.  With
one exception, they refused his services as an insult.  Beaver would
not associate with immoral women, or Mrs. Beaver with lewd,
adulterous men.  They said so.  Indeed, the pair made themselves
variously and acutely unpleasant, and that in the name of Christ.

The American missionaries who followed them developed deadly
treachery against the doctor; the American pioneers, all pleasantly
uncouth, wrested the country from its British owners, but the English
Beavers were first to undermine the happiness of Oregon, and it was
their advent which closed the golden age.



III

H.B.C. brigantine _Beaver_, all shiny with fresh paint and burnished
brass, dipped her ensign to the fort, fired her salute of guns,
dropped anchor abreast of the village, reported to the chief factor,
and sent ashore all sorts of reading matter and other precious
treasure.  Then she proceeded to turn herself into a little paddle
boat, the pioneer steamer of the Pacific Ocean.  It was on the 14th
of June, 1836, that she took the gentlemen of the fort on an
excursion all round Wapato Island.  After that came her maiden voyage
under steam of 800 miles to Milbank Sound, and the first filling of
her little bunkers at the Nanaimo coal seam.  So she passes out of
our story.

Meanwhile, at his first obeisance to the chief factor, Captain Home
made report with much pomp and circumstance that he had a prisoner in
irons awaiting commitment on the horrible charge of murdering his
parents.  The doctor advised him to see Mr. Douglas, Justice of the
Peace.

Black Douglas, scarce less tall and imposing of presence than the
doctor himself, received the little fuss box with an amiable grin,
read over the newspaper cutting with some slight impatience, and
remarked that Bill Fright seemed to have a jolly good case for
criminal libel against the _London Advertiser_.  The captain was
disgusted, and presently consoled himself by telling Mr. Beaver all
about it.

Meanwhile, the ship's company related to all comers that the prisoner
was a pretty good fellow, with the makings of a sailorman, although
the skipper "had a down on him."

The officers' mess agreed that Captain Home was a pompous ass,
sitting on a mare's nest, and making a ridiculous fuss about some
youngster falsely accused of felony.

At the mess the Reverend Herbert Beaver observed over his wine that
he had already reported to the Aborigines Protection Society of
London on the hideous and callous immorality of the present company,
and if this parricide were not at once committed for trial he in fact
would proceed--to take steps.

Doctor McLoughlin rang for Bruce, took a pinch of snuff, released the
servants, then requested the Reverend Chaplain to resign from the
mess, because it was intended only for the use of gentlemen.

The Reverend Beaver having flounced out of the room in a huff, and
banged the door, the chief factor bowed to the delighted officers,
who came about him as he stood to receive their congratulations.  "Do
you know, gentlemen," he said, "I agree with the chaplain.  Yes.  I
regret to say that for once I find myself in agreement with Mr.
Beaver.

"Now, James," he turned to Douglas, "please don't give Mr. Beaver
ground for complaints against you to the Government of Lower Canada
from which you hold Commission of the Peace."

"You mean sir, that I should try this rotten case?"

"I do, Jim, really.  I have my reasons too.  And Jim," he winked at
the magistrate, "may I be prisoner's friend?"'

There was a roar of laughter.

"And mind you, Jim, no hole-and-corner business.  All white men
should be present, as witnesses to the fact that Mr. Beaver has no
grounds for complaint either against you or against me."

"May we use this room, sir?"

And so was the trial arranged.



IV

"Prisoner.  The London news-sheets of 29th October, 1835, our latest
advices, report that a coroner's inquest was convened at a place
called, yes--Margate, the day previous, upon the bodies of James
Fright, a barge master, and Catherine his wife.  The jury gave a
verdict of deliberate and willful murder against the son of the
deceased, by name Bill Fright.  As a Justice of the Peace I'm obliged
to rule that this newspaper report is bona fide evidence.

"What is your name?"

"Bill Fright."

"Call Mr. David Home."

David Home, having taken oath, protested that he was entitled to be
called Captain.

"By courtesy," said the magistrate blandly, "which I shall render,
when I have inspected your log book.  You will please show the
prisoner's name in your log."

"Prisoner is shown here," said Home, "under a purser's name, as
Willie Muggins."  The captain was mopping his forehead with a
handkerchief.  Certainly the mess room was hot and crowded.

"You assert that the prisoner signed on under a false name?"

The captain shuffled.  "Oh, well, fact is----"

"Be careful, Mister David Home, be careful!"

Still the captain shuffled, and his ship's company, present at his
request, excepting the Iroquois and the Negro, began to rejoice aloud.

"Am I to understand," thundered Black Douglas, "that you attempt to
prejudice the prisoner's case by suggesting that he signed under a
false name?"

"No, sir!"

"Then what the devil do you mean by appearing in a British Court of
Justice with a false log book?  I refuse to receive your evidence.
You will leave my court.  Get out!"

Nothing could restrain the _Beaver's_ crew from rousing cheers as
their captain was shown out, but Black Douglas ordered silence or he
would clear the court.

The boatswain's evidence was accepted as to the fact of arrest.

"And now," the magistrate turned to the prisoner, "you are charged,"
he spoke with a grave gentleness, "with the murder of your parents.
Do you plead guilty or not guilty?"

Bill knew that this man was a friend worth winning.  "Not guilty!" he
answered joyfully.

Black Douglas looked at the crowd.  "I want you all to know," he
said, "that I don't pretend to any training at all in law or in court
procedure.  I'm a trader.  But I am a white man claiming British
blood.  Deep down in all our hearts there is one root principle of
our common sense, fair play between man and man.  We are here to play
the game.  A prisoner is a man restrained by the law because his
conduct has been called in question, held until Justice can give him
absolute fair play, and he stands free in presence of his fellows.
He is an innocent man in trouble, in jeopardy."

Here the Reverend Beaver, seated in the front row of the spectators,
was unrestrained in his impatience.

"Pish!  Pshaw!  Mawkish sentiment!  Playing to the gallery!
Disgraceful!"

The magistrate seemed to be pleased, and addressed the remainder of
his remarks directly to the chaplain.  As he drove home the attack,
great was the joy of his brother officers.

"To slander a prisoner behind his back, to question, bully, or punish
him, or in any way to treat him as a felon before he is proven
guilty, is a beastly and contemptible act of cowardice.  The prisoner
before me has been slandered by the news-sheets behind his back prior
to his trial.  I cannot shoot the reptiles of the press, but I can
and will defend the prisoner in the establishment of his own
innocence.  As magistrate I am allowed to ask him which way he
pleads, in guilt appealing to the Crown for mercy, or in innocence
demanding release as an act of justice.  Pleading 'Not guilty,' he
has demanded trial.

"Prisoner, Dr. David McLoughlin, Chief Factor, asks leave to appear
on your behalf as prisoner's friend to see that you get fair play and
benefit of doubt.  Do you accept his help?"

There were tears in Bill's eyes and his voice was very gruff as he
answered "Yes."

Press cuttings were then read by the clerk of the court and noted as
documentary evidence, completing the case for the prosecution.

Mr. Dodd, mate of the _Beaver_, was sworn for the defense, and
presently examined by the doctor.

"In whose watch, Mr. Dodd, did the prisoner serve?"

"In mine, sir; I chose him."

"Any regrets?"

"None, sir."

"What sort of character?"

"First-rate, sir; best helmsman we has, makings of an excellent
seaman.  Couldn't have done it, sir."

"Done what?"

"Done murder, sir."

"I think," observed the magistrate, "that this is opinion rather than
evidence as to fact."

"Does the prisoner get on well with Captain Home?"

"No, sir."

"Why?"

"Rather not say.  It's not my place to discuss my commanding officer."

"Excellent.  By the way, Mr. Dodd, was the prisoner wearing a belt
knife when he joined the ship?"

"He was, sir."

"May I request the court to have one or two of the newspaper reports
read again with reference to the weapon?"

The clerk read two or three versions which described the murderer's
blood-stained belt knife as found in the barge's cabin.  The last
version showed the weapon as clutched in the dead man's hand.

"That's right, sir," cried the prisoner, and when the doctor tried to
silence him, so much the more he protested.  "Why, I seen it!"

"Prisoner," said the magistrate, "you will be wise to leave your
defense to your counsel."

"Bias!  Bias!"  The Reverend Herbert Beaver jumped up and shrieked in
his shrill voice.  "Bias!  The court is shielding a felon!"

"Silence in court," said the magistrate.  "Usher, if that man
interrupts with one more word, remove him, using all necessary
violence."

The prisoner had whirled round to stare at the chaplain.  His face
became deadly pale, his eyes were starting from his head, his teeth
were clenched, lips parted.  "You go to 'Ell," he snarled.  "And that
ain't far--for you!"

"I call you all to witness----" shrieked the reverend gentleman; but
he got no further, for all necessary violence attended his departure.

The Reverend Jason and Daniel Lee, of the Methodist faith, American
missionaries, some visiting officers of the company's outposts, one
or two overland trappers, a couple of stray seamen, the gentlemen and
servants of Fort Vancouver, and the ships' companies of the _Beaver_,
_Nereid_, and _Una_, made in all perhaps the largest assemblage of
white men which had so far met on the Pacific coast.  The affair of
Bill Fright was not of the smallest consequence that day compared
with the great issue, the chaplain's grievance against the magistrate
which would be laid before the Government of Lower Canada, and his
complaints to the Governor and Company in London which might easily
ruin the Father of Oregon.  Now he would claim conspiracy between the
doctor, the magistrate, and the prisoner!  How much worse his
grievance, if the prisoner were found not guilty, and released as an
innocent man!  The doctor and Black Douglas were exchanging glances,
and both understood that the boy must be committed for trial.

The case went on, for Mr. Dodd was witness as to Silas discovering
the charge against the prisoner, and how as chief officer he himself
examined the supposed Willie Muggins, who proved perfectly frank, and
manfully indignant at an outrageous slander.  Again the seamen of the
_Beaver_ broke out cheering, and had to be restrained.  There was no
doubt as to their sympathy.

Now Bill demanded that the Court should hear his story; and, rueful
as they were lest he should ruin his case, neither the magistrate nor
the doctor felt that it was wise to appear in the suppression of
evidence.  Great was their relief as the lad spoke, simply and to the
point, clearing away all mystery, all doubt, until the crime was seen
in its true proportions, a murder and suicide committed by his
father, which left him motherless, friendless, and in jeopardy of the
gallows.

The doctor scribbled a note, and handed it to Douglas.

"Dr. McLoughlin," the magistrate looked up from reading the note, "I
quite understand.  The clerk of the court will make record that the
prisoner, having taken over his own case, the prisoner's friend
withdraws from his defense."

Bill was horrified at that disaster just when he thought that he had
won the game.

"Prisoner, it is your right as a British subject, to proceed to
England, and there as an innocent man demand a reversal of the
coroner's sentence, so that your innocence may be established before
the world.  You are therefore committed for trial."

"May I speak?" asked Bill.

"You may."

"Then"--he shook with anger--"I says as you sends the mouse to eat
the cheese in the mousetrap--and calls that justice!"

The magistrate's grave face preserved an unsmiling severity, but his
right eye closed, then opened.  "Exactly so," said Douglas.



V

"And then," said Storm, "he wunk!"

"But _how_?" asked Rain.

"Like this," Storm closed one eye and opened it with much solemnity,
first to the padre on his stool, and then to Rain in the corner.

"Of which," explained the padre, winking a few times to try what it
felt like, "I will proceed to give the interpretation.  For if," he
assumed the pulpit manner, and winked devotionally, "there is an
interpretation of dreams down there on Earth, there is likewise an
interpretation of wakes up here in Dreamland."

"Quite so," said Rain.  "I always felt that there should be, seeing
that our actions down on the hunting ground are never taken seriously
by any fairies here."

"The meaning of the magistrate's gesture," continued the padre, "is
as follows.  My good youth, if I declare you innocent and free, you
are a seaman on board the _Beaver_ and go to the northwest coast, to
shovel coals and have yourself bullied by that Complete Swine Captain
David Home.

"Or if I get the doctor here to take you on the permanent staff of
the Fort, you come under the spiritual ministrations of the Holy
Beaver, which stirs up mud with its tail instead of using it as a
trowel and building dams to keep out Satan withal.

"And if I commit you to take your trial as a mouse in the Public
Mousetrap, which is very bad for mice----"

"That's what he done!" cried Storm indignantly.

"But for the wunk," explained the padre, "yes; albeit, dear
Brethren-in-the-singular, you will take to the woods, and presently
get yourself devoured by a very fierce bear----"

"A real bear," said Rain very gravely.

"Because you don't know how to shoot."

"I do!" cried Storm.

"Not to hit, my son."

"I see."  Storm showed dismay, and relapsed into gloomy attention.

"Wherefore we will fool the captain of the ship, the Holy Beaver, the
Public Mousetrap, and the Real Bear by sending you away to be taught
hunting, trapping, and woodcraft with my old friend Lieutenant
Tschirikov----"

"The Fatbald!" said Rain.  "I'm sure he must be very nice to make up
for being so plain."

"So that's why!" cried Storm, delighted.

"--who lives, my son, at the river of the Kutenais, on the green
meads at the head of Flatbow Lake."

"Why, that's my lake!" cried Rain.

"Of course," observed the padre: "for this cause was Storm brought
from the Land of Barbarian-hereticks who drop their aitches, and
carried to the mouth of your river, in order that he may come to your
own lake, and meet you on the high snow field overlooking the Apse of
Ice."

"The Sun Lodge where I am priestess!" cried Rain, exultant.  "Now do
I thank thee, Holy Spirit in the Sun, for all Thy mercies!"

When they had all three said their thanks, the padre observed that
Julia was outside waiting to conduct them.  They really must call on
the invalid dragon.

"Who is that?" asked Storm.

"He is a poor dragon who devoured so many virgins that he has grown
too stout, his cave is pinching him, and he can't get out."

"If I killed him," said Rain reflectively, "it would count for a good
coup, like a scalp."

"Nay," the padre rebuked her ignorance, "a proper scalping lasts, but
the more you chop a dragon the more he grows, and when you kill him
he comes alive again."

"Anyway," said Rain, who had turned obstinate, "when Julia guides us,
she is so busy showing herself off, that she always loses her way."

"Let's give her the slip," said Storm; so they got the padre out, by
stretching him a little, through the back window, and went to see the
dragon.

It took Rain and Storm some time before they mislaid the clergyman,
and forgot all about the dragon, as they set forward upon that great
adventure.  At first they crossed part of a city, set in the midst of
a park with very stately, formal gardens.  They wanted to have a
nearer view of the palace which rose beyond.  It was made of silvery
morning mist carved into colonnades, big shiny towers, and, far up in
the sky, a dome all iridescent like the soap bubbles which have
gliding colors.  Rather frightened, daring one another to come on,
expecting to be turned back at any moment, they crept into the
vestibule.  It had a sheen of pearl, and went away on either side
into cool green distances.  It was like the soul of the sea.  Beyond
it they found a courtyard with a pool reflecting its high walls,
which were of opal, changing as one watched with color which rolled
like sea waves towards the open doors upon the farther side.  Within
those doors was a big ante-chamber, where the light was all golden.
Then there was a forest of columns, dusky and enormous, where
footsteps echoed so that one went on tiptoe, until one looked through
into the vast throne room.  That seemed to be hewn out of the heart
of a diamond, and in the midst of its flashing splendors there sat
enthroned and all alone the King of the High Fairies.  So dazzling
was the light which came from him that the intruders went down on
their knees and covered their faces.

"My thought has called you here," said the King, softly as though he
whispered.  "Do not fear, my children.  Come to the step here at my
feet, and rest while I speak to you."

Now, the story which was told by the King of the High Fairies is no
invention, but real; not mine at all, but copied word for word out of
a splendid book.[1]


[1] _A Subaltern in Spirit Land_, by J. S. M. Ward, B.A.,
F.R.Econ.S., F.R.S.S.  (London: Rider & Son.)


Long ago I was one of the fairy folk, such as those you have just
left, and so were we all.  I dwelt in a castle, and did deeds of
glamour, and hoped that a mortal would one day proclaim them to the
world.  But one day I fell into a strange trance, and dreamed of
Earth, and of the sufferings of mortals, and their follies, and I saw
how foolish were their griefs, and how easy it would be to relieve
them.

And when I awoke, I pondered over these things, and it grew upon me
that the life I lived was aimless and empty, since it was but
glamour, and there was neither real sorrow nor sin, but only
make-believe.  For evil was only potential, but there it was real.
Here the triumph of the good knight was always assured, but there it
was uncertain.


Be it understood that the High Fairies are like ourselves, real
people, but belong to a separate Order of Spirits, who have never
been in mortal bodies to learn the discipline of pain, of sin and
sorrow.  Many of their adventures which happened in Fairyland are
well known to all of us, in the _Annals of the Round Table_, _The
Arabian Nights_, and some of the so-called fairy tales.  The writers
of such books went in their dreams to Fairyland, invented earth-names
for the High Fairies they encountered there, and brought back great
annals of adventure.  Others of the High Fairies hope that some day a
writer will come and give them earth-names, so that they and their
adventures may be known by mortals.  Now to resume the story told by
the Fairy King.


Then I set out towards the confines of Fairyland, and turned my back
on the pleasant vales.  I journeyed through the dark wood, and came
at last to the cave where the gnomes dwell.  These would have bidden
me stay, but I heeded them not, and at length I came out into the
astral plane, of which you know.  But lower and lower I went, seeking
sin and suffering, just as you menfolk flee from them, and on the
astral plane I worked for a while, but as I knew not earth-life, I
found my efforts of little avail.

So at length I reached the earth plane, and wandered unseen among the
sons of men till the sorrow of the world ate into my soul and grief
for its woe overwhelmed me.

Yet, try as I would, I found I could do little to help mankind, for I
was not of their nature.  Till one dread day I stood on a hill near a
city men call Jerusalem, and I gazed in the faces of three who were
crucified.  Then He in the center saw me, though the rest saw me not,
and He spoke these words:

"O spirit of air, who knowest not the love of men, draw near."

And I drew near, and said, "I have sought suffering and grief that I
might be able to aid menfolk.  Thou, who seemest to be the King of
Pain, bring pain to me."

And He smiled.  "Thou askest a hard thing.  Yet shall it be given
unto thee.  Wrench forth the nails which fasten My hands and feet and
set Me free."

Then I arose and strove to grasp the nails, but couldn't, for they
were material and I immaterial.  And as I strove, my helplessness
filled me with a new sensation, and it was grief.  For, strive as I
might, I could do nothing to help that gentle sufferer.

And the grief grew to an intensity of pain which is indescribable.

Then again He spoke.  "It avails not--thou canst not help Me; and yet
in the striving thy request has been granted.  Go, and My love for
men go with thee!"

Then the vague desire to help men grew into a burning passion, and I
went from the spot and strove to help them.  And now it seemed that I
was changed in spirit, for I comprehended their griefs and how to
help them.

So I comforted the heavy-hearted in the dark watches of the night.
And I guided the erring ones into the safe road.  I strove with the
wayward and warned the foolish, until my work was accomplished.  I
have learned to suffer, yet have I never learned to die, and I think
that none can become perfect till that experience has been endured.


All the time that he was telling the story the King's right hand had
rested upon Storm's head, or gently stroked the wavy, sun-gold hair.
"Why do you tremble so?" he asked--"you that are learning to die,
that shalt become what I may never be, perfected in endurance by the
rite of death.  Why are you frightened?"

"I'm not frightened, sir.  We gets a training on our earth so as not
to show funk when we're scared."

We all know how dream-scenes change, how dream-people are
transformed.  By the King's magic the throne room had vanished.  They
seemed to be in a paved courtyard, and in front of him there rose a
Roman colonnade.  It was the Prætorium in old Jerusalem.  "Why,
that's the orderly room," said Storm; "it's lucky I'm off duty."

His clothes had changed themselves into Roman infantry uniform,
parade kit, a burnished and plumed steel helmet, a shining steel
cuirass, a kilt, strapped sandals.

That was the King's magic, which awakened slumbering memories, making
far-past events to live as though they happened within the hour.

"You are not frightened," said the King; "what then, lad, makes you
as the leaves when they are dry, when their voice is harsh, ere the
death wind carries them away?"

Storm glanced sideways angrily at Rain.  "It was all along of her,"
he answered.  "When she blamed it on to me that she was to have a
baby.  Wanted me to make an honest woman of her, as if I'd stoop to
the likes--a native--a Jew drab.

"She slobbered," cried Storm, "all over my breast-plate and shoulder
straps, which I'd been burnishing for inspection.  I never noticed
that anything was wrong until the morning parade.  And there was my
steel all rusted.  The old centurion told our ten-man, Vivianus his
name was, that if he couldn't keep his men clean he'd better chuck
his stripes.  The ten-man was proper sick at that and when we got
back to the barrack room he took it out of me, yes, good and plenty.
He had to furnish the day's execution detail, and I was senior
soldier of the section.  Said he couldn't trust a dirty man in
charge.  He'd have to take the detail himself.  Besides he insulted
me, and we Northmen take no lip from them little black Italians.
Tell you, what with that, and the woman, and the disgrace--by
Mithras!  I was just about crazy by the time he marched us round here
to this Prætorium Courtyard."

Storm was a Roman soldier once again, back in the garrison of old
Jerusalem.

"Got to chuck a brace, breast to breastplate, shoulder blades
touching or you galls your windpipe on the cuirass.  Got to watch
your step and mind your dressing so as not to make a holy show of our
legion in front of them natives.  Got to keep your mouth from
yelling, yes, and leave your dirk sheathed when ye can't see nothin'
but blood--blood, blood, and the ten-man a-prompting in yer
ear--'left, left, left, right, left, right incline, come up on the
left there!  Mark time, by the left--forward, march straight through
the swineherd!  Shoulder through them!  Damn them!  Frontform.  Halt.
Stand at ease--stand easy.'  Blood!  Blood!  By the crucified
Mithras, I'll have his blood for insulting me.

"The natives was having their usual riot.  It was something about one
of them street-preachers they wanted hanged; and, after a shindy, the
Governor let 'em have Him, provided of course He was turned off
decently by the troops, not torn to pieces by the mob.

"Of course the Governor's guard escorted the prisoner to the
Prætorium Courtyard for the usual flogging, and then, as He seemed to
be something special--claimed to be King of the Jews--the boys on
guard called the battalion out of barracks for a bit of fun with Him.
They sent out for a dead branch from one of them acacias, with
ivory-white thorns a couple of inches long.  They plaited that into a
crown.  They got an old short crimson cloak--general officers' batmen
gets such things given them.  And a long cane did for scepter, though
it broke.  They stripped the preacher, and rigged Him out, had a
great game with the King of the Jews, bashing the crown of thorns on
His head with that scepter.  His face was running with blood.

"Of course our execution squad, of an N.C.O. and three privates, just
stood easy until the day's prisoners was handed over to us for our
job of hanging.  If the boys behaved like kids, they was off duty,
and it weren't no business of mine.  Besides, the prisoner was only a
Jew, and Jews is offal.

"Yet He was sort of getting hold of me, like drink takes hold of a
man before he knows.  That's why I acted rough when we took over,
cause us Roman soldiers can't afford to be sloppy, especially with
natives.  His eyes--crucified Mithras, His eyes!  I couldn't look Him
in the face while I was going to murder Vivianus.  That's the first
man I ever forgave.

"The quartermaster used to issue crosses which we had to turn into
store after the day's executions.  They was heavy, and this preacher,
after the way the boys had handled Him--well, He was none too strong.
The other two was just the usual thieves and they come fresh from the
cells, but He broke down under the load.  We caught a friend of
His'n, an old fellow from Cyrene, in North Africa, who had a couple
of sons, Alexander and Rufus, in the horse trade.  Them Cyreneans is
horse copers to a man.  Well, this old Simon what we caught, we made
to carry the preacher's cross all the way to the West Gate, with the
natives mobbing Him, cursing and throwing muck.  When they're roused,
them Jews is beastly.  So we come to the Skull Hill just due west of
the city, in full view from every roof.  There's holes hewn in the
rock there, a row of 'em for crosses.  Them two thieves was lashed to
their crosses, which is the usual way, but He was a sort of special
case, so I had the job of driving the spikes with a sledge through
His hands and feet.  He lay there on the cross, watching me, and when
I went sick all of a sudden He tells me to do my duty.  He was
smiling at me.  My God!  We lifted them three crosses, dropped the
butts into the mortise holes, and hammered in the wedges--same as
quoins, to keep 'em steady.

"We'd took off all their clothes, which was our perquisite, and our
ten-man makes fair division.  Except His tunic, no use if it was cut,
being woven, same as a jersey in one piece.  We used knucklebones,
which is much the same as throwing dice.  I won, and in the evening I
give it----"

He glanced at Rain.

"To her."

The King bent low.  "Go on," he said.

"The day was heavy, and along in the afternoon come a big storm,
dark, with sheets of rain, and blinding flashes.

* * * * * * *

"Hello!" said Storm, "that's Snow Fell!  This is Broad Firth.  We're
in Iceland.  This is another life.  Oh, what's the name of the farm?"

"Under-the-lava," said Rain, "the stead of Slaying Stir.  And I'm the
veiled woman from Swede-realm.  Don't you remember Slaying Stir has
murdered my dear brothers Halli and Leikner?  Their ghosts have
brought me hither to murder Slaying Stir.  In my dream they said I
must come to Iceland and avenge their deaths.  So I did.  I came with
the two poor ghosts to Iceland to the house of Slaying Stir.  And
when I tried to stab him, my heart was turned to water.  My man here,
Storm, was guesting at Stir's house.  Storm loved me."

The King laid his hand on the lad's arm.

"That I did," said Storm.

"What were you, then?" asked the King.

"A slave.  I, Harald Christian, Earl of Man, captured in battle, sold
to be a thrall.  My master, I loved my master, young Leif Ericson.
And we came guesting to the house of Slaying Stir, where we met my
woman.  That was in Iceland, but our home was Greenland, the new
Colony."

"So," Rain continued, "my man and I loved and were wedded secretly.
But Leif captured me.  Then he took his thrall, my poor man, Storm,
and lashed him to a post which stood in the tideway.  'One prayer to
Thor,' said Leif, 'and you go free.  One prayer to Thor,' said Leif,
'and you get your woman.'"

"'One prayer to Christ,' said Storm, 'and you save your soul!'  Then
the tide closed over Storm's mouth."

"So," asked the King of the Fairies, "you gave your life for the
Christ you had slain?"

"No such luck," answered Storm gloomily.  "Leif got me back to life,
made me a freeman, gave me my woman.  Christ had him.  Afterwards I
was with him, steersman of the _Flying Dragon_, when we found a new
world."

There came a sudden vision of smoking seas, of lashing spray, a
reeling, staggering ship, with one great lugsail lifting her as she
drove, thirty-two oarsmen straining at their labor, Storm in a
leather jerkin at the thwart-ship tiller, and beside him a youth
gigantic in chain mail who pointed with drawn sword, conning the
passage between drowned sand banks and terrific combers into the
entry of a land-locked bay.

"A new-found world," said the King.  "New-found America."

But Storm answered concerning the Viking hero, Leif the Fortunate.

"He called it Christ-realm.  Yes.  That was afterwards, when we'd
crossed the Western Ocean, made Norway, and put in at Nidaros, the
new capital.  There was Leif baptized, with the Norse King standing
godfather.  He offered Christ-Realm to Olaf Tryggveson, the Christian
King of Norway."

The King of the Fairies said then:

"There seems to be a purpose running from life to life.  So in the
voyage of a ship the days pass, and the nights pass, but from day to
day the purpose of her master continues always towards one end, one
seaport.  Mortals, your lives are days.  Tell me of the next
incarnation."

"That time," said Storm, "I never found my woman, so it don't count."

"Tell me, though.  Perhaps the purpose runs."

"I was Gaston le Brut, de Joinville's body servant, and him crusading
with Louis, King of France.  Them wars is a muddle of battles, mud,
and hunger, the pest, and slavery among the Paynim at Babylon the
Less.  The King and de Joinville got ransomed before they could raise
the money to buy out us troops from the Soldan.  It's all a muddle of
bad management, but yes--I see--the ridge! the dragging my little
master by the hand and he squealing 'Non! non! non!' but I made him
see that which St. Louis didn't, the view of the Holy City through
the heat mist faint in the distance, and the Hill of Skulls where I'd
helped crucify my God!  Oh, Christ Almighty!"

"The purpose runs, Rain," said the King of the Fairies.  "Follow the
quest.  What was your next life?"

"When next we met," Rain answered, "I was what Storm calls Red
Indian.  I was Powhatan's daughter then.  It was in those days that
the English came first into our country--the land they call
Virginia--yes, and the English called me Pocahontas.  It wasn't my
real name though.  I wedded my man, and he was Master John Rolfe--a
little widower.  Twice he was Roman soldier, once he was thrall in
Iceland, and then it seems crusader, and again John Rolfe the
planter, and now what he calls bargee; but he is always Storm and I
am always Rain, and we shall always love."

"And have you loved none other?" asked the King.

"Nay, but there was one I worshiped as though he were a god.  Captain
Johnsmith."

"Which," cried Storm--"I'd know that face among millions--was Leif
Ericson, the man who found a new world."

"And in his next life," said the King of the Fairies, "founded the
United States, eh?"

"Then that," cried Rain, "which we drop in the last life, we take up
again in the next."

"The ship," answered the Fairy King, "carries on her journey during
the night, and at the next daybreak is that much nearer to her haven.
Now tell me of this present day's journey, which you mortals call a
lifetime, down on earth."

Storm answered.  "Me and her is man and wife."

"Whom God hath joined," said the King, "no man can possibly sunder."

"Till death us part?" Rain whispered.

The Fairy King leaned forward on his throne, his hands clasped.
"Death," he reflected, "Time, and Space are only three impostors.
They are shadows, glamour, not realities like Faith or Hope or Love.
A Spirit told me once that a man and a woman who love, whom death
cannot set asunder, may in the end be parts of one, one Angel.

"How I do envy you two children!  And have you been parted in this
life you are living now down on the Earth?"

"We've never met," said Rain.  "Storm is an English sailor; I live
with my mother Thunder Feather, the sacred woman of the Blackfoot
nation.  We have our tipi in a lonely valley of the mountains, and
pilgrims come to Thunder Feather to be healed when they are sick in
soul or body.  But she is dying, so I take up her work.  And always I
call my man, so that he has come on a voyage of six moons, to the
mouth of my river.  Still I call him to come up my river, then over
the mountains to the sacred lodge.  He brings the Christ Faith with
him for our Indian peoples."

"I'm a prisoner," said Storm, "at Fort Vancouver, and they want to
send me to England because they say I murdered mother.  I didn't, so
I don't want to be hanged for that.  I did murder Christ.  I want to
die for that."

"A Roman legionary," said the King, "a brave man among the Vikings, a
Crusader, a pioneer of the United States, a seaman of England--how I
envy you the least of these achievements!  And you, my daughter,
loving and heroic, how poor my fate compared with yours!  But I see
ahead of you the greatest of all adventures, the most splendid, the
most tremendous, the most triumphant.  May God bless you both!"

"Good-by, sir."  Storm kissed his hand.  "My body is calling me,
dragging me back to earth--to prison at Vancouver."

"And," said Rain, "my mother calls me home.  Farewell, Great Chief."



VI

Bill Fright awakened in his cell at Fort Vancouver.

The dawn was breaking, and pale blue smoke went up from the chimneys
as Fort Vancouver awakened, yawning, for the new day's work.  Quite
naked, wrapping a blanket about him, stately as a Roman Emperor,
Black Douglas came to his door to snuff the breath of the spring.
Then stepping gingerly, barefooted across the crisp and dewy lawn and
the gravel road beyond, he made his way out of the fort and across
the village, until he stood upon the riverbank, where he dropped his
blanket and bath towel.  It looked very cold.

Mist lay on the shining water and the dim gray ships, whose masts
went up so sharply etched against the deeps of sky.  Beyond them
lofty firs and spreading cedars faint as dreams arose from isles
invisible, rapt, waiting.  Far up the valley, soaring above the
forest and the cloud belts, snow fields of icy blue were edged with
flame against the throbbing splendors of the sunrise.  Close at hand
some little fussy birds were singing orisons, but the great prayer of
the forest and the volcanoes was a Silence, faithful, calm,
triumphant, rendered to Love and Power which reigns for ever, the
Spirit in the Sun, their Lord, their God.

In that homage Douglas joined for a moment shivering with cold, then
dived for his morning bath in the Columbia.

Near by, at the jetty, a crew of five voyageurs, the hoods of their
blanket capotes like the cowls of monks, were urging a prisoner into
their birch canoe.  As he flatly refused to enter they gabbled like
squattering sea fowl in shrill French, until the patron Louis le
Grandeur bade them desist.  "Laissez, mes enfants!  Restez!  Cet
animal!"  He shook his fist in Bill's face.  "And how you t'ink we
mak' ze bre'kfas' if we no depart--hein?  Sacré, mojee, batteme,
goddam pig!"

He turned about and saw Black Douglas climb dripping up the bank, all
glowing from the sting of the crisp tide.

"V'la!"  He ran to the big chief.  "Bo'jour, M'sieu Dougla!"  He
saluted.  "Sare--zees animal prisonnier Beel----"

"Good morning, le Grandeur.  Ready to start, eh?"

"--'e say he no coom!"

Bill shouldered him aside, presenting shackled hands.

"Don't like the handcuffs, eh?" said Mr. Douglas cheerily, grooming
his back with the bath towel.

"Called me an animal!" cried Bill, exasperated, raging at fresh
indignities.  Yet somehow this man, twice his size and many times as
strong, this Justice of the Peace, this leader born to command, who
looked down at him smiling, indulgent, did make him feel like one of
the lower animals content to obey, to trust, to do his bidding.

"You and I," said Douglas, "are being watched.  There's your late
commanding officer watching from the poop, and no doubt His Holiness
the Chaplain is peeping somewhere from behind a house.  The handcuffs
look impressive."

"I see," said Bill, quite humbled.

"Look up the valley," said Douglas.  "See a point of standing forest
yonder?"

The headland was black against the sunblaze.

"Behind that point," said Douglas, "le Grandeur will release you."

"Yes, sure!" broke in le Grandeur, "and ze fusil!"

"The gun," Douglas translated, "and everything your shipmates gave
you is in that canoe.  You are free.  You can run away, and my
voyageurs will not shoot.  They have my orders."

"You mean that, sir?"

"Yes.  But will you take advice from an old frontiersman?  I know
you're too sensible a lad to run away and starve in the bush with a
gun you can't use, in swamps you cannot cross.  These good voyageurs
will teach you how to hunt, and if you can feed the crew it stands to
reason you wouldn't starve alone."

"Then I run away, sir?"

"I wouldn't.  Inland the tribes are dangerous, unless you know their
ways.  Run by all means, but, if you want to live, go with these men
to the point where the River of the Kutenais falls into Flatbow Lake.
There you will find my old friend the Russian, Nicolai Tschirikoff."

"I've heard that name, sir, somewhere, Fatbald Tschirikov."

"That's curious, for the doctor and myself are the only men here in
Oregon who know him by that name, or call him Fatbald."

"I must ha' dreamed it."

"Maybe.  Anyway"--Douglas picked up his blanket and wrapped it about
him like a Roman toga--"he'll make a man of you, hunter, trapper,
able to hold your own among the tribes."

"Gawd bless you, sir."

"But, lad, remember that you've run away, and as a Justice of the
Peace I'm after you, to catch you if I can, and ship you to England,
to be hanged because your worthy father killed your mother.  Don't
let me catch you, Bill.

"Now, march off looking just as if I had sent you to the gallows."

"Mayn't I shake 'ands, sir?"

The magistrate shook his head, and as Bill turned to go assisted him
on his way with a bare foot.  At that Bill was indignant.

Still Black Douglas stood on the river bank, until the prisoner had
boarded the canoe, and the voyageurs shoved off.  They came upstream
saluting as they passed, then the swing and flash and glitter of
their paddles took time from the voyageur chantey:

  _Allouette!  Chantez Allouette!
  All-ou-ette!  Je le plumerai!_


Douglas followed with his eyes as the canoe went on into the blaze of
sunshine on the ripples.  There was something very tender, very
wistful, in his smile as he stood listening.

  _Je le plumerai le bee;
      Et les yeux,
      Et la tête,
      Et les ailles,
  Ah-a-allouette!  Chantez allouette!_

  * * * * *

                  _Et les ailles!_



CHAPTER IV

KOOTENAY


I

When Fatbald Tschirikov would take his seat before the fireplace his
glance went first backward and downward, fear seemed to flatten his
large ears against his head, and he lowered his hands to the
chair-arms, testing in doubt the strength of the birchen frame.  Next
would his eyeballs roll, and his mouth gape in readiness for a
screech while he lowered himself, fearful even unto anguish, into the
vast rawhide seat; a very hammock, but liable to split.  A smirk
succeeded, the signal for applause from his four Indian wives, then a
wriggle or two adjusted him for the day.  No. 1 wife cast the bison
robe to cover him.  No. 2 served the soup wherewith he greased
himself most amply, slopping his way through the mess.  No. 3 loaded
his meerschaum pipe.  No. 4 stood by to run for the help of the tribe
if aught went wrong.  Afterwards he would remark that the four of
them were canaille, and might attend their own several funerals for
all he cared.  At this token of his gratitude they crept away on
tiptoe into the lean-to kitchen.

The clay fireplace in front of him was full of logs set upright and
aflame as though an ox were to roast.  The cabin walls were of
cottonwood trunks notched at the ends and dovetailed where they
crossed, the chinks between them being filled with blocks of wood,
moss, and a daub of mud.  No air got in or out save when some
malefactor, a wife perchance, opened the front door.  Then Fatbald
screamed reproaches in Russian, Samoyed, French, Blackfoot, Kutenais,
and general profanity mixed, hot, crescendo, and culminating in a
volley of good round English damns, fortissimo.

Outside it might be twenty to forty degrees below zero Fahrenheit in
a world of dazzling sunshine and glittering snowdrift.  Northward
from the front door extended the frozen levels of Kootenay Lake some
ninety miles, walled by austere forest, and still, white dreaming
Alps.  And yonder, fifty miles or so from the trading post, was a
little headland jutting from the right.  As far back as 1825--some
fifteen years ago--the Hudson's Bay voyageurs, making a night camp,
where now is the Bluebell mine, had been astonished by a flow of
molten metal from under their cooking fire.  The stuff was lead, the
first discovery of mineral in all the regions west of the
Mississippi, and the Hudson's Bay Company was quick to seize
advantage from the find.  They built a small stone smelter with a
pyramid of roof, still standing when I saw the place in 1889, but
gone when I returned in 1913.  There they were wont to make bullets
for use in the Indian trade.  They were good bullets, hard, part
silver as it happened, but nobody knew that.  The Hydahs of Queen
Charlotte Islands once made and used gold bullets, rather too soft,
they said, but better than none at all.

In his mind old Tschirikov was rather concerned about the lead mine
yonder, a long day's march to the north.  Storm--these three years
past his dear adopted son--was there, with a bullet mold found in the
bos'n's locker aboard the _Beaver_, making some bullets for the
Kutenais.  A weary while away, weary weeks.  The old man had made up
his mind to live until Storm came home, rather than trust his funeral
to a pack of useless wives.

He spoke many languages, and the blend was thickened into a husky
wheeze.  Nobody on earth excepting Storm knew what he talked about.
The American trapper who squatted in a corner of the room, lacing the
web of a snowshoe, heard Fatbald muttering feebly through the soup,
something which ended

"--dobra fils delate Klahowya mik, eh, hombre?"

In Russian, French, Chinook and Eskimo, English and Spanish, this,
being interpreted, meant: "I fear that my good son has gone to
heaven, eh, man?"

"Fine day, sure," responded the trapper indulgently, "and a right
smart snap of cold."

The husky dog asleep at Fatbald's feet lifted his gray muzzle,
snuffing something new, pricked his ears forward, muttered a rumbling
growl, then of a sudden leaped at the door, yelping, "He's coming!
Coming!"  He did not speak in English, but in Dog, a language of even
wider distribution.

Somebody was coming.  The trapper went to peer through a little
frosted windowpane.  Somebody was coming with a sturdy shout to greet
the house.  There were yelps of a dog team to all the pups at home,
the swish of carriole and snowshoes, brisk orders given in the
Kutenais, and stampings to shake the snow off moccasins.  The husky
was yelling out joyful adjectives as he jumped up and down at the
door, then as it opened he leaped high for a kiss while the man
stooped low to get in under the lintel.

This fellow was by no means the subdued but truculent Bill Fright of
three years back.  Standing six foot and just beginning to widen at
the shoulders, he was lean, hard, hale, and deep-tanned as an Indian.
No savage ever whelped had steel-blue eyes like his that flashed and
glittered with power, or such a mane of sun-gold hair, or flush of
eager blood to light the skin as though with an inner lamp.

He slipped his hands out of the fur mitts, shook off the frost rime
from his buckskin shirt so that the heavy shoulder fringes pattered
like rain on leaves, then with a grin which showed a white flash of
teeth he chucked his beaver cap at Tschirikov.  "Hello! hello!"  He
spoke in Kutenais.  "How's fleas, and the little nits, eh, Daddy
Fat-face?"

"La porte! la porte!"

"Oh, the frowst!"  Storm slammed the door to.

"Storms-all-the-time," the old man wheezed in Kutenais, "you deafen
me."

"All right, old chief, we'll have the whelps loose."

He flung open the trade-room door, and out of the freezing store
tumbled a heap of children head-over-heels and shrilling Indian war
whoops, leaping at him, clamoring the news, the wagers on his first
kiss, the games which he must play, and how they wanted dinner.  Had
he any gifts?

They got him down on the floor, climbed all over him, went through
the pockets of his hunting shirt.  Yes, there were gifts!  For each a
little leaden redskin warrior cast in a special mold of his own
carving.  The four wives had been in violent collisions getting him
four meals ready all at once; but now let the food burn while they
shared the scrimmage for the toys.

Presently there was silence, because the old man, the wives, and all
the offspring watched with enormous solemnity while Storm sat on the
floor cross-legged to a bowl of berry pemmican, a dish of three large
trouts, and a stew of camas.

In his own corner the American was being fed, apart, not quite as a
guest, nor yet as a prisoner.  These people would not let him starve
or suffer, but they made him doubt the nature of his welcome.

This new arrival, the trapper reckoned, was certainly by his coloring
a white man, but in his speech and manners Indian, perhaps the old
man's son, undoubtedly the master of the house, honored, obeyed, and
loved.  Was he husband to these four women, father of all these
children?  Surely too young.

He seemed to have traveled far, and at his topmost speed, to be
ravenous, weary, and now, after the meal and a pipe of wild tobacco,
right well disposed towards sleep.  He dismissed the women and
children to their supper in the kitchen, kissed the old man who was
fast asleep in the chair, then crossed to his bed and lay down
looking at the fire while he smoked his pipe.  It dropped upon the
robes.

"Oh, Secret Helper, I come!" he muttered softly.

Through the closed eyelids he felt the flicker of the firelight.  He
smelled in fresh warm air a fragrance from some burning herb, then
heard a low voice at prayer.

"Oh, Holy Spirit in the Sun!

"Hear, Old Man!

"Listen, oh dear Above-people!

"Hear me, Under-water-people!

"I purify my body that my prayers may reach your hearing."

The scene before Storm's eyes had changed.  In a moment he had passed
to Rain's lodge, more than a hundred miles to the northward.

The firelight flickered now upon the sloping wall of a tipi, and
through the skins of the lodge covering poured sunshine, mellowed as
though it flowed from gold-stained ancient glass.

Rain knelt on the far side of her hearth fire, and naked down to the
loins she let her body sway to the rhythm of the prayer, while she
bathed her hands, arms, shoulders, and breast in the smoke of burning
herbs.

"I purify myself.  O Holy Animals, intercede for me.  If you have
spirit-power, pray for me that my spirit, O Buffalo, may be strong to
overrun all enemies; O Eagle, that it may soar far up above the
earth-mists; O Wolf, that it may be subtle to see and understand; O
Owl, that it may see far through the darkness; O Deer, that I may run
fast and far upon my errands.

"Hear me, O Spirit in the Sun!  I ask the Holy Animals, so much
stronger, wiser, swifter, more powerful than poor Rain, to plead for
me to you, that I may have spirit-strength to help my people when
they are in need.

"My Secret Helper!  Hiawatha!  Men come who are very unhappy.  Tell
me of their needs, and show me how to help them.

"Send blessings to Storm, dear Spirit.  Pity him, and help him.  Send
him to me, for he needs all my love."

She looked up, across the smoke of the hearth, and there was Storm,
who lay on the couch, his shoulders against the back rest, in the
chief's place facing the door of the tent.  She was ever so glad to
see him.  "You got home quick," she said.  She sat back on her heels,
and drew up a sheet of milk-white antelope skin about her shoulders,
and the fringe of little dew claws tinkled softly.

"The sun," he answered, "was still two hours high when I got home."

"Your animal must have been very hungry?"

"When it was fed it felt quite sleepy, so I left it and came to you,
dear Secret Helper."

"Do you remember," she spoke wistfully, "in the long-ago time when we
were little?  How seldom we could both leave our poor animals at the
same hours!  How rare our Dreamland meetings!  Oh, the long waitings
for you at the Tuft of Moss!"

"Yes, Dream.  I'd leave my animal on board of the old barge in London
River, but before I made the Tuft of Moss the sun was up over these
western mountains, and your mother shaking your animal to turn out
for the day's work.

"Then, you remember, I was on board the _Beaver_ off the Horn, when
your nights and mine began to close in together, so that I saw you
every night watch below.  Ever since I came ashore we've had whole
nights together--three years now."

"Don't be so stupid, Storm.  The times of the Sun Spirit are not
changed.  The Ruler cannot change.  Only our Sun-power grows."

Now, Storm would hold as dogma that the sun keeps different hours in
Oregon and in England, and therefore the Spirit in the Sun must pass
from London River to the Kootenay, a matter of six hours.  This to
Rain's mind was false doctrine, a flagrant heresy.  The Holy Spirit
in the Sun must shine alike, with equal hours at the same time, upon
the unjust in England and on the just west of the Rocky Mountains.
Here was a point in theology on which they always quarreled, without
being a bit the wiser or one whit the better.  Neither had grasped
the thought that the Great Spirit is everywhere, and shines even
within ourselves, while the good sun keeps appointed seasons, days
and hours.

If none of us were theologians, all of us might be Christians.

After the squabble, Rain and Storm agreed that anyway their
"medicine" grew stronger.  That word may need explaining in its
Indian sense.  A physician in the French is "médecin," his treatment
in the English "medicine."  But when a French voyageur would use the
word among the Western Indians, they understood quite in a different
way, for to them a doctor's drug was magic, so the word "medicine"
applied in time to all things magical, mysterious, in contact with
worlds unseen.

To Storm and Rain their medicine, which grew stronger day by day, was
the power which we call psychic, meaning awareness and activity
outside the bodily senses.  The gift is common, its cultivation rare,
for to these lovers it was given in great strength and quick
development.  Not knowing how to explain the whole of this deep
mystery, I venture only to suggest that Rain's mother, a sacred woman
of the Blackfeet, and Storm's mother, a Quaker mystic among the
English, had met together in the planes of spirit-being, and by their
love were helping these children onward.

"At first," said Rain, "when mother went over the Wolf Trail, I was,
oh, so lonely here!  You used to come, to comfort me.  I only heard
your voice, and when I saw you at last you were like a ghost.  I saw
the lodge poles through you, and was so frightened!  Now you grow
clear, just like a person, making my couch all rumpled."

"Come, sit beside me, Dream!"

"Not now," she answered gently.  "I made the holy rites because two
men are coming here."

"Who are they?"

"Two men came up the pass, Blackfeet, and chiefs.  They have killed
an elk, to bring the meat and skin, a pack-horse load, to hang up at
the door of my lodge.  They all do that who come, else must I hunt,
and they would wait half a day before they saw me.  These men have
come from the Great Plains, a seven sun's journey, to ask my help in
trouble.  They pray so earnestly to the Sun!  One of them has a
daughter, the other a boy, in love, but these poor lovers are parted
because the young man is a prisoner with the Sparrowhawks.  The
fathers come to ask me if he lives.  And I must show them how to get
the young warrior back.  Else will the girl think that her heart is
broken, and that is just as bad as a broken heart."

"How far away are these fathers?"

"They will come just before the sun sets.  They have so little hope.
They do not truly believe that I can help them, but the girl pleaded,
and her mother nagged, so of course they had to come.  I will send
them away in the morning with big hearts.  The Sun has pity on them."

"Rain, dear," he asked, "when I got home I found a white man there.
I didn't speak and greet him, because I didn't know if he is good.
Is he good?"

"I see a white trapper," she said, "and a girl grieving for him
because she jilted him, and cannot get him back.  She never will--the
cat!  Her name is Nan.  Far in the East she lives, by the salt
water--her fingers so tired, hemming shirts all day!  How I do pity
these poor washed-out squaws of your Race!  Slaves they are!  Slaves!"

"But the trapper?"

"Oh, him?  Made too free with the Kutenais women, so some of my good
mountaineers made bold to burn his cabin.  He came to your lodge for
refuge, the Kutenais at his heels.  They wait for you, so angry too!"

"Why do they wait for me?"

"They want to ask you first before they kill him, because, if you say
yes, his ghost will haunt you, not them.  They are artful, these
Kutenais."

"Shall I let them have him?"

"Your guest?"

"Of course not.  I can't."

"He has hunted and brought good meat when they were all afraid of
famine.  He nurses the old Fatbald.  The children's spirits plead for
him.  He will be your friend, that is, at first, dear.  I shall be
jealous.  Yes, I'll be nasty."

"All right.  Why did you send me home in such a hurry?  The old man
seems all right."

"The flame will flicker to-night, and then go out.  He willed to live
until he could see you, Storm.  Don't laugh at him to-night."

"I promise.  And when he is dead, Rain, may I come to you on Earth?"

"No, you must settle affairs.  The household would starve if you left
them now, and the tribe need you badly.  Three months must pass
before you are free to come."

"Haven't I waited these three years, and all the years before that?"

"Cry-baby!  Have I not waited?  Besides, I don't think I want to see
you in your meat body.  No.  How often do you bathe?"

"Wheugh!  Not in this weather, not in winter.  In summer, when it's
hot--yes."

"A Blackfoot warrior bathes daily."

"In winter?" He shuddered at the idea.

"Yes, in winter a sweat bath and a roll in the snow.  How else could
he keep fit for the war trail?"

"Glad I'm not a Blackfoot!"

"Glad we're not married!  So there!  Storm, you'll bathe every day
from now on, or you come not to my lodge, son of a dirty tribe!"

"The English, dirty!"

"Savage, rude, wild, uncouth--with naughty tempers.  Now go back to
your stupid body, for the Blackfoot chiefs draw near.  I hear them.
I must pray to the Sun to smooth my temper too."

The fire blazed up strongly with a crackle of curling birch bark, and
Storm looked out from his bed to see old Fatbald's chief woman
putting on fresh logs.

"Two Bits," he called to her in Kutenais.

She looked round.  "Awake?" she asked.

"Dear Two Bits, my Secret Helper is cruel and orders me to have a
bath every day.  Isn't it awful?"

"Huh!  Your Dream must be a Blackfoot.  Mark you, it takes more than
a daily bath to wash off their dirty deeds."

"You'll get the sweat lodge ready?"

"You'll catch your death," she answered gloomily, "and then of course
we'll all starve."

She went out grumbling to get the sweat house ready.  But Two Bits
always grumbled, and never in her life had risked a bath, having no
dirty deeds to wash away.

The old man slept, and Storm lay watching him.  Fatbald would awaken
presently and demand to have his back scratched.

"Say," the American trapper, determined to be treated no longer as a
log on the woodpile, came over to the hearth and stood confronting
Storm, "do you talk white?"

Storm sat up yawning, stretched himself, looked at the trapper,
laughed, offered his hand.  "Sorry," he said, and the English felt
heavy, like bullets in his mouth.  "English--I half forget--English,
I speak no word three years.  Talk white, eh?  So you're American!"
The mother tongue came easier.  "I knew an American once, name of
Silas."

"Silas, what?"

"Just Silas.  Do your tribe have two names?  I had two, once."

"Hiram J. Kant's my name."

"I asked no question, did I?  You are my guest.  I do not ax you why
you tried to make free with women of my tribe, or why the men burned
you out, or why you took cover here, or why my people wait my leave
to kill you."

"How did you know all that?  It's more 'en these Injuns know, and I
seen they telled you nothin'.  They nary looked my way."

"Who told me about Nan?"

The American went white, and shrank against the wall.

"What d'ye mean?" he asked under his breath.  "I ain't been
asleep--to talk in my sleep since you come."

Storm's eyes made everything else blind dark to the American.

"Far east," he said, "by the Atlantic coast, Nan sits at her window,
sewing all day long, shirts, always shirts.  Her fingers are stiff
with cramp, and she cries and cries."

"What business is that of yours?  You leave my private affairs to me.
What do you know, anyways?"

"Nothing much, shipmate.  It's your affair that you'll take oath to
leave our women here alone, or their men kill you when you cross that
doorstep.  Take oath, swear to God that you leave the women of the
Kutenais alone, or you cross the doorstep now."

He went to the doorway, and stood with his hand on the latch.

"You take your choice," he said.

"I ain't panting any," said the American disdainfully, "after your
damned homely old squaws."

"On your oath?"'

"Honest to God!"

"See that you keep your word."

The old man stirred, and burbled.

"He's waking up," said Storm.  "You take my bed.  Well, daddy?"  He
spoke in Kutenais.  "Want your back scratched?"

"Come here, my son."

"Here, daddy.  What's up?"

"Secrets, my son, secrets.  Bend your head down, listen.  Don't tell
these women."

"Not a word."

"Speak French.  I'm going to leave them.  I shall be wafted, wafted,
like a thistledown, to my brother's palace at Irkutsk.  Then we go,
he and I, to Peterborg, to the winter palace, to the court ball--the
Bal Masque, my brother as Puncinello--so fat--ho! ho!  He is too fat
to be good form.  But I--don't breathe a word--I go as the
Sansculotte, the Revolutionary of the Red Terror, with wild hair, and
the tricolor sash.  Yes, even the pantaloons--to terrify the Court.
Her Imperial Majesty the Tsarevna will faint at the sight of a
Sansculotte.  Ah! there's the practical joke, to make our Court of
Russia expect Madame Guillotine, the madam who thinks us all too tall
to be quite in the mode, too tall by a head.

"A Sansculotte, yes, but not without a shirt--no--no.  That would be
too immoral.  Get out a dress shirt with my Mechlin ruffles.  And
really the striped waistcoat does make most subtle suggestion of a
graceful figure.  Tatata--_quel horreur_!  Not the rude breeches with
iron buckles.  Wheu!  And these so scratchy, disgustingly coarse gray
stockings.  Take them away!  Burn them!  Yes, dove-colored
stockinette, and for a graceful contrast the egg-blue swallow-tails
with salmon-colored revers.  And _comme la mode_ my diamond fob, of
course--tut tut tut--to illustrate the complexion of a patch here--as
though by accident, carelessly, _sans gêne_.  Ah! this black cocked
hat with its tricolor plume, and gold tassels above the
shoulders--oh, very saucy!  Ivan!  My quizzing glass! of course.
Beast!  Why, they'll be the rage next season!  Not Sansculotte?  Pig!
Am I not Orthodox?  _Noblesse oblige_!

"Hark, Storm!  Violin, 'cello, harpischord, and flute.  Why, 'tis the
Herr Professor Beethoven's new minuet!  Mad'moiselle in homage,
adorable!  Thy bridal crown, Pavlova!  My wife!  My darling--thy love
pours through me as Neva bathes her isles.  No star dare shine where
thy light gleams.  Rose of the nightless summer.  Oh, petal fingers
thrill my hand!  Am I not shadow to enhance thy sunshine?  And in my
reverent homage bow before thee.

"The music changes.  'Tis the Emperor's hymn.  A most fatiguing
homemade tune.  And here come their Imperial Majesties the Tsar and
Tsarevna, advancing through the lane of courtiers.  She wears the
Orlov diamond _en corsage_, but don't you think this old Russian
court dress rather dowdy?  Nicholas has the new side-whiskers.  I
must remember.  I really must ask my barber if----  What fun, what a
joke!  Olga, my Little Fur Seal, I shall present you as my wife--my
bride in hairy sealskin breeches--Eskimo!  The Tsarevna and the Grand
Duchesses will faint in heaps, and order my head chopped off.  All
Peterborg convulsed at my last joke.  Now, don't you scratch my face,
dear.  No.  Not here!  Why, these insipid dolls in diamonds and
starch are not real flesh and blood, passion and tenderness, as you
are, my little savage.  But really you shouldn't scratch my face at a
court ball.  _Démodé_, my dear, _outré_.  You hold my gloves instead,
for the zakouska.  We will have cognac and one red mushroom, eh?

"Oh, dear me!  Paradise of course, my dear Storm, and all the
fountains playing, but who invites these old Haidah wives of mine and
the Kutenais harem as well?  They must not meet, or there'll be such
a row.  And for heaven's sake don't let them see my Little Fur Seal,
or any of them meet Pavlova.  Good gracious, here's my old Samoyed
wife as well!  What a reunion!  How badly arranged!  They'll never
get on together.  Don't let my past wives catch me in Heaven--it's
really too disgusting.  I am busy.  Tell them I haven't the honor of
their acquaintance.  Olga!  Be reasonable.  None of them have any
manners.  Yes, I admit they fail to do me justice, biting, clawing,
screeching.  Canaille!  Hags!  Oh, not at all a good selection to
meet me in Paradise.  The arrangements here are really deplorable!
Help!  Help!  Woman, that's my face----

"Ah!  Brother!  Is that you?"

The dying man shoved Storm aside, reached out his arms, his face most
strangely boyish.  "Alexei!" he said.  "Let's play at wives and
husbands!"

Storm saw the spirit departing from the worn-out, ruined body of his
friend.



II

Daily the widows mourned.  Ah hai-i-i ahee-ee! for the White Chief,
Many Wives hai-ai-ya-hai!  Whose medicine was so strong that the hair
grew out at the wrong end of his head?  Ya-a-a-hai!  Whose body
needed the tribe, the dogs, and carrioles lashed abreast, to carry
awai-i-i-ya-hai-i-i.  Yow-ow-ow-o!  And he wanted to be buried up a
tree-ee-ee-hee!  Aye, yow-ow-ow!  Ahooo-oo-boohoo-oo-oo-oo-ahai-i!

At meals, or otherwise when ordered by the white men to shut up, and
hold their row-ow-ow-aeou! they became placid, even moderately
cheerful, and squabbled a little in the kitchen about the division of
Fatbald's property.

It was at such an interval that Storm took Hiram into the trade room
where one's breath made clouds.  They sat on bales of furs
considering a pack of sulphur from the Cascade volcanoes, a sack of
willow charcoal, and ten alforgas of wood ash washed, strained, and
dried into gray niter with a nice gun-powder perfume.  These the
American approved, but he demanded black lead to waterproof the
gunpowder, when made, "Unless," he said, "you want it for liquid face
paint."

As for Storm's cake of explosive, made already and with great pride
set out for inspection: "Shucks," said the trapper, "ef that ain't
the complete benighted, effete, old-country Britisher!  Want it as
mush for breakfast, or to drown kittens in?

"And yet, I dunno.  It's shorely a safety gunpowder this, all right.
No danger of going off bang--just mammie's pap warranted safe for
children."

"Make the stuff yourself then," said Storm indignantly.

"That's the proposition," answered the American; "and what do I get?"

"I'll replace the outfit them Injuns burned.  You 'elps yourself."

"Done!"

The American had out a clasp knife, and whittled the edge of a
packing case.

"And, say!  When you auctions off them widders----"

"They're not my widders."

"Eh?  Not your widders yet?  Waal, now I kind of thought you was fell
heir to them widders.  Marrying all four?"

"None."

"'Cause ef they come reasonable I'm open to dicker for Two Bits."

"Hiram, hadn't you better wake up?"

"Eh?  Now I kinder reckoned I shorely was awake."

"This widder Two Bits owns this place."

"Well, did you hear me crying?  I don't weep none."

"The Head Chief of the Lower Kutenais, young Sitting Wolf, happens to
be a widower.  He's going to marry Two Bits."

"When she's through mourning for Many Wives, eh?  Got it all fixed.
Now I sort of reckon the lady ain't having any.  She's set her hat at
me."

"And Sitting Wolf?  He had your winter quarters burned because you
looked at the women.  He's jealous.  His friend must have no other
friend 'cepting himself.  His first wife looked sideways at a man--he
killed both.  The man who looks at Two Bits is taking risks.  Don't
get athwart his hawse.  Don't foul his bows if you want to keep
afloat."

"All right--all right.  How much will Sitting Wolf take to be sort of
Running Wolf over the sky line?"

"I think," Storm answered him, "it's much more like a case of Running
Hiram."

"You mean he'll chase me out of the doggone country?"

"He mentioned the idea, and the tribe woted in the affirmitude."

Here they were interrupted by a young warrior, a messenger from
Sitting Wolf and the tribal council, requesting Storm to attend them.

"We'll be right along," said Hiram.

But Storm looked at the American's hair, which was cropped at the
neck.  "I wouldn't," he said earnestly.

"What's bitten you?" asked Hiram.

"A man with short hair ain't axed to sit with Injuns in council.
Wait till your hair grows, and you're asked to come."

"Is that so?  Waal, of all the----"

Storm followed the messenger to a lodge covered with mats of rushes.
There in the chief's place opposite the door was Sitting Wolf,
dressed in his finest robe, and on his left in order of their rank
the leaders of the septs, very grave and formal.  The white man was
asked to take his seat on the women's side of the lodge.

In front of the chief lay a bundle which he now opened, making a
prayer for each of the many coverings disclosed, until amid a
breathless hush--as when at the Roman Mass the Host is revealed to
the people--he took up the sacred pipe.  Its bowl of red sandstone
came from the pipe-stone quarry in far-away Michigan, and the stem,
ancient, charged with mysterious power, was hung with eagle feathers.
The messenger, kneeling in homage, received the medicine pipe,
charged the bowl with tobacco, and after praying, lighted it with a
coal from the hearth.

Sitting Wolf stood to perform the culminating rite.  He was a young
man in those days, by all accounts a gallant gentleman, lightly
built, graceful of bearing, his clear-cut face austere, now made
beautiful by reverence, by faith as he prayed.  Filling his mouth
with smoke and blowing it in homage, he greeted first the Spirit in
the Sun, then by turn the Spirits of the Four Winds, and lastly
Mother Earth.  Afterwards each of the leaders smoked in turn, once,
and Storm last of all, before the pipe was returned and covered up.

Before the end of this long ritual the sun had gone down behind the
westward heights, the hearth fire burned low, and the Indians were
huddled in their robes of elk or bison while Storm, with only his
deer-skin hunting dress, felt chilled to the bones.  With the
covering of the pipe, Sitting Wolf ceased to be priest celebrant and
was the chief, jealous, envious, with something in his leathery dark
face sinister, boding.  Storm knew that his own heirship to old
Tschirikov stripped Two Bits of great wealth, and the chief, who
intended to marry the widow, had been brooding over her losses.

"We have purified our bodies," began the chief indifferently, as one
who patters a set form of words, "with prayer have cleansed our
hearts, and with smoke of the sacred pipe-have cleared our heads for
counsel.  Now for the leaders here, and for the tribe, I speak to you
Storm, adopted son and sole heir of him who has passed.  He was our
friend, but never a priest, a chief, or leader in our tribe.  Having
a sit-beside-him wife, he lived with other women out of wedlock,
according to the custom of his people, which by our law is very wrong.

"He came of a tribe beyond the western sea, you come of a tribe
beyond the eastern sea, and you have different customs.  The question
of the council is, will you obey our laws?"

"Aye."

Sitting Wolf lifted his eyebrows as though surprised, turned down the
corners of his lips as if he were disappointed.  If this white man
obeyed the tribal law, he could not well be fined or his property
made forfeit.

"Storm," he said, "we have watched you these three snows.  We see,
all of us here, that in your tribe beyond the eastern sea, you came
of a bad father."

The challenge would have been insulting to an Indian, but Storm
assented easily.

"Aye," he said--"aye."

"Poor chap!" was the inner thought, "Thinks I'm robbing him of a
trade house full of furs, three hundred ponies in pasture, five
canoes, no end of saddles and harness, the dog teams, and carrioles."

"Aye," he said, "a bad father."

"I speak as chief," continued the envious Sitting Wolf, and his
upward glance was full of menace now.  "I speak for your good.

"We know that your father was bad because your riding is a sin, and
the Sun clouds his face at the sight.  Your seat in a canoe wakes the
winds to howl.  Your feet on the trail break sticks and stumble over
roots to frighten away the game and affront the Holy Animals.  You
have an ill-trained nose which cannot smell a real bear at ten paces.
Your sight may be long and keen, but you have never learned to note
the thing which moves at a distance.  Your arrows are a danger to us,
and with the medicine iron your bullets hit the sky, offending the
Above Spirits.  Your fishing amuses the fish, but affronts the
Under-water Spirits.  You never pray for the help of the Holy
Animals.  You say you do your best.  You try, but one who does not
succeed becomes a danger to his comrades whether in running buffalo
or on the war trail.  Until you can feed and defend a woman and help
in the tribe's defense, you are not fit to marry among my people.  We
live too near the Lodge of the Hunger Spirit to take such risks as
that.  Later I shall speak more of my mind, but first the medicine
man has words to say."

Storm was not at all pleased.  Truth is void of manners, and yet has
a front and a back, an outside and an inside.  Here was only the
outside of Truth spoken in anger, with ill-veiled intention of
enmity, by one who had always seemed to be a friend.

Now spoke the withered medicine man, kindly, fatuous Beaver Tail, who
saw another aspect of the Truth, and loved a platitude.

"White Man, our chief has spoken, and of course his words are my
words.  Yet these three winters, friends, and not your enemies, have
watched you, and a friend speaks now.  Bad was your father, yet you
are the son of a good woman."

Storm looked up, and the sullen resentment seemed to vanish from his
face.

"Sitting Wolf, as chief," said the old man, "speaks to your father's
son.  I as priest speak to your mother's son.  She gave you strength
and staying power.  The work you do should kill the strongest of our
young men.  She gave you also a quick mind, a straight tongue, a good
heart.  For these, not for your skill as a hunter or warrior, we make
you a member of our tribe, and subject to our laws."

"Artful old devil!" was the white man's inner thought.  "He wants me
subject to the tribal law, so that the chief can claim old Fatbald's
property."

"Go on," he said, eager to fathom the plot which underlay these
compliments.

"Your Dream," continued _Beaver_ Tail, under his breath, his hands
making signs of prayer, "your Secret Helper is a strong and very holy
animal.  Your medicine is becoming powerful."  He smiled engagingly,
frankly.  "Your white man's cunning is of use to us.  We have decided
to make you a member of this council."

Storm bent his head in acknowledgment.  "Does the old humbug," he
wondered, "think he is fooling me?  If I'm a member of tribe and
council they'll claim that I'm subject to the chief--unfit to hold
property unless he adopts me as brother, to look after me, to look
after the old man's wealth."

Sitting Wolf had heard the medicine man's talk with ill-concealed
impatience.  "As member of tribe and council," he said, "open your
heart to us, young man, as to the affairs of our friend who has
departed."

Swift as a flash of lightning Storm's mind went back to Margate beach
of a Sunday afternoon.  Once more he was Bill Fright in ragged slacks
and jersey, where Dolly, the cuddlesome little 'tweenie, sat between
his knees upon the sands.  She had cotton gloves to hide her grubby
hands, and these must not be touched lest he should soil their
new-washed whiteness, though he might kiss the place where the hair
tickled just close behind her ear.  "No, silly!  The left ear!"  Then
she recited word for word the very latest squabble between her
mistress, Lady Travis, and Sir Julian--a cat-and-dog fight, no less.

A tear ran down Storm's cheek.  If only to take a penn'orth of
shrimps for mother's tea on board the _Polly Phemus_ at the quay
side, he would forfeit his share to these painted savages.  Stanch
friends and earnest instructors had they been: Sitting Wolf in
woodcraft, horsemanship, and canoe work, Beaver Tail in the language,
the sign talk, herb lore, hypnotic medicine, and the deep things of
Kutenais religion.  What if the medicine man trapped him in tribal
and council membership that the chief might overrule his claim on
Fatbald's wealth!  These Indians were the only friends he had, or
ever could have now, on earth.

He did not think of Rain as of the earth.  His body had never dared
to worship her, his love was as yet untarnished by any breath of
passion.  She was of the spirit, and in the spirit beloved, beyond,
above all earthly creatures, a priestess serving at the Apse of Ice,
a High Place sacred to the All-Father.

He looked at the grave faces of his friends, knowing them all so
deeply, loving them so dearly.  There were no braver men on earth,
none more chaste, religious, hospitable, sweet-tempered, honorable
than these large-handed, large-footed, great-hearted mountaineers.
He was proud to have their friendship, and yet in the recesses of his
soul he was a man, and these were only children, who painted their
faces.

One must have lived alone with savages before one realizes that in
the most ignorant white man of the Northlands there resides age-long
experience, a will which never rests, a high authority and
sovereignty commanding their obedience.

Rough on the surface only, Storm in the soul of him was a man of
unusual force, with powers far beyond the average of his race.
Humbly and simply as he spoke to these Indians his words bit deep,
his power gripped their hearts, while still they were unconscious, as
he was himself, of anything unusual.

"My words are air, just frosty clouds of air.  See."  The lodge was
so cold that his breath showed white as he spoke.  "Only my hands can
thank you for all your friendship, all your love.  I am a seaman of
the big canoes on the salt water.  There my hands are trained.  But
here, on these plains and forests and high snows, it needs the
training of a lifetime up from childhood to be a hunter and warrior
as you are hunters, as you are warriors.  Three snows are not enough
to train a man."

"How!" they muttered their approval--"how!"

"Hear, then, Chief Sitting Wolf.  Hear, Beaver Tail, my teacher.
Hear, my friends.  I speak from a full heart, and the fool tears tell
you I'm not a man yet fit to sit among men, or to ride for buffalo
out there beyond the World Spine, or to walk on the war trail, or to
keep a wife.

"You go soon, most of you, to join with the Flatheads, Nez Percés,
Pend d'Oreilles, Cœur d'Alènes, perhaps even a few Yakimas.  Your
fit men will ride together in force across the World Spine to the
Great Plains, to run the buffalo bulls of the spring hunting, perhaps
to fight the Blackfeet.  Your women will ride to dry the meat and
dress the robes.

"The rest of the tribe will go in your canoes along the Lake and the
West Arm, and the river of the Kutenais to the Mother of Rivers, and
downstream to the Great Falls.  There they will join the fishing
tribes, under the Salmon Chief.  They will catch the salmon, trade at
Fort Colville, feast, dance, gamble.  They take the women to smoke
the fish.  They take the children; for the babies, even the dogs, are
fit.  I shall be left behind, less than the least, worse than a dog."

The chief looked sulky and aggrieved, the medicine man was clearing
his throat to make a soothing speech.  One of the leaders asked Storm
to be his brother at the hunting.  Another was muttering, "Shame!
shame!"  All were uncomfortable.  "Come to the point!" growled
Sitting Wolf.

And Storm was laughing at their disquietude.  "No need," he said more
cheerfully, "for the dog to freeze."

He threw some wood on the fire, then wrapped a robe about his
shoulders.

"I am here," continued Storm, "to speak for him that was my father.
What has the little law of your petty tribe to do with a chief among
the Russians?  By the law of the Russian tribe his sit-on-the-right
woman, Two Bits, gets the trading house and the lodge furnishings.
By the law of the Russians the four widows have taken equal shares of
the pony herd and harness, the canoes and paddles, the dog teams and
carrioles.  He who marries one of these widows will be rich.

"Again I speak for my dead father.  He was a Russian, I am an
Englishman.  Russia and England are the left arm and the right arm of
mankind, enfolding the whole earth.  And where the fingers meet, the
Kutenais tribe is a flea caught under a finger nail of the English.
By the law of both Russians and English I am heir to the great chief
who made me his son.

"The trade room is full of furs, and these are mine."

Sitting Wolf leaned forward staring, snarling in his throat, but
Storm went on, looking him straight in the eyes and laughing at him.
"Enough," he said incisively, "to load the canoes of the
tribe!--Silence!  I speak!--and at Fort Colville, to buy guns for all
your hunters.  Do you object to having your hunters armed?"

If a shell had exploded among them these Indians would have sat quite
still while Death selected his prey; and now, at the burst of Storm's
words, they kept their quietude, their dignity.  Only they turned
their eyes reproachfully upon their chief.  Their breathing seemed to
stop, but no face changed.  In sheer relief the chief relaxed against
the backrest, and a queer smile, shy, friendly, as of a dog to his
master, sought Storm's approval.

Before they sent for Storm the members of the council had been agreed
that this white man was unfit to marry, hunt, or fight, and least of
all to hold great property.  They had placed him beneath the level of
their dogs, and in return he gave them a gun to every hunter.  Their
chief would not have done so.

Never again would famine camp among their lodges, and war could not
invade their mountain stronghold.  The tribes allied with them for
hunting buffalo--East Kutenais, Flatheads, Nez Perces, Pend
d'Oreilles, Cœur d'Alènes, Spokanes, Yakimas combined, could never
attack with arrows a people armed with guns.  Best armed of all the
tribes, they should ride safely into the barred hunting grounds of
the powerful Blackfoot Confederation.  Truly this dog had fangs!

"I thought you would be pleased," said the white man easily, as he
stirred the smoldering fire until it blazed.  "But there are points
you do not think of until I speak about them.  This trading of furs
for guns needs a white man's brain to match against the Hudson's Bay
Company, whose trader would get the best of any Indian.  I shall send
my white man, Hiram Kant, whom you call Hunt-the-girls."

The grave Indians were smiling as they heard that new name for the
trapper.

"You would have shot and wasted him, but I need him, and kept him for
this trading.  I want one of you chiefs to go with Hunt-the-girls and
see that you get the guns here to this camp--or kill him.  Only a
chief shall do this, because Hunt-the-girls is a chief, as all of you
know in your hearts, all of you sitting here.  You shall choose who
is to go, to help him, or shoot him as the case may be.

"But of these medicine irons.  They are only sticks, dead rubbish
unless you have the medicine powder, and the medicine balls.  Long
ago I knew that my father was dying, and that I should prepare this
gift.  For that reason I made, as you know, a carriole load and a
canoe load of bullets.  I tried, you may remember, long ago, to make
the powder, but my medicine was no good.  For this kind of work
Hunt-the-girls has better medicine than mine, so I let him make the
powder.  He gets a trapper's outfit for his pay.

"You shall not have the powder and ball to blow away and waste.  They
shall belong to Two Bits, and she will sell them to you in trade for
furs.  The higher the price she charges for ball and powder, the less
will be thrown away in idle shooting.  These are my orders.  If you
don't like them, I'm ready to fight anybody who wants shooting, or
I'll take on the crowd--as you please.

"Now, I have one thing more to say.  I will have Two Bits rich and
powerful in the tribe because she has more sense than any of you, and
she will keep Sitting Wolf out of mischief.  You cannot!  When the
chief is jealous he goes mad, and flies at the throat of his nearest
friend.  Two Bits will tame him--already he eats out of her hand.

"That's all, I think."

For some minutes the Indians were lost in thought, or deep in prayer.

"My brother," asked the chief at last, "where is your share?"

"What share," answered Storm, "can I carry on my back?  How many
horses, how many canoes, can I carry on my back through the woods?
That much is my share."

"You take nothing?"

"Before I left salt water, my friends of the big canoe gave me a gun,
a belt, a wallet, a pouch, a knife--yes, and one other thing I have
never shown you, a secret thing which is my medicine.  I will ask
you, my brothers, to give me a supply of ball and powder, a robe, and
your good will."

"Where do you go?"

"When all is done and the ice breaks, I go into the Wilderness.  You
have often told me about Rain, the Sacred Woman of the Blackfeet.
Men of all nations go to her lodge for counsel in their sorrow,
sickness, or peril.  I go to make my offering at the holy lodge, and
seek the guidance of the Sacred Woman."



CHAPTER V

THE WHOLE ARMOR


I--RENUNCIATION

When the sun wears the snow thin, the butter-cups underneath feel the
light and the warmth, so they have faith, melting their way up
through the edges of the drifts until they reach the glory of the
day.  Then the ice breaks, roaring down the river, shatters and
founders on the lake, while the birds proclaim the summer to the
valleys, avalanches thunder in the hills, because it is Easter, the
time of the Resurrection.

The American trapper was much surprised at having behaved himself so
nicely as to win Storm's friendship and the hearty good will of the
tribe.  He was quite touched by the treatment he met with.  The
trapping outfit, lost when they burned him out of winter quarters,
had been most lavishly replaced in payment for his gunpowder.  He
said he felt good.  He helped to ballast the canoes with bullets,
even to stow the cargo of powder and furs for Fort Colville.  And yet
he had misgivings.

The Kutenais bark canoe is curiously fashioned with a long horn or
ram at either end below the water line.  Because its natural position
is bottom upwards, it is not popular.  Nobody really enjoys it except
the Flatbow Indians of Flatbow Lake.  And yet it has one merit: one
can spell Kutenai in seventy-six recognized orthodox ways and always
pronounce the word Flatbow.  Still Hunt-the-girls saw the loaded
canoes and heard of the cataracts, and to him the spelling and
pronunciation were mere details.  He was quite frank about it.  He
flatly refused the journey.  He would be doggoned and several other
disagreeable things would happen to him before he would go trading to
a British Fort.  He had no sort of use for Britishers anyways, having
whipped 'em at Bunker Hill--wherever that was--and kep' 'em on the
dead run ever since.  He didn't give a continental--whatever that
might be--about Injuns, which wasn't good unless they was dead, and
hadn't ought to be allowed out with guns for shooting the whites.
Moreover, he'd heard tell of a crick up North a-ways, which was plumb
spoiled with beaver dams, as needed clearing out with his little set
of traps.  Two Bits would loan him her dugout.  There was no two ways
about it.  "And I'm due," he told Storm, "to roll my tail in the
mawning."

Now the four widows, resolved that the trader who represented the
tribe at Fort Colville should be dressed to do them credit, had made
a deerskin hunting shirt, leggings and moccasins soft as silk,
golden-tawny, perfumed with wood smoke.  The deep fringes about the
shoulders and along the seams, whose pattering throws off snow to
keep the leather dry, the decoration of porcupine quills, dyed lemon,
plum bloom, indigo, and vermilion, in sacred patterns which charm
away disease, wounds, or death, made this gift beautiful, the most
precious that love could offer.  When Hunt-the-girls refused to trade
for the tribe the widows brought their offering to Storm, and, cut to
the quick, the trapper declared it was rotten anyway.

Storm sat in Fatbald's chair before the fire and let the women lay
the hunting dress upon his knees.  "Get out!" he said to
Hunt-the-girls.  "Get out of my camp--you!"

And Hunt-the-girls left in a rage.  Storm heard him swearing at the
men while he got his dugout canoe afloat and loaded for the North.
Then the women saw that their friend wanted to be alone, so they left
him.

"Rain!" he whispered.  "My Dream!  Rain!"

"Storm," she answered out of the air, "I heard, dear."

"How long?" he asked--"how long?"  And tears were running down his
face.

"We have waited," she answered, "all our lives.  Dearest, you are not
obliged to go to the Fort of the Stone-hearts."

"That's all you know," he said indignantly.

"But they'll arrest you for murder!"

"What of that!  If I let these silly savages trade for guns, they'll
waste the furs on imitation jewelry, sham silk handkerchiefs, liquor,
all sorts of foolishness.  They'll come back with two or three old
fukes, and say that arrows are better.  Of course I'll have to go."

He heard a chirp like that of a squirrel, cheeky, truculent.

"You're laughing at me," he said peevishly.

"T-t.  T-t.  T-t.  Krr-aw-aw!  Storm, dear, your mother is with me."

"Humph!  What does she want?"

"She says that long ago, in the big-canoe-on-the-salt-water, you had
an enemy."

"Silas?  Oh, we were pretty good friends after."

"Yes.  When you loved your enemy.  Then, when you came within three
suns' journey of my lodge, you stayed three years to nurse a fat old
man."

"How could I help that?  It wasn't my fault."

"That you didn't pass him by on the other side?  He died though, and
left you the richest man in all the mountain tribes."

"What was the good?  I couldn't carry all that, and come to you."

"Your mother asks what you will do with this dress."

Storm had given away a fortune without one pang of regret, but he was
filled now with a sick longing for this gift from the four widows.
To give it up?  Oh, well, it would please his mother, make Rain
happy.  "It's all one to me," he said quite cheerfully.  "And after
all, I ain't no hunter that I should swagger about in such a kit.
Old clothes are good enough for the likes o' me.  But then, Rain,
there's them widders.  They'd cry their eyes out!"

He heard Rain singing her happy song, the squirrel song.  Then she
spoke as though she were crying.

"Storm!"

"Yes."

"We'll make a low-down savage of you, a Redskin brave like my brother
Heap-of-dogs."

"All right.  I wasn't much use as a white man, and my tribe here say
I'll never make an Indian."

"You gave everything away.  That's Indian."

"Nothing to brag about."

"Take all your old clothes and everything you've got except your
hunting weapons, and hang them up as a sacrifice to the Sun Spirit.
That's Indian."

"Right."

"Had your bath to-day?"

"Of course."

"That's a good Indian!  Now swim across the river in the running ice.
A Blackfoot thinks nothing of that."

"I wasn't raised for a pet."

"Go naked into the woods, eat no food, pray till your Secret Helper
comes to you.  Every Indian does that before he's a warrior."

"I won't be beat."

"To-morrow at this hour swim back across the river, call the tribe
together, and ask them to pray for you to the Sun, the Moon, and
Morning Star.

"Go to the Council Lodge, and you shall use the big-turnip smoke to
purify your body.  The chief is to open the bundle of the medicine
pipe, and after the ceremony the medicine man will dress you in these
new clothes which the widows made of love, prayers, and the honor of
the tribe to the glory of the Sun.  It is full of spiritual power to
guard you from evil, but your mother says that the dress is not
completed until you reach Fort Colville."



II--COMMUNION

Naked and hungry, torn by the thorns, and bruised, his feet bleeding
on the rough ground, Storm climbed to keep himself warm until he
stood among the last trees.  They were like torches, gaunt, funereal,
their feet in the old gray snow, their heads among the stars waiting
until the moon should rise and kindle them.  Far down beneath, the
howls of the timber wolves cleft the still deeps of night.  Storm
leaned against a tree facing the south, awed by the silence to the
verge of terror.  And then through the silence there came a voice
more beautiful than he had ever heard on earth:

  Spirit in the Sun,
  I thank Thee for my training
  In sorrow and adversity, in want and peril,
  Which have brought me nearer to Thee;
  For the happy adventures of my life,
  The beauty of the earth,
  The revelations of Thy mighty power,
  And all the love which has enfolded me.


"Who prays?" cried Storm.  "Who says the prayer?"

He looked about him, and found he was not alone, for Rain was on her
knees close by, her mother, Thunder Feather, his mother, Catherine,
the three of them busy kindling a little fire.  The man whose voice
he had heard stood just beyond them, a figure of radiant light and
more than human stature, wearing a ceremonial robe of milk-white
deerskin and a single eagle plume in his hair, the token of
chiefship.  Storm looked up very humbly at the Spirit whose face had
so grave, so sweet a majesty.

A glance of the great chief's eyes commanded him to look at the scene
surrounding them.

The trees had faded into mist.  Now they were gone, and the snow lay
unbroken, level, a headland from whose edges, near on either side,
the walls went down into deep immensities of space.  On the far side
of this abyss, all round the east, the south, and the west, mountains
were taking substance in slow revelation of walls inimitably deep,
broken by five small glaciers.  Precipice immeasurably high, scored
here and there by cornices of clear green ice, shouldered the starlit
snow fields, from whence there soared seven peaks of hewn and graven
starlight.

As he watched, these mountains began to glow with an inner light,
each of one clear color, the whole a spectrum enclosing the level
hilltop.  From where the three women knelt, a thin blue smoke
ascended, as from an altar.

Storm turned again to the chief whose mysterious power had made this
vision.

"Who are you, sir?" he asked.

"In my last earth-life," answered the chief, "my name was Hiawatha.
It used to be a custom among my people that a young man seeking to
have the rank of a warrior gave away all his property, except his
weapons.  Then having bathed, and left every impurity behind him, he
went naked into the wilderness, and there fasted until his Secret
Helper came to instruct him.  My son, you have followed the custom of
my people.  Will you accept me as your Secret Helper?"

"Thank you, sir."

"The dress of a brave is something more than clothing.  It is the
outward sign of his training for war, his obedience to his leader,
his cheery endurance of hardships, his gift to his tribe of all that
he is, all that he has, and all he can do, his dedication not only of
his life, but also of his death."

Storm bent his head in token that, understanding, he stood in
readiness.

"Under what leader shall you serve?"

"I don't brag," said Storm, "or even talk about that.  I suppose
you've got to know.  I was one of four soldiers, we were Romans, on
execution fatigue, and we hanged a man.  Well, He's my leader."

Hiawatha made the sign of the cross.

"And mine," he said, "Warrior!"

Then Storm knew that he was no longer naked, but clad in the splendid
dress whose earthly counterpart he should put on for the first time
to-morrow.

"This Easter morning," said Hiawatha, "before the day breaks, your
wife and your mother here have asked me, Storm, to tell you a few
things about my Indian people."

They sat down in comfort round the fire, the three women on the
chief's right, Storm on his left, after the Indian manner.  Rain
lighted Hiawatha's pipe, then that of her man.

"I am the cracked earth," said Storm cheerily, "which prays for rain."

"It seems to me," the chief's retort was prompt, "that a cracked
mouth makes fun of our holy animals."

"They seem so silly."

"What, even in your Bible?"

Storm thought for a moment, concerning the four beasts full of eyes,
within and without.  There were the jolliest horses.  There was the
symbolism of the sheep, of the lamb.

"Truths," Hiawatha spoke with reverence, "veiled in allegory,
illustrated by symbols."

"But are there animals, real ones?"

"Many.  There is, for instance, one Spirit who has charge of the
buffalo.  The group-consciousness of all the buffalo, their
herd-awareness, which you know as instinct, is a part of his mind
that warns the buffalo herds of coming storms, of changing seasons,
and leads them to winter pastures where the bunch grass stands out
clear from the thin snow.  To this buffalo spirit my people address
their prayers, asking him to guide them also in search for food, and
in his pity to plead for them in their need to the Spirit in the Sun.

"Such prayers give them spiritual strength.  Now, sonny, which will
give you spiritual power--to make fun which hurts your wife, or to
learn the lessons which she had from me?"

"Oh, damn the 'oly animals!" said Storm in his heart.  "Old Daddy
swore I'd never be a bargeman.  Silas claimed he couldn't make a
sailor of me.  Even these Injuns despise me.  I know I'm no good; I'm
nothing."

He had forgotten that in the spirit-realms no secret thought is
hidden.  Now Rain winked at her mother, Thunder Feather, and
Hiawatha, seeing that, nearly betrayed his laughter, which would give
such pain if it were seen; but Catherine crept behind them and sat
beside her son.  "They're only a pack of savages," she whispered.  "I
'aven't seen no 'oly animals neither."

Hiawatha made signs to the Indian women, composed his face to
severity, and in the manner of a schoolmaster addressed himself to
Storm.

"Storms-all-of-a-sudden, what is a savage?" he asked with Indian
gravity.

"Oh, I dunno!"  The white man was sulky, ashamed, and moaning to
himself because his pride was wounded.

"A dog," said Hiawatha, "has only four fingers, so that he cannot
hold or aim a gun to shoot at other people.  A savage has four
fingers and a thumb, so you see he must be rather better than a dog,
because he can handle a gun, to shoot his neighbors when he is not
pleased.  A white man is still better because he can make the gun.
In his rich country he finds the medicine stones, copper, tin, and
iron for making tools.  With the tools to strengthen his hands he can
coin money, forge weapons, and build ships.  As he labors his mind
grows, his will increases, his intellect is strengthened, until he
becomes as greedy as a pike, swift as a horse, and like the buffalo
he tramples down the flowers, for none can resist his rush.  He rules
the seas, he occupies the lands, he wields dominion over mankind, and
having the whole earth for his possession, dies, leaving it behind,
divested of all that he had.  All that he is goes to the
spirit-lands, where the dogs pity him.  The dog's unselfish love is
worth more in the spirit-realms than the money, the weapons, the
ships of his rich master.  Dogs and savages have not much to be
selfish about on earth, but only the hearts of little children."

Storm and his mother were not so proud of their blood as they had
been; but Rain and Thunder Feather looked complacent as Hiawatha
again took up his legend.

"When I lived on earth, my son, our Iroquois towns were not so very
savage.  London has lately copied our municipal police.  While your
doctors were bleeding their patients to death, ours were far advanced
in hypnotic medicine, and among the Indian drugs were the
salicylates, quinine, coca, and jalap.  Our Indian farming gave to
man tobacco, corn and potatoes.  Of our monuments I dare not boast,
for the tremendous pyramids of Mexico were an heresy, seeing that the
body of man is the real temple of the Holy Spirit; and the palaces,
however vast and lovely, were seats of tyranny.

"At the time of my last earth-life your little England was ruled by a
sickly but very good and able sovereign, Queen Elizabeth.  Philip the
Second ruled Europe for the Pope, Suleiman the Great had command of
the Mediterranean and held a splendid Empire for Mahomet.  A still
wealthier and better-ordered empire was held for the Prophet by Akbar
the Magnificent, who reigned over Hindustan.  Greatest and most
stable of all was the throne of China.  In every case the princes
were tyrants, the people what we should call war slaves.

"I believe that Iceland was first of Republics--but half the people
there were only slaves.

"In my little nation, the Iroquois, only the women could own lands or
houses, only the mothers could elect the President.  Women and men
sat together in congress.

"As President, it was my dream to put an end to war.  For that ideal
of an everlasting peace I called four other nations into counsel.
They made me President of the Five Nations, the Federated Republic of
the Iroquois.

"Here in the west there were many visitors from other lands,
Polynesians, Chinese, and Japanese.  They say that our first news of
Europe came with the Saint Quetzal-Coatl to the Toltec nation, and to
his memory they built a temple at Cholula four times as large as the
Great Pyramid in Egypt.  To my own people came the hero Leif Ericson,
and he was followed by many Norsemen who traded with us or hewed out
cargoes of hardwood timber.

"Five centuries later, Columbus came, but he never visited North
America.  His people brought us horses, but also they carried with
them germs of disease, of pestilences which are sweeping away almost
the whole Red Indian race."

"Sweeping us away?" asked Rain.

"Yes."

Thunder Feather lifted the death wail, mourning for her people.

Hiawatha sheltered Rain in his arms:

"Be brave," he said.  "The bodies of our people are wasted and
destroyed with strange diseases not to be healed by our medicine.
Our tribes are driven from their farms, their fisheries, and their
hunting grounds, crowded into the west, forced to make war against
each other in order to get meat, resorting in despair to savage
crimes and eating human flesh, our wild herds slaughtered, grass
eaten, lands stolen, faith betrayed, until only a last remnant shall
be left on the earth."

"On earth," Rain answered bravely.  "But we are a spirit-race which
cannot die."

Again the sacred woman Thunder Feather sent up her desolate cry for
the lost nations.

But Hiawatha clasped Rain to his heart.  "I love your courage," he
said under his breath, "but still I warn you never to let there be
anger in your heart against the white man or towards your husband.
Promise me."

"I promise."

"Catherine," said Hiawatha, "Storm, Rain, Thunder Feather, I tell you
on this Easter morning: The seed is not quickened except it die, and
the race crucified shall rise again."

Once more the wailing of the old priestess shook their hearts, and
she began to sing the death-song of her race.

  Beware, ye base, relentless Ghost Invaders!
  I see your bones lie naked on the prairie,
  And such a frightful Death as yet you know not
  Shall flap his wings in triumph o'er your women--
  So shall your black deeds make your souls accursed
  And God shall blast your spirits to destruction!


"Oh!  Thunder Feather," said Hiawatha gently, "bad words come back
like fleas to bite you in bed.  You make your nights all scratches.
Cover your head with your robe, and pray the Spirit Porcupine to
smooth your quills, my dear.

"It is lucky for you, Storms-all-of-a-sudden, that in the Blackfoot
custom a son-in-law and mother-in-law are never allowed to meet, so
if your wife's prickly mother tries to haunt you, tell Thunder
Feather to mind her manners."

The old woman had been glaring vindictively at the white man, but
now, discovered, she had a rather sheepish grin to hide under her
robe.

"Chief," said Rain, turning away from her malicious little old
mother, "my man and I have often been over the Wolf Trail in our
dreams.  Oh, but my dear man is so stupid.  I cannot make him
understand how spirit-animals and spirit-men speak all one language
as we do--thought-flashings.  He is so blind and deaf to natural
things that animals are shy, and cannot flash their thoughts to him,
no, not even his horse along the lead rope when we ride together.
Yet we have ridden up there the dearest spirit-horses who died
gallant deaths on earth.  We have raced with the herds of
spirit-buffalo on prairies gay with fairy flowers.  We sat in my
father's lodge, and Thunder Feather with us, while we smoked the
everyday pipe, or used the medicine pipe for the great prayers.  We
worshiped together in the Medicine Lodge.  We played with the
spirit-children.  Oh, but my man is so dull that he still fears
Death!"

"My daughter," said Hiawatha, "only the most awful sorrow can awake
your man until he is fully alive.  Then will the animals converse
with him as they do with us, the little children will teach him as
they teach us, and he will see how our nature worship is part of a
great faith.  Words cannot teach, only experience.

"Now we must tell him about the race-death."

"I would," said Rain, "that all my people were past the race-death,
safe in our Happy Hunting grounds from Windmaker's tempests,
Coldmaker's blizzards, from the magicians of the Hunger Lodge, the
peril of wild rivers, the hatreds, wounds, and pain, the pestilence,
the wailing of the mourners."

"The lily," said Hiawatha, "has her roots in the dirt, but her white
vesture is not soiled whose warp and weft are sunshine and clear
rain, her home the winds invisible.

"So stands the Indian Spirit seeded on earth, but flowering in the
heavens."

And after that there was silence.

Storm looked about him, and found that he was alone.  Around him were
trees like torches, gaunt, funereal, their feet in old gray snow.  At
the foot of one of these he crouched naked, famished, shivering, his
feet bruised, his limbs benumbed and scarred with wounds which seemed
to have been bleeding.  Far down across the forest he saw the icy
river, and beyond, thin threads of smoke went up from the lodges of
the Kutenais camp.  Cramped and in pain he stood, remembering that he
must observe the rite of purification, and how he should put on the
sacred dress of a warrior.  Mother said that this must be completed
at Fort Colville.  What, then, was lacking?

So he set forward upon this adventure.



III--THE SWORD

Some time in the third decade of the nineteenth century certain
voyageurs of the Hudson's Bay brigades made their homes in the Rocky
Mountains.  They were Iroquois warriors, devoutly Christian, were fit
messengers.  The fiery Cross is not carried very far by smug pastors
who let the flame die out, but, brandished by knights-errant such as
these Iroquois, it kindled the mountaineer Nez Percés, Flatheads,
Cœur d'Alènes, and Pend d'Oreilles, and like a forest fire the
Faith swept through the hills.  Not satisfied, but craving for more
light, the Nez Percés dispatched a couple of young warriors as their
envoys on foot through countries held by hostile nations to visit the
white men's lands, and beg the Big Father at Washington to send them
Black-robes.

The White-tie missions responded, forwarding a brace of Methodist
ministers who settled on the Lower Columbia where the tribes were
tame, the lands fertile, and prospects favorable in godliness and
possibly real estate.  Later a couple of Presbyterian White-ties came
to the mountains, with their courageous wives, and were welcomed by
an assemblage of the tribes, thousands of mounted warriors at full
gallop, a display of frantic joy and terrifying grandeur.  The ladies
fainted, and their husbands were properly shocked by naked, painted,
plumed, and yelling savages.  For some few years this intensely
respectable mission showed off their sober paces, their small
proprieties to ferocious idealists, wild saints of the Silent Places.
In the end, utterly disillusioned, the Nez Percés took the scalps of
the missionaries as the only useful asset of the mission.

If one cannot lighten one's darkness with sun rays, a rushlight is
better than nothing, so the pony tribes were still quite patient with
their White-tie medicine men when in May, 1839 Storm came with a
following of his Kutenais to trade for guns at Fort Colville.  Upon
the morning after his arrival he brought his people to a church
parade in progress outside the stockade.  The gate, of course, was
closed, and in the covered gallery above a sentry lounged to watch
proceedings through the loopholes, while on a bastion to the left a
gun was manned commanding the curtain wall, just to make sure.  The
fish-eating tribes assembled for the salmon run were not more
dangerous than an average mothers' meeting, but some of the mounted
Indians had come to trade, and Storm's Kutenais might prove
excitable.  So in this congregation the salmon fishers were squatted
in the sunshine, the Kutenais standing aloof, as aristocrats who
observe the savor of the commonalty, and the haughty mountaineers
remained on horseback.  Under the bastion stood a group of American
trappers, long-haired, dressed like the fighting Indians in buckskin,
chewing cable-twist tobacco and spitting with an air of absolute
detachment, spectators not devotees.

The White-tie medicine man, in blacks, attired like the Reverend Mr.
Stiggins or dear Brother Chadband, despite the repulsive dress,
parsonic voice, and pious mannerisms, had a suggestion of rough-neck
about him, something manful, real, earnest, a glitter of the eyes, a
smile.  He served out Presbyterian views on Predestination as though
he thought the stuff important.  Certainly he pleased the Hudson's
Bay officers, who sat with their native wives on adze-hewn benches,
all in their Sunday swallow-tails, nursing top hats, Scots to a man,
alert to the shrewd and pawky argument.  As to the native
interpreters, sound on fish, but hazy as theologians, each of them
preached a sermon of his own, which, had he known, would have
horrified the missionary.  Here and there in the congregation were
grubby naked boys conducting dog fights, groups of mothers exchanging
the latest gossip, and stolid babies lashed to their board cradles
making the most of the sunshine.  The fleas were not wasting time.

Long afterwards when Storm told his mother about that service: "Tea
ain't much good," was his summing-up, "unless you've boiled the
water."

After dinner Mr. James Douglas went for a walk, a Sabbath stroll
taken in civilized dress, tall beaver hat, gloves, his mother's New
Testament in his left hand, a cane in his right--the sort of things
to remind an exile of Home.  His close-cropped mutton-chop whiskers
and clean-shaven chin, clear-cut features, gray eyes, stern jaw,
belonged, one would suppose, to city life, to business management;
but the soul of him, despite all such appearances, in defiance of the
uttermost self-discipline, was kin to the wild solitude of the
frontier.  Yet of all frontiersmen Storm was the one man with vision
keen enough to discern Black Douglas as he was, and, when they
happened to meet beside the farm, he offered his hand to the factor
as to an equal.

"Beastly familiar.  Confound these Yankee trappers!"  So Douglas felt
as he pulled up short and took a pace backward.  "And yet no trapper
would sport a single straight-up eagle pinion worn at the back of the
head.  This fellow claims my hand as an Indian, as a chief!"

Against the verdure of the meadows, in clear sunshine, this creature
was certainly most beautiful.  Deep tan, sun-lighted mane, and
buckskin dress appeared all dusty gold save for the flashing blue of
his clear eyes.  The stature, strength, grace, dignity, commanding
power of the fellow made the factor catch his breath as he asked:

"Who are you?  Surely, I've seen you somewhere.  Not--not Bill
Fright?"

"They call me Storm, now.  The Kutenais call me
Storms-all-of-a-sudden."

"H'm.  As Justice of the Peace, I'm supposed to want young Fright for
parricide."

White teeth flashed as the man laughed.  "And you might get me," he
answered, "with, say, five hundred men--or even hold me, until my
Kutenais had time to raise the tribes."

Then as the shadow of a passing cloud will soften the hard brightness
of the snows, the youngster's laughing, triumphant manhood became all
tenderness.  "You said as you'd make a man of me," he added under his
breath and very humbly.  "I owe all this to you.  I'm not running
away or asking for a fight, Mr. Douglas, or even bragging; but if you
should ever 'appen to want a friend--my heart is good towards you."

"Thank you, thank you.  I might be glad of that.  One never knows.
Will you shake hands, Mr. Storm?"

"Rather!"

Storm felt without resentment that the great man condescended, as to
a servant, yet tried to put an inferior at ease.  Accepting that as
natural, he wiped his paw on his deerskin leggings before he would
venture to shake hands.

"I never thought to meet you, sir, upcountry, but I wants 'elp for my
tribe, and your trader here at Colville is--well--_cultus_!"  He
snarled the word, for which the factor snubbed him.

They turned along the pathway by the river, and for the next few
minutes cut and thrust were sharp as they came to business.

"Well, what can I do for you?" asked Douglas.

"You wants pelts.  You may need help of a fighting tribe."

"Well?"

"One armed mountain tribe is worth more to you in trade and war than
all the fishing Injuns in the world."

"Perhaps," was the dry response, "or they might take their trade to
the American Fur Company, and use our guns to blackmail our brigades."

"Depends on who runs the tribe."

"It does.  How's Tschirikov?"

"Dead."

"Left everything to you?"

"Alow and aloft."

"You run the Lower Kutenais now?"

"Yes.  Do you trust me?"

"Personally, yes.  But the Company is here on business.  When we're
attacked, it's time enough to serve out guns to our men."

"Who don't know butt from barrel, and can't hit a house from inside."

"There's something in that.  At the same time, Mr. Storm, we have not
found your Lower Kutenais especially reliable for trade."

"They're true as steel!"

"No doubt.  Perhaps twenty years back, or even more, Lieut.
Tschirikov, late of the Russian Navy, came down the coast from
Russian America with a schooner-load of sea otter.  Had he gone west
to China with that cargo he might have done much better, but still,
that was not our business.  The pelts were, so far as we know,
honestly come by.  We bought them.  He took trade goods, and set off
upcountry, to start a trading post among the Kutenais.  Quite
naturally we expected to buy his furs.  We got none."

Storm grinned amiably, and Douglas probed a little deeper now.

"Once or twice when I was passing with our brigades, I camped with
the good old fellow and offered to talk pelts.  He would change the
subject at once.  I never found out what sort of business he
was--well, concealing in our Territory.  I thought, to tell you the
plain truth, Storm, that it might be worth while to send you, to find
out Tschirikov's game."

Storm laughed until the tears came.

"It ain't no sort of secret," he said at last.  "According to old
Fatbald that load of sea otter and fur seal was worth at Pekin about
a million pounds."

"Say half."

"Well, you got 'em cheap at twenty thousand pounds' worth of trade
goods."

"Reasonably cheap, yes."

"For trade goods as any Injun tribe is better without."

"Of all the confounded impudence!"

"Better without, and you know it as well as I does.  Is trade rum and
sham silk handkerchiefs the cargo as makes any nation strong to
defend their 'unting grounds, or rich to tide through famines?"

"Well, perhaps not, perhaps not.  More useful merchandise would rot
on our hands for want of buyers.  We are traders, not
philanthropists--or dreamers."

"So Fatbald warned the Injuns.  Called 'em fools for trading.  They
traded with him, though, until the bales of furs crowded him into a
tipi.  He sold them pelts to the Upper Kutenais in trade for 'orses.
His pony herds filled all the pastures up above our lake.  They bred.
He sold them ponies to our Lower Kutenais, for furs of course.  In
twenty years he's made that low-down fishing tribe into hunters,
fighting mountaineers, able to 'old their own, and defend their
'omes.  The little kiddies, what used to starve to death if the
salmon run came late, is fat as butter now.  Our people rides level
with the Upper Kutenais and the Flatheads, runs buffalo out on the
Blackfoot plains.  They're rich.  They're respected.  They has peace
because they don't buy no more rubbish from either you nor them
Americans."

"Fatbald the First," said the factor sarcastically, "being gathered
to his portly forefathers, King Storm ascends the throne, whose
little finger is heavier than the old monarch's thigh.  At least, my
late friend, however reticent, was not insulting."  Then, with a
malicious smile, "Your Majesty has, I hear, a few loads of pelts
here, eh?"

"You're making fun of me," said Storm, uneasy, ruffled, a little
truculent.  "Go on!  Your medicine is bad, but it ain't strong.  Go
on."

"I might venture to point out," said Douglas, "that your manners at
the shop-counter are not ingratiating."

"I seen some Yakimas play 'umble Injun in front of your Colville
trader.  Their trade prayer and their rum-dance don't make _him_ what
you calls infatuating.  I played big chief, but all the brains he has
for politics won't fill a hollow tooth.  Carries a mighty head of
sail, and forgets he's anchored!  No-head is a big noise and a big
smell, but you're a chief, and so I comes to you."

The factor chuckled.  This was worth keeping for Mrs. Douglas.

"When I was your prisoner," said Storm, "at Fort Vancouver, I seen
the furs beat once a week for dust and moth.  I done that these three
snows, and my skins are prime."

"Bravo!"

"But No-head forks his tongue, so he lost my trade.  Besides, he asks
too much and gives too little.  The American Fur Company, so them
trappers tell me, ain't so far south as all that."

"I see.  Of course you want ball and powder?"

"None.  I make both."

"What!"

"Tons."

"Oh yes, I remember now.  Of course, our lead mine is on Lake
Kootenay.  But then the trader here has orders not to lend our bullet
molds to anybody."

"I found a bullet mold," said Storm, "in the bos'n's locker aboard of
the _Beaver_.  I don't lend mine, neither."

Again the factor showed some little irritation.

"You seem," he said testily, "to have more brains than Dr. McLoughlin
and I had reckoned on.  But it's all damned nonsense.  Make powder!
_We_ can't!  The thing's impossible."

"Well," said Storm, enjoying this, "the couple of hundredweights I
bring with me ain't much to offer for sale to people as was here
before Christ."

"Does it go off?"

"You might care to try, Mr. Douglas.  And the bullets.  I'm using 'em
as ballast under the cargoes of pelts.  I'm here trading for guns.
The only question, sir, is this--do I trade at Fort Colville or down
south?"

Guns!  This was a leader of men, chief of a tribe quite strong
enough, under his discipline, to take and loot Fort Colville for the
guns.

"And why do you want trade guns?"

"I have a range of mountains," answered Storm.  "See--here--I'll show
you."

Old Beaver-tail had mapped the country for him, and like an Indian,
Storm squatted on his heels making lines on the dust of the trail
with a dry twig.  "The river of the Kutenais," he said, "starts here."

In the heart of the Rockies, within a mile or so of the Canadian
Pacific Railway, snows on ten-thousand-foot Alps drain to the
southward, down tangled steeps of forest, calling from stream to
stream along the hillsides, a shrill assembly of many waters, source
of a white-maned torrent roaring through deep gorges.  Purling over
gravels, hurling round short curves, and undercutting cliffs, the
river widens out among pine-crested isles, and spreads in
beaver-flooded jungle.  Then it snakes through meads of wild flowers,
and coils like a serpent by miles of widening prairie, glittering in
the sunshine.

"'Ere," said Storm, "across these pastures it swings, being here ten
bowshots distant from the head source of the Columbia.  The Kootenay
River wagers ponies to little dogs on the path towards the sun, but
the Columbia says its prayers and hits the trail nor'west.  Both is
beaten, for here's my range of mountains walling off the west, miles
high snows, hundreds of miles in length."

Look at the maps and see how very few large rivers manage to flow to
the westward against the terrific eastward trend of the earth's
surface.

"At last," said Storm, "the Columbia finds a way round the norrard
end of my Alps, and the Kootenay sneaks around the southern
foothills.  Each makes a hairpin bend.  They've both got lost in the
woods, so the Columbia flows due south, and the Kootenay due north.
Here on the Kootenay is our herd camp, that's the bulrush swamps, and
there's my trading post on the only bit of gravel which doesn't flood
in summer.  And here's our hundred-mile lake.

"By this time the Kootenay cools off and gets lonesome, so it finds a
hollowed lip 'ere at the West Arm, and goes ramping down big falls to
the Columbia.  This way!' says he, 'due west!' but the old Columbia
knows what's best, and keeps straight on down through them lava
deserts, and the big volcanoes."

"Your mountains form the island, then?" said the factor.

Storm looked up at Douglas, and his face had a yearning, hungry
ferocity reminding the factor of a mother wolf guarding her cubs.

"When I gets my guns," he said, "I can 'old that range of Alps agin
the world.  But you wants trade.  Well, here's the World Spine, and
them Blackfoot prairies.  Here's the Flatheads down south past
Tobacco Plains.  Here's the Shushwap tribes nor'west of us.  There's
trade enough."

He stood up facing Douglas.  "Who gets the trade?" he asked--"you or
them Americans?"

"You'll be trader?"

"No.  Fatbald's widow Two Bits owns the post, not me.  She got more
brains than me when it comes to trading, and she's wife of the Head
Chief Sitting Wolf, my friend."

"I see," said Douglas thoughtfully.  "And you?  Where do you come
into this?  When you've given everything away, what then, King Storm?"

"What then?"

Storm's mood changed always with bewildering suddenness.  Within this
brief conversation he had been cordial, truculent, grateful, shrewd,
poetic, whimsical, wistful, ferocious, and now astounded Douglas by
showing the reserve of an English gentleman intruded upon by
strangers.  This forlorn bargee and ordinary seaman, fugitive from
justice, had an extraordinary air of breeding.  "I don't understand
you," he said, and turned away, as though to end the interview.

"My dear chap," said the administrator, treating Storm, for the first
time, as an equal, "I really must beg your pardon.  Your private
affairs----"

Storm swung around sharply.

"'Ow about them guns?"

"Oh, I must see our resident officer.  You'll count on my good
offices?"

"Thank you."

"But when I spoke so bluntly just now, I was only wondering, Storm,
if I can do you a good turn, somehow.  We white men stick together
out here, eh?  And your life must be rather lonely."

Storm had a quizzing, twisty sort of smile.  He did not know what
impulse moved him, or realize that his mother, invisible, but most
urgent and determined for his good, guided his mind, directed his
hand as he pointed to the New Testament in the factor's hand, and
said outright:

"I wants that!"

"What?"

"That book, sir.  The New Testament."

"I brought it out with me," said the factor, "to read here under the
trees.  You want to see it?  Here.  It was my mother's copy," he
added.

Storm took it in his hands, but looked away across the sun-bright
river.  "My mother's!  I left my mother's behind," he said.  "You
see, it was under her pillow when daddy knifed her.  I couldn't go
down into the cabin to fetch it then.  I just couldn't.  Now she
says--says she--I got to ax you for this."

"Man!  She's dead.  She can't be speaking."

"Why not?  She hain't so dead as all that.  She says there is no
death.  She told me I'd got to come here to Fort Colville because--to
complete my outfit.  It hain't complete, she says, without--without
that book."

"The Word of God," said Douglas.  "No outfit is complete without that
weapon.  Take it, my boy.  You're welcome.  It is the sword of the
Spirit."



IV--THE TRAIL

Alone upon the river bank, under a tree, Storm opened the book.  So
long a time had passed since he had last seen the written word, the
white man's greatest magic, that all he could do was to spell out
letters and make syllables aloud, forgetting the beginnings of a line
before he reached its end.  So reading he fell into a doze, and
presently into deep sleep, dreaming true.  In his dream he stood once
more among funereal and torchlike pines upon a level tract of old
gray snow.  There were the tracks quite fresh of a white man's boots,
which following, he came to the edge of the snow-clad plateau.
Thence he looked down a thousand feet or so of corkscrew trail among
dark junipers, and at the foot of the hill he saw Rain's sacred tipi.
The tracks led down the trail, and halfway to the tipi lurched a man
who carried pack and gun.  Storm recognized the beaver cap, the
deerskin hunting shirt, the breeches with long fringes down the
seams, the long boots gone over at the heels.  So there went the only
white man save himself in all the Kutenais, for this was American
trapper Hunt-the-girls.  Evening was closing in, and down there the
hearth fire made Rain's tipi glow, while a thin thread of smoke went
up as from an altar.  So Hunt-the-girls would seek for hospitality at
the Sacred Lodge.

In his dream Storm went directly to the lodge, where he saw Rain at
her evensong.  Storm would not venture to make his presence known at
such a time, but stood behind her joining his prayer to hers.  A few
days more, after a lifetime of waiting and years of self-denial, he
would come there in the body, to be joined with Rain in wedlock.
Both of them prayed that the time might be shortened until they were
man and wife.

When Hunt-the-girls came to the tipi he drew aside the door flap and
entered.  He seemed a little daunted at finding a woman at prayer,
but presently Rain stood up, gave him a kindly greeting, helped to
take off his pack, then let him have tobacco to smoke while she made
supper.  They talked a little in the Kutenais, of the weather, the
trails, the hunting, and the beaver, but all the while the white man,
fascinated, enthralled, gazed at the woman, desire in his eyes, while
she, kneeling at the work, her back turned, grew more and more
uneasy.  Storm saw her loose the dagger in her belt sheath, and tried
to let Rain know that he was present, but could not reach her mind.
He wanted with all his might to restrain the white man, to frighten
him, to drive him away, or even in the last resort to kill, but
Storm's spiritual presence might have no influence upon the material
body of this felon, nor hands invisible defend the woman he loved, in
the extremity of her peril.  She was praying in desperation.  At her
summons her mother, Thunder Feather, and Storm's mother, Catherine,
were present instantly, and presently the great spirit Hiawatha.
These joined Storm, and by agreement all of them bent their wills to
daunt the trapper, while they inspired Rain to coolness, skill, and
daring in her defense.

The mad beast passion had called up demons also until a crowd of evil
spirits urged the trapper on so that Rain's friends could not avail
to hold him from his purpose.  The trapper leaped at Rain, flung her
headlong beside the little fire on the hearth, then dragged her
across the floor, laying her on the bison robes against the back
rest.  There they fought long, desperately, until at last Rain's
strength failed.  She seemed to have fainted, yet her eyelids parted
almost invisibly as she got ready.  Only she opened her eyes wide
when she struck, driving the dagger home into the white man's lungs.
It seemed but a minute later that she dragged the wounded man abreast
of the hearth fire, rolled him face downwards across the belt of
red-hot coals, and stood holding him there with her foot, until the
awful vengeance was accomplished.

Then Storm remembered her words of long ago: "If a woman will not
defend her honor, with her weapons defend her honor, with all that
she is, all that she has, defend her honor, then let her not think
that she shall dare the Wolf Trail.  She shall not climb the Wolf
Trail to the land of the Blessed Spirits."

So be it.  Her honor was defended, and avenged.  Henceforth he who
had offended her, if he should live, so long as he should live should
have but one name, No-man.

And the dream faded.

* * * * * * *

The dusk had fallen, the lamp was alight in the chief factor's room
at the Fort.

"My dear," said Douglas to his Indian wife, "I've given my New
Testament to Storm of the East Kutenais."

The woman wondered at him.

"After all," Douglas explained, "what could I do?  We've got the big
Bible with us and I'm sure my mother would have given him that little
Testament, as of course I did.  You'll laugh at what I say, but if
you'd seen him there, a sort of spirit, all dusty sunshine, his eyes
dreaming, seeing things unearthly, as he looked across the blaze of
light on the water!  My dear! why, his face was inspired."

"Hush!  Some one at the door," said Mrs. Douglas, who was undressing
to go to bed.  "Who can it be, so late?"

The factor opened the door, and Mrs. Douglas hid herself behind it.
Storm stood there, deathly-pale, shaking all over, holding on to the
lintel overhead.

"I want you," he said huskily.  "My wife's in danger.  I got to go at
once."

"You've had a message?"

"Yes.  From her mother, Thunder Feather.  I'm starting now with the
three best canoe men.  But I can't leave my Injuns in the lurch about
them guns.  You got to do the trading for me, with this Fort Colville
man?"

"I?" asked the factor.

"You.  I trust you.  You're straight."

"The Hudson's Bay Company is not exactly crooked."

"It's you I trust.  You'll do it?"

"Gladly," said Douglas.

"Fatbald's widow, Two Bits, Sitting Wolf's woman, will come to you in
the morning.  Or you can send for her."

He was gone, and Douglas stood in the doorway listening as Storm ran
towards the river and his canoe.



CHAPTER VI

THE GHOST TRAIL

The Indian would rather not be fed from the Great Horn Spoon of the
Pale-face.  North of the Medicine Line we have kept faith with him,
in cold frugality and aggravating meanness.  Southward in the Land of
Promises we showed him the whole art and practice of Humbug,
sometimes massacred a tribe or so, were always liable to break out,
and yet had generous moods or even dealt a little sunshine now and
then to warm starved hearts.  The Indian likes Canada least.

We wear hats, not for an occasional ceremony, but all the time, as
though we never desisted from making magic.  That is uncanny, not
quite human.

The Indian likes a fight as much as anybody, and afterwards a scalp
is the very best trophy.  But he always took that trophy in war, not,
like the white frontiersman, in peace, or for fun, or as a collector
of curiosities.  In other ways, too, the white man is ferocious.
When, on a hard trip, the Indians are done for and lie down to die,
the white man gets up and kicks them.  I have done that myself.  The
white man's purpose goes on until he is dead, and afterwards.  He is
much fiercer even than the poor embittered Apaches.  He is fierce in
cold blood.  He laughs.

All this is to illustrate the emotions of Falls-in-two,
Wags-his-tail, and Last-one-to-swim-home-with-fodder, the three best
canoe men of the Kutenais.

They did not like the white man Storms-all-of-a-sudden, who kept two
of them at the paddles, one resting, and worked without sleep himself
for seventy hours on end.  When he caught them trying to cook a meal,
he kicked the fire out.  Of course, they could kill him easily, but
when they rejoined the tribe Two Bits would have a few words to say
about that.  Brave they were to a fault, but when old Two Bits
"turned her wolf loose," naught could avail but absence.

A white man wears a hat and can work without rest or food, such being
his sun-power; but an over-strained Indian's nerve breaks, and,
though he may seem to get well, he will not live long afterwards.
So, at the cataract from which he had his name, Falls-in-two
explained this mystery to Storms-all-of-a-sudden.  It made Storm
worse than ever.

At the upper portage the three Indians prayed that the sun would burn
him and powder him up for black face-paint.  Most certainly the
prayer had some effect, for the heat became extreme, and in the late
afternoon when they reached the place where the city of Nelson
stands, the white man, so said Wags-his-tail, just fell down dead.
They were too tired to help.  They let him stay dead until midnight.

* * * * * * *

Storm had lost himself among heaps of clinkers and beds of cinders.
There were drifts of ashes flung by an icy wind in the gray gloom, a
gale of ashes blowing through his body, cold which wrenched his
heart, clutched his throat, strangled him.  He could not find Rain's
enemy, the man who had ruined his wife, and robbed her of her honor.
The plain reached away forever without shelter or refuge or any hope.
There was no hope.  There was no life in him or warmth except from
the burning of murderous hatred for Rain's enemy.

"I have a soul," he shouted, "to offer in exchange if I may have my
enemy.  Give me my enemy!"

There was no answer to his cry, no echo from the desert, only more
furious wind, and deepening of gray darkness, drift in which he
floundered, sinking, cold beyond endurance.

Again he shouted, offering his soul for help in the finding of Rain's
enemy.

That time he heard the echo, derisive, hollow, flung by unseen
cliffs, crashing from wall to wall, from height to height, far up to
summits remote, and empty silence.  Presently his knee struck a chain
suspended in the ash drift.  Its cold tore the skin from his hands,
but he could not lower it to climb over or lift it to get under.  He
hauled himself along by the chain as though it were a life line,
knowing that the name of it was Despair.  And by the chain of Despair
he came at last to the foot of the cliffs, just where a pathway went
up, broad, of easy gradient, quartering the precipice.  He knew that
the name of that path was Hope, but he could not tell whither it led.
Only it saved him from the gale of drifting ashes, and it seemed to
lead him away from Hate, wherein there is no shelter, or succor, or
deliverance.  He went on a long way, but always the path narrowed,
shrinking against the cliffs; and whereas it had been easy, it was
now steep, aye, and perilous, for it shelved to the edge, of slippery
loose flakes which slithered over and fell.  He stood breathless,
listening for the stones to reach the bottom to reassure him, but
they fell, and fell without end.  Now he dared go no farther upon
that narrow shelving way lest he should miss a foothold in the dark,
to slither as the stones did, and go suddenly mad, to leap, turning
over and over in Space, falling into the Silence.  He would have gone
down the path, but that he dared not turn round.  He went on,
clinging to the wall, peering into the gloom, looking for footholds.

So Thunder Feather found him, and barred his path.  She said that
Rain lay up yonder at the point of death.  She must come down this
trail to find Storm because he had failed her, in her extremity had
failed her.

The words were echoed by clanging walls, with cap and crash of
thundering calls and answers, far up the heights until the sound was
lost in Silence.

And in the disorder of her grief the mother railed at Storm.  "You
think yourself a man," she cried, "a warrior!"  The echoes crashed
and thundered to every word.  "Your woman bids you keep away from
your lodge these three snows past, and you obey, you cur!  What woman
ever made could love or reverence a thing that obeys her like a dog
at the lodge door!

"Three winters married and never seen your woman!  O craven dog-face!
The squaw is master in your lodge, and you whimpering outside, unfit,
unworthy to enter, not man enough to go in, Betrayer of Manhood.  He
arms a tribe with guns to protect his woman's mountains, while he
dare not guard her honor."

She leaned forward, and spat in his face.

"It's just as well," she said, "you were not there to meet that
warrior, to spoil your woman's aim when she launched the arrow, or
afterwards where she finished him.

"He lies outside the lodge writhing, moaning, there in his blood,
craving for water.  I sat unseen, invisible, beside him, making sure
of his agony, drinking his anguish.  Rain's vengeance has not failed,
as yours fails, coward.  Her vengeance is the one thing saved, the
only thing which has not failed in our downfall, all that we have
left.  He will never have power to harm another woman.

"And so you think you'll climb this trail up to the Hunting Grounds
among the blessed dead!  You will, but it will be a land of strangers
for such as you, who shirked."

Father and Uncle Joey stood behind her, and they also jeered.

In all Storm's life that was the moment of deepest humiliation, for
while he knelt upon the ledge, broken with misery, Thunder Feather,
his chief assailant, turned on these evil spirits like a tigress.
She terrified them, driving them away.

Afterwards when she came back, she crouched down on a jutting crag,
covered her head with her robe, and mourned for the overthrow of all
she had loved on earth.

"What brought you here?" Storm asked, for his heart went out to her.

"I'm finding the trail," she said, "to make it easier for Rain when
she dies, and comes here--she who avenged her honor.  I will set up
her lodge, and bide with her."

Not sin, but love, had brought this unhappy spirit down to Hell, love
upside down, grotesquely changed to hate, to venomous curses and
exulting vengeance, but love nevertheless, love eternal, love
triumphant.  Ignoring his own misery, thrusting self away, Storm had
the heart to pity Thunder Feather, sought clumsily enough and
hopelessly to give her the comfort which he lacked himself.

How strange it was that, all unnoticed, humble mosses grew in the
cracks of the rock, putting forth tiny forlorn green flowers.  There
was even a trickle of water flowing across the shelf.

Why, there was light enough now to see far up the gray, stupendous
walls on either side, although the abyss beneath was hardly visible.
The water caught the light, and Storm saw it, letting the trickle
flow into his hands, although his thirst had become so terrible that
he could not keep still, but let it run away between his fingers.  He
tried again, but this time to get water for the woman.  She cursed
him, cross-grained as ever, but she drank, and went on cursing his
attempts to give her comfort where there could be none.  She tried to
drive him away, but he was busy drinking and took no notice.  She was
glad in her heart that he stayed, that he still tried to give her
something to hope for.  If she had come down the trail, it must be
possible for him to help her up again.

It was then that Catherine came, calling for Thunder Feather, feeling
her way down into the gloom of the abyss.  She found the woman at her
son's feet, mourning.

Storm looked up wondering at his mother's radiance, which lighted the
gray walls on either side.  Then she bent down and kissed him on the
forehead.

"Silly old Thunder Feather!" she said with all the clear-cut, brisk
decisiveness of the trained nurse, "talketh nonsense and knoweth it
is rubbish, and grinneth when found out, as she doth now.  Ugh!  Look
at her!"

Thunder Feather tried to conceal the grin under her robe.

"Pay thee no heed," said Catherine.  "For, if she meant a tenth part
of that which she saith, her portion would be perdition, albeit her
spirit dwelleth in Rain's tent."

Storm dared not ask about Rain.

"I've just left Rain," said mother, "asleep and asking for thee.
Thou must not come, son."

"Why?"

"Because if thee comes in the spirit she will leave her body to meet
thee, and then she won't get back again.  Dost thee want her to
croak?  Then don't be silly.  Come in thy body like a man, so that
thy wife seeth thee in the flesh and cleaveth to the earth-life for
thy sake.  The poor thing prays for death.  Make her pray for life.
Now promise.  S'elp you Bob!"

"S'elp me Bob."

"That's right."  The sensible old woman turned briskly to Thunder
Feather.  "Dost gloat on Hell, eh?  Come back to thy child or--or
I'll smack thee black and blue."

The Indian spirit got up, favored Storm with a demure wink, and
meekly followed Catherine back to duty.

* * * * * * *

Despite his mother's comforting words, the taunts of Thunder Feather
had bitten so very deeply that Storm awakened, yelling.  He raved to
the three Indians that he had failed his wife in her need, and they,
supposing him to be unmarried, thought he had gone crazy.

Ill as he was from yesterday's touch of the sun, he roused them again
at daybreak, and drove them heartlessly on that last day's journey of
seventy miles by water.  Yet as a gale breaks into squalls, and flaws
into calm, so he became inconstant, with moods of furious haste
followed by hours when he dared not go on.  He might not find Rain
alive.  So at the outlet of the main lake he let his men cook
breakfast; at the Warm Springs they all had a bath; at Kaslo Point
landed for supper; and it was not until night was far advanced that
they came dead weary to the head of navigation on Hamill Creek.

After a dreamless night Storm found himself fit for travel.  At dawn
he bathed, said his prayers, cooked breakfast, and finished eating by
the time the three Indians awakened.  They sat up, each in his robe,
and offered thanks to Morning Star that they were to go no farther
with this madman.  They watched him stow his New Testament and some
jerked buffalo beef into the robe which he packed and slung by
shoulder cords upon his back.

"Chiefs," observed Falls-in-two, "great medicine men, and even
warriors may fulfill a vow, or in grave need venture to take this
Ghost Trail.  I'll bet you my canoe you don't get back."

"Yes," said Last-one-to-swim-home-with-the-fodder, "my beaver-mother
warned me in my dream.  'My beaver-child,' she said, 'you were born
lazy, which is incurable, but if you ever do recover, don't attempt
the Ghost Trail.  But if you do go, prepare yourself with fasting,
purification, the beaver bundle ceremonial, and the sacrifice of all
your property to the Sun-spirit.'  I would not like that part."

"My father," remarked young Wags-his-tail, "did walk this Ghost
Trail, to fulfill a vow.  The ghosts ate him, and we never found
anything except his skull.  Yes, and his tail-bone," he added
cheerfully.

Storm was laughing as he belted on the hatchet, took up his gun, and
offered his hand to his friends.

"We will pray for you," said Falls-in-two grudgingly, "but it's not
much use in this case."

"Your scouting is bad," said Last-one-to-swim-home-with-the-fodder.
"My dream says you'll get bushed.  The best way is not to go."

"Your hunting," said Wags-his-tail, "will make you so thin that the
ghosts won't think you're meat.  You may get through to the sacred
woman's lodge."

Thus thoroughly cheered, Storm took the Ghost Trail, which was very
faintly blazed through the dense timber.

For a white man, he was not so bad a tracker.  He knew a blaze on a
tree, however much the bark had overgrown the slash.  He knew that
mosses and lichens denote the north side of either tree or rock, that
a slope leads down to water, that deer tracks are guides in crossing
a valley, but that elk slot shows the best route following a stream.
The man who knows these things, even when tired or flustered, is not
very easily bushed.  Besides, when his mind was quiet, kindly spirits
were able to guide his course, as they always will if one lets them.

For the first few hours he went in great contentment.  Farther on,
within the foldings of the foothills, he looked down a thousand feet
or more upon the white earth-shaking torrent, whose northern bank was
precipice unscalable.  The southern incurved slope of the cañon, to
which he clung like a fly on a wall, became more perilous as he
advanced, for the moss was strewn with slippery pine needles, while
here and there it was clad with snow, thawed, and then glazed by
frost, so that he had to hew out a tread for every step.  No sunlight
ever falls upon that hillside, where the Douglas firs are a couple of
hundred feet high, and fallen trunks perhaps thirty feet in girth lie
rotting, sliding, not to be climbed, most dangerous to pass lest they
break loose.  Uphill the whole slope was ice-clad, downhill the
stretches of open ground were more and more abrupt, and as the day
waned, frozen, slippery as glass.  Storm worked on, desperate because
the sun was setting and soon it would be dark.  It was then in the
dusk that he met the grizzly, an old man bear, a giant, lean from the
winter's fast, morosely hunting tree grubs for a scanty meal.  He
reared up from his work on the butt of a fallen tree, angry at being
disturbed, barring Storm's way, determined to have meat.

Storm's stomach flopped over, so he said, for he was terrified.

"Brother," he pleaded nervously, "my woman is wounded, and I'm going
to her.  Have pity, and let me off!  Brother, do you believe in the
Sun Spirit?  See this gun!  If I trust in that I'm a rotten shot, but
if I trust in the Sun Spirit----"

The man whirled the gun round his head and launched it flying down
into the cañon.

"Now, God," he cried, "it's Your turn!"

The bear dropped on all fours, and with a snarl of defiance over his
left shoulder dared Storm to follow him.

"Spirit in the Sun!  Thanks!" cried Storm.  "That gun is Yours."

So he followed the bear, who knew the way down to the river, where
there was ground level enough for camping.  He went upstream a
little, out of sight from the gun, lest he be tempted to steal it
back again.

So in the dusk he made a little fire, ate dried meat, hung up the
remainder beyond the reach of roving porcupines, and slept.  For fear
lest the bear come back to eat his body, he dared not leave it, but
mother came in his dream to say he had done well.  And Rain was
better.

The river was at its very lowest, but even then it makes one's flesh
creep to think of crossing Hamill Creek.  Of course the change of
weather that night to steady slopping rain made bathing no wetter
than walking, and, since the fellow swam like a duck, he might as
well land on the north bank.  Anybody else would have drowned, but
somehow he got across to the sunlit side of the gorge.

The trouble about the north side is that it is streaked with the
tracks of snowslides, where avalanche has swept away the giant
timber, and in its place grows grass.  When a horse falls into that
grass one can see by movements of the foliage where his four legs are
waving for assistance, but one cannot chop one's way to him, or by
any means get down to the rescue.  As to the flowers, there is one,
the giant hemlock, whose blossom can just be reached up to by a
mounted man.  Yet, when one comes to think, this jungle of late
summer might be quite easily passable in May.

A bull elk was ramping down the gorge rutting, who belled for his
mate, very crazy.  When he came upon Storm he lowered his antlers,
and charged, but the man who had put the fear into a real bear was
not to be alarmed by any stag.

"Can't you see I'm not a cow?  Get out of my way!" said Storm.

The elk propped with his four legs to a halt, stood for a moment at
gaze, and turned off, shattering through the underbrush.

And presently a gray wolf, who was tracking the elk, showed himself
to Storm, rather shyly.  Indians are comrades, but this one was off
color.

"Brother," said the man, "your people and mine are at peace.  Good
hunting!"

"Not armed!" said the wolf to himself.  Then he whimpered softly, for
he was hungry, and the man might help him to meat.

"Show me the way," said Storm, "and I'll give you my dry meat.  Take
me to my wife."

The Indians know that wolves have sometimes not only hunted with
people, but also shown them the way, and Storm's power was very
strong since his encounter with the grizzly.  He followed the wolf up
the gigantic hills until at dusk he came to a little level field of
old gray snow where gaunt funereal pines like torches stood in the
dripping rain, the mournful rain.  The snow had been disturbed and
there were tracks of unshod horses, who would not come up here unless
they were ridden.  Here, where the snow had melted through, the
sodden ground showed ashes of a camp fire, pitted by big raindrops
from the trees.  This tree whose branches dripped into the ashes was
hung with clothes, torn by the wind to rags, bundles, weapons,
ornaments, offerings to the Sun.  It was a place of sacrifice,
dedicated.  And the wolf had fled without his reward of meat:

"Surely," thought Storm, "I've been here before.  Aye, in this life
I've sat beside that fire."

He peered through a veil of rain into the violet gloom.  "If it were
only clear enough!" he thought.  "There is the Apse of Ice!"

He walked to the eastward edge of the platform and looked down the
hillside, precipitous, flecked with dark juniper bushes.  A thousand
feet below he could see a level mead where there were horses grazing,
and there in the pasture close against the hill was a tipi.  That was
her lodge!

Risking his neck on slippery ground and snowdrift, he rushed that
hillside, leaping, sliding, rolling, falling, catching at bushes,
then scrambling to his feet and quartering zigzag downwards until,
breathless and frantic, he pulled himself up short behind the tipi.
It showed no smoke, no firelight.

He groped his way in the dark, round to the eastward side where the
closed square flap of the doorway faced the valley.  There he tripped
over something, and reaching out his hands to save himself, he found
the body of a man, of Rain's enemy whom he had come to kill.  To all
Indians the place was holy, the priestess a sacred woman.  The tribes
would burn the man who dared molest her.  This was no Indian.  These
sodden clothes, a serge shirt, duck overalls, long boots, were those
of a white man.  There was but one white man in these mountains,
Hiram Kant, the American trapper, known to the Indians as
Hunt-the-girls, who had "heard of a crick up north a-ways, plumb
spoiled with beaver dams."

Storm's groping fingers found the wound.  The touch of it made him
retch, for this man was wounded--horribly.  Rain's vengeance had
struck.  And Thunder Feather had given to this trapper Hunt-the-girls
a new name--"No-man."

If he had only been dead!  But this thing was alive, delirious,
muttering, moaning for water.  "And it wouldn't be decent to
kill--until I gets him well enough to fight me.  I suppose I got
to----"

Sick, faint, reeling, Storm groped in the dark until he found by the
tent door an elk paunch used as a bucket, and half full of water.  He
poured some into No-man's mouth.

And all the while there were words, dimly remembered words, which
would run in Storm's head:

"If thine enemy hunger!"

"Well?  Let him hunger!" said Storm out loud.  "I got to find Rain
first."

Still feeling sick, he groped at the door flap, unfastened it,
wrenched it aside, and reeled into the lodge.  He could not hear
properly, for the drumming of raindrops on the skin wall drowned any
sound, although he had a sense which made his flesh creep of
something stirring, of deadly menace waiting in the darkness.

Then with a sense of horror he remembered that Rain knew no word of
English nor he of Blackfoot.  In Dreamland, where all languages are
as one, they used to talk of that, and how when they met on
earth--yes, he was to sing the melody she loved best.

His mouth was dry.  He could not sing.  He was too frightened.  He
must!  Yes; while he knelt down groping for the fire sticks which
always, in an Indian tipi, lay just within the doorway on the left----

  Now 'ere's to hold Tom Bow-oh-oh-le-hing,
  The darling of our crew-hoo.


Would she remember?  His shaking hands had found the fire sticks.
With fumblings at his belt pouch, he got out flint, steel, and
tinder, struck down brisk showers of sparks----

  Faithful be-low, he did his doo-hoo-hooty
  But death has broached him too-oo-oo-hoo-hoo--


He blew at the tinder until it kindled----

  De-heth has broached hi-im too.


"That's right!"  The fire stick caught, and showed him a torch, which
he lighted.  "How's that?  Eh?"  He looked up triumphant, and then,
with narrowing eyes, peered out across the lodge.

What should he know about Red Indian grief, of Blackfoot rites which
mourned for murdered honor?  The priestess had bled nearly to death,
had starved her body these four days, and only remained alive because
the guardian spirits gave her power.

They said that Storm was coming.  Who could mistake that blundering
white man's rush down the hillside, that muttering of oaths when he
fell over No-man's body, that funny dear old melody?

Had she not loved so fiercely she could not have hated his coming
with such frantic intensity.  That he should break into the place
where she hid her misery!

Purity fierce as fire, anger which struck like lightning, pride
ferocious, a wild heart savage as this terrific wilderness, all that
had made her overwrought, hysterical, half mad, found their
expression now as she crouched kneeling, her bow drawn, her arrow
ready, her staring eyes waiting until the light showed the target,
and then she steadied her aim directly at his heart.

Storm saw the woman he had worshiped from childhood, married in
Dreamland, his wife whom now the torch revealed to him for the first
time on earth--a terrible, avenging fury.

As a horseman speaks of his horse, so had this woman spoken of her
animal, her earthly body, which, be it beautiful or be it disfigured,
was a thing apart from herself, which he had never seen, or loved, or
thought about.

It is not the lamp which gives light, or the oil, or the wick, but
the flame.  So the earthly body inspires passion, while Love is of
the soul, burning, spiritual, not of the Earth or of Time, but of the
Heavens eternal.  And Death can only make the dull flame clear,
shining above the level of the earth mists, in regions where Love is
regnant, omnipotent, omniscient, eternal.  The human love which
lights our way on earth is to that mighty power, like the small
twinkle in a sunlit dew-drop.

So Storm saw dimly by the flickering torchlight the disfigured body,
but clearly radiantly the untarnished soul.  His love was not of the
Earth, or of Time, or Space or any limitation, but the divine spark
which kindled his manhood, not to be quenched by any illusion of the
senses.  And as to the threatened death, what was that to him except
a quick awakening from this earth-dream!

Long ago in Dreamland Rain had launched an arrow through Storm's
heart, but by his faith he had been saved from any pain or injury
from the wound.  Laughing at that old memory, he said, "I still
believe"; and, just as he had then, so now he stretched out his arms.

His hair was draggled with the wet, his deerskin dress was soaked,
dank, clinging to his body; but neither the drenching, the cold, nor
his weariness could lower the flash of his eyes or hide the love
which lighted his face as he knelt there, not come to affront her
privacy, but to show Rain that he, her lover, her husband, had come
at last to protect and succor her.  She understood.

The bow relaxed, the arrow dropped, she reached out her arms to him,
her lips rendered thanksgiving; but now that the strain was ended,
the wounded, starving woman swayed helplessly, the flush gone from
her face, the light from her eyes.  And she fell forward.

Storm dropped the torch.  The tipi was all in darkness, and there was
no sound save the steady pattering of rain on the taut skins overhead.



CHAPTER VII

THE HOLY LODGE


I

Europe has two groups of languages, the Aryan and the Basque, but the
North Americans had ten, with hundreds of tribal dialects.  Only the
nations on the northwest coast had a trade jargon to unite their
isolated villages.

The Indian of the hunting tribes made his whole life the exercise of
a religion expressed in endless ceremonial, even the songs and dances
being forms of prayer.  The song was derived from the notes of birds
and beasts, the ritual and the dance were a careful mimicry of the
wild creatures, and the whole art of pantomine gave to the Indian
extraordinary expressiveness, variety, and grace in gesture.  So
North America had what Europe lacked, the basis for a language of
signs, in universal use, breaking down tribal barriers, welding all
nations into one brotherhood.  The population was so small, its
tribes were so far apart, that war was informal, a hunting for
trophies to please the girls, not a campaigning for conquest; but the
sign talk made an immense telegraphy which carried news from hill to
hill across the wilderness, scout's warning to the home camp, signal
of tribe to tribe guiding the hunt, as well as an instrument in
diplomacy, a vehicle for treaties.

So far back as they remembered their life, Rain had instructed Storm
in the ways of her people, and they could spend hours together
conversing in the hand talk without one spoken word.  Their first
earthly meeting occurred on a dark night when the fire was out; but
when they had light to see by, they talked as deaf and dumb folk do
among ourselves.  Even when Storm learned Blackfoot, they would
revert to the graceful, happy game, as one might turn for fun from
prose to poetry.

Think, then, of Storm on his knees enjoying a bright fire, and the
haggard priestess sitting up affronted because he had bedded No-man
down on the other side of the tipi.  "That thing, No-man," she sig-
naled, "profanes my lodge.  Chuck him out!" No-man!  Such was the
name which Thunder Feather had called the white man Hunt-the-girls,
her daughter's enemy.

"Don't fuss," he answered, "here's your soup all steaming, and I'm
Old Squaw who smacks the children to make them good inside.  You
shan't have any soup until you agree to be good."

Rain wanted that soup.

No-man did not want soup.  He was Hiram J. Kant, a free-born American
citizen, what had a right to die if he pleased.

"Not at all," said Storm.  "You got no right to sneak out of a fight."

"What fight?"

"I'm Rain's husband."

"Some liar," said No-man with admiration.

"You're going to fight me, Hiram," Storm added, "knives, guns, or
teeth, but you'll fight."

"Eh?"  The American became quite cheerful with something to look
forward to.

"Gimme that soup!"

Both patients were acutely disagreeable.  Rain determined to finish
murdering No-man the moment she felt well enough, while the trapper
had but one motive for living, a duel with his nurse.  Moreover, all
three of them had to be fed.  So the nurse went hunting with No-man's
gun or Rain's arrows daily to get meat, just at the height of the
season when the animals were either in love or looking after their
children.  No-man wanted rainbow trout, Rain said fish were unclean.
Storm could not catch them anyway, and only the little fishes enjoyed
the joke.  The camas lilies made the pastures blue as a sunlit lake,
and Rain turned rabid vegetarian, but Storm had never learned to use
the rooting stick, shaped like a packing needle.  The bulbs came up
in broken bits.  As to the cooking of them in a grass-lined pit, with
a fire on top, that really needs a bit of practice, and Rain's
explanations in the hand talk were merely an aggravation of his
worries.  His nursing was rough, his surgery a peril, his hunting a
failure, his cookery a besetting sin, his housekeeping an outrage on
decency, and in short his conduct of affairs most stimulating.  Both
patients in self-defense made hasty convalescence.

The worker, arraigned by his conscience and condemned by his fellows
as a failure, sees but one side of life, while on the other spirits
invisible may be praising his service as one of immortal beauty.  The
wise women, Catherine and Thunder Feather, saw the excellence of
Storm's deeds, but also the error in his thoughts which brought his
work to naught.  He supposed his honor to demand a duel with No-man,
while Rain's desire was wholly set on murder, and the trapper lived
but for the single motive of a fair fight to the death with his only
friend.  Such thoughts were not curative to the sick or helpful to
the nurse, but liable to end in some unpleasantness.  Catherine and
Thunder Feather prayed for help to Hiawatha.

He came, not to Rain's tipi, but to her place of sacrifice, that hill
which like an altar stood in the middle of the Apse of Ice.  He
called the children to him, and when they arrived borne, in their
dream, through the hush of the night, they found him.  Remote and
spectral under the moonlight, the walls went up to spires of frosty
silver, and at their feet five glaciers crouched, half seen through a
veil of mist.

"May the Light defend us," said Hiawatha, "from spiritual perils and
in earthly danger."

Rain sat on his right hand, Storm on his left, their hearts at rest.

"I come to tell you about certain angels."

The story-teller's duty is to amuse and interest the folk, setting
forth real and golden truth, not of events as though he were
historian, not of philosophy as though he were a scholar, not of
religion as though he were a priest, but of human character,
adventure, humor, tragedy, and fun.  He is the jester in a fool's
cap, motley, and bells, but it would be a poor joke to trap the
unwary reader with a sermon.  That would be dishonest and the book a
swindle.

Yet I did love Hiawatha's sermons, sitting with Rain and Storm to
listen, moved as they were moved, crying a little at times or
laughing with them, resolved as they were resolved to be more kindly,
not quite such a prig, forgiving as they forgave a fallen enemy, and
living as they lived on this earth the life immortal.

We are so busy gabbling and fussing that our guardian angels cannot
get a word in edgeways unless we are asleep.  And then we don't
remember.  The soul remembers.  I deem the world would all go mad but
for the good things which happen in the night, while the bodies of
the dream-folk rest.

So Hiawatha's sermons shall make a separate volume, a better one than
this, and for the time it is enough to specify that through this
teaching Rain and Storm forgave No-man his trespass, hoping to be
for-given some of their own pet sins.

Long after his children had gone back to their lodge, the Guardian
Spirit of the New Race sat by the altar fire peering into the future,
the great and terrible days to come.  He saw his people play the Game
of Life not for the zest of it, but for greed of the counters.  In
that game, as seen from the spirit planes, the winner is he who gives
away the counters, the piteous loser he who stakes his soul to get
them, but presently leaving the table, finds his gains no longer a
currency in regions where a million of them will not buy so much as a
drop of water.



II

When Rain was well enough she made clothes for No-man, but would not
as yet speak to him or go near him.  Storm was the nurse.  He did the
hunting also, but his wife sun-dried the meat and dressed the skins.
He fished, but she did the cooking; he dug wild vegetables which his
wife prepared and stored.  When the berry season came he thrashed the
sarvis, cherry, and cranberry bushes, while Rain sifted, cured, and
stored the fruit for winter.  She had many a hard day's work besides
to entertain the clients, who came hundreds of miles for healing or
for counsel.  They had to be fed, bedded down, and listened to for
patient hours far into the night.

When there was time, the day's work finished and the gear repaired,
if light enough remained of a summer evening, Storm read the Bible
spelling it out laboriously and aloud in English, then translating
phrase by phrase into his broken Blackfoot and the sign talk.

As rendered, it was something of this kind:

"Jesus went up to the medicine lodge."

Rain could see the camp of the Jews: herders watching their pony herd
up on the prairie, and down in the meadow, miles wide and miles long,
was the ring of the tribal tipis, in one immense ellipse.  There the
squaws were busy flenching skins, or sitting in a merry group to
piece together the covering of a lodge.  The little naked Jew boys
chased and roped dogs or went on a make-believe buffalo hunt shooting
with blunted arrows.  The little girls were moving a doll's camp, or
cooking a let's-pretend feast.  Out in the open arena stood a row of
society lodges for the Pharisee, Sadducee, and Scribe societies where
they painted themselves and dressed for ceremonials.  The Crazy Dogs,
or camp police, were called the "Roman soldiers," much too stuck-up
to mix with the other societies.

In the very middle was the medicine lodge, an enclosure of sheltering
branches which sloped all inward towards the sacred lodge pole.
Close by was the booth where the sacred woman fasted, and there was a
shelter with a sweat lodge for the three high priests.

"Jesus went up to the medicine lodge, and found a lot of dog-faced
persons who sold birds and trade goods for sacrifice to the
Sun-Spirit."

"Shame!  Shame!" cried Rain.

"So He threw them out, and pitched the trade goods after them."

"Of course," said Rain, approving heartily.

"He said the holy tipi is a place for prayer, but you have made it an
All-Thieves-Society Lodge.

"Then a lot of blind and lame Indians came to the medicine lodge for
help.  So He mended them.

"But when the big chiefs and medicine men saw that----"

"I see," said Rain.  "If He mended the poor people for nothing, they
wouldn't have to pay all their ponies and robes to be cured by the
medicine men.  He was spoiling the medicine business.  Of course they
didn't understand that He was really Morning Star, the only Son of
the Big Spirit.  Nobody except Scarface could ever scout the way for
the people over the terrible Wolf Trail.  O Scarf ace, Star of the
Daybreak, Christ our Chief, lead us through the darkness upon that
Path of Stars."

On the other side of the hearth fire, No-man lay in torment, half mad
with pain, disturbed all day and far into each night by the tireless
labor and worship.  After a couple of months his nerves were torn to
rags.  He became hysterical.  One morning, while Rain was down at the
bathing place, and Storm spelling out an epistle to the people of
Salonica, the patient called a halt.

"Say," he drawled, "see here.  Whar I was brung up, 'way East, my
folks they got religion.  They took it bad, at one of them camp
meetings, whar more souls is made than saved.  See?

"They was mean as snakes to start with, an' if they lost five cents
they raised the death wail.  But when they got Religion the way
they'd slander the unconverted neighbors and whine about their own
souls!  I cleared.  You couldn't see my tail for dust.

"I'm shorely disabled, and heap sick, but I'm what's left of a man,
and you're a white-livered skunk with cold feet, which daresn't meet
me, either with knives, guns, or teeth."

There was just enough truth in No-man's words to stab, to torture,
sufficient injustice to enrage Storm almost to the point of murder.
And he had fallen so far short of his own ideals.  A fugitive from
justice because he was afraid to face the gallows; an outcast of the
master race contented in his shame to be a sham Indian among savages;
a frontiersman, but so poor a specimen compared with this wounded
trapper; a Christian yet angry, jealous, full of spiritual pride
mixed up with devilish hatred.  He doubted if he was really fit to
live.

His heart cried, "Is this man right?  Am I unfit to live?"

No-man got to his knees unsteadily and swayed with weakness as he
took up the weapon and loaded.  His head swam.  He fumbled with
tremulous fingers, muttering that there wasn't room for two men in
Rain's tipi.  Then he turned himself round, confronting Storm, who
sat with the Book clasped in his hands.

"Whar's yo' gun?"

"My gun?"

Storm's mind flashed back to his interview with a real bear, a much
more formidable enemy than this, and how his faith proved then of
better avail than any medicine iron.

"Perhaps," he thought more cheerfully, "if I hadn't been no good at
all, that grizzly would have got me."

"Oh," he said, "that's all right, Hiram.  One gun is enough.  We'll
draw lots, if you like, or you can have first shot.  It's all the
same to me."

"Huh!" the Trapper snorted.  "Play-acting, eh?"

"Oh, yes," Storm sighed.  "I'm just trying to play at being a man.
That's all.  Shall we draw lots?"

But if the trapper waited for that, the pain would master him.  He
hesitated.

"All right," said Storm.  "Fire!"

"Of all the cold-blooded frawgs!"

"You'll need a touch of bear oil on that lock, Yank.  It's 'ard on
the draw."

Storm wanted that minute.  He hoped it wasn't cowardly.  Just one
minute before--to serve in this life, or in another world?

"Oh, well," he said out loud, "it doesn't really matter.  Aim low."

"I'm going to call your bluff!" cried No-man, and took aim.  "Damn
you!  I'll call your bluff!"

"Too low," said Storm, "Hiram, that gun kicks!"

It did!

The recoil knocked the invalid head over heels against the wall of
the tipi.  Then he looked at the slow-drifting smoke as it swept
upwards, and from behind came Storm's rather hysterical chuckle.
"You'll catch it, Yank!  A bullet hole through the skin of the lodge,
a leak just over where she sleeps!"

No-man scrambled back to some sort of posture for defense, but when
the smoke cleared he saw Storm still sitting, the Book clasped in his
hands, a broad grin on his face.

"Still acting!" the trapper sneered, "showing off to yourself, eh?
Of all the humbugs!  Of all infernal hypocrites!  I'll make you own
to the sham!  I'll----"

"Call my bluff!" cried Storm, exulting.  "Try again.  Aim lower.  Ask
Him to help.  I always have to, 'cause I'm such a rotten bad shot."

"Ask the Devil!" cried No-man, wild with rage.

"Friend of yourn?" asked Storm, then with biting sarcasm: "Ask him
then!  You couldn't hit me with the muzzle against my ribs!"

"What'll you bet?"

"My burning-glass.  You has always envied that."

"Agin what?"

"Your soul, Yank.  My burning-glass to your soul, you daren't fire!"

"Done!"

Beside himself, cursing, raving, the trapper loaded, reviling the
powder, wad, ramrod, gun, himself, and the Devil, then with a burst
of frantic blasphemy, he advanced the weapon against Storm's ribs,
and let fly.  The lock snapped in the pan.

"You'd really ought," said Storm, "to have primed that pan.  Why,
Hiram, you didn't stand no chance."

The trapper flung the weapon out through the door of the tipi.  "I
ain't no crawler.  And if you thinks you've won my soul, you're away
off.  It's done lost."

Storm laughed gayly.  "That's all right, partner," said he; "we'll
catch it!"

"Well"--No-man smiled at last--"it's up to you.  You won.  And I
shorely loves the way you acts."

"Found!  The very first thing is loving your enemy, specially when
you hates him like poison as you does me.  Shake 'ands on it."

Shamefacedly No-man shook hands with Storm.

"Mush.  I'm getting mushy," said the trapper to himself.  "Softer
than a woman, plumb unmanly believing of things which ain't so.
Sick, of course.  But this man isn't no hypocrite.  He don't scare
none.  He don't preach.  His medicine is powerful strong too, by the
way he's healing this yer wound.  Now, if I don't roll my tail down
to the nearest white men and have a fortnight's drunk--why, dammit,
they'll have me saved.  I'm off!"

He went, his hosts proclaiming so frequently and with such insistence
how greatly they were relieved at his departure, that one might even
think they needed some persuasion of proof they did not miss the
fellow at all.  Of course he had to earn his living as a trapper, and
naturally must sell the season's takings, but why not trade with Two
Bits?  News came by various clients at the lodge that No-man was here
or there, in all sorts of scrapes, trying to get himself killed in
the most lunatic adventures among hostile tribes, yet with a charmed
life.  He hunted Death, so of course Death had to run away; always
does if you chase him.  He was trying to find a white man's camp and
get a proper drunk, or so he told the Indians.  Why was it, they
wanted to know, that when by accident he came on a white man's
trading camp, he ran away?  Was he afraid of his own tribe, or was he
ashamed to meet them?  And why was it that, when the women made eyes
at Hunt-the-girls, he always fled from the camps?

Then, dreading the very sight of the priestess, horribly afraid lest
Storm should unman him altogether by making a Christian of him, the
trapper came back to the tipi because he was lonely, homesick, hungry
of heart, and desolate.

Always after that, when he went away for a season's trapping, No-man
was full of pomp and ostentation to himself, as well as towards his
hosts, about the big drunk he would have in the spring at the nearest
trade house, how he was hitting civilization, what presents he was
taking to the folks down East.  Young America always proposes to do
things, whereas the other white men are grown-ups content to let the
accomplished deed speak for them.  Still, it pleased the exile to
dream ahead, and he found in that a satisfaction which would never
come from a drunk realized, a visit to the civilization which he
dared not face, a return to the home love he never would know again,
or any other fair-appearing dead-sea fruit, which in his mouth would
change to ashes.  Rain said she hated the very sight of No-man, Storm
proclaimed him a nuisance; yet they saw through him, their hearts
ached because of the tragic emptiness of the life he faced with such
gay valor, and when they expected his return to this, his only home,
they certainly looked forward to his gossip.

While that sort of thing continued through six years, they might have
realized, had they thought of it, how No-man would hardly be silent
among the Indians.  He had to make some sort of face, put up
something, anything for appearances.  Craving for sympathy,
affection, respect, or even enmity, he could claim attention only in
one way.  He had no strength to boast of, no wealth to display, or
power, or virtue, fame of deeds, or other merit save this: that his
home was the sacred tipi, that his friends were the holy woman of the
Blackfeet, and her husband the medicine man, Storm.  He boasted of
Rain's oracles and her miracles of healing as though they were given
under his management.  More and more the mountaineers and the warrior
hordes of the plains regarded the sacred lodge as a place of
pilgrimage.  Yearly the Apse of Ice became more central to that
Indian world which was swept by mysterious pestilence, ravaged by
hopeless wars, appealing for guidance, and getting fire water.



III

As the work increased a guest lodge was set up for the use of the
Indian pilgrims, who hunted and cooked for themselves.  Only No-man
was admitted to the sacred tipi, where his visits formed a pretext
for a bit of meat now and again which Rain and Storm would share
without too much offense to Hiawatha.  Of course they knew that they
were doing wrong--so much the better fun.  Early in their life
together the Spirit Guide showed them the life of an Indian tribe as
seen from the astral plane.  The slaughtering of the buffalo, the
dressing of meat, and the feasting was all done in a cloud, a fetid
mist caused by the fumes of blood.  "Poor things," said Hiawatha, as
he watched, "if they do not hunt they will lose their training for
war, and the other tribes will rub them out.  They eat flesh, they
are strong, they have the intellect which leads them to slaughter and
despoil their enemies, to lie, to steal, to cheat.  Only the blood
fumes cloud their intuition, fog their conscience, and take away from
them that foreboding which warns the animals when there is danger.
That Veil of Blood is the heaviest of all the seven which shut men
out from Vision."

Of course that was all very true; but, on the other hand, the camas
bulb is sweet enough to cloy, and though there is a great variety of
wild vegetables and fruits, they are not an exciting diet.  As to
rainbow trout, they are very shy of holy anchorites.

But that was not the worst.  Bears are unscrupulous: at certain
seasons also vegetarians because meat is rather scarce.  When Rain
caught a grizzly raiding the holy tipi, her thrashings tickled him so
nicely that he would fetch his wife to share the fun.  The wood rats,
a special nuisance in that district, the porcupines, squirrels,
chipmunks, polecats, all shared Rain's views on diet, treating her
supplies as a public larder.  So great was their enthusiasm that she
and Storm were like to starve to death, rather than relinquish their
principles, but for the pilgrims who brought offerings of dried
fruits or vegetables.

Had there been seeds to start a garden without any birds or bears to
inspect the produce, had there been eggs, milk, cheese, honey,
groceries, or cereals, there were no merit in a meatless regimen; but
housekeeping at the holy tipi was not without its worries.

Still, it is a verity that with rare exceptions prophets, seers,
hermits, saints, monks, some sorts of clergy, all kinds of people as
a whole who visit the spirit-realms must abstain from eating any
creature which is able to look them in the eyes.  The most carnal
among us observe that rule with regard to dogs, cats, and horses.

Howbeit when No-man came on a visit, his fleshly lusts were a very
good excuse for a lapse from grace which the anchorites were depraved
enough to enjoy.  It was he who contrived the animal-proof cavern
with a rock door which finally solved the problem of the vegetarian
larder.



CHAPTER VIII

RISING WOLF

Southward, astride of the Rocky Mountains, ranged the Absarokas, the
Sparrowhawks, who were known to the whites as the Crows.  For a
decade or so one, if not both, of the Absaroka tribes had been ruled
by a mulatto adventurer Jim Beckwourth.  Under his leadership the
hunters were skilled in getting, the women industrious in dressing
bison robes.  In trade they abstained from liquor and bought guns and
ammunition.  They made themselves dreaded in war, stole plenty of
ponies, danced for scalps beyond all numbering, and were very careful
not to kill a white man.  When at last Beckwourth abandoned his wives
and tribe, departing for California, a rival but minor trader began
to prosper among the Absaroka.  He claimed to be an Absaroka, called
himself the Crow, but, like Jim Beckwourth, was part negro.  I think
he was half negro and half Mexican.  Beginning in a small way, he
traded for bison robes with liquor only.  As his business grew he got
all the Absaroka robes, but in return the people had nothing but
alcohol.  So the two tribes, the richest in the west, were reduced to
poverty, their pony herds became an easy prey, their warriors a mere
supply of scalps for the Blackfoot raiders.  The Crow brought the
nation to ruin.

At this stage in the Crow's progress, the chief medicine man of the
Absaroka nation came to the holy lodge and sought Rain's counsel.
She advised him to get consent of his National Council, then have the
Crow's wagon burned, and the man himself expelled with a price on his
head lest he should venture back again.  The medicine man departed,
and No-man, traveling in his company, learned from him the whole
advice which Rain had given in secret.

For some months No-man kept the secret, but in the ensuing winter he
came into partnership with another trapper, and to him he told this
story, together with many others, to illustrate the power and
influence of his friends at the holy lodge.

Now does our story follow the other trapper.  He was Hugh Monroe, the
son of a Scots colonel and of a French-Canadian mother, born at
Montreal in 1799.  At the age of fourteen he joined the Blackfoot
nation, and earned a title of honor--Rising Wolf.

Friends of mine who knew Rising Wolf in his age, spoke of him as not
very much to look at, a little wizened old man deeply sunburned.  In
1842, at the age of 43 and the height of his powers, one must think
of him as the head of an Indian household, and as a leader of the
glorious Blackfoot chivalry, unrivaled among horsemen, hunters, and
warriors.

In August with the tribe on the march, Rising Wolf rode one day with
Many Horses, Head Chief of the Blackfoot nation.  To him he repeated
No-man's tale concerning the downfall of the Absarokas, the Crow as
organizing their destruction, their chief medicine man as pilgrim to
the holy lodge and Rain's advice for the deliverance of the people.
Many Horses was not pleased.  The rescue of his foes the Absarokas
was not his policy or that of the Blackfoot Council.  Rain, a
Blackfoot woman, had done a grievous injury to her tribe.

To Rising Wolf, Rain seemed of less importance, not to be taken quite
so seriously.  She and her husband Storm were doubtless rogues, but
not likely to influence events or to become a factor in Indian
politics.

"I don't know," said Many Horses.  "The faith of the people makes
this woman and her husband powerful.  Get me proof that they are
frauds, and I can put a stop to any further mischief."

"Shall I go and see for myself?" asked Rising Wolf.

"Yes.  But do not let the people think that I am sending you, or have
a hand in this.  An embassy to the holy lodge would give it too much
importance."

"Rain's brother, Heap-of-dogs, wants me to dine with him."

The big chief chuckled.  "A young man," said he, "newly admitted to
serve in the Camp Police.  The impudence!  Why, all the chiefs'
wives, including mine, would take the warpath.  If you refused their
feasts and dined with this young upstart, they'd dance your scalp, my
friend.  Take him as guide to the holy lodge, but as you love me, do
not dine with him."

"I only said I'd think it over," answered Rising Wolf.  "Indeed, he
bores me.  Haven't you noticed, Many Horses, that a young man or a
young woman who goes in for being excessively beautiful, as this
young spark does, is always the very dullest company?  It's the plain
fellows like you and me who have to be attractive with humor, wit or
skill, learning or valor."

"How you do paint yourself!"  The great chief loved a chance of
poking fun at his counselor.  "Now, don't blush.  Your gifts are most
becoming."

"Let me off, or I'll turn flatterer and sicken you.  This
Heap-of-dogs, Rain's brother, is really beautiful."

"A fop, as you say--a fop."

Rain says that white people will not understand her brother's
name--Heap-of-dogs--unless it is explained.

So you must know that in Red Indian custom when a mother carries her
new born baby into the sunshine, she looks about her, and the first
thing she sees amusing or unusual suggests a name for her child.

Thus when Rain's mother, Thunder Feather, had been delivered of her
firstborn child, her son, she went with him to the lodge door, and
looked out at the sun-lit camp.  And as it happened, the Stony
Indians, come upon a visit, were pitching their tipis close by the
tribal camp.  But though the tribes were at peace, the dogs were at
war, engaged in battle, all of a writhing heap.

So did Thunder Feather name her son Heap-of-dogs.

Rain's brother was strikingly handsome, a showy horseman, a dandy, a
leader of fashion.  Moreover, he shone with several different kinds
of reflected glory, as son-in-law to a rich chief, as brother to the
famous prophetess, and presently as guide to Rising Wolf.  For this
occasion he sported the top hat of a paleface chief, from which he
had cut out the crown to use the thing as a sort of flowerpot from
whence rose a bush of scalps.  From his rump waved the tail of a
horse.  Large shaving glasses formed his necklace, which blazed in
the sunshine, visible for miles to friends and enemies.  As to the
design of his face-paint, even Blackfoot society was surprised,
ladies of our own tribes would have fainted with envy, and clocks
would have stopped at the sight.

"Take off those mirrors," said Rising Wolf.  "I don't want to be
ambushed and scalped."

When this was done, they started, each with a wife to drive the
baggage ponies and make camp, while the two men scouted ahead and
killed meat for each day's provisions.  They rode across the Rockies
by way of Crow's Nest Pass, they forded the Upper Columbia below Lake
Windermere, and they threaded the little trail up Toby Creek, this in
the first week of a bright September.  So, nearing the sources of
Toby Creek in the heart of the Selkirk Range, they cantered through
glades of bunch grass, by orchards of wild fruit and stately pine
woods, with vistas now and then of glaciers at the head of the valley
and snow-crowned walls against clear azure.  The heights were bathed
in a splendor of sunshine, but the vale in a mist of perfume where
the organ of falling waters played for a choir of birds.  The beauty
of the place was overwhelming.

"You never told me," Rising Wolf complained, "that it would be like
this."

"There are not words," answered Rain's brother, "or signs to tell
with."

They passed through the herd, two hundred head of spotted and dappled
ponies.

"We call Rain the Kutenai woman," said Heap-of-dogs, "because she
likes the spotted ponies.  How the herd grows!"

"Considering," answered Rising Wolf, "that every man in every tribe
is a natural-born horse thief, have these ponies no fear of being
run?"

"They know," said Rain's brother, "that they are the sacred herd.
They expect us to get out of their way because they are important."

Now there opened out a glade commanding the head of the valley, and
the eastward glaciers of the Apse.  The westward glaciers were hidden
by the altar hill on the right, a dark wall clothed with juniper and
snow-crowned.  At its base nestled the holy tipi and the guest lodge.
As the custom was, the visitors dismounted, approaching the tents on
foot.  Both proved to be empty, but when a voice hailed them cheerily
from overhead, they saw the priestess and her husband riding down the
breakneck zigzag trail.

When Storm rode up and greeted him, Heap-of-dogs whispered behind his
hand.  "Brother Storm, there's going to be some fun."

"Rising Wolf," was Rain's greeting, "may the Sun bless you."

The white man saw in Rain's face the high cheekbones and pinched
forehead of her people, free from face-paint though, aglow with
health, and in a stern way almost beautiful.  She moved with swift,
savage grace, a creature of the wilds.  Her smile was charming as she
gave him welcome to her lodge, and asked Storm to make her brother
comfortable.  She lighted pipes for her white guest, Rising Wolf, and
her brother Heap-of-dogs, and her husband Storm.  Then she settled
modestly in her place, on the woman's side of the hearth, confronting
them.

"Certainly," the white man felt, "she has the manners of a lady, not
of the conjurer, the professional charlatan."

According to Indian custom there was silence for a few minutes before
they came to business.  "You know my name, then?" said Rising Wolf.

Rain answered: "No-man, and my dear Storm, and Rising Wolf are the
only Stonehearts in our country."

And the visitor had supposed he could pass for a Blackfoot!  He had
actually painted his face "for the mosquitos."

"It's much more comfortable," said Rain out loud, "in the fly season."

So she read his thoughts!

"Perhaps," he said with sharp suspicion, "you know what brings me?"

"Oh, of course."  Rain counted on her fingers.  "Seven suns ago, you
rode with the big chief Many Horses, and you told him that my man and
I are frauds."

"Rain counts coup!" cried her brother Heap-of-dogs, exultant.
"Didn't I warn you?"

"So," Rising Wolf probed shrewdly, "Many Horses has sent a rider
ahead to prepare you for this visit."

"Hyai yo!  You think the head chief too good a sportsman!"

"I did," the white man retorted; "you read my mind."

"That is true, Rising Wolf," answered the priestess, amused by his
chagrin.  "You rode leading your painted war horse, who tried to
plead, poor thing, that the trotting was bad for his wound."

"What do you mean?"

"That your war horse has an arrow point behind his off shoulder
blade, but you mistake the lameness for cracked heel."

"The head chief said it was cracked heel, but, by Jove, you may be
right!  How on earth----"

"Not on earth," answered the priestess gently, "for you didn't see me
riding your led horse, you didn't hear him pleading to me in his
pain, you didn't remember the red stone arrow points when the Snake
braves attacked you down at the Pisk'un.  You will not believe until
the red arrowhead works out to the skin, at Leaf Fall."

"So I'm put off," said Rising Wolf sarcastically, "until Leaf Fall
for your proof!"

"My dear guest," Rain laughed at his ill-humor, "did I ask you to
come?  Did I seek your opinion?  Will you judge me as you judged your
horse?"

Rising Wolf thought deeply, and his was a quick intellect.  If the
Chief Many Horses had sent a messenger, the priestess might know that
his charger was a piebald, lame in the off fore, but not of a red
stone arrowhead behind the shoulderblade.  Had the Snake warriors,
who raided his camp beside the old buffalo trap, been here and told
the story?  Of course this must be some sort of cheap conjuring.  Was
Heap-of-dogs guiding Rain his sister in the sign talk, or how was the
trick worked?

"Even cheap conjuring," Rain answered his unspoken thoughts once
more, "is puzzling until one knows the trick."

Gentle her smile, and womanly her conduct, yet without the least
offense she made him catch his breath, amazed, startled, almost
frightened.  Under the straight, strong brows her eyes were shadowed,
but the glance was penetrating, looking right through him.  By her
smile she seemed to be sorry for him.  And she was beautiful, pure,
austere, making his lurking suspicion feel caddish.

"Many Horses is not pleased," she said, "that his enemies the
Absaroka are being rescued, that the Crow is to be driven from their
camps, that the fire water shall not destroy them any more.  Are the
Blackfeet afraid lest their enemies be fit for war?  Is Many Horses
frightened?  Are you turned coward?"

Then Rising Wolf knew that Many Horses had sent no messenger.  This
witch had powers beyond all things possible.

"Poor Doggie!" she whispered.  His father had called him that far
back in childhood, a nickname forgotten these forty years.

"Your father," said Rain, "sends you that token."

Nobody in the West knew who his father was, but in quaint, broken
English, unable to pronounce the letters l and r, "Co'on'ee Mon'oe,"
she said.

"Colonel Monroe," said Rising Wolf.  "Where is he?"

"At the small Stoneheart town under the hill by the river where foam
of the long falls rides on the salty water."

"Name the town."

"Names do not make thoughts easily," said Rain.

"What is my father's message?"

"In three suns, his spirit will pass over the Wolf Trail."

Rising Wolf jumped to his feet.  "I must go quick," he cried.

"Sit down ... think.  How far can you ride your animal in three suns?"

That was true.

"You would like to be with your father this evening?"

"Impossible!"

"Poor Stoneheart!" said Rain pitifully.  "You refuse to see, you
refuse to hear, you refuse to know.  You make yourself just like a
stone which cannot see, or hear, or feel, or know anything at all.
So if I took you to Mont-re-al--I read the word in your mind--you
would come back from the dream saying it was a dream, not real.  The
woman is a fraud and plays tricks.  You only want to prove that you
are right--and show me up.  Your heart is bad to my man and to me.
You fool my brother to bring you here, and think that is so clever.
I am sorry for you, my poor little enemy!"

"You don't mince your words."

"I am frank to your face as you were behind my back when you told
Many Horses that my man and I do our conjuring for the presents we
get, the ponies."

"I saw a couple of hundred."

"We have three hundred.  Take them, all of them.  Four ponies will
break back here when my love calls them.  They are mine.  The rest
you shall take to the head chief as a gift to the poor of your
village."

"Why didn't you do this before?"

"Why should we?  Nobody before has doubted us.  As you told my
brother here, all other men except yourself are horse thieves.  Any
Indian, as he told you, caught with the sacred herd, would be burned
by my people.  But, as you are not a horse thief, you are safe.
What! surely you are not frightened?  You? who are so brave!"

"Because I'm your enemy," said Rising Wolf, "you've set a trap to get
me burned!"

"My brother Heap-of-dogs shall ride ahead with my message for the
Chief Many Horses.  The head chief himself shall send herders to help
you.  Then you will be praised for the gift you bring to the poor.
And you like praise."

"Damned clever," said Rising Wolf, "perfectly convincing, and
devilish subtle.  And why do you want to win me over?"

"Is this the moment for telling?" asked Rain.  "Should we not win you
first?"

"A common woman," the man was thinking, "would have bargained with
her horses.  She is at least a lady.  And she claims that father is
dying.  Suppose it were true!  After all, I don't think she means any
harm, or that I'm frightened."

"Please," he said, "will you take me to my father?"

"Not while your heart is bad."

"Why not?"

"Because your coming would spoil your father's peace while he is
dying.  So I will take you in your dream to see other people until
your heart is good.  Who would you like to see?"

"Adventurers, fellows like me.  I understand them best."

The French-Canadian mother side of Rising Wolf was very
superstitious, had to be bitted severely, and reined hard lest it run
away with the pawky Monroe strain in his character.  Now, both his
womanly intuition and his Scots intellect were leagued together
against the noble pig-headed tenacity of his Indian training.

"I won't be fooled," he said all through that afternoon, while he
held himself proudly aloof from Rain and haunted Storm like a peevish
ghost to show his independence.  Storm would tell him nothing, but
went fishing with Rain's brother Heap-of-dogs.  Like all good
Blackfeet, Heap-of-dogs despised fish as unclean, but being a
sportsman found that rainbow trouts were rather good fun.  Neither
Heap-of-dogs nor Storm took heed of Rising Wolf and his worries;
indeed the Indian's mind was set upon his fond ambition to get
Storm's golden scalp as a trophy of war.  But Rain objected.

At sundown, fagged in mind and body, Rising Wolf lay down in the
guest lodge bidding the squaws keep quiet while he had a nap.
Afterwards he swore that he went down to the bathing pool, where Rain
came behind him, placing her forefinger just between his eyes, and
bidding him look at the light on the still water.  "We never moved an
inch."  So he told the woman.  "And all the time I could hear the
roar of the falls.  Only the sound through the pines was more like
the sough of wind.  It was lifting the snow as it drove across the
rocks, a sort of whirling blizzard, so it was only between the gusts
that I saw the old fellow up on top of the crag.  The young chap was
close by, small, frail, with the fringes of his buckskin shirt
snapping like whip crackers.  He was blown off his feet once or
twice, but he scrambled up at last with a little bundle which he
reached out to the man on top.  It blew out on the wind, a flag, the
Yankee flag, and the man waved it, shouting.  Both of 'em were
cheering like mad."

"Who are they?" asked Rising Wolf.

"The boy," said Rain, "is called Kit, Kit Carson, I think.  The man's
name is Fremont.  They're sent by the Big Father to find a trail to
the Oregon; but they've climbed up a peak of the World Spine to
plant--they call it Old Glory!  Say a prayer with me, Rising Wolf,
for these men and for their flag."

"Why should I?"

"It helps them."

"To steal Oregon, eh?  I'll see 'em damned first."

"Oregon," said Rain, "is here."

The snow had vanished, and they looked down at the Columbia, all
flame red, snaking through lava fields.  Up beyond the broken brown
hills loomed blue forest, and high above that was a volcano blazing,
whose immense eruption filled the sky with light, as of a burning
world.

"Storm likes that," said the priestess.  "So I thought it might
please you.  He calls the mountain Saint Helens.  I don't like it at
all.  I think it's dreadful.  The tribes on the coast are packing up
smoked salmon, for a move to the next world, poor things.  My man
says that even the Stonehearts at Fort Vancouver are getting
frightened.  They call it 'Day-of-judgment.'"

"Ah!  That's it," the white man was thinking; "she's got a
professional manner, just like a medicine man or a war chief
teaching.  I wonder if the angels have a professional manner."

"If you only saw one!" said Rain's mind.  "The dogs and the ponies
can see.  Why is this poor thing blinded by his conceit!"

"Humph!" said Rising Wolf.  "Am I so bad as all that?"

"Your spirit-power," Rain answered, "is like a spent torch, which
flickers, then smokes and then flares, nearly dead.  Sun Spirit, help
him!"

They were flashing southward, the sunset glow abreast upon their
right, where violet cumuli, like mountain ranges, broke to reveal
cirrii of molten ruby against clear orange sky.  As they came down
into the lower earth mist, that radiance glowed warmly upon the face
of an adobe wall upon their left, with prickly pear bush on the
parapet dark green against the upward sweep of the advancing night.

"We are in Mexico," said Rain.

In front of this wall facing the afterglow stood a long line of men
on parade, at open intervals three feet apart.  Ragged, unshaven,
famished, they were gay with a forced cheerfulness, passing jokes one
to another in derision of a group of officers, Mexicans.

"That general," said Rain, "is the wicked President Santa Ana.  Years
ago, in a dream like this, Storm saw him at the siege of Alamo, when
Bowie, Travis, and so many heroes fell, and dear Davy Crockett."

The Mexican General Staff was attended by a squad of half-clad
soldiers, who shuffled their dusty sandals, halting to order in front
of each in turn of the American prisoners.  To each of these captured
filibusters, when his turn came, there was tendered a sack from which
he was required to take one bean, and hold it up for inspection.  If
it proved to be a white bean, he lived.  If it was a black bean, the
firing party, moving in drill time, got ready, presented, loaded,
fired, then left the quivering body in its blood, to shoulder arms,
and march one full pace right in readiness for the next murder.  The
Americans were jeering at their uncouth movements.

"My man is here," said Rain.  "Of course, they cannot see him.  Look."

Amid the disheveled company Storm stood out clean.  His golden mane
and tawny dress looked crisp, fresh, strangely luminous, his face,
from which the beard hairs had been plucked in the Indian manner, was
that of a mighty chief, commanding, sternly beautiful as he stood
wrapped in prayer.  In his arms he held the prisoner next for death,
supporting him.  The fusillade rang out, and as the smoke cleared
Rising Wolf saw the crumpled body sag down with that queer empty look
he had noticed so often in men newly dead.

But the prisoner released, the man, the spirit himself, stood as
before, supported in Storm's arms, rather bewildered than hurt.  "It
wasn't so very bad?" Storm whispered to him.

"Why," answered the American, "you don't say I'm dead?"

"There is no death," said Storm, "except for your poor body.  Come
away; here is your mother waiting to take you home."

Rain pointed out the prisoner next for trial, young Crittenden.  "He
isn't old enough to go on the war trail," she said.  "A boy, and such
a dear lad!  O Rising Wolf, this will awaken your soul--or your soul
is dead.  My man and I pray for him.  Oh, can't you say one little
prayer?"

Crittenden drew a white bean, so Rain's prayer was answered.

"I am glad of that," said Rising Wolf.  "He seems a decent lad."

Crittenden gave his white bean to the middle-aged man who stood next
upon his left.  "You have a wife and children," he was saying, his
tongue so dried by fear that he could scarcely speak.  "I haven't.  I
can afford to risk another chance."

"O Mighty Power," Rain cried, "O Morning Star, Son of the All-Father,
help him!  Help him!"

Storm came behind Crittenden, trying to guide his hand.  "Rain," he
shouted, "help me to guide his hand!  Quick!"

Crittenden put his hand into the bag.

"Help him!" cried Rising Wolf.  "Oh, I do wish I could help!"

"Your first prayer, answered!" said Rain, as Crittenden held up a
white bean.

For some time after that Rising Wolf joined his wishes to the prayers
of Rain and Storm for those who were murdered or for those who lived.
Then Storm was left to the duty, while the priestess led the white
adventurer upon another quest.

"How do you find your way?" asked Rising Wolf, as they went southward
into deepening twilight, guided now for vast distances by the heights
upon their left, of the white Andes.

"My secret helper," answered the priestess, "tells me the names and
the places.  Then I just wish, and I am there.  Pray now for those in
peril."  The southern ocean lay beneath, lashed by an icy hurricane.
Through the gray dusk loomed icebergs spectral and enormous above the
black white-capped ranges of seas mountainous.  There, like poor
ghosts half seen amid the level driving snow, two ice-clad ships fled
under bare poles eastward.

"What ships?" asked Rising Wolf.

"The _Erebus_ and the _Terror_," answered Rain, "and they are so
frightened!"

The ships passed into the night, and Rain's prayer went with them.

"I always help them a little at evening prayer," she said.

But Rising Wolf was troubled.  "You do a hard day's work; then travel
ten thousand miles to pray for people in danger, and that when you're
dead tired."

"Dead tired?  Oh dear, no.  Are you?"

"Well, fact is, I'm not."

"How you get things mixed up!  Of course our animals are tired, which
we washed, fed, watered, rode to a finish, then washed, fed, and
watered all over again before we put them to rest.  But we left our
animals asleep.  We are not the horses, but the riders, the mounted
Spirits of the Heavens.  We are free, we use the free will which
white men talk so much about, and know so little."

"Free will?  What do you mean?"

"I'm free, dear man.  I will to be in a country called Tahiti, at the
hut of the Queen Pomare.  Look!"

The dusk was taking form within a large grass hut, where there seemed
to be many persons, women, asleep on the floor.  The sudden flinging
open of a door filled the place with the hot splendor of a tropic
day.  Outside, the cocoa palms were streaming in the breeze above the
coral reefs and the leaping diamond-glittering surf.

A man stood in the doorway, seen darkly against the blaze, his white
uniform heavily laced, braided and hung with cords of gold across the
shoulders.  His gestures and his speech were French and full of
studied deliberate insult, addressed to a woman who sat up on the
mats, while she suckled a new-born baby at her breast.  She was
lithe, tawny, fierce, tigerishly regal, and in a royal rage as she
stood up to confront this bully.

"Admiral," she answered him, holding out her baby that he might see,
"this is the prince you have robbed of his kingdom, this is my son,
the king who shall avenge me against your people.  Now"--with a
sweeping gesture of her arm, Pomare pointed away through the door to
the sun and the leap of the crested seas--"get out!" she hissed, "or
I'll have you thrown to the sharks.  They love a cur.  I don't."

"Poor thing!" Rain muttered.  "So she has lost her kingdom after all,
to the cruel Stonehearts.  What do you think of that man who could
bully a woman in labor?"

From Tahiti westward Rain showed her pupil the wide immensity of the
Coral Sea which, like the sky at night, glitters with far-flung
constellations, though these are of ring-shaped palm groves and white
beach, set in a riot of surf.  Beyond that gleamed the Indies; and,
crossing a forest continent, they came to a bay in Sarawak where a
white schooner yacht rolled in the anchorage.  The white man was
puzzled by Rain's Blackfoot accent, which gave a funny twist to
"Rajah Brooke."

"He is the new king of all this land," said Rain.  "He is ever so
busy shooting robbers, saving English sailors who are war slaves of
the chiefs, opening old mines of stuff called diamonds and gold,
which is not to eat, or to wear, or to keep the tipi warm."

Under the poop awnings Brooke of Sarawak sat at a table writing.

"He makes the power-message every day for his old mother.  Peep over
his shoulder and tell me.  No?  Of course--you say you are a chief.
But what is the use of being a chief, a gent-le-man, when nobody can
see you.  Oh, do look!"

Gentleman though he was, being greatly tempted, Rising Wolf took one
step, and read the words to Rain.  "'I breathe peace,' he writes,
'and comfort to all who obey; and wrath and fury to the evil-doer.'"

"His medicine," said Rain, "is very strong this day; but sometimes my
man or I must nurse him through the fever.  Now he thinks about his
friend whose name is so hard to say--Captainharry Keppel.  We will
go, see."

In Malacca Strait they found Harry Keppel's ship, H.M.S. _Dido_,
having a fight with a number of pirate junks, one being afire and
sinking.  "I like fights best," said Rain, "don't you?"

"But I thought you set up as a holy woman!"

"That's to help my man, and other people, but I'm really and truly
bad most of the time.  Storm likes you, for instance, but I've always
thought you hateful."

"We never met until yesterday!"

Rain chuckled.  "Why, we've looked after you for years.  My Secret
Helper told me I must train myself by praying for some one I hated,
so I took you.  Then of course I had to help that other Stoneheart,
No-man, who is poison.  I loathe you both--like fruits and
vegetables."

They had crossed a broad haze of the midday heat, but now above the
mist descried a broken sea of mountains, a storm of rock, which was
called Afghanistan.  Far to the left, fain in the distance rose a
rock platform, old Herat.  Beyond lay Persia whose king, the
Shah-in-Shah, had lately laid siege with seventy thousand men, to the
rock fortress.  "The Afghans there," said Rain, "were yelping coyotes
until the young spy came.  He made them mountain lions."

"Who is the young spy?"

Eldred Pottinger was his name, but in Rain's telling the words were
not much like that.  While Pottinger was busy saving Herat from the
Persians, a British field force had conquered Afghanistan.  But there
arose an Afghan chief named Akbar, who brought about a revolt against
the British.  It burst like a volcano, and the British leaders lost
their heads.  Their army was caught in the Khyber, and only one man
escaped, a Doctor Brydon.  Rain had held him steady on his dying
horse until he crossed the Indian boundary to Fort Jellalabad.  She
told the story next of General Sale, and his young warriors cut off
in Afghanistan, corralled by Akbar's army.  During three whole moons
under fire they built the walls of their stronghold; then on the
ninetieth day an earthquake knocked their fortress flat, and left
them at Akbar's mercy.  "That," said Rain, "is when I learned what
prayers can do.  Oh, if you had seen the chief Havelock with his
young men charge, stampeding Akbar's tribes--like dust before a
cyclone!

"See, Stoneheart, yonder, far in the north, is Kohistan.  There was
the young spy with his regiment of the Ghoorka tribe, fighting his
way southward.  He was wounded and nearly dead.  He had five warriors
left when he came to the gates of Cabul."

"Five men!"

"Then," answered Rain, "but now!  See, all along this roadside, the
regiments of his Afghan army camped, asleep through the heat of the
day, until his trumpets call at sundown.  See here, outside this
little wayside fort, are forty great chiefs and medicine men of his
Council.

"Where is the young spy?"

"That shabby Afghan sitting half asleep in the shadow of the gate."

"You say he raised and leads an army?"

"Yes, these Afghan tribesmen think that he is a sort of god.  He
leads them against Akbar, their own king."

"This is a man indeed!"

Rain showed him the courtyard of the fort, full of poor ragged women
and children, Lady Sale, the British General's wife, Lady McNaughten,
the wives of many soldiers.  The women of the fallen government and
the dead army were all rescued, they and their children, by the spy
who sat asleep there in the gateway.

"Listen!" said Rain, as they stood on the wall of the fort.
Somewhere, far away in the heat haze, there was a tiny broken thread
of music.  First one and then another, the women and the children
stirred in their sleep, awakened in sudden terror, then sat up,
wondering, to listen, straining to catch the distant sound again, for
an old, old Scottish melody rang softly in the cañons, "Oh, but ye've
been lang a-comin'!"

Now they were all afoot, swarming across the courtyard to the gate.
Lady McNaughten, rousing the spy, cried, "Major Pottinger, don't you
hear?  Oh, can't you hear?  A band is playing somewhere!"

Pottinger rose to his feet, swaying with weariness as he stared down
the pass, intent to catch the sound; and then he also heard.

"Oh, but ye've been lang a-comin'!"

Pottinger called his General Staff about him, giving brisk orders.
His bugler was sounding the "Alert," then the "Assembly," and trumpet
after trumpet took the echo far off into the haze.

Then the head of the British relief column came swinging round a
shoulder of the cliffs, and Lady Sale ran, shouting, to join her
husband.

Rain cried a little, then brushed her eyes with her sleeve.
"Finished," she said.  "I have worked for our dear spy three snows
now, and he needs no more help."  She turned upon her pupil.

"And you?"  Rising Wolf felt as though Rain's eyes were burning him.
"Your soul," she said, "has come alive so quickly."

They were crossing the evening westward into the night and Rain drove
her lesson home to the white man's heart:

"Faith in all that is good is the soul's life, like sunshine to a
plant, but doubt is the bleak wind which stops its growth, denial the
frost which nips and withers it."

"I believe in you."

"The messenger is bad," she answered, "but the message is true, and
He who sends it expects you to obey.  Now, if I take you to your
father, what sort of comfort do you bring to his bedside?  Ah, you
still dread death!"

"I do."

"A sore thing, parting with one's horse, eh?"

"It is all that."

"--with the animal one has ridden so hard, and loved so dearly."

"Aye, Rain.  You love a horse as much as I do."

"Did it break your heart to leave your tired animal there in the
guest lodge when you came with me?"

"You mean my body?  No."

"See.  There below us is the Atlantic, lit by the moonrise."

"So it is.  Then we've been nearly round the earth.  What an immense
adventure!"

"And yet you grudge your father this adventure?"

"Oh, but he's dying."

"Dying into a bigger adventure than ours, in bigger and more splendid
worlds.  Do you grudge him that?  Shame on you!"

He saw America lift above the sky line, and presently the Gulf of St.
Lawrence narrowed to the river.  There was the citadel of Quebec,
yonder his native Montreal, the familiar maple trees, the garden, the
old house with its green shutters, the open windows.  "See," said
Rain, "I leave you now.  My dear man, Storm, is waiting, to take you
to your father."

The night was hot and the windows thrown wide open, the moonlight
falling through the maples cast the shadows of their delicately
pointed leaves, like dark stars, on the floor and on the white bed
where old Monroe lay dying.

"'For this my son,'" he said in his dream, "was dead, and is alive
again, was lost, and is found.  It's been such a long time, Doggie.
I'm frightened, too, although you needn't tell my brother officers."

"What is it makes you frightened, sir?" asked Rising Wolf.

"To lie in the earth while the worms crawl and bite me.  I can't say
I like the idea, Doggie.  And when they've finished, I won't be
exactly nice for the Last Parade."

"I've a friend outside, sir, waiting, sort of angel, knows all about
it.  Will you see him?"

"Three days, Doggie, since I shaved my chin, or brushed my whiskers.
I've had men flogged for less, much less."

"Draw the sheet up to your mouth, sir.  There, you look fine.  Storm!"

Storm knelt beside him.

"Oh, it's you!" said the old man.  "But, Doggie, this is the fellow I
sent to fetch you.  He doesn't know a platoon from a quarter guard."

"I don't," said Storm cheerily, "but I use worm for bait."

"Hoo!  What a despicable way of fishing."

"No flies," the Colonel's son explained.

"If a worm wanted," said Storm, "to eat me, and if he was old
Boneyparte himself, he'd need to run like a jack rabbit, or fly like
a bird before he got a bite."

The colonel nodded.

"I'm not frightened of worms, and you're no more scared of 'em than
you was of Boney.  They're welcome to my animal body, after I've
finished with it."

"Finished with it?"

"Well, there's a natural body, and there's a spiritual body, isn't
there?"

"That's quoting Authority.  That's as good as Queen's Regulations."

"Better," said Storm.  "Won't be monkeyed with by the War Office.
I've heard soldiers growsing before now."

"Bravo!  Excellent!"

"Well, the worms get the natural body, and the angels get the
spiritual body."

"We shall rise in our bodies at the Last Day.  That's Authority too."

"Yes, if it says 'in our animal bodies.'  I've seen some I'd hate to
repair if I was the carpenter."

The colonel chuckled.  "Well," he said, "there's sense in that.  Go
on."

"Soldiers tell me," said Storm, "that each regiment has a battalion
at home feeding one oversea."

"With drafts, yes."

"Yours, Colonel, if I've got it correct, sent out a lot of drafts,
one time and another."

"That's true."

"Drafts from Torres Vedras, Fuentes d'Onoro, Talavera, Toulouse,
Quatre Bras, Waterloo----"

"Hold on.  We lost men, a lot of men in those engagements, but----"

"Drafts," said Storm.  "I've met the Other Battalion, and they say
they'll be jolly glad to welcome good old--well, they called you 'Old
Cat's Whiskers.'"

"They did, eh?  Beastly cheek!"

"They say you'll have seniority, whatever that means."

"It means taking command, I say, young Angel, or whatever you call
yourself--are they on active service?"

"Yes."

"Who's the enemy?"

"Devils."

"Is it like that, Angel?" answered the colonel, radiant.  "Doggie,"
he turned to his son, "seem's you've found a new master.  Follow him,
my son, when I am gone."

"I will," said Rising Wolf.

For hours he kept vigil at his father's bedside, each in his dream
comforted by the other's presence, although the old man did not speak
again.

Hugh Monroe thought of this night's great journey round the planet,
made at a speed he reckoned of about four thousand miles an hour, by
sheer will power of the woman he had slandered.  He had dared to call
Rain a charlatan!

He who called himself adventurer had met Kit Carson, Fremont, and
Crittenden, Brooke the King of Sarawak, Harry Keppel, and greatest of
them all young Eldred Pottinger the spy.  Their very names were new
to him.  "And what am I?" he moaned, "compared with the least of
these!"

His world had seemed enormous, limitless, his influence powerful, yet
his own father had told him, Rising Wolf, white leader of the
Blackfeet, to be Storm's dog!

Then Rising Wolf awakened from his dream, to find himself in the
guest lodge, and through the open doorway saw the rose flush of the
sunrise lighting the pinnacles of the Apse of Ice.  Rain sat beside
him, her hand upon his forehead.  "Remember!" she was
whispering--"remember!"

"He called me Doggie," answered Rising Wolf.  "Storm's dog.  I shall
remember.  While I live, I shall remember."



CHAPTER IX

THE STRIKING OF THE CAMP

So far back as the year 1813, Hugh Monroe had been apprenticed to the
Hudson's Bay Company, and posted to a fort at the headwaters of the
Saskatchewan.  The three tribes of the Blackfoot nation, the
Blackfeet, Bloods, and Piegans, brought their trade to that post,
where the trader in charge had misgivings, lest presently they be
misled into dealing with the Americans, whose hearts were bad and
their goods inferior.  So, one of the three tribes being at the fort,
the trader detailed young Monroe to join them, travel and live with
the people, win their confidence, and steer them judiciously lest
evil communications of the American Fur Company corrupt the good
manners of the Blackfoot nation.

A few days out on the trail southward the chiefs, with whom young
Monroe was riding, came in an afternoon to the brow of the prairie,
overlooking a meadow where the tribal camp would be pitched for the
night halt.  They dismounted to sit on the hill, watching the
procession file past, and one of the chiefs had trouble with flint,
steel, and tinder, kindling a pipe which would not light.

The lad took the pipe, and held a burning-glass in focus until the
tobacco kindled.  Not perceiving the lens, but supposing that the
Stoneheart had the direct aid of their Sun God, the chiefs hailed the
event as a miracle, and Hugh Monroe as a great medicine man.  He was
given a name of honor--Rising Wolf.  Long afterwards, though hand
mirrors came into general use for signaling, and the burning-glass
for kindling a camp fire, this Rising Wolf's reputed sun power, which
was really common sense, continued to give his voice weight in the
Blackfoot Council.  As time went by he married into the tribe, became
the father of a family, and continued among the people, for a matter
of sixty years.  He was eighty-five years old when his life ended,
and in his memory one of the high peaks of the Rocky Mountains is
named Mount Rising Wolf.

It would be difficult to find a criticism of the holy lodge more
sane, temperate, and impartial than that of the gentle adventurer.
Without the slightest doubt as to their power, he spoke of the seers
as cranks.  "Seems to me," he said in after-years, "the offense of a
crank is not that he is right, but that his rectitude puts other folk
in the wrong.  And as cranks, the seers were so damned aggravating."

Thus one may be a vegetarian without malice, in so far as one is
opposed on principle to uric acid in the blood.  Or one may prefer,
quite reasonably, the gift of vision to the juiciest buffalo steak.
There is no harm in claiming merit for a meatless diet approved by
sound physicians on the one part, by mystics on the other.  Offense
only begins when one calls one's friends foul feeders even as pigs
and dogs, or taunts the neighbors with the suggestion that eaters of
rabbits are quite capable of devouring the baby.  An enthusiast
without the restraint of common sense or the slightest fear of
consequences, Rain commended the vegetarian tenets to Red Indians who
must train themselves in hunting, live by the chase, and migrate with
the game on pain of being starved in peace, or rudely scalped in war.
So much said Rising Wolf outright, but the priestess, very calm and
aloof, observed that he was quite ignorant without being at all
clever.  Yet the adventurer knew, as Rain did not, how lewd,
frivolous young savages in the camps make no end of fun out of the
vegetarian doctrine, while Many Horses and other chiefs used to say
that the sacred woman was becoming a holy nuisance.

If Rain led, Storm was a close follower.  Having sacrificed his gun,
and afterwards his wife's bow and arrows to the Sun Spirit, he began
to observe that the vicinity of the holy lodge was looked upon by the
birds and the beasts as a sanctuary.  He loved them.  They trusted
him.  They let him witness all sorts of their affairs, and their
ceremonies, such as the small bird's jig in lugging the rest of a
worm out of the ground, or the bear's height mark scored on a tree
trunk from time to time as he grows, the field mouse dance, or
ructions at porcupine lodge.  Many animals with a sense of humor
would come to hear him sing "Tom Bowling," or, with much gravity and
deportment, play at congregation while he preached.

Unhappily there settled in the neighborhood a family of cougars who
proceeded, without regard to doctrine or respect for the holy man, to
eat their way through his parishioners.

Much prayer guided a very strenuous hunting, until at last, far up in
the fells, Storm came one afternoon to the residence of the cougar
family; and, firmly resolved to slay the parents, he fell in love
with their delightful kittens.  The result was a misunderstanding,
because the father and mother on their return from hunting supposed
Storm to be molesting the babies.  Their combined rush felled him.
Either of these nine-foot cats could have finished the business, but
that the cave was rather small, they got in each other's way, and he
found time to draw his hunting knife.  The scrimmage was frantic, a
whirling fury, so that when at last the man dispatched them both, he
fainted from loss of blood.

Rain saw the affair in a vision, and by hard riding reached the scene
in time to save her husband from bleeding to death.  She loaded him
on her pony, got him to camp, and kept him alive by her strong
spiritual power; but the wounds, being poisonous, festered.  Storm
was long in delirium, weak when he rallied, slow in recovery.
Afterwards he walked rather lame, and had also a deep scratch which
won for him among the Blackfeet the sacred name of Scarface.

So far as critic Rising Wolf, who found Storm an invalid on his
second visit, could see, no harm whatever; but presently, when Storm
felt well enough, that seer put up crosses, a big one in front of the
holy lodge and little ones five miles east and five miles west at the
trail side, to mark the limits of sanctuary for all wild creatures.
A pilgrim must lay down his arms at the foot of the boundary cross,
or was sent back an hour's journey to do so before either Rain or
Storm would give an audience.

Ingenious visitors would evade the extra ride by lying; but Storm,
who would read their thoughts, would then deny to liars that
sanctuary which was freely given to mountain sheep and goats, elk,
caribou, deer, the beaver, and the bears.

Now it so happened that Two-shakes, and Worm-in-the-bud, warriors of
the Snake tribes, riding on a knight-errantry to this far country,
learned by the sign talk from some friendly Crows about this
Truce-of-God in the northern mountains.  They came afoot over the
hills until they looked down into the valley, where they descried two
tipis beside the sanctuary cross upon the eastward trail.  Quite
naturally they mistook this cross for the one which stood before the
holy tipi and the guest lodge.  They supposed that they would get for
a trophy of war Storm's famous golden hair, by long odds the finest
scalp in the known world.

Their surprise attack just before dawn of a winter morning was quite
a success, for the knights-errant counted coups on the scalps of Four
Bears, chief of the East Kutenais, Sings-all-night, the eminent
medicine man, his famous medicine pipe, Mrs. Four Bears, whose name
was Weeping Tit, Mrs. Sings-all-night, whose name was
Back-hair-parted, and her little boy, whose name was Dark-in-places.
When day broke it was a bitter disappointment for the Snake braves
that Storm's hair was not included in the treasure; but they consoled
themselves with two guns, many robes, and a nice bunch of spotted
ponies.  While they drove long and hard it was their misfortune to
leave tracks in the telltale snow, whereby they were traced,
overtaken, and captured alive by the East Kutenais, who burned them
with much pomp and circumstance at the mouth of Wild Horse Creek.

Afterwards the story ran like fire through the tribes that Four Bears
and Sings-all-night had lied to Storm concerning the deposit of their
weapons at the east cross, that he refused to receive them as
pilgrims and had barred sanctuary.  Their fate most terribly enhanced
Storm's reputation and made the pilgrims meek.

In modern national parks, where there is truce for the animals, they
become self-conscious, show themselves off with ostentation, are
disposed as residents to look down upon mere tourists.  So, under
Storm's protection, did that born _poseur_ the big-horn, that low
comedian the bear, and even the porcupine who in the wilds flies for
his life from man at a mile an hour.  The skunk, of course, has right
of way on all trails, so that men, grizzlies, cougars, even the
lordly elk must step aside to let his lordship pass disdainfully by;
but that all the animals should expect the polecat's honors was gall
and wormwood to free-born warriors.  When, as critic Rising Wolf
mentioned the subject, Storm seemed a little truculent, and said it
served them right.  "I've been thirty years among 'em," answered
Rising Wolf, "but you may know more than I do.  I only warn
you--don't make enemies for fun."

When Rising Wolf, on first meeting the seers, accused them of
avarice, they gave away their ponies, robes, everything they
possessed that was worth having.  It was typically Indian.  A squaw
in mourning for an uncle, a cousin, or a brother, without consulting
her husband, may present the whole of his property to the poor.
Surely nobody could be more generous than that.  An Indian gives in a
very large-hearted way, and nothing grieves, hurts, or insults him as
much as a refusal to accept his present; but the seers, having
stripped themselves to bare necessities, would now accept from the
pilgrims nothing whatever except a little dried fruit, a few wild
vegetables, or a catch of trout.  The sick restored to health, the
mourners comforted, the men in grave dilemmas shown the way, found
all their gifts declined.  They were dishonored.  Their gratitude
turned sour.

All this they would reveal to their tribal medicine men, who earned a
living, supporting wives and families on the fees received in their
practice.  To such professionals, any magician who wrought cures for
love was worse than amateurish.  He was a menace.  Not that the
medicine man said anything outright, or exposed himself to a
suspicion of jealousy by using such words as unprofessional, cheat,
charlatan, black-leg, unorthodox.  Only he would hint.

"String halt?  Dear, dear!  To get as lame as all that the horse must
have been on high, rough, broken ground.  Been in the mountains
lately?"

"So you don't like the weather?  Well, well, the Thunder Bird, and
the Spirits of the Storm, and the Rain, have a deal to answer for."

"A war party ambushed?  Tut, tut, very curious, very odd indeed.
Now, if they'd mentioned their plans to a neutral, one who meets the
enemy, and tells him about our raids, why, of course, of course!  But
no!  That's quite out of the question.  Quite.  Odd, though, how many
warriors we lose just after they've gone on pilgrimage."

Were the traders overcharging for their goods?  "Why, what can you
expect?  We depart from the faith of our fathers to pick up every
wind of heresy which blows about in the mountains, and yet you
complain because your medicine goes bad!"

Were there scandals among the women.  "Ah!  How different in the days
of our mothers, when there were no magicians calling up evil spirits!"

"It seems ungracious," said Rising Wolf in after years, recalling old
events.  "I don't want to set myself up as a critic of saints, for
Rain and Storm were saints, and I'm no more than a sinner.  Many a
time when they would get a meal for the pilgrims, they went hungry
themselves because there was nothing left to eat.  They'd be up all
night with people sick or in trouble.  They never showed a sign of
peevishness, or said an ill word of anybody.  Both of them worked
what one has to call miracles.  They had far-reaching influence among
the tribes, always used for the good of others.  There was no trace
of sham or trickery, but everything straightforward, unpretentious,
real.  Rain was really a very beautiful woman, and she would charm a
bird off a tree.  Storm was good-looking, too, in his way, a matter
of coloring with his fierce blue eyes and that gorgeous mane of hair.
Of course he had a slight truculence, a bit of defiance about him
which choked one off until one knew him better.  You know he began as
a sailor before the mast, and his people, I take it, were in very
humble life; but 'pon my soul he was a damned sight more like some
duke.  I never met one, but I mean what I think a duke ought to be
like, with the grand air, the simple direct manners, the courtesies,
the thoughtfulness for everybody which goes only with real
thoroughbreds.  The pilgrims just worshiped them--at the time; and
yet when they went away, out of the glamour so to speak, they'd feel
they'd been talked down to, their self-respect bruised, their plumes
a little rumpled.  There was the bend in the arrow.

"You mark my words.  This human species runs in herds.  If we forsake
the herd life to run apart, we get out of focus like a burning-glass
at the wrong distance, we see ourselves in the wrong proportion--not
enough world, too much me.  When the trouble came, the average human
person helped by these big saints wanted to see them taken down a peg
or two.  Of course the tribes were shocked and all that, but human
people rather enjoy a sensation.  And if Rain and Storm were so
mighty powerful, why didn't they help themselves?  After all, it was
their business to work wonders."

Rising Wolf paid four visits to the holy lodge, the first to expose
fraud, the other times to seek advice in his own troubles.  Of wider
experience than any Indian, a deeper man than most and very shrewd,
he had for thirty years kept almost the whole of the Blackfoot trade
in the hands of the Hudson's Bay Company; and thanks to him, this
nation, for all its alleged ferocity, shed no white man's blood.

"They're gentlefolk," said he, "that's all.  One only needs a little
tact, and it would take a downright cad to quarrel with such fellows
as Many Horses."  Indian names wear out, and are discarded about as
frequently as we change hats, but among the young bucks of that
period were chiefs, now remembered by whites and Indians alike with
kindly reverence as Crowfoot, Mad Wolf, and Brings-down-the-sun.  In
any land or age such men would have been distinguished as very
perfect and most gentle knights, but there were hundreds of men
worthy to ride with these.

Sooner or later, inevitably as the tide marches from neap to flood,
the waves of American settlement must lap the upper plains, and
pioneers find their way into the hunting grounds of the Blackfeet.
"Kill one," said Rising Wolf to the Council, "and a thousand will
come to the funeral."

The first American to secure a foothold among the Blackfeet was the
Crow, a mulatto, and according to one version of the story an escaped
slave.  Other accounts allow for his being part negro, but for the
rest a Mexican Indian.  Certainly he had a touch of the Spaniard in
his manner.  He would make a statement, and finish it with a
query--"Yes?"  "No?"  He would commence a sentence in words and end
it with a gesture.  The fellow passed himself off as an Indian, an
authentic Absaroka warrior with three Crow wives and a litter of
children; and he was known to the tribes as the Crow.  Rising Wolf
described him as a big, lusty, hearty, jovial ruffian, lavish with
gifts, fond of display, hail-fellow-well-met with the chiefs, a
braggart, a monstrous liar, without fear; and, under that surface of
him, subtle, sinuous, fork-tongued, secret, deadly.

When Rain advised the chief medicine man of the Absaroka, had she
been a little thoughtful of her own benefit, she might have foreseen
the calling together of the Absaroka Council, the delivery of her
message to the chiefs, and the conveyance of every word with
embellishments to the Crow for his information and action.  The
Blackfoot priestess was not worldly-wise.  The Crow was all that.  He
went to the chiefs in council and called them a pack of fools.  "You
wanted fire water," said he, "and I delivered the goods.  You did not
engage me to ruin your enemies the Blackfeet.  It would have paid me
just as well to ruin them."

They asked him what he meant.

"I am the Devil's merchant," he explained.  "The Devil pays me pretty
good money for bringing destruction to silly Indian tribes.  How much
will you pay me to go and ruin the Blackfeet, as I ruined you?"

"If the white man's Devil pays you," asked the chief, "why should we
hire you?"

"All right," said the Crow.  "I guess I can put up the same goods for
your allies, the Snakes.  I don't run half the risk there that I
would with the Blackfeet."

The head chief lost his temper.  "We'll burn this trader's wagons,
share his ponies, and put a price on his scalp.  Then he can go to
the Devil."

"Of course," observed the Crow, "all traders will know how you kept
faith with me, and what to expect if they come with trade goods to
your camps.  May the Blackfeet," he added piously, "drive off the
rest of your ponies, scalp the rest of your braves, enslave your
women, butcher your children, and blot out your camp fires.  They
will too.  My medicine says they're coming, and your rotten tribes
are in poor shape to meet them."

In the end the Absaroka Council hired the Crow to ruin the Blackfeet.
Afterwards, he said, he would marry that Blackfoot priestess.  Rain
should be his squaw.

The Crow bragged of such intentions at Fort Benton, well within
earshot of the Blackfoot tribes.  His talk was cynical, pungent
enough to be repeated, to pass into the general gossip of the
Blackfoot country, with comments on Rain's character to spice the
scandal, and derision of the old-fashioned Hudson's Bay Company which
could hardly fail to reach the ears of Rising Wolf.  The Blackfeet
were interested, amused, and curious to see this trader who
advertised so boldly, who was going to undersell the Company, blacken
the face of Rising Wolf, and take Rain the sacred woman down a peg or
two.  As to their pending ruin, all the surrounding nations would
threaten as much or more when the mood took them.  Threatened tribes
live long.

The Blackfoot nation was blind to any danger.  Rising Wolf alone saw
the extent and nature of the peril.  For once he lost his head.
Where tact and humor would have won for him the exclusion of the Crow
from the Blackfoot villages, he went raving before the Council,
pleading with the Blackfoot chiefs for the mulatto's death.  That was
a blunder.  By seeking the murder of a rival trader he put himself in
the wrong, meeting his first rebuff from Many Horses, who told him
curtly to do his own killings.  To give Rising Wolf justice, he
challenged the Crow, a man four times his size, to fight with any
weapons--this in presence of the Blackfoot Council.  "That's all
right," was the Crow's cheery rejoinder.  "I reckon I name the
weapon--cannon, loaded with buffalo horns!"

The white adventurer failed to meet with jest the gale of laughter
which presently drove him out of camp, leaving the Crow in
possession.  And the Crow was clever, distributing to the Blackfoot
chiefs and medicine men gifts of axes and guns, of scarlet cloth and
beads, every treasure the heart of man could covet, silks for the
women, toys for the children, liquor by the keg.  The Crow offered
subsidy to every important leader, so long as he traded in safety
with the Blackfoot nation.  That night he had a wagon load of robes
and a tribe drunk.

Instead of reporting his failure to the Hudson's Bay Company, which
does not suffer fools gladly, their agent, Rising Wolf, went on his
third visit to the holy lodge, and laid the whole of the troubles
before the Sacred Woman.

Now did Rain see that her people were doomed to destruction.  "My
eyes are opened," she said, "and I see all the warrior spirit of our
people change to cowardice.  O fallen chiefs!  O childless mothers,
starving lodges, broken tribes driven to beggary.  Aye, and the
Stonehearts come with their cold charity--all through my fault, my
fault!"

"How can that be your fault?" asked Rising Wolf.

The spirit of prophecy forsook her; she was all woman as she answered
him.

"I try," she confessed, "to be a Christian, but I'm a little heathen
inside.  A Christian wouldn't have told the Absaroka Council, as I
did, to burn the Crow's wagons, to steal his horses, and take his
scalp if he came back again.  'Twas I who had the Crow turned loose
to ruin my own dear Blackfeet people.  If I wasn't really and truly a
Christian I'd paint my face black, cut off one or two fingers, and
howl all night.  Then Storm would beat me, and it would do me good."

And then she fell to crying.

Rain and Storm had spent the whole of their working years, as well as
their arduous dream-life, in practical application of every principle
contained in the Sermon on the Mount.  So intensely literal were
they, that Rain would sometimes devote an hour to slapping her man's
face, while he turned one cheek or the other, until his complexion
became that of a roast of beef on a spit.  Had an eye offended either
of them, it would have been plucked out, and that with no hesitation;
indeed, they lived ever in fearful hope that they would not be
obliged to take offense at the conduct of a leg or an arm.  On this
occasion the pair of them spent a night fasting in the cold fog on
the altar hill, while they tried to forgive the Crow for ruining the
Blackfeet; but in the morning they hated him worse than ever.  It
seemed for the time as though the Sermon on the Mount had failed them.

Urgent, then, was their appeal to Hiawatha as guide, who delivered to
them a lecture full of original thought, and high inspiration,
beautifully phrased, elusive as a fine, rare melody, difficult to
remember, and to all appearance wide of the point.

In meditation they saw great angels and all the Heavens opened, but
when they came to earth again they had no practical or direct advice
for Rising Wolf.  Only they felt with final conviction the
irrevocable law which binds us each to live his own life guided by
such light as he can find.  Storm summed it all up when he rode with
Rising Wolf to speed him on his way back to the tribe.  "The
Blackfeet are a flock of sheep.  A wolf has got into the fold.  You
are the shepherd."

Of Rising Wolf's duel that summer with the Crow there are few
particulars remembered now.  The fighting seems to have been
prolonged, in several successive phases, beginning on horseback with
guns at extreme range, and closing on foot with axes.  Hand to hand
the little adventurer had no chance against a man of longer reach and
enormous muscular strength.  For weeks afterwards he lay between life
and death, during the rest of a year a convalescent nursed by his
wife.  In the moon of berries 1846, she brought him, an invalid, a
shadow of his former self, on his fourth visit to the holy lodge.

"I don't want," he said, "to make things out worse than they are.
It's better to keep a cool head, and calculate without losing one's
temper.  In the first place, the Crow is a pretty good fellow in his
way, with a very big heart.  He's never been in camp without coming
to see me or sending his wives with presents--invalid food that
wasn't come by without sending especially to St. Louis.  That corn
meal helped, and the dressings for my wound.  The Crow wants me to
chuck the Hudson's Bay Company and come into partnership--can't for
the life of him see any difference between our old merchant
adventurers trading honest goods and his own horrible poison.

"By the way, it isn't so very poisonous.  I tried a drink once, nasty
but harmless.  It's just neat alcohol, mixed, one part to four in
water.  He sells a pint mug for one buffalo robe, and doesn't put a
thumb inside to shorten the measure.  A pint makes an Indian think
he's on the Happy Hunting grounds, a second knocks him out, and
then--well, a lot of the warriors drop on the way back to their
tipis, and in winter they freeze to death.  In liquor most of the
bucks think they're fierce and dangerous, so that the squaws and the
children take to the woods.  A few people are killed in the squabbles.

"Then there's a limit.  The hunters get so many buffalo, the women
dress that many robes, and each pelt fetches one pint.  You see, a
very few gallons of alcohol buys enough robes to load a prairie
schooner; so on the whole the drinking doesn't last long enough to do
the men very much harm.  They can't get to delirium tremens, as white
men do in the settlements.

"The men hunt all the time, instead of taking the war trail.  The
women have to dress robes instead of curing meat, camas, and berries
for the winter.  It means that the men get soft.  The enemy grows
bold and runs our horses with impunity.  We're liable to a general
massacre, and there's horrible danger of famine.  It would make you
cry, Rain, to see how poor our people are since the Crow came, to
cart away the whole wealth of the Blackfoot nation.  He keeps the
chiefs rich, while the rest are beggared.  That's why some of the
women have taken to drink, which isn't good for the children.  And
some of the men have sold their wives to the Crow.  He takes the
three tribes by turns.  He's with the Piegans now.  And Rain, your
brother, my dear friend, Heap-of-dogs, is falling under the influence
of this devil."

Rain and her man had abandoned all other service in their dream-life,
and for a year past had visited the sleep and the meditation of the
Blackfeet, prompting them to good thoughts, new resolutions, kindly
impulses, helpful deeds, to the overthrow of the trader, even to the
rigors of the war trail, the sport of stealing ponies.  They had
helped Rising Wolf to keep the soul in his body, inspired his
flagging courage, prayed earnestly for his welfare and he alone rose
clear above temptation.  The rest kept their resolves until they
tasted liquor.  And Rain knew that her own brother had become a
drunkard.

"I understand," said Storm, when Rising Wolf had spoken.  "The enemy
killed my father, hanged my Uncle Joey, damned my Uncle Thomas, and
got my mother murdered.  Even as you spoke, Rising Wolf, I felt the
old craving to get drunk.  It's in my blood.  It's harder to fight
than cougars, but it's got to be faced at last.

"We must go to the Blackfoot nation.  We must set up the holy cross
in front of this trader's wagon.  Nothing except the cross has power
to save the people.  Besides, there's Heap-of-dogs, your own brother,
Rain, my brother, and your chum, eh, Rising Wolf?  We must save him."

"You're taking a terrible risk," said Rising Wolf.

"What risk?" asked Rain, bridling at the word.

"Death!" was the answer.

"The Crow," said Storm, "risks more than we do."

"What do you mean?" asked Rising Wolf.

"Hell!" answered Storm--"Hell!  If he's brave enough to risk Hell,
we're not cowards enough to shirk so little a thing as death."

"We must go," said the priestess.  "Yes, we must go.  Else must my
people perish.

"The lodge poles of our tipi"--Rain looked up at them--"have rooted
and sprouted, so that I have to trim the buds off every spring.  I
thought our roots had struck here, that we should never leave our
home.  I must cut new poles for our journey."

"Why drag them across the World Spine?" asked Storm.  "I'll cut a new
set before we come out on the plains, and a cross to set up in front
of our lodge door"--he leaned over and clutched his wife's work-worn
hands--"to remind us of home," he added, "as well as to save the
people."

"I must make a decent frock before we start," said the woman.

Storm laughed, for she had a dozen splendid and unworn dresses in her
trunks of arrowproof hide.

"Rags!" she cried.  "Rags!  I've nothing fit to be seen, and you'll
want a pack of moccasins for this trail.  Besides, poor Rising Wolf
needs a rest before he's fit to travel.  And oh! how shall we ever
manage with only two pack ponies and the colt?  We'll have to load
our saddle beasts and walk."

It was ten years now since Storm had entered the wilderness, and
seven of these had been spent with his wife in the sweet vale below
the Apse of Ice.  Their home was very dear to both of them, filled as
it was with happy memories.  They pretended that they would like to
see the world, take part in the stirring affairs of the Blackfoot
nation, attend the ceremonies, the buffalo hunting, the gambling at
the wheel game, the dancing, and the feasts.  That was all
make-believe.  They perhaps of all mankind were the most widely
traveled, for with the clarity of the dream-state they had seen the
innermost life of imperial palaces and cities, traveled in regions
unexplored, ascended mountains never scaled by climbers, walked the
sea floor in groves of living coral, attended armies in battle,
passed unharmed through burning forests, earthquake-shattered towns,
devastating floods.  To them the astral plane was familiar ground
with its amazing vistas of past ages from the dawn of Time, its lands
of glamour and fairy, its cities and settlements of the "dead" who
live.  They had been beyond the astral to regions infernal,
purgatorial, and spiritual, attending worship at temples eternal in
the Heavens where the priests are angels ministrant and the music
celestial in chords of living light.  "Seeing the world!"  With such
phrases they consoled one another concerning this journey to a
Blackfoot camp with all its people drunk.

"The berries are nearly ripe," said Rain as they struck camp.  "I
wish we could stay to get our supply for the winter."

The men were loading a pony.

"My wife," Storm said to Rising Wolf, as they balanced the packs on
the sling rope, "my woman is still a child--all make-believe, all
let's-pretend."  He laid the cooking gear between the panniers.  "She
is not grown up, and never will be."

"I don't follow," objected Rising Wolf.  "Of course you'll want a
winter store of berries."

They drew the manta, a bed robe, over the horse-load.

"Why, 'of course'?" asked Storm, as he passed the bight of the lash
rope, and Rising Wolf hooked on.

"I wouldn't hint such things to my woman," said Rising Wolf
reproachfully.  "The hook's clear," he added.

Storm made the pony grunt as he set his knee to the pack, and hauled
sharp home.  Then he crossed the lines.

"If Rain knew the meaning of fear," he said, "I'd keep my mouth
shut."  He made his basket line, and Rising Wolf, with a foot on the
end of the pack, took in all that.  He also made his basket line,
completing the diamond hitch.  He made all fast.

"Rain and I," Storm smiled as he patted the pony on the neck, "are
making the big trail, the long trail, the Wolf Trail, climbing the
Milky Way, the great white Road of Stars.  You"--he looked Rising
Wolf in the eyes--"will live to see the plains covered with the white
man's buffalo, the free water fenced, the free men like dogs begging
for their rations, the women selling themselves to the Stonehearts
because their children are hungry.  I see vulgar white people tear
down the burial scaffolds to rob the bodies of our Indian chiefs.  I
see them peeping in at the window of your cabin to see the squaw man
at dinner, and say 'Now, ain't that jest too quaint!'  My friend, you
will live until your grandsons ride to the iron road, to see the
train, and sell war bonnets whose every feather records a deed of
war.  Wouldn't you rather ride the Wolf Trail with Rain and Storm?

"The dead, the comforted, are sorry for the mourners who cry in the
night outside the desolate lodges."

"Come," said Rain, "you who are speaking in the owl talk, and keep
the ponies waiting with their groans all ready for the lash rope."

Rising Wolf's woman laughed heartily as she folded the lodge skin.
"Thus," she said, "days fly when Stonehearts talk."

The guest lodge was left standing to shelter travelers; the poles of
the holy lodge to grow into a little grove of trees; and Rain laid
the ashes from her hearth at the foot of the cross.  Her man led her
away.

Rising Wolf and his woman had spare ponies for them to ride, driving
the small remuda down through the valley.  The falling waters called
to them through the berry groves, but they dared not look back to
where the desolate cross, gray in the dawn light, stood out against
the junipers, where the winding trail went up the altar hill, and far
above that, the mighty spires of icy rock full in the rose flush of
the sunrise pointed to the skies.

"The valley seems full of shadows," said Rising Wolf's woman
fearfully.  "I'm so frightened."

"It is the valley of the shadow," answered Storm.



CHAPTER X

THE TRANSLATION

From the spring and early-summer buffalo hunt, the robes were not all
dressed before the Moon of Berries, when the tribes moved into the
lee of the World Spine, to set their villages in river meadows
between the lakes and the timber.  The harvest of the wild fruit, the
cutting of new lodge poles to replace those worn short upon the
trails, and the rituals of the Medicine Lodge, filled the shortening
days until the aspen leaves were all a quivering gold, and the frosty
evenings were given to feasts or dancing.  At that season the Crow
cleaned out the Blackfeet and the Bloods, taking their robes to Fort
Benton, then with five wagons came to the Piegans.

He reached the Piegan village at sunset after a long day's march,
beset on his arrival by the men of the tribe who brought robes
demanding drinks.  One keg of liquor he gave to the Council Lodge,
disposing for that night of the tribal government; but the Crow knew
nothing of the Blackfoot language, was deaf to all entreaties of the
warriors for trade or drinks.  He sat on a rocking-chair within the
leading wagon, behind the tailboard which was iron-sheathed serving
him as a breastwork.  "Greeting, my brothers," he said in the hand
talk.  "Far have I traveled, who am old and fat.  To-night my women
pitch my tipi, my men make a fort of our wagons, I smoke my pipe,
taking my rest.  When the sun rises, trade begins.  Send me my friend
Heap-of-dogs."

Knowing well that the Crow would not be moved from his word, the
people went to their tipis.

Presently Heap-of-dogs rode up to the wagontail, a very gallant
figure painted and dressed for war with a coronal of eagle pinions
which streamed from brow to heels.  He was leader of the Crazy Dog
Society, or as we should say Chief of Police, and the Crow's devoted
slave while there was hope of a drink.  Some of his warriors attended
him on foot.

"How!" said the Crow, lifting his right-hand palm forward, fingers
closed, the peace sign.  Then as his rocking-chair swayed gently back
and forth: "Send your Crazy Dog warriors," he continued in the hand
talk.  "Tell them to bid their squaws move camp and come here to
protect my trade.  You'll mount a guard as usual."

Rain's brother gave his orders, and while his people departed he
played his horse as a virtuoso plays a violin through graceful
movements, those of a slow dance.  "Now," he said in the hand talk,
"we are alone.  A drink!"

Just so much.  The trader measured liquor enough to loosen the young
chief's tongue, not one drop more.  "Here's happiness," he said,
passing the mug; then took a dram of rum himself with kick enough in
it to set his own wits to an edge.

"Now me good Indian," said Heap-of-dogs happily, for when his tongue
was loosened, shyness fled, and he knew a few English phrases learned
from Storm.  "Now I have news."

Black skin and Indian dress belied the Crow, who had the face, the
expression, even the characteristic gestures of the modern business
American, statesman, financier, or manufacturer, large-minded,
lightning-swift of thought, niggard of slow words which bit like
acid, straight to the point, and shrewdly humorous of judgment.
"News of Rising Wolf?" he prompted.

"He came alive again," said the Indian merrily, "for the warpath
against you, Big Chief, to take away your trade."

"He rode to the Hudson's Bay House?"

"No.  To my sister Rain at the sacred lodge."

"Who set the Absaroka at me.  Well?"

"I told you before," said Heap-of-dogs, "of my sister's man, the
white man, the prophet, Storm.  My sister is holy, but he has the
white man's cunning.  And Rising Wolf is wise.  They come.  They say
their God shall drive you from our villages!"

The Crow knew better.  "See, my son," he said.  "Their God lives a
long way off.  I carry mine in this wagon.  Which is the
strongest--an enemy nation beyond the World Spine yonder, or the
enemy warrior in your camp, knife in his teeth, creeping under the
lodge skin, feeling the heave of your bed robe, finding the way for
the heart?  Such is my god; but theirs----"  He chuckled softly, and
Heap-of-dogs passaged his horse to and fro, played by the liquor.

"Where are they?" asked the trader.

"One hour up the pass, camped to cut out new lodge poles, and to hew
a cross like they have at the holy place.  They're going to set up
that cross in front of your wagon.  They make strong medicine to
drive you away.  I supped with them so I'm hungry, and thirsty.  Big
Chief, I love your god."

"You shall pray to him when you've told the news--you're keeping from
me."

"Rising Wolf is burning the trail to fetch his friends from the Blood
and the Blackfoot camps.  He says my sister will need guards--as if,"
he added haughtily, "my men were not enough."

"Faithful brother!  You shall pray now," said the Crow, "just a short
prayer."  He handed a second drink across the tailboard, then as he
watched the mounted man lift the mug to his lips, "when do your
sister and her husband come to this camp?"

"Before the sun."

"You must keep sober to protect your sister.  There are bad Indians
about."

"But I want to get drunk!"

"Yes, afterwards.  Not now."

"Oh, but my Crazy Dogs will keep Rain safe.  They'll scalp the man
who lays a hand on my sister."

"See that they're sober, then."

"You don't want to hurt my sister?"

"Far from it.  I want to save her."

"Save her from what?"

The Crow's eyes gleamed in the dusk under the wagon cover.

"From a fool husband," he answered.

"Oh, that's all right," cried Heap-of-dogs.  "But I get his scalp.  I
want his scalp on my belt.  Best scalp in the world.  Say it's for
me."

"When I have finished with him, not before."

"And you'll save my sister?"

"I'll make her wife of a big chief."

"What chief?"

"Am I not a big chief?"

"But if you get my sister for your wife, what sort of present do you
make to me?"

"It's worth a hundred ponies to you."

"Huh!  I can steal your ponies any day.  And besides, what do you do
when you break my heart with the killing of my poor brother, Storm?"

"See here, young fellow.  You keep sober, and I'll see your braves
get none.  And you obey my orders until, say, sundown to-morrow.
When I've finished with Storm, you get his beautiful yellow scalp you
talked about so much.  You get me for your brother.  Do you see what
that means?  First, I give you, my brother, a keg for you and your
braves to dance the scalp with.  You shall be so drunk to-morrow
night that you'll fall up off the ground.  You shall be dead drunk
every night for one moon, and after that I'll teach my brother the
way I pray to my god all the time just a little.  Why, it's ten years
since I've been properly sober, and all the time my god makes me
richer and richer with wagons, horses, scarlet cloth, axes, beautiful
guns.  My god shall make my brother as rich as that!  And you'll
never be sober again.  Think of it!"

The trader sighed.  "If it were only true!" he thought.  "It gives
one quite a glow.  The Devil, if there is any such person, must enjoy
a bit of philanthropy.  It makes one feel so good."

The Indian felt the blood race in his arteries, the whirling joy.
Clearer vision, a new worldly wisdom, made him see the folly of
Rain's mission to the tribes.  "She doesn't know what's good for
her," he thought.  "She needs me to handle her affairs, and make her
the Big Chief's wife.  Then she can run him, as he runs the Nations."
Then came insurgent memories of Rain's camp, and the meager supper,
of Storm hewing notches in the two logs, so that they would fit, one
athwart the other, to make a cross.  "Like the logs notched at the
corners of a cabin."  Storm dreaded the preaching.  "I'd much
rather," he had confessed, "trust all to the mysterious power of the
cross, which burns away all evils, triumphs over enemies, conquers
Death himself.  Death is not."

"That must be nonsense, but still----"

The young chief was riding his horse in circles through the dusk,
teaching a new dance movement of exceeding grace.  The Crow thought
he had never in all his life seen anything quite so beautiful.

"I want," said Heap-of-dogs, "another prayer to clear my head."

"When it's earned," answered the trader.

"Suppose I fetch Storm's hair, will you give me a drink?"

"If you lay your hands on Storm's hair before I give you orders, my
Devil shall tear your entrails out, very slowly, and wind them round
a tree."

"But I want a drink!  Give me a drink!"

The Indian had drawn an ax from the saddle and passaged his horse
against the tailboard to get near enough for the blow.

"Seems you want a pill," answered the trader, pressing the muzzle of
his rifle against the Indian's ribs.

Then Heap-of-dogs felt for the first time that hypnosis whereby the
Crow's eyes compelled him to obey, to the strict letter of his
orders.  "All right," he muttered sulkily, drawing off.

At that moment another horseman came surging down upon them, shaking
the turf with his rush, yelling exultant war whoops, as he charged
between the Indian and the wagon.  He pulled the horse on his
haunches, with forefeet sliding forward.

"That you, Hiram Kant?" asked the trader, peering out of the darkness
into the dusk, where he saw the American trapper, once known to the
Indians as Hunt-the-girls, but now called No-man, friend of Rain and
Storm.

"That's your little prairie chicken!  Look a-here, Crow, I got a
whole pack of beaver pelts in camp here.  See?  I've come for a
fortnight's drunk.  Me and my hoss has our tongues out.  Quick, gimme
a drink!"

For years had No-man boasted to his friends.

"Turn your pony loose, and come up into the wagon," answered the
trader.  "Meanwhile, here's a tot.  Heap-of-dogs," he called out in
English, "see this?  Want to watch the white man getting drunk with
me?"

Rain's brother rode off into the gloaming to carry out his orders,
and to make his fortune.

* * * * * * *

Pale golden light revealed the sky line of the Great Plains to
eastward, dreaming mountains awakened as the first grayness of the
daybreak outlined their sheer scarps, their level snow fields.  The
hoarfrost of the meadow began to be veiled by the dawn mist and
Heap-of-dogs sober, gloomy, resolute, rode out to meet his sister.
She walked by her saddle pony, who trailed the new set of lodge
poles, eight on either flank.  Storm led his horse, which carried the
two logs of the cross.  The other ponies followed, stopping to get a
bite of the sere brown bunch grass, then trotting a few paces to
catch up with the leaders.

"Everything ready?" asked Storm, as his brother-in-law gave the peace
sign by way of greeting.

"All," answered Heap-of-dogs, bending down from the saddle to caress
the white man's hair.  His hands and his feet were small and
delicate, his touch like that of a woman.  "My warriors," he added,
"were too proud to dig the hole for the cross, but the women did
that, and made the wedges."

"Just as I told you?" asked Rain--"opposite the Crow's trading wagon?"

"Three horse-lengths distant.  I left space for your lodge between
the Crazy Dogs' tipis, where we can guard you best.  No-man came last
night to visit the Crow.  He's lying dead drunk under the trade
wagon."

"Oh, I'm so sorry for him, so sorry," said Rain.  "I couldn't find
him in my dream.  Brother, I couldn't find anybody.  Ever since we
left our home both Storm and I have been so lonely on our
dream-trails.  We can't find Catherine, or my mother.  We pray for
Hiawatha, but he does not come.  All the dear Spirits have left us."

"Then the Crow's medicine," said her brother, "must be very powerful.
You'd better turn back."

Not even Storm knew this woman so well as he did.  She pressed on,
resolute across the pasture and through the pony herd, which had
started grazing.  Before her she saw the village of her people, that
far-flung ellipse of tipis, like the rim of a wheel dark yonder
against the orange glow on the sky line.  Plumes of blue smoke began
to rise from the lodges, as the small group drew abreast, closing the
southern edge of the camp.  Not since her childhood had Rain in her
waking life seen the beloved and familiar things of a Blackfoot
village; rows of painted "dusty stars" which adorn the base of the
lodge skin, representing puffballs; tripods beside the tipis which
carry the bundle containing sacred things, or a brave's war dress;
travois, the cart with trailing poles instead of wheels on which the
very old folk, the babies, and little puppies ride with the marching
tribe; rag dolls or blunt arrows lost by the children at play.  The
childless wife went on with an aching heart, while her brother rode
ahead, curbing his restive charger to a foot pace, his magnificent
war dress in black silhouette against the orange daybreak, the little
ruby cloud-flecks.  Storm followed her, his pony staggering under the
heavy beams of the cross.  The woman's heart was crying for the
everyday things, the home life, the babies, the gossip, the dancing,
the wholesome world which she could never know.  Her man went towards
the light through a peace which is not of this world.  And so they
came before the village was as yet astir, to the trader's fort of
wagons, the tipis of the tribal police on guard, the hole in the
ground with the wedges for stepping the holy cross.  The warriors of
the Crazy Dog band stood at their lodge doors grinning.  Not one of
them greeted the holy woman, though two or three in years gone by had
come to her as pilgrims, and been helped.

It is a very shameful thing for a warrior to aid in woman's work,
such as the unlading of the pack beasts, or the setting-up of a tipi;
but Storm carried no weapons, nor did he claim to be anything except
his Master's servant.  Still, he felt degraded under the eyes of the
Crazy Dogs as he helped Rain.  He made the rawhide lashing which
bound the four key poles of the lodge, whose butts made the corners
of a square upon the ground, while their four shafts described the
outline of a pyramid, and their heads keyed one with another so that
no gale would dislodge them.  The other twelve poles, resting against
these crotches, turned the pyramid into a cone, and their butts
completed the square on the ground into a circle.  Next, the heavy
skin of the lodge was hoisted by aid of the vane pole, wrapped about
the cone and fastened above the door hole with wooden pins.  In all
this, and the remainder of the work, Storm, having but little
practice, was very clumsy, and put to shame because Rain chided, and
the Crazy Dogs were shouting rude remarks.

Rain's brother had awakened the Crow, who got out of his blankets to
give the man a pint of trade liquor, then a tot of rum to quicken its
action.  A few at a time the Crazy Dogs were brought to the
wagon-tail for the same treatment, making them all mad drunk within
the first few minutes.  The trader mixed a still more powerful drink
for himself, which seemed to have no effect.

The priestess and her man saw nothing of all this, for they were busy
unloading the other ponies, whose cargo they carried into the lodge.
They scarcely noticed that they were now encircled by a ring of
hilarious Indians who watched their work and jeered.  The pony who
had the two great timbers was led near the mortise hole directly in
front of the trading wagon, distant some few paces.  There Storm cast
off the lashings, letting the timbers crash to the ground.  He and
his wife lifted the ends of the shorter beam until its notch was
lowered athwart the notch in the longer piece of timber.  Storm, with
wet rawhide, made the seamanlike lashing which bound the two together
into a cross.

He did this kneeling, while Rain stood for a moment to see how the
lashing was made, which when dry would hold if even the solid log was
broken.

"It is good," said Rain, just to please him, as men are always hungry
for a word of praise.

"I'm still," he answered complacently, "more sailor than medicine
man."

At that moment both were seized from behind, and pinioned by the
elbows.  Taken completely aback, the priestess found Heap-of-dogs
giving directions for her removal; but somehow in these last few
minutes her brother had changed, seemed like a different man, no
longer morose or silent, but showing white flash of teeth, glitter of
bright eyes, glow of ruddy health, a strange aloofness and remoteness
as though he did not know her, as though they had never met.

The Crow was standing beside Heap-of-dogs nudging him with an elbow,
leering at her as No-man had leered once.  "Not so bad, eh?  Needs
feeding up a bit.  Well, take her to my tipi."

The words were English, the gestures those of the sign talk, but the
look and the smile told everything, laid bare the fathomless
treachery of her betrayal.  Her brother had sold her to this beast.

The guiding spirits had deserted her.  God had abandoned her.  There
was no hope in earth, or any heaven or hell, but only this horror.
She opened her mouth to scream.  Then pride rescued her.  She was not
here to amuse her enemies, or to shame her man, or to abandon him as
God had abandoned her; but to be loyal as Love, to be strong as
Death, giving Storm heart and courage who needed her so sorely when
he was in trouble, when he was in danger.  "Courage!" she called to
him.  "Courage, Warrior!"

Indeed she had to shout, so great already was the clamor growing up
about them.  A crowd was gathering rapidly, and the camp police were
just drunk enough to ply their clubs at random, while they lacked the
numbers needed to keep the ground clear.  The bartenders at the wagon
were taking on special police, each of them pledged with a pint to
keep the crowd off.

Yet while the riot grew, the vortex round which it swirled seemed to
become so quiet, that presently Rain heard quite clearly the low
voice of the Crow as he spoke to Storm.  By main force, she wrung her
captor half round until she could face the scene.

The Crow was speaking quite amiably, and by his gestures in the sign
talk Rain understood him where his English failed her.

"Well, Storm," he said, "I hear you've come to preach against my god."

"I have."

"Going to put up your shingle in front of my wagons?"

"I am."

"Waal, I've got along of a quarter million dollars to back John
Barleycorn, my god with, agin your God."

Storm looked him in the eyes, and laughed.  "Well?"

"White man, I ain't exactly partial to your tribe, your bleached,
washed-out white men.  I," he said this proudly, "am of the black.  I
been insulted too much and too often to be fond of you-all--much.
Still, I'm not a bad sort of fellow, I'm a bit of a sport, kinder
warm-hearted enough, anyways, to give your God a sporting chance agin
John Barleycorn."

"Well?"

"What is it that saves our souls, young feller, the cross, or the man
on the cross?"

"The God on the cross."

"Well, I ain't got your God handy, so a man on the cross is as far as
I'm prepared to go.  I'm putting up a handicap in favor of your side.
That's what I calls a sporting proposition.  Now, isn't it?"

"I am no judge," Storm answered, and the trader chuckled.  His manner
was friendly, almost confiding.

He carried in his hands and clanked together four spikes such as are
used to pin the rails down to the ties or sleepers on an American
railroad.  They had served in his camp for tent pegs--a sign of
riches that, and many had been the attempts to steal such treasures.

"These here spikes," he said, "is to nail you good and hard to this
cross.  Then I'll turn my god loose, and you can do the same.  You
and your woman here can preach all you've a mind to.  Only, I stake
my life and a quarter of a million dollars that your God's dead."

It was then that Rain grasped his meaning, and screamed again and
again for mercy, offering her body as her husband's ransom.

But the sacred woman's appeal had stirred the dying embers of her
brother's manhood.  Heap-of-dogs took station in front of Rain,
blustering, pot-valiantly defiant, offering battle to the Crow or
anybody who should dare to touch her.

At a sign from the trader, one of his bartenders poured two or three
drops of a drug into a pint of fire water, then brought it running to
Heap-of-dogs, who swallowed the whole at a draught.  Afterwards he
stood rocking backwards and forwards, wondering who it was he wanted
to kill, babbling invitations to anybody who would like to have a
battle.

The Crow knew well that at any moment some friend of the sacred woman
might cry a rescue, and short shrift would he get if the chiefs of
the tribe awakened from their debauch before he could show them the
accomplished fact.  If he would live he must carry his audience with
him, so now in the sign talk he explained to the crowd how much he
admired their sacred woman, what a killing he and her brother would
make if anybody dared molest her, how he proposed most honorably to
make Rain his wife, so soon as he had freed her from a swindling
charlatan and his bogus God.  Meanwhile, in the greatness of his
heart, the Crow, for this day's trading only, gave away a little
glass, a chaser of rum, with every pint of fire water.  He was
perfectly sure that prime robes would be forthcoming to meet so great
a business opportunity.

One may realize that when the blood ebbed out of Storm's face, lean
from ten years of self-denial and frequent fasting, his ivory pallor
and the bluish shadows would emphasize the deep-cut lines of age, of
rigid character, the high austere and saintly beauty of him, the
blaze of power in his fierce blue eyes.

"Be quick," he shouted in Blackfoot to the Crow.  "You talk too much,
and do too little--frightened of my God!  You"--he turned to the man
who held him pinioned--"how can I lie down on this bed of timber
unless you loose my arms?  Loose me, you fool, that I may kiss my
woman, and take my place there, ready."

In sheer surprise the Indian loosed him, and standing free, Storm
ordered the Crow, as a master to his servant, "Go and get a sledge
hammer.  The spikes," he said, "are useless unless you can drive
them."  He took Rain in his arms.  "We are not cowards," he
whispered.  "Death is nothing to us, who have died so many times--and
live forever.  You taught me to be brave."

"Kill me," she whispered, when he kissed her.  "You have your knife
still.  Save me from the Beast!  I'm frightened!  Save me!"

"Where is your faith!" he answered.  "Our God shall deliver both of
us.  Trust Him!"

With that he whipped the knife out of his belt and brandished it,
shouting to all the Indians.  "Witness!  The Crow stood at my mercy,
but I have not stabbed him.  God shall judge, not I!"

He flung his knife away.

Storm lay down upon the cross, his arms extended, his eyes looking up
at her face, a smile upon his lips.  The death song died in Rain's
throat.

"We shall meet," he said, "in the Great Dream presently.  Be brave."

"I do begin to see," she said, "there is a God!  Look, Storm"--she
pointed to the trader--"below his belt, see inside of him, that dim,
gray, great Thing clutching--clutching.  See"--she clutched in the
air with her hands--"like that.  What is it?"

Storm lifted his head from the cross and turned to look.  "Crow," he
said, "my wife and I can both see the most awful slow death inside
you.  Within three weeks you shall answer for all you have done, for
every crime, for every evil thought.  We pity you.  From the very
bottom of our hearts we both forgive you."

The Crow had turned livid, attempting to laugh while his mouth went
dry.  His black hand clutched his throat as he spoke in a hoarse
whisper, struggling to get his voice back.  "What if I let you off?
Here--take one drink to show these men you're beaten--you and your
woman--free!"

The place was reeking with heavy fumes of liquor.  The astral air,
the living atmosphere of all emotion, was filled with fierce desire.
Storm was heir to a line of dipsomaniacs, by his very blood born
drunkard, and in his quick health swayed by every lust.  No man held
life more dearly.  Only the strong love of his mother and of his wife
had tamed the beast passions raging in him, transmuted the wild soul
into still spirit.  Now he met the fiercest temptation of his whole
life with triumphant laughter.

"Give me that sledge!" yelled the Crow; then to the Indian who had
arrested Storm, "Hold the spike--damn you!"

"Let me hold the spike," said Storm, taking it from the Indian.
"I'll hold it with my fingers, this way, the point against my palm,
so.  Now, drive!"

The Crow let drive.

* * * * * * *

When the cross had been lifted, and its foot wedged in the
mortise-hole, they lashed Rain there, her head against Storm's knees.

"Lean back hard," he said between his teeth; "it takes away half the
pain."

She obeyed, no longer bowed down, but facing the people bravely with
eyes half closed and head thrown back.  The sweat from his face
dropped on her hair.

"Now preach!"  The Crow was shouting at her.  "Preach!" he repeated,
slashing a mug of liquor into her face.  "Preach----"

At Rain's feet her brother lay upon his face unconscious, and close
beyond him a ring of men confronted her as they swirled slowly
sideways round the cross in the first movement of the scalp dance,
drunk all of them, and reeling.  Behind them were women carrying
buffalo robes which their men traded over the counter to the Crow's
bartender, getting for each a pint, with a dram of rum.  Most of
these men were drunk, also the women, laughing, shouting, dancing,
quarreling, or yelling insults or throwing stones at Storm.  An
immense crowd of people jostled and swayed, trying to enter the trade
ground and buy liquor or to get a nearer view.

The trader had taunted Rain, calling her vile names, because she
would not preach to amuse his customers.  It was no time for
preaching.

The sun had risen, and swung slowly upward into the southern sky,
while still God showed no sign, wrought no vengeance, gave no
deliverance.  Only the Crow's god visibly triumphed, for the addition
of rum to the trade liquor sent a man mad drunk for every pint, and
the trader with all three of the bartenders could scarcely cope with
the rush of business.  Towards noon that saturnalia had every man in
the tribe, nearly all the women, many of the children, raving mad.

The man on the cross confronted the sun, whose ever-increasing
splendor of light and heat gave him the merciful delirium of pain,
mounting towards its climax.  And Rain, bound to the cross with wet
rawhide, felt as the lashings dried shrinking, the slowly growing
agony of swollen wrists and arms, without the man's triumphant faith,
or any hope either from earth or heaven, for still there was no
thunder of Rising Wolf's rescuing horsemen, still no portent, still
no miracle to attest that God reigned, or would avenge.

Yet in the steady growth of her own pain the woman realized at last
the valor of her man.  In the stoic fortitude with which he faced the
agonies of slow death, she found a healing pride which comforted her
soul.  While he set so great an example, she would be worthy of him,
worthy to be his woman.  More than that, she saw in his mysterious
power proof absolute of something superhuman, something inspired,
miraculous, divine.

They twain had been as one flesh, a lamp of the All-Father burning in
the darkness of the earthly mists; but now, as the oil feeds the
flame, her soul sustained his spirit; and that majestic light blazed
visible to the Hells and to the Heavens.  To light the way for the
lost, to comfort the spirits in prison, to inspire those who climb
the steeps of purgatory, even to fill the lower heavens with a new
song of praise--that is the glory which is called Martyrdom.

The mists which veil the spirit-realms were thinned and rent asunder;
the heavens, as we see them, were rolled together like a scroll.  At
last the priestess realized that she had not been in danger of
outrage or pollution, but given the inestimable glory of the cross.
She knew that her body was dying.  She was beyond pain, giving her
strength to Storm, whose body still endured in agony, unable to let
him go.

At last, towards midday, No-man, who had been lying under the
trader's wagon, awake some hours ago with a sick headache, crawled on
his hands and knees into the open, got to his feet by the aid of one
of the wheels, and stood there, clinging to the spokes.  Still drunk,
he staggered towards the bar in search of liquor to set him to
rights.  In a dim way he realized the pandemonium of raving savages
as he shouldered his way among them.  They greeted him, hilarious,
eagerly pointing out the cross, and his friend, to whom he came
bewildered, and stood in front of him swaying upon his feet, rubbing
his eyes to clear them, trying in vain to realize.  Then his brain
cleared suddenly, and he stood sober, shouting until Storm heard him,
saw him, spoke to him.

Yet this was not Storm, the seer, who spoke now, not Bill Fright,
bargee and seaman, not even John Rolfe of his last life, or Gaston le
Brut, the crusader, or Harald Christian, slave in Iceland.  The
spirit had flashed back to an earlier memory.  Once again Storm was a
Northman in the Roman army.  He spoke in Latin with a broad Northland
accent, spoke to the squad commander, the Decemvir, the Ten-man.

"Ten-man," said the Martyr, in a low, wailing voice.  "Decemvir.
This woman's tears rusted my armor for me.  Oh, plead for me!  The
Centurion favors thee.  Plead for me that I be not scourged, and
dishonored because I do love this woman."

No-man heard only strange words which were spoken in delirium, a
voice which pleaded with him.  Rain's eyes, wide, staring, terrible,
seemed to pierce him through--but when he spoke to her she made no
answer.  Then came the burning memory of his sin against Rain, her
terrific and deserved vengeance, Storm's forgiveness, the wonderful
friendship of them both which for these latter years had been the one
bright light for him in a maimed life.

Sobered, horrified, and in tears, he groped his way back to the
wagon, where he found and loaded his rifle.  It seems to have been a
double-barreled muzzle-loading weapon fired by percussion caps,
casting half-inch slugs, quicker in action than the old-time
flintlocks.

"Thou shalt do no murder!" so the words ran.

"What, then, if I do murder?" thus he reasoned.  "I shall be damned
to Hell forever.  Well, I'm damned anyway for what I done, so it
don't matter to me.  But it matters a lot to them to put an end to
all their pain, and let them loose into Heaven.

"What if I'm killed for doing this?

"Well, it's up to me to die, if I like, for them I loves--the woman I
love, the man I love, the only two people on earth who done much good
to me.

"I'll have to play drunk to these Injuns to get me in point-blank
range, and my hands is none too steady even then.  Wish't I could
have just one last drink to steady me.  No, better not.  I may just
as well die sober--to please them.  Here goes."

Some there are among us who have lived sheltered from all temptation
to do wrong and therefore very quick to judge their fellows.  To such
the event which followed will appear disgusting drunkenness and
atrocious murder.

Others there are of us who have ourselves been hurled by elemental
passions against raw issues of life or death; and whether we be
believers in Death or whether we be Christians, we shall claim that
there can be no greater deed of love, no higher act of valor.

Reeling, staggering, brandishing his rifle, shouting to the Indians
to come and see the fun, laughing hysterically at the man crucified,
at the woman dying, No-man came in front of the cross, and at
point-blank range with exact and perfect aim shot Storm through the
heart, Rain through the forehead, releasing both of them.

Then he reloaded his weapon to kill the Crow.  Already the trader,
roused to action by the hundred-tongued clamor of the event, was
threatening with his pistol from behind the bar, waving to the
Indians to stand clear.

Without the slightest warning he let drive through the white man's
back, breaking the spinal cord.

* * * * * * *

At dusk came Rising Wolf with some few friends from the Piegan tribe,
who followed him in uncertainty, pacing their horses among the people
who lay drunk on the prairie.

The wagon fort, and the village beyond, seemed strangely empty.  No
evening smoke went up from the tipis.  The usual clamor of those who
called the names of guests bidden to feasting, of the camp crier, of
the dancing, the pony racing, the games, was hushed as though night
had fallen.  The boys failed to bring the night horses, which should
be at the lodge doors.  Neither were there maids to scurry along the
watering trails, nor lovers to watch them pass.  Only dogs prowled
along the skirts of the tipis.  Over the meadow hung a sense of
terror, of desolation, and sometimes far away, or sometimes near at
hand, the startling death wail of the mourners cleft a boding silence.

Within the wagon fort the Crow lay, stricken with rending pain; but
it was not for him that his women were wailing.  His children also
had contracted smallpox, which now spread from lodge to lodge through
the whole camp, where cry after cry of sharp-edged despair attended
each new discovery of the pestilence.

Rising Wolf buried the bodies of his friends at the foot of the
cross, where, on the blood-stained timber, he carved an inscription
to their memory.

  RAIN
  STORM
  NO-MAN
  TOOK THE WOLF TRAIL
  MOON OF BERRIES 1846
  GLORIA IN
  EXCELSIS
  DOMINE.


A few days later he showed this to Father de Smet, who came with an
escort of thirty mountaineer warriors to visit the dreaded Blackfeet.
The priest rendered the last office.

Being of one faith, de Smet and Rising Wolf worked together
throughout the plague of 1846, from which the Blackfoot nation has
never rallied.  Only a pitiful remnant represents to-day that breed
of savage gentlefolk, the finest horsemen in the modern world.  The
Christianity which they see in practice has not converted them, nor
can they still believe in the Sun-god who left them at the mercy of
the Stonehearts.

Hope is dead, and with that is gone the sunny, breezy, happy warrior
spirit; but not the stoic manhood underneath, or the strange
distinctive charm which appeals with greater power than ever to white
men who have hearts.

* * * * * * *

Of the three who went over the Wolf Trail, No-man had died without
being tortured, so he was the first to awaken, not on the earth or in
his earthly body.  The flowers attracted his first thoughts, a bush
near by his head of wild briar covered with roses in blossom, some
red, some white.  Tall fronds of goldenrod bent over him, and the
whole pasture glowed with big, brown-hearted, orange-petaled
marigolds, up to the edge of the sarvis bushes snowed down with their
sweet blossoms.  "Surely," he wondered, "it is the berry moon.  Why
are there flowers?"

His deerskin hunting dress had been old, soiled, ragged, most of the
fringes used up for strings or lashings.  Now it was brand-new,
perfumed with wood smoke.

He had been sick, but was well, maimed but was made whole, with such
a glow of health, riot of blood, and joy of life, quick heart, live
brain, as he had not known for years.

He had not eaten food since goodness knows when, and yet he felt no
hunger, while all the craving for alcohol was gone.  He would never
know hunger again, or any thirst.

Where were the Blackfoot camp, the wagon fort, the cross, Storm
crucified, Rain dying?

There came a little bunch of antelope, grazing, who presently stood
at gaze with all their natural curiosity, none of their quick fear.
He reached for his gun.  It was gone.  The antelope went on grazing,
not frightened even when he jumped to his feet shouting from sheer
astonishment.

And a voice answered:

"Man-alive!"

There was Nan, his girl, she who had jilted him, she whom Storm had
seen, her fingers stiff with cramp as she sewed shirts, beside a
window, looking out upon the Atlantic sea, crying, and crying for
him.  She came across the pasture through the tall flowers, walked
with a healthy stride, swinging a sunbonnet, a nut-brown lass
freckled, dimpled, laughing, shouting to him that greeting out of the
lost years, "Why, man alive!"

He seized her to his breast, and if he did rumple her shirt-waist, he
didn't give a damn, while he verified each dimple with a kiss, and
took the freckles wholesale.

By her prim and downcast virginity, in her fresh crisp beauty, for
every grace, for every charm, for everlasting love, he found a litany
of thanksgivings, and most of all for her forgiveness, for her
tolerance of his misdeeds.

"Your folks," she said at last, "is waiting.  They said I'd best come
to fetch you."

"But"--he was puzzled--"what are you doing here in the Injun country?
What's this about the folks?"

"But, Man-alive, this isn't the Injun Country.  Why, you're dreaming!"

"Then let me go on dreaming!" answered Man-alive.  "And take me to
the folks.  Where are we, anyways?"

"In Summerland," she said.  "Our town is yonder behind these bushes,
but we must give the people time to get things fixed."

"What things?"

"Why, Man-alive, the flags, the arches, the triumph, a proper
American triumph to welcome a proper American hero!  Davy Crockett
himself is going to give the oration, being an ex-Congress man.  He
says you died a greater death than his."

"Death?" He laughed.  "Dead?  Bet you a castor I'm not!  I never been
so much alive before."

"What's a castor?"

"A pelt, a beaver pelt, of course!"

"I never heard tell of pelt.  Yes, you may have your arm there until
we pass the bushes.  Then you must try to act respectable.  This
isn't wild west here."

"You say I'm dead."

"Me, too," she answered cheerily.  "Thanks be, that's over"--her face
turned grave--"that bad dream we called life.  See, here's our
town--the dearest, sweetest place.  Listen.  It's the Grand Army
band."

"What's that?"

"Grand Army of the Republic, of course.  Your dad is trying to start
branches down on earth, only the people are too stupid.  He thinks
this Mexican war may wake 'em up a bit.  Now take your arm from my
waist, or they'll see."

They saw.  A band of the Grand Army of the Republic struck up
"Conquering Hero."

* * * * * * *

Now, of the briar rosebush seen by Man-alive, there is a story, which
was related long ago in the fifteenth-century travels attributed to
Sir John Mandeville.  The story runs that after the Crucifixion there
did appear upon the hill of Calvary a briar bush wherein each several
drop of sweat and every tear became a white rose, and all the drops
of blood begat red roses.

Where Ananias was an amateur but the author of these old Travels a
Great Master, one must be modest, but this present writer is aware
that he and his fellow craftsmen break through at times into the
Truth.  That rose bush may not very likely have blossomed down on
earth, and yet it might well appear upon the holy site a veritable
thing upon the astral plane, much visited by people in their dreams,
watered by fairies, guarded by the angels.  One dreams of such a rose
bush growing thus out of the sweat, the tears, the blood of martyrs
crucified, and sheltering Rain as she lay in Storm's arms asleep
until the third day, the time of resurrection.

Man-alive would see the roses there, but not the astral cross of
lambent flame like carven moonlight, or the luminous figures of the
priestess at rest in the arms of a martyr crucified, or the spirits
Catherine and Thunder Feather, who knelt keeping vigil beside their
children, or their guardian Hiawatha, descended from the middle
Heavens, his glory softened lest its exceeding splendor be unbearable
to people of the mists.  He witnessed the meeting of those
long-parted lovers, in a region where hearts are opened and
misunderstandings quite impossible.  But he also saw four angels
attendant upon the cross.  It was long since human hands had
fashioned a cross like that, claiming a guard of Angels.

Rain awakened, and when she saw her mother, Catherine, Hiawatha, and
the four Angels on guard, her cry of joy roused Storm.  He was a
little bewildered at first, supposing himself to be still that Roman
soldier who so long ago had helped to crucify the King of Angels.
Then slowly he realized that he was Storm who had made atonement, who
now bore, on his own hands, feet, and breast the very stigmata, the
wounds whose blood-drops burn and glow as rubies.  That is the reason
why on our earth the ruby is more precious than the diamond or any
other stone, being, as it were, the shadow cast by the very holiest,
loveliest, and rarest thing in Heaven.

When they tried to stand up both Storm and Rain were seen to be
suffering from shock, for even the body spiritual is jarred by such a
death as theirs.  They could not stand, but at a sign from Hiawatha
knelt before a table which now stood at the foot of the cross.  Upon
the table were a Cup and a Dish which cannot be seen except by those
of pure and perfect knighthood, such as Sir Galahad, and Joan of Arc,
for the Chalice is that used at the Last Supper, and the Dish is the
Holy Grail.

Two of the Angels, having performed the rite done in Remembrance,
brought the Grail which contained the broken bread, and the cup of
wine.  "Take, eat," said the one.  "Drink ye all of this," said the
other.

These two, who had hungered and thirsted, were now fed, so that never
afterwards could they know hunger or thirst, weakness or any pain,
but were immediately filled with more than human strength.  Moreover,
so great was the enlargement of their faculties that they could hear
music, of which only a little had been revealed to Handel and Mozart,
Bach and Beethoven; they could see such color as was disclosed to
Turner; forms which Pheideas and Praxiteles tried to model, da Vinci,
Raffaele, and Michelangelo to paint, or Shelley to describe.  Yet,
even in the hands of genius, our arts are bankrupt, unable to render
a penny in the pound of the Realities which have inspired them.

Yet, because in the act of writing these passages, I hear with the
inner senses most tremendous music, and see, when I close my eyes,
color ineffably lovely, I feel the assurance that the words may be
true beyond my knowledge.  It seems to me that I see the cross
uprooted, and laid down.  Then the four Angels hold a laughing
argument as to whether Storm and Rain shall stand as in a chariot or
sit as in a throne, it being decided that they shall do exactly as
they please; while Storm has but one wish, that his arm may enfold
his wife, and she denies him such conduct as that in public.  I see
them seated upon the arms of the cross facing its foot, while the
Angels, one at each limb of the glowing timbers, lift it upon their
shoulders.

Those who have been used to seeing pictures of Angels may be reminded
that the wings are symbolic only, of beings whose flight is swifter
than our thought.  They need no wings, who flash with the speed of
light upon their journeys.

Those of us who have not read the modern lucid books describing the
planes of being may care for a moment to consider the lilies, which
offer the best analogy we have for understanding the Heavens.  The
bulb of the Liliacese, that is, of such plants as the lily, camas,
onion, and hyacinth, consists of many layers or spheres concentrated
round one nucleus.  In our planet Earth, the nucleus is the world
visible, which has three layers of subplanes, the land, the sea, and
the air, of different densities, for the water is thicker than the
air, and the rocks more compact than the ocean which rests upon them.
Outside these three layers of the bulb there are others, concentric
spheres of ether, less in their densities, quicker in their
vibrations, too tenuous for perception by our gross animal senses.
Our astral bodies are attuned to the vibrations of the astral
subplanes, which we visit in dreams and dwell in after death.  Our
spiritual body, when it grows, is able to inhabit the land, sea, and
air of the lower spirit-plane or heaven spiritual.  Beyond are the
heavens celestial, and their outermost layers are those of the
Christ-sphere, an orb enormously transcending the material sun in
size and radiance.  In all there are forty-nine, or seven octaves of
subplanes, alluded to in Genesis as that Ladder of Being, on which
the patriarch Jacob saw traffic of ascending and descending Angels.

Imagination, the formation of images in the mind, may have two
separate modes, that of an artist creating forms to which he shall
give expression, and that of the seer who is able to perceive things
which are shown to him.  One cannot ever know to what extent one
creates, or in what degree one perceives.

My vision is set down as it occurred with some of the mental comments.

Each of the four Angels bears upon his shoulder a limb of the lambent
cross.  On this Storm sits naked as he was crucified, but Rain wears
a robe which has the texture one sees in the petals of an Easter
lily.  It is edged with a decoration of pistils and stamens,
sprinkled, made out of dust of light seeming to signify fertility.
Both figures are strongly radiant.

Behind them is Hiawatha, a great figure, august, serene, luminous.
Catherine and Thunder Feather have fallen away, unable to endure the
increasing splendor of the light.

The foreground is of tawny plains, reaching away downward to a sea
deeply blue.  Hull down, beyond are far-away white Alps.

This landscape, a province in extent, is, as it were, the arena of an
amphitheater, but the floor of the lowest tier or circle is far above
the summits of the alps.  The edge of the tier is not defined like
the frontage or balustrade of a balcony, but vague, as when one looks
up at the floor of a cloud field.  It is the margin of a world which
has its plains, seas, hills, ethereal Andes, all glittering etched in
light, with a detail of trees luminous, temples opalescent, and
iridescent palaces.  There are innumerable multitudes of people
watching.

It is as though this upper world were (invisibly) continuous
overhead, but only becomes visible towards the horizon.

Above this first tier of the amphitheater there is a second, even a
third, perhaps more.  But against even the second tier our sun would
look like a round patch of darkness.  And this second tier is like a
shadow cast by the third.  The light is utterly beyond human
endurance, yet it proceeds from the spectators, circle on circle,
world above world, populous with an innumerable throng, millions of
millions, either of the redeemed or of the angelic hosts.

A procession should march, but the ever-growing pageant of the cross
advances, not in position, with regard to space but in the splendor
of its tremendous light.  Its progress is not even an ascension, but
rather a translation.

And yet there must have been an ascension, a lifting-up into space,
for when at last it moves forward, it is not across the tawny plain
of the arena, but through a garden whose paths, lawns, flowers,
trees, are made of light, not blinding but refreshing to the eyes.

Beyond, in the far distance crowning a plateau of light, there is a
temple--I remember reading about it in many telepathic descriptions
of the heavens--each of whose four porches carries a cupola.  The
four porches describe the figure of a cross, and in the midst above,
the drum of the main building is sculptured in deep-cut bas-reliefs.
This drum carries a circular colonnade, from whence the main dome
soars until its ever-changing and prismatic radiance is lost in mist
of light, a cloud of glory.

They who joined the procession of the cross have become a multitude
and they seem to move in silence, with a sense of hushed reverence.
For there is One coming through the garden to meet them.  Words are
like the dice which a gambler throws at random, and it is better not
to attempt thoughts which no language can render.

At His coming the four Angels bow down, then lower the cross from
their shoulders, but Storm and Rain are bidden to kneel at His feet
that they may receive His blessing.

If their hearts quake, if their limbs turn to water, all spirits bow
down before Him not in fear, nor in dread, only in homage.

"Be still, and know that I have loved you, and have longed to give
you Life."



THE END





*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The wolf trail" ***


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