The Law-bringers/Chapter 2
CHAPTER II
"WE ALL EXERT OUR PULL"
Grey Wolf Landing ran its one street along the river-edge; a ragged, half-mile street, patched with cotton-wood and poplar clumps and split into sections by the vaguer trails that slid back from it into the forest. One end of the street was flanked by the frame-built Church of England; the other end by the Roman Catholic chapel, and in between lay the reason of Grey Wolf—the story of Fur; of the trapper; of all the big and little four-footed animals that die yearly in the great North-West in order that men may live.
Above the small Hudson Bay Store set sheer to the loose plank side-walk the flag of the red cross and the caribou rampant blew out from the staff as it had blown across all the trackless North-West these two hundred and fifty years past. The sun drew the smell of hot leather and dust and groceries out from its gaping door; mixed it with the smells found in the holes and broken corduroy of the street, and let the idle wind take it forward; past the barracks of the Royal North-West Mounted Police, standing back from their white-washed pickets; past Revillon's Store and the little log-shack where Moore and Holland did their trading, and flung it through the windows over the counter and bottles of Grange's Hotel on a corner lot. Across the street the low bank dipped short to the river, where it breasted big to the Lake. Beyond the river the sword of the frost had touched the forest, so that the trees were yielding up their lives in dripping blood-gouts that turned russet as they dried and fell, leaving the grey limbs gaunt and naked in their yearly death.
The thrill of vigorous, virile life was on Grey Wolf; humming with the soft under-beat of moccasined feet along the planking; ripped through and through with blasts of laughter, and rising to a steady roar where the swarm of nuggetty, sturdy men clustered thickest round Grange's Hotel and the Stores. Brown-faced and eyed, these men; black-haired, with a flash of white teeth, and gleam of gaudy handkerchief or Indian-work belt about the broad hips, and a glint of things that shone on the slouch hat and the moccasins that were bound with yellow thongs to the ankle. They moved with the swinging tread born of the snow-shoe; they sparred in noisy horse-play, laughing like children, shrilly and often, and in the Hudson Bay Store they drove the two young Ontario clerks to the thin edge of idiocy with their quick-pattered demands in the Cree and Slavi and the Chipewyan French of the outer places.
For they were half-breeds all, from the handsome youth with clear features and haughty head-carriage down through the flat-nosed, slant-eyed Japanese-type to the Indian throw-back, with his black hair, lank either side the raised cheek-bones, and his chin-tuft turning grey. They were the men of the backwoods whose stamping-grounds lay with those of the Indian. They were the men of the trapping-trails, of the silences; the strong men who pitted their flesh and spirit against the white might of the land that bred them; who wrested their right to live from her or yielded her their lives at the call of the river brules, or the breaking ice or the thin far threads of trail in the forest.
By the river-bank lay the reason which had brought them to Grey Wolf; a long line of scows stretched, each behind each, with noses up; broad-hulled and brown and oily-smelling as whales. An hour back the spaces under the wide, high seats and over the broken decking had been bared of the great square packages of pelts, the year's yield of Hudson Bay furs from the North, tracked by the dark-faced breeds up three hundred miles and over of rapid and river and lake. That sweating journey's end came with Grey Wolf, and the long tin Hudson Bay sheds were shut fast on the warm, close-pressed greasy bales that waited the freighter's wagons and the railroad rattle and the deep-sea ships beyond all.
At the window of the little dark office through the Store end, Leigh, the Hudson Bay factor, was busy. For these short hundred of men had a season's work behind them, rated at something like thirty dollars a month, with board and moccasins added. Round the window they shouldered each other, good-natured, grinning and awkward; reaching hard, rough hands for the dirty bills that made half their pay, and for the order which gave the rest in trade at the counters. Then they surged back to Hotchkiss and Lampard, swamping their substance in such things as the light, coarse tobacco which filled every pipe, and fine-tooth-combs, and scents, and blue and red and purple satin ribbons. Tommy Joseph had a place of worship on the counter, with legs swinging and hat thrust back from the broad, grinning face. For Tommy Joseph had brought in a silver-fox skin from the spring hunt before he went North, and the hundred-dollar worth of it lay in his thick hands now. Beyond the door and the reek of smoke and the noise loitered two half-breed girls, tall and sinuous, with the swarthy beauty that fades with such swiftness. Two-young-men laughed, rolling a length of purple satin between his sweating palms and stuffing it into his hairy chest.
"Florestine, she laike vous retournez, Tommy," he said, and Tommy slid off the counter with sheepish defiance on his face.
"S'pose you donnez moi de perfume—dat stinky-stuff," he said, pointing; and Lampard brought down a gaudy, gold-topped bottle of Jockey Club.
"I taike dat," said Tommy Joseph. "T'anks beaucoup."
He swept the change into his trouser-pocket and the bottle into his jumper, and sprang out into the tide that was setting towards Grange's Hotel. Little Beaver nodded slowly.
"Me t'ink Florestine she please you tell Tommy," he said.
"Bien," said Two-young-men, shrugging. "Florestine's man he not say t'ank, mebbe. You t'ings in de scow yet, Louis?"
"For sure," said the young breed, and shouldered his way out and through the crowded street to the river. Here a few men slept in the smell of tobacco-smoke and bilge-water, and a breed with huge rounded shoulders was shouting up the bank to a white boy.
"Slicker! Are Ducane come in yet?"
The white boy looked down with eyes that were startlingly blue in the sunburnt face, and finished his whistle through to the end. Then he said:
"Were you speaking to me?"
The breed's heavy face went purple. In law he classed as a white man, and he had white relations.
"What d'yer think?" he said savagely.
"I thought you were," explained Slicker blandly. "But I guess you've got my name wrong. It's Warriner—H. G. Warriner."
He turned and strolled off, and the breed came up the bank with red flecking his little eyes. Slicker heard him cross the street and shout through the mob of men round the bar-door:
"Ducane! Any feller seed Ducane?"
"Slicker!"
The boy's whistle broke sharply. Then his brown face lit up.
"Hillo, Tempest," he said. "These fellows will be going some soon."
"Why, certainly. They've been dry for six months, and they've got to get rid of their pay before they pull out again. Seen Ducane?"
Slicker's cousin happened to be married to Ducane. But this was no matter of pride to Slicker.
"Why should all the world reckon I carry Ducane around in my pocket?" he demanded. "I'm sick of the name of the brute. Robinson was asking for him just now."
"Slicker!"
"Now, what in the nation" Slicker wheeled and looked into the eyes of Ducane's young wife. "You're the third man to-day who has asked me where Ducane is," he said. "And I don't know. I don't know. I don't"
"But I never asked you."
"But you were just going to. You can't monkey with me, Jennifer."
Jennifer laughed, glancing at Tempest where the light struck on him from the broad-brimmed Stetson hat down the straight-run body to the light spurred boots.
"He told me to bring the rig over for him this afternoon," she explained. "I left it in the Hudson Bay yard. But if he is in there"
She nodded towards the hotel with her small, delicate face troubled, and Slicker patted her shoulder. Ducane was J.P. for the district, but men had no occasion to honour him therefore.
"I'll go hunt him out for you, honey. It's no place for you. I'll get him."
He loped over the dusty road and in through the doors where a cluster of breeds showed black as bees on the comb. Tempest turned, keeping step with Jennifer, past the barracks where blew the flag that spoke the law of the English to the solitudes, and round the little post-office, into the Hudson Bay yard. He knew Ducane as it was his business to know men, and he knew small good of him. The man had that big, blustering way of mind and body which so many women mistake for manliness and so many men do not mistake for something else; and since he had brought his month-old wife to Grey Wolf three short weeks ago Ducane had not improved to any noticeable extent.
Jennifer patted the pony; cuddled it, and kissed its nose, investing each movement with that quaint and delicate charm which made men forget her lack of beauty and remember her. Then she laughed up into Tempest's grave eyes.
"Come back to supper. I'll make you some corn-cake," she said.
"Sorry." Tempest did not smile. "I fancy I'm needed here to-night. Too many trackers about. Why, no—I don't imagine there'll be trouble. But I must be on deck. The other men are away."
"Your arm is just out of the sling. If any of them"
"They won't. Besides, that's what I'm here for." He laughed now. "I am not scared," he said.
"Well, of course—a man never is," she said.
Tempest had put Ducane sick with fear once already. And he expected to do it again. He gave place to Slicker with relief."Honey," Slicker slid an arm through Jennifer's. "You'll have to let me drive you home. Ducane will be late—business, you know. He won't be back to supper, and he sent you his love."
Slicker's imagination was responsible for this last. His boy-face was hard about the jaw, and, in the vernacular, he "put Tempest wise" with a flicker of his left eye-lid. Tempest unhitched the halter and stowed it under the seat in silence.
"That's good of you, Slicker, dear," said Jennifer tremulously. "But poor Harry does so hate the hotel meals. He says they're horrid."
"I feed there, and they haven't killed me yet," said Tempest cheerfully. But his face was grave again as Slicker swung the rig down by the river to the grey haze of the forest where the sweet-scented blanket of hill-fire smoke clung. Then he went back swiftly, with his scarlet tunic making a blot among the dark-shawled women squatted on the side-walks, and the clustered loafing men in their dingy store-clothes.
The knot round the bar-door gaped to let him in and closed again. Their broken vivid speech came to him full of the North. For to the men of "inside" the North-West is the world, and kingdoms and captains may fail and parliments run to red ruin unheeded so long as the rabbits which feed the lynx swarm in their thousands, and the running record between Fort Smith and anywhere else is won by a man whom other men do not hate over well.
Drifted scraps concerning a bear-trap that broke, a man who made no fur, little Marguerite who "vas si belle von taime," and Jack Audoine, the breed who portaged a loaded scow up the Rapids of the Damned; rivulets of talk in the Indian dialects, with the whole pock-marked by such familiar words as Mackenzie River, Fort Resolution, and Good Hope, were as familiar to Tempest as the smell of the river-wetted clothes and the moose-skin moccasins; of whiskey, and heated men, and the strong, light, coarse tobacco.
He crossed to the counter that ran up the north side of the big bare room, and spoke to the bar-tender.
"Have you seen Mr. Ducane anywhere, Jimmy?"
"Why—he's up to the balcony wi' Robison, Sergeant. I guess they're talkin' some. They've sent for drinks twice."
Tempest leaned over the bar.
"Not had any trouble yet, have you?" he said with dropped voice.
"Not a mite." Jimmy screwed his eyes up, looking round the barn-bare place, where the dark breeds dozed half-fallen on the benches, or smoked stolidly with spittoons between their moccasined feet, or talked in twos and threes with the picturesque hand-movements which often make half the speech of men who have lived among the Indians. Jimmy nodded.
"Pretty as a Sunday-school," he said. "We'll likely have a few muzzy to-night. You wouldn't want to be hard on them, Sergeant? They're as good a bunch of boys as any along the river."
"Don't let them get too gay, then," said Tempest, and went through the inner door and up the wide uncarpeted staircase, seeking Ducane.
Grange's Hotel was the only one in Grey Wolf. The only one "inside"—which is to say, north of latitude fifty-six along these water-ways! It carried the distinction of its position, and of not much else just now; and Tempest, turning along the upper landing, looked on the bare rooms and tumbled beds with an indifference bred of familiarity. They were for the men of the trail, these places; surveyors, prospectors going through to the ore-beds of the north; traders on their home-way to another five years "inside"; the men of the Treaty Party, perhaps, or those who took the long patrol with the Judge who happened to pass Grey Wolf in his yearly round. But they were for men only. Few women travelled that trail which men's feet found difficult at times, and those who passed it were chiefly of the pioneer class; brave-eyed, hard-handed women, trekking with their home and their children and their husbands into the loneliness, and sleeping at night with the tent-peak and the stars above them.
The ring of Tempest's spurred feet along the balcony jerked Ducane out of his stooping, muttering talk with Robison. He flung himself back in the creaking chair and bawled out the jovial greeting which Tempest knew to be false as the man himself.
"Hillo, Sergeant, hillo. We were just talking about you; saying you'll want to keep the lead sounding to-night, eh?"
"I don't expect any trouble," said Tempest, sitting down. "They are good boys all right. And drunkenness is one of the honest sins up here. It seldom hurts more than the drinker."
Tone and words were casual enough, but Ducane shied from them uneasily. Tempest had a way of making his personality felt where he went, and there was much in Ducane's life which would not bear the inspection of those clear eyes. Robison grinned. He was long-armed and hairy-chested as an ape, and he had all the ignorant, resentful, cunning courage of an ape.
"Never thought such as you'd say as there was honest sins, Sergeant," he remarked, and Tempest smiled, lighting his pipe.
"That is a social problem, I suppose. But when it comes to a question of degrees of evil we must discriminate. I fancy Ducane will agree with me that a drunken breed may very often do less harm, morally and socially, than many a sober white-man."
Ducane's bloated, handsome face reddened. Tempest's casual sentences had a way of dropping straight into the well of a man's mind to trouble the waters.
"Oh, I guess all human nature is tarred with the same stick, more or less," he said. "We can't all be plaster saints, Tempest, or you'd be out of a job. But in lots of cases bad men sin and worse men talk about it. Those that like the taste of it on the tongue, and yet are afraid of the fires on their skin. Not going, are you? Robison was just telling me about some land he'd bought near Grande Prairie."
Robison was trader and trapper in a small mysterious way of his own, and of late he had become farmer also. He launched into vernacular technicalities which Tempest listened to idly. He was thinking of Ducane at present, and of Ducane's young wife.
He supped with Ducane later in the big dining-place where clerks from the trading-offices, a few half-breeds, and a score of men more passed and passed again, fed at the little tables, joked with Grange's good-tempered half-breed wife, and watched, shyly or boldly, according to their kind, the two white serving girls who bore the stamp of town-life on them still.
Tempest came out at last from the noise and light to stand in the pallor of the dreaming night. Beyond the street lay the huge silent scows, emptied at last of the sun-warmed, close-pressed furs. Behind were the men who had warped them up, foot by foot, by the long-laid, mysterious water-trails of the North, and who would so soon seek their own again among the winter woods with the light patter of moccasined feet sounding along every nerve and fibre of the chilling land. It was part of the routine—like life, and death, and sleep, and all else, and it meant as little to the men who did it as these things mean to the most of us. But to Tempest something of the wonder of the need for it all came restlessly, and he spoke without turning to the man whose lagging footsteps had followed him out.
"I'm going home, Grange. You'll know where to send if I'm wanted."
Grange giggled. He was a little nervous man with a great love of his many children, and of Moosta, his half-breed wife.
"Sure, Sergeant, sure. But I reckon we ain't got much hot stuff ter-night, barrin' Robison." He jerked his head towards the bar. " They're on'y singin'," he said. "My, how that Pierre Dupuis kin drive the chune."
Tempest knew what make of men comes of French-Indian blood. He knew of the occasional cast-back to the vices of each; of the irresponsible temper flung to fury from laughter before the white man can take heed; of the frank, childish nature, which brings men to heel like eager dogs before the voice of authority. He nodded.
"Well, don't forget to let me know," he said, and went down to the lonely barracks with the deep-throated swing of the song welling up to the stars above him, and all the soft, purring murmur of wooden dwellings settling into the hush of sleep after the day's heat sounding through the clearing.
Two hours later he found that Grange had not forgotten, when young Forbes, a green English boy in Revillon's Store, burst in on him with gasping breath and starting eyes.
"Pile out—quick, Sergeant," he said. "Ducane and Robison are killing each other."
Tempest distanced the boy back up the silent street and over the flapping boards that made a following rattle like musketry in the hills. He thrust between the half-breeds who clustered thick round the door, and saw the two men who struggled breast to breast, knee to knee; the white face livid with fury and fear, the dark face like a bursting plum.
The quarrel had been born in a flash, and the end of it was likely to be as swift; for Robison had his knife out as Tempest jumped forward with his lithe finish of movement, and gripped each man by the shoulder.
"That's enough," he said, and his voice carried through the noise. "Quit! Sharp!"
The men were blind and deaf with the wrath that held them. Ducane wrenched away Robison's knife with a quick wrist-turn, and then Tempest's face was thrust in his with eyes blazing like the flash before the bullet.
"Quit!" he said only. But the threat behind the word drove terror into Ducane.
He fell away, dropping the knife, and Tempest flung himself on Robison. The breed was too big and too heavy for him; but he would not have called for assistance when he did if a sudden demon of mischief had not lit the idea in his brain. Robison was a malignant hater, and there was no man in Grey Wolf would have cared to bring himself under the harrow of that hate undesired. They stood back, waiting on Tempest's call. And when it came it hit the only man who did not look for it.
"Ducane," shouted Tempest. "Lend a hand here."
And Ducane it was, half-sobered and sick, who helped pinion the big breed and guide his resisting feet down to the barracks, and into the little cell with its grinning grating on the whitewashed wall. Then Tempest shut out the approving crowd, who had followed; settled his tunic-collar where the top hook was burst off, and looked at Ducane.
"You'd best sit down and get your breath," he said. "I want to hear some reasons why you shouldn't be in right alongside Robison."
The heavy red flooded Ducane's skin.
"You forget who you're speaking to," he said.
"I'm likely to forget it when a gentleman brawls with half-breeds in a public bar," said Tempest. "Is there a shack or a tepee up or down river won't have that news inside a week? We are teaching them to respect the white man in Grey Wolf."
His level words bit like serpents' little tongues. Ducane came to his feet unsteadily, taking hold of his blustering courage.
"You rather exceed your duty," he said. "I was preventing Robison from assaulting a breed. Good-night."
Tempest let him go. He had more work to do, and before morning the half-dozen cells were full with the frank and ordinary cases of a pay-night. For in one night, or two, these cheerful men of the child-heart had to "blow in the wad" of a year's work ere they faced to the trail again. Such was custom; and Tempest, knowing, tempered the wind to the shorn lamb in so far as he honestly could.
There were mild fines and reproofs in the little court-room next Tempest's bedroom in the morning; and then, hour by hour, Grey Wolf slacked her sinews again, lying inert until the next cataclysm of life should burst on her. The fringe of it came three evenings later, when Tempest rode home, on the bob-tailed cayuse known to all his world as Gopher, and found the little steamer from Lower Landing backing noisily into the stub-end of wharf. All the population were out to make remarks, and Tempest added his in amaze.
"But how the deuce did you cross the rapids, Mackay?" he said. "They coudn't track the scows further, for she's closing so unusually early this year. You'll never get back."
The brawny Scotchman laughed, reaching a hand over the rail.
"Listen till I tell ye," he said. "I wadna hae daured bring her, but Harris swore I couldna. He swore it in company, ye see, an' I waur bound tae gie him the lie." His heavy shoulders shook with his rumbling laugh. "Every dommed pund o' freight I tracked over those rapids in York boats," he said. "An' I go back by trail. The 'Northland Flower' is sleepin' in that backwater for her winter bed, an' I thought more than aince she'd be sleepin' on the rapids. It waur sure enough close skatin'. But the fairies was wi' us." He lit his pipe, and jerked the match overboard. "Ha' ye heard tell that Tom Saunders is tae pu' out East for good?" he said. "What div ye mak' o' that, now?"
"Cold feet, perhaps. Marriage, perhaps. But he'll break his neck breaking horses some day before long."
"The wildest o' us slack oop when we mairry," remarked Mackay. "’Cept Ducane. I hear things about him. Things as you don't hear, ye ken. In the nature o' life ye have to go around wi' your ridin'-lights up."
Tempest dropped his whip lightly across Gopher's crest.
"Come in and have a smoke up this evening, Mackay," he said only. But Mackay winked long and slowly after the cloud of dust.
"And do ye think Ducane will hold any course straight enough for you or me to catch him on it, Sergeant?" he said.
In his office at the barracks Tempest opened his mail; read a part, and then sat still for long, very long, until the notices and memorandums, and the few photographs on the opposite wall were a blur, and Poley, the old red-headed cook, came in with the lamp.
Tempest roused himself, and his eyes were strange as the eyes of a man who has been seeing what he did not think to see again.
"Is Baxter in?" he said. "Send him to me, then."
There was dislocation and promotion of which to speak to Baxter. Then he leaned forward and grasped the man's hand.
"I congratulate you—Sergeant," he said, and smiled. "You should have had this step last year, for you've deserved it long enough." He looked away. "Your marching-orders come with it," he said. "But they've managed a good leave for you first."
Baxter's rough hands shook a little where he knuckled them down on the table-edge, and his rough voice was not quite steady. He was Canadian born, even as his fathers were, and he served his land simply and directly with all his simple powers.
"Ah!" he said, and the weight of his soul seemed to lighten with the breath. "I guess I can drive that horse, Sergeant. An' I don't mind tellin' you now—there's a little girl—she's waitin' six years—I guess maybe if they put me south she won't want to wait no longer!"
Tempest gave no answer. Baxter looked at him sharply; lost colour; spoke with suddenly thickened voice.
"Where have they put me at? Where? Not Herschel?"
Then, before Tempest's face, his own sagged and grew grey.
"God," he said in his throat, and sat down, and looked out straight before him with still eyes.
Tempest moved his papers with quiet hands. He had come sane and whole from the searching test of that last, loneliest, most terrible post of all which the North-West offers her children: Herschel Island on the rim of the Arctic Ocean; where the sun lies hid, and almost hid, a half year through; where the desolation and the silence take hands and walk together over the untrod snow, and the Northern Lights chase each other with curious shapes and silky noises across the great black cup of the sky. Tempest had taken his trick at that wheel, and had come from it unharmed. But he was a younger man than Baxter, and he had more education to teach him self-control. Besides, there had been no little girl waiting for him.
"I can represent the case at head-quarters if you like," he said. "But you know we're short of men. We always are."
Baxter nodded; cleared his throat; cleared it again.
"Sixteen years I've been in the Force," he said. "And never a word against me, Sergeant."
"I beg your pardon."
Tempest had answered tone rather than words, and Baxter nodded again.
"Granted," he said. Then, "Over two years, isn't it?"
"Officially two. Nearer three, allowing for travel and change of seasons."
"I've got till ice goes out in spring," said Baxter, and his eyes lit with longing. "I could marry her right now—an' leave her again. I couldn't take a woman up there?"
"No," said Tempest. "You couldn't take a woman up there."
Baxter's knotty hands stirred and grew still again. He looked out at the blur beyond the windows where an unseen child was laughing. Tempest's sympathy showed in his silence, and Baxter stood up at last.
"Thank you, Sergeant," he said; halted, and added, grim and slow: "I guess I can't marry her. Herschel an' the North have done up better men than me."
"You're judged fit, or they wouldn't send you. There have been no excesses in your life for you to fret over, Baxter. You'll get along well. There are two more in the detachment, you know, and it is seldom that some of the whalers don't winter there."
Baxter looked at him.
"As man to man?" he said. "It gets hold of one? That having dark at daylight, as you may say—and seeing nothing half the time but those Esquimaux with their long tails trailin'—and letters once a year. And the knowing, maybe for months at a time, that there's nothin' between you and your God—nothing white, but the two-three men with you and the snow. It gets hold of one? As man to man, Sergeant?"
"It does," said Tempest quietly. "And yet you can stand it, Baxter."
"If you say so, Sergeant. You've got all your senses, right enough. But—I don't know. I don't know."
"You do know," said Tempest, and his voice rang suddenly. "There won't be more asked of you than a man can stand. And you are a man."
"I should hope so. Well"—he shook himself. "Let her roll into it," he said. "When do I go out?"
"On the York boats—Barney's gang, to-morrow. The new man is riding up now."
"Quick work. But, of course—with the ice coming an' all. Who's the new man, Sergeant? Been this way before?"
"He has been all over. But he comes from Macleod. He has lately been promoted Corporal, and his name," Tempest's voice altered slightly—"his name is Heriot; R. L. Heriot."
"That'll be Dick Heriot, I guess. Can ride most things that have two sides to 'em, folk say. I've heard o' him."
Tempest had heard of him also, although it was not necessary to say so. For two days he hid the trouble in his eyes; but when he met Dick the shadow was lifted.
"What are we going to do?" he said. "We have always run together before. Are you strong enough to obey me, Dick?"
"If you're strong enough to make me!" said Dick, and laughed.
"By, I'll make you," said Tempest. "But it's a poor look-out for the Force if I've got to make you, old man."
Dick moved restlessly. The pull of this man was on him again, and he knew that he would resist more than he gave to it all the days of his life. For the good which he could see and reverence was greater than the good which he wanted to do.
"I guess you'll whittle me into my hole," he said. "But I'm hard wood. I'll break your knives."
"I don't want to whittle you," said Tempest, staring out with his head between his hands. "Aren't you man enough to do it for yourself?"
Dick laughed and walked to the window.
"Lord, yes," he said. "I've whittled myself slab-sided. I've whittled my soul out and put a whiskey-peg in its place. I've loaned my youth where I didn't ought, and I've run up accounts which I don't mean to settle. But you'll make me pay with usury, you old fox. I know you, Tempest."
"I hope so," said Tempest. Then his voice changed. "But I believe that you're a better man than you pretend to be," he said.
"It's not his beliefs which trouble a man," said Dick. "It is the making folk believe that he believes in his beliefs." He wheeled suddenly, and faced Tempest. "The clinkers that we rake out of the engine-fire can't burn again," he said. "I've wanted to be a clinker more times than once. On my soul, Tempest, I don't imagine a thing could ever get hold of you as it gets hold of me."
Tempest still stared at the blurr of window-pane through which Baxter had looked on his future.
"God knows I don't want to judge any man," he said. "But this would be a simpler world if each were responsible for himself only."
Dick whistled softly between shut teeth.
"According to the tenets of common-sense we are," he said. "But what a rotten thing is common-sense. A man doesn't rule himself by it half his days. And when he does he generally gets up to the neck. You leave me alone all you can, Tempest. A man can shoulder the rest of the world—but he can't shoulder his friend. His heart gets in the way there."
Tempest left the matter at that, and went over in the next afternoon to see Jennifer. He had developed a habit of going to see Jennifer when his work called him in that direction, and this day he found Slicker on the table in the little sitting-room eating the last half-dried saskatoons from the hill out of a shining tin pan. Jennifer was in the window-seat with that cheerful busyness of work about her which reminded Tempest of long ago home-days. The red of a late fall sunset was behind her, sharply distinct on lake and sky, on hills and marshy foreground; and the red of it was in the rough ends of her cloudy hair which glowed until they called a witticism from Slicker.
Jennifer was unabashed. She bit off an end of thead with her sharp little teeth.
"I suppose you can't help being clever any more than Mr. Tempest can help being good," she said. "It must be an awful handicap to you both."
"It is," admitted Tempest gravely. "Especially when you're the only one in the bunch."
Slicker chuckled with his mouth full.
"That's one on you, honey," he said. "But we can't help it. Some are born with cold feet, some get cold feet, and some have cold feet thrust u"
"Slicker, if you bring your vulgar jokes over here, I'll lock you up. I know you're in a position to tell us why both acquirements are a handicap, Mrs. Ducane, but"
"Tempest considers each of his good deeds as an asset placed in heavenly securities to act as retainers when the time comes to need an advocate," explained Slicker. "You won't convince him, Jennifer."
"You see, Slicker has tried," said Jennifer. "That is what makes him so contemptuous. We are never really contemptuous of things till we find out that we can't do them. Slicker tried for a month. That was down East, when he thought of going to China for a missionary. He was so affected. I spilt boiling water into both his shoes one day—with his feet in them, and he only said, 'Oh, dear!' Now, he should have said 'damn,' shouldn't he? All white men say 'damn.' Kipling calls it 'the war-drum of the English round the world.’"
"I—I think he expressed it a little differently," suggested Tempest. "But no doubt he meant much the same thing."
"Of course," said Jennifer.
She drew a ragged sock over her hand; held it up to the light, and cocked her head at it.
"When Providence made me your cousin, Slicker," she said, "it neglected to tell me what you were going to do with your clothes. Otherwise I might have declined the honour. This is the seventh pair of holes you have brought me to darn socks on to in one week."
"But you look so sweet when you're doing it, honey." Slicker tipped the tin for the last of the berries. "You make a regular little home-bird twittering in your pretty nest—and I never reckoned there'd be anything but a bonfire made out of this old place in Ducane's time."
Jennifer laughed and flushed with the consciousness of her young wifehood, and again Tempest's face was troubled as he looked at her. As yet there was no flaw in the warp and woof that Life was spinning her. But it must come soon. It could not fail to come, and the snarl might be such that no patient fingers and no brave eyes that kept the tears back would unravel. It could not fail to come. He knew Ducane too well for that, and he knew Life too well.
The dread of grim tragedy broke before the indefinable sensation of something tense in the air. He turned from the window to see Slicker with a saskatoon between thumb and finger, regarding Jennifer very much as he might have regarded a chick which had just emerged from a duck's egg. The light from without struck one side of Jennifer's small face and the blurr of copper hair as she leant forward, speaking with that soft, quick voice which was characteristic of her.
"You don't know! How should a boy like you know what it means to lie awake at night and feel that you have got into the heart of things at last—the real core—right back to the beginning where men stood with bare feet on the bare earth, as it were"
Slicker removed his eyes to his sock.
"I've stood with bare feet" he began. Then he looked at Tempest. "Isn't she the most surprising thing that ever happened?" he said.
Jennifer swung round. Her eyes and her hair glowed in the light.
"Out here men do things," she cried. "It is the land of romance and the real picturesque. Here one can believe—and do. It's like coming out of a novel and getting into history. It brings out all that is brave and good and noble in men and women. Look at those women at the English Mission, making Christians of the little half-breed children! Look at the Mounted Police scouring the land with their old khaki uniforms, year in and year out, to enforce the law! Look at the half-breeds submitting themselves to that awful labour of tracking, season by season. Look at men such as my Harry, battling for his home in the wilderness, just so that he can make some woman happy"
Slicker swallowed his berry with the air of one who needed some support.
"Maybe a girl who can see her back-hair in a hand-glass without getting lock-jaw isn't fitted by nature to look at life straight," he said. "You get Miss Chubb down at the Mission to tell you if she hasn't reason to consider that she's done her possible by the race if she can teach them to put their clothes on to the right parts of themselves and to blow their noses. And you ask Tempest right now how long it would be before an M.P. got acquainted with the inside of his coffin if he attempted to scour the land with an old uniform or anything else without letting up for meals. And the breeds wouldn't take another job if you went on your knees to 'em. They like it. And"
Tempest moved nervously. Would Slicker's tongue carry him into dangerous latitudes? But Jennifer's rare temper was waking.
"Boys think it so clever to make fun of everything," she said. "They haven't imagination enough to see the true, wonderful beauty of life. I can see a little—just a little. And I'm going to tell the world. I'm going to write some articles for a Toronto paper. I began last night."
"Do. I reckon it would be well to get all that stuff out of your system right away. And then put 'em in the stove. But be careful, for I guess there will be plenty hot air in 'em to burst the pipes."
Jennifer whipped round on him like a kitten about to spring.
"You—you—you animal!" she cried. "Come off my table this instant! Stop eating my berries. Don't sit there with your hair all over your head, staring like that! And don't you dare put your feet on my carpet. They're mud up to the elbows!"
"Sakes!" said Slicker, bewildered into alarm for the first time in his life. "I can't jump right out of here in once."
For an instant more Jennifer's temper possessed her. Then she dropped on the window-seat and laughed with the two men until her eyes ran over.
"You're not fit to live, Slicker," she said. "Go away. Go away and die. But don't do it on the door step. I mean it. Indeed I do! You haven't left me one berry for supper, and you've made me lose my temper, and you're in disgrace. Good-bye. You can come back for your socks to-morrow. And—shut the door."
They heard his serene whistle as he strolled down the mud-track to the Lake. Then Jennifer glanced up at Tempest.
"You'll stay to supper, won't you?" she said. "Harry will surely be in directly.
"Thanks," said Tempest absently. "I shall be very pleased."
He watched her as she drew the wool through Slicker's socks, and that skeleton behind Ducane's door seemed to take shape and move about her. How long would this little ardent girl believe in the "true wonderful beauty of Life?" Or was she perhaps filled with the great heart and the inner wisdom which can hold to it and know it through all pains? Jennifer glanced at him again.
"You don't believe what Slicker says, do you?" she asked.
"Why—every sweeping statement is true and untrue. Slicker has heard so much of what he calls hot air talked about us and every other phase of western life that he quite naturally goes to the other extreme. I imagine you're just men and women out here, you know—the same as in most places. But we're fighting out these ordinary passions and joys and agonies under unusually primeval conditions, and—and I want you to make allowances for that." He hesitated, wondering if he dared give a warning plain enough for her to take. "Men get rougher. They slough off a lot of conventionalities, and there's quite a good deal of the brute in human nature. They do ugly things, maybe, because they haven't got the perspective to know how ugly they are."
"I haven't seen any of the ugly things," said Jennifer softly.
Tempest looked out on the placid lake where a couple of late ducks cut sharply and black between sedge and sky.
"You will," he said. "You were right when you said that Life was not a novel. It is history, and it needs each one of us to make this history of the West. You have got to do your share. And you are not going to find it easy."
Jennifer's hands had fallen still and loosely in her lap. She never fidgeted.
"You make me feel as if I was on the edge of something," she said. "Of something big and terrible that you know about and I don't. Is that—Life? I couldn't do anything much, you know. I should certainly fail if I tried."
"Why—to fail is a bad thing," said Tempest slowly. "But to be afraid to dare failure is much worse. I guess you wouldn't be afraid to dare."
"But this is a man's life—for men. I can't do anything in it—anything that makes a difference."
"Don't you know that at the moment when a star splits apart each half instantly exerts its pull on every other atom near enough to it? Instantly, and—eternally. There is no getting away from that. There is no burking it. We all exert our pull—through every moment of our lives. You do. I do."
His voice rang strong and vital through the dusk, telling her that he recognised the power of his own pull and was glad of it. She shivered, looking out where the warm lights of Grey Wolf began to blink across the Lake.
"I think you frighten me when you talk like that," she said. "You make me want to be a little quiet soul, hidden away in a corner behind a cloud, and not mattering to anybody. I—I don't think I care to have an influence. Especially when I don't quite know what it is."
"I beg your pardon," said Tempest. He came over and knelt a knee on the window-seat in penitence. "I likely say what I feel too plainly at times. And that is dangerous in a man who serves others. But I can tell you just a little of what your influence may be. We haven't seen dull silk portières, and just those kind of pictures and little bits of old statuary up this way before. Other women keep their houses nice and clean. But this room—well, I imagine you are going to be a civilising influence, Mrs. Ducane."
Jennifer laughed and pouted.
"You don't think me capable of the big heroics," she said. "Civilisation sounds so—so paltry up here."
"God forbid! It's the one rag we have to cover our nakedness until we're fit to grow angel's feathers. Don't ever strip it off. And don't let any man you come in contact with strip it off in your presence. That is going to be one of your great responsibilities."
"I—I wonder if I want it," said Jennifer.
"You needn't be afraid of it," said Tempest gently. "But the most ignorant of us daily take on ourselves responsibilities that the gods would jib at. We do it because we are ignorant, of course. And that is naturally the very last reason we give for our mistakes—for it is the only one that is going to save us." He laughed, and stood up. "I have been uncivilised enough to give you advice," he said. "But you've no time to get back on me now. There's Ducane."
"Where? Where? I don't see" Then, as Tempest flung up the window, the swift running beat of an Indian cayuse came to her along the frozen track toward the house. She flashed round at Tempest with sudden crisp life in each inch of her.
"It is; it is," she cried. "But I never heard—oh, Harry!"
Ducane swung round the horse-corner; dropped from the high-cantled saddle, and thrust his head through the window.
"Hallo, Jenny," he said, and slid a careless arm round her shoulders. "That you, Sergeant? Well, you're wanted down at the Portage right away. Some white fool—Englishman named Lucas—smashed his mate's head in. Oh, he's got it, sure enough. Best pile after him, I guess. Why—what's to pay, Jenny? It was one of your sex was responsible, I'll bet."
Jennifer shivered in the grasp of his big arm.
"You—you say it as if it was nothing," she whispered.
"Lucas won't find it nothing once the Sergeant has him by the neck, I promise you. Coming out this way, Tempest? Well—stand aside, Jenny."
Tempest slid a leg out and followed it where the pony stood four-square with drooped head and smoking flanks.
"It saves time," he said. "Come down to the canoe with me, Ducane. I want some particulars of this." He smiled, saluting Jennifer. "Don't think of it again," he said. "I apologise—for Lucas."
Jennifer watched the two swing down the narrow trail, and she pressed her hands together over her breast. One of the ugly things had come suddenly, bald and hideous. And it was her husband who had brought it, uncaring. She shut her little sharp teeth down on her lip in swift anger and disgust. Then Tempests's voice came to her memory. "I want you to make allowances—there's a good deal of the brute in human nature."
What was there in Ducane? She knew that she did not know. He had come into her life like a wild, vivid storm; bearing her out with the force of him into a strange world of hot kisses that half-frightened her and boisterous words that blew away all her shy excuses, until there was a new plain ring on her finger, and his thick, gripping arm about her before she understood if this great thing which had come on her was love in very truth. Her senses were whirling still when he brought her home and kissed her on the lips as he lifted her out of the rig.
"Our home, Jenny," he said. "And not fit for you, little girl. But, by , I'll make it fit now I've got reason."
His very oath had excited her, thrilled her. She had not heard men speak so before, and it was surely part of this great virile world out of which he had come to her with his loud voice and his manner that rushed all before it. Now, even as the canoe shot off from the bank and Ducane shouted words after it, there swept over her, horribly, vividly, the contrast between her husband and Tempest. Harry had coarse words and coarse thoughts that he no longer troubled to hide from her. Harry was—he was one who might do ugly things; one for whom she must make allowances. Make allowances for him! For Harry! With a gasp of sudden blinding agony she turned and fled through the dark house to the hithermost end of it, hearing Ducane calling after her:
"Jenny! Hi, Jenny! I want you."