Dillon Wallace

“ The Spirit of Hunger--the Gaunt Gray Wolf--is at our back. The raven, the Black Spirit of Death, is ready to attack us. The Spirit of the Tempest torments us. The Spirits of the Forest and of the Barrens mock us. The Great Spirit of the Sky has driven away the atuk, and our people are starving. Many of our people are dead. Four of our hunters now lie dead in their lodges."
Shad Trowbridge could not understand what was said, but he could not fail to understand the situation.
For some inexplicable reason the caribou, upon which the Indians depended for food, had disappeared from the land. ”

“ It was late on Christmas eve when Ungava Bob, returning from the Indian camp, drew his toboggan into the clearing in the centre of which stood the river tilt. Its roof was scarcely visible in the moonlight above the high drifted snow. He had hoped that some of the others might have arrived before him, but no smoke issued from the pipe, and fresh drifted, untrodden snow around the door told him that he was the first.
It was fearfully cold. Rime filled the air. The deerskin coat which Manikawan had given him, and which he wore, was thick coated with frost. ”

“ A birch-bark canoe containing the two Indians came leisurely gliding down the river some hundred yards from shore. Manikawan, like a beautiful statue, stood tall and straight at the end of the portage trail. Two paces from her the rifle lay behind the bowlder.
The Indians, unsuspecting, turned the prow of the canoe toward the shore where she stood. Still she did not move. The cat waits for its victim until the victim beyond peradventure is within reach of its spring. Nearer and nearer drew the canoe. Still Manikawan stood, a graven image. She was looking out and beyond her intended victims. ”

“ Manikawan, your skin was red, but your soul was as white as the driven snow that covers the desolate land of your people. Your features are shrunken with starvation and suffering, but still they are beautiful, for they reflect the beautiful, unselfish soul which they once sheltered. ”

“ The three trappers, who had entered the tilt that evening wearied from the day's labour upon the trail, forgot their weariness as they swung forward at a rapid pace toward the camp on the Great Lake.
First one, then another, took the lead, breaking the trail and making it easier for those who followed. To men less inured to hardship and less accustomed to wilderness travel, it would have been a killing pace, continued unabated, unvarying, hour after hour. ”

“ When Shad laughed hysterically and derisively at his fate, as he did sometimes, Manikawan would step to his side, touch him lightly with her hand, and say in the same old voice, lower than of old, but even more musical and sweet:
"The friend of White Brother of the Snow is brave. He is not a coward. He is not afraid to die." ”

“ Work for your life! If th' rapid gets us, 'twill carry us over th' falls!"
Then they paddled--paddled as none had ever paddled before. But already the powerful current had them in its grip. Slowly--slowly--but with increasing speed they were drifting toward the awful cataract.
They would have braved the Indians now, and attempted a landing, but from a point directly below the portage trail, and extending to the white water of the heavy rapids the river bank rose in a perpendicular rampart of smooth-scoured rock, a full ten feet in height, offering no possible foothold. ”

“ As though in answer to Shad's question the last rays of the setting sun dropped through the open top of the lodge and rested upon the upturned face of the dead Indian maiden in a bright, illuminating glow.
"Manikawan, you sacrificed your life to duty and to human sympathy. You died a Christ-like death, and your sacrifice shall not be wasted. Your body is dead, but your spirit still lives. ”

“ He craved action and excitement, and the glamour of romance that surrounded the Indians and their nomadic life had attracted him. It was this, together with the human instinct to play at games of chance, and the primordial instinct slumbering in every strong man's breast to throw off restraint and, untrammelled, match his brains and strength against the forces of untamed nature, that had led Shad to adopt the red man's life for a period which he believed would not exceed three or four weeks at most. ”

“ Manikawan was not a Christian. She had never heard of Christ and His saving grace. But dare any say He did not welcome her to His Father's house?
She had renounced her own hope of life by remaining behind in the lodge when Mookoomahn left them. In the name of love and duty she had made the supreme sacrifice--she had laid down her life for another--and Christ hath said: "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." ”

“ Impotent to resist the power that was drawing them down, Shad Trowbridge and Ungava Bob were certain beyond a doubt that presently they were to be hurled into this awful chasm, and that in all human probability but a few minutes more of life remained to them.
Then suddenly there flashed upon Bob's memory the recollection of an island which he had observed when walking along the river bank from the falls to the portage trail. ”

“ She watches when the moon is bright and the shadow spirits are abroad. She watches when the evil spirits of the storm are raging in fury through the forest. She watches always, and is sad. Young men have sought her hand to wife, but she has denied them. White Brother of the Snow will return. He will come again to our lodge, and the maiden will be joyful."
Shad was unable to understand a word of this, but Bob's face told him plainly that something not altogether pleasant to the lad had been said. ”

“ For half an hour they stood enthralled by the scene, then they turned up the river, walking along its bank.
"'Tis an awful place down there," remarked Bob. "I'm not wonderin', now, th' Injuns thinks 'tis possessed by evil spirits."
"It is the most sublime scene I ever beheld," declared Shad. "One glimpse of it is worth all the trouble we've had in getting here."
The river gradually widened, but always with a strong current, even above the heavy white rapids, until some five miles above the falls it expanded into a large island-dotted lake. ”

“ And then for the first time there came to her a full realisation of the great change that was to take place in her life--that she was going far from home and into a strange land--that for many, many months she was to see neither her father nor her mother--that she was to live among strangers who cared nothing for her--that she would be separated from those who loved her and all that she held dear in the world. ”

“ Upon her pinnacle of rock she felt herself in the presence of the Mysterious Power which governed her destiny and the world in which she lived, and after the manner of her fathers she besought that Mysterious Presence in unspoken words, to make her pure and noble and generous; to make her worthy to stand in its Presence--worthy to live in the beautiful world which surrounded her. ”

“ Once a small flock of ptarmigans was seen along the willow brush that lined a stream. Shad drew his shotgun from his toboggan, but the Indians would not permit him to use it, and in disgust he returned it to its place while he watched Sishetakushin and Mookoomahn kill the birds with bows and arrows. He marvelled at their skill. Indeed, he did not observe a single arrow go astray of its mark.
Eleven birds were secured in this way--the first game they had seen, and the last they were to see for several days.
A dead, awful cold settled upon the earth. The very atmosphere was frozen. ”

“ The men set forth in haste upon their mission of life and death. The moon, a white, cold patch, lay against the steel-blue sky. The snow, thick coated with frost, glittered and scintillated in the moonlight. ”

“ Normally Shad was a good fellow, and he would endure hardships cheerfully if the hardships were accompanied by physical activity; but the condition of monotonous existence, accompanied by idleness and inactivity, which they were now experiencing, was too great for him to withstand, and he was prepared to take the most desperate chance to escape from it. When at length the tea and his tobacco were gone, and nothing but the daily ration of unseasoned rabbit remained, the thought of thus continuing indefinitely became unendurable to him. ”

“ While Dick Blake was the first to declare that the Indians must be punished for causing the supposed death of Bob and Shad, he was no more thoroughly in earnest than were his companions.
Normally these trappers were quiet, peace-loving men, who would have shuddered at the thought of causing human bloodshed; but now, moved doubtless to a large extent by a natural desire to avenge an outrage committed upon their friends, they also felt it their plain duty to mete out punishment to the guilty ones, in order to insure themselves and other white trappers against further molestation. ”

“ A clock ticked cheerfully on a rude mantel behind a large box stove. To the left of the door, a rough stairway led to the attic, and the rear of the room was curtained off into two compartments, the spotlessly clean curtains of a pale blue and white checked print, giving a refreshing touch of colour to the room which, simply as it was furnished, possessed an atmosphere of restfulness and homely comfort that impressed the visitor at once as cosy and wholesome.
"My folks be all abed," explained Bob, as he placed the candle on the table, "but we'll put a fire on an' boil th' kettle. ”

“ I'd have given up and thrown myself down in the snow to die a hundred times but for the encouragement she gave me to keep going, for I was constantly possessed of a desire to seek the rest and peace of death. And those poor Indians shared with me, Bob, the little they had, when they might easily have left me to perish.
"Do you know, Bob, there has not been a night since she died that I have not dreamed of Manikawan? She seems to say to me: 'I gave my life for yours. Go forth and make your life useful--offer a helping hand to others. ”

“ Everything in the world save only themselves seemed to have been frozen into oblivion. There was no sound, save the monotonous swish, swish of their own snowshoes, to disturb the silence--a silence otherwise as absolute and vast as the uttermost depths of the grave. ”

“ Hope is life, and one possessed of a large degree of hope, coupled with a good physique, may withstand a tremendous amount of hardship and privation.
The very presence of Manikawan during the long period of enforced inactivity and waiting, had kept alive in Shad Trowbridge the hope that Mookoomahn might after all reach the river tilt and send his friends to the rescue before it was too late. ”

“ Bob, who never was separated from the little Testament his mother had given him years before, drew the book from his pocket when they had seated themselves in the lodge, and opening to John xv, passed it to Shad, who, accepting it, read the chapter aloud in a low but clear voice, while the others reverently listened.
[Transcriber's note: John XV:12-13--"This is my commandment: love one another as I love you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends."] ”

“ After all, she was but a girl. Human emotions are pretty much the same the world over, irrespective of race, and Manikawan, the Indian maiden, was very human indeed in her emotions and the limit of her physical endurance.
She looked faint and weary, indeed, as Shad and Bob bent over her solicitously, but presently she indicated her desire to rise; and slowly, for Manikawan's exhaustion was still apparent, Bob led the way while the three took a direct course to the tilt on the first lake. ”

“ Staggering, but ever struggling forward, they forced their way painfully on and on, over pitiless windswept ridges, across life-sapping, desolate barrens, through scarcely less inhospitable forests. Exerting their waning strength to its utmost, they never stopped, save when exhausted nature compelled them to halt for brief intervals of sleep and rest, to recuperate their wasted energies. ”

“ With November winter fell upon the land in all its sub-Arctic rigour. For a day and a night a blizzard raged, so blinding, so terrific, and with the temperature so low that none dared venture out; and when the weather cleared, the snow, grown so deep that snowshoes were essential in travel, no longer melted under the mid-day sun.
Socks of heavy woollen duffel were now necessary to protect the feet, and buckskin moccasins, with knee-high leggings, took the place of sealskin boots. ”