Ridgwell Cullum

“ But it was not Marcel. A heavy gun was thrusting forward, and the muzzle of it was covering Steve's body. Helpless, impotent, the man who had taken and survived every chance the Northern world could offer him, stood like any weakling awaiting the shot that must rob him of life in the hour of his triumph.
Steve stared wide-eyed. The man was no taller than himself. He was white, and above his fur clothing was a dark, brutish face with eyes of almost Indian blackness. For a moment they shone fiercely in the lamplight. They were alive with demoniac purpose. ”

“ The folks who are all different from what we see them every day. Tough, hard-living, hard-swearing men all hidden up in their Sunday suits, and handing you ceremony as if you were some queen. Then the sense of pleasure in every heart, with all the cares and troubles of life pushed into the background—at least for a while. These things are a glimpse of life to us poor folk who spend all our years in the endless chores of an inhospitable country. You can smile, Steve. You can sneer at Abe's saloon. ”

“ The chorus was still raging as she flung open the door of the store, and stood peering out into the brilliant night. Steve's repeating rifle was ready in her hand. She had lit the lamp before she removed the bars of the door, and stood silhouetted against its yellow light. Only a woman or the utterly reckless could have committed such a folly.
With every sense alert, those senses that were so keenly instinct with the perception of the animal world, she searched the shadows within the stockade, and the distance beyond its open gateway. ”

“ It was the splitting of the solid bed of ice into which the river that came up out of the south had been transformed.
But somehow he did not readily sleep again. He was weary enough. His mind was at rest. But sleep—sleep was reluctant, and the old thread of his waking dreams came again as he gazed across at the beacon fire.
Hours passed. He had no idea of time. He had no care. He lay there watching the dancing firelight, building for the hundredth time those priceless castles of the night which the daylight loves to shatter. Never were they more resplendent. ”

“ His blankets and his sleeping-bag lay spread out ready to receive him. And the old, sightless moose gazed out in its silent, never-ceasing vigil.
Night shut down with a stillness that must have been maddening to a less preoccupied mind. The perfect night sky shone coldly with the burnish of its million stars. The blazing northern lights plodded their ghostly measure with the sedateness of the ages through which they had endured, while the youth sat on unstirring, smoking his pipe of perfect peace. They were moments such as Marcel would never know again. ”

“ It mattered little enough to him that the whole world about him was awakening. It mattered nothing to him that the white world was passing, and the rivers were starting to flood. The feathered world might wing to greet the new-born season. It might darken the sky with its legions. Such things had no power to stir his pulses, any more than had the thought of the great triumph he had achieved over the desperate Arctic elements, if all was not well with—Marcel.
This was his haunting fear. He was thinking of Marcel—and this white girl, Keeko. ”

“ A girl. A white girl. Oh, yes, there was no mistake, for all the mannishness of her clothing. Marcel stared. He had listened to her words of regret barely comprehending their drift. He was absorbed by that which he beheld, wondering, amazed.
A white girl here, alone in the primordial world of—Unaga.
From the pretty, fair hair peeping from under her beaver cap to the moccasined feet, so absurdly small, under the wide-cut buckskin chapps or trousers that clad her nether limbs, he searched stupidly for the answer to the thousand questions which flooded his brain. Who was she? How came she there? ”

“ Marcel and Keeko were standing at the dawn of a new life. The man had looked into a woman's wide, blue eyes. He had gazed upon softly rounded cheeks, as perfect as physical well-being could make them. He had contemplated rich, ripe lips that tempted him well-nigh to distraction. Thus it was that the passionless life of the outworld had no longer power before the stirring of a soul at last awakened from its pristine slumbers. ”

“ But human endurance was sorely tested. The tasks often became well-nigh insuperable. There were moments when dogs and Indians lay beaten in the midst of their labours, without will, without energy to stir another yard. It was at such times that despair knocked at the strong heart of the man who had never learned to yield, and who had never quite known defeat.
But even in the worst moments the steadily warming air never failed to lure. It breathed its soft message of promise into Steve's ready ears, supporting a heart powerless to resist the appeal. ”

“ The blazing arc of the rising sun was lifting over the tattered skyline, and its light burnished the snow-crowned glacial beds to an almost blinding whiteness. As yet it only caught the hill tops within its range. The hollows, the shadowed woodlands, remained lost beneath the early morning mists. It gave the impression of gazing down upon one vast steaming lake, out of which was slowly emerging ridges of white-crested land chequered with masses of primeval forest.
In all directions it was the same; a hidden world having laboriously to free itself from the bondage of the mists. ”

“ Young Marcel's superb manhood had no greater claim upon her woman's admiration than had the sturdy set of Steve's broad shoulders. The boy's sunny smile, and often humorous eyes, were no greater source of delight to her than the steady, honest purpose which was in every line of the older man's strong face. Age and temperament were far enough apart, but, to An-ina, they were children of a great mother heart. ”

“ They had lived in fear of the law, in fear of Steve, for over two years. And the grind of it, for the pleasure-loving wife who had buoyed herself with dreams of gaiety and delight which her life in the North had denied her, had driven her back upon the elemental that was only latent in her. Coqueline was her all now. Nita clung to her baby as the one indestructible link with that purity of life which no woman, however fallen, can ever wholly disregard, or forget. ”

“ The play of the phosphorescent light was the reflection of Unaga's lights caught by the myriad facets of broken ice upon its tumbled surface.
Steve nodded.
"Yes. We make this," he cried, in a fashion to forbid all discussion. Then after a pause that gave his decision due effect: "There's a valley away out there. And I guess it'll likely hand us the things we got to know. We've beaten those darn hills. We've beaten the snow and ice—and the cold. The things we're going to find down there need beating, too." ”

“ CHAPTER XIII "ADRESOL"
The horrible aroma of a gently smouldering smudge fire, battling with invading mosquitoes; the pleasant smell of tobacco, adding to the enjoyment of the crisp Northern air; the resplendent sunset, slashing a broken sky with a sea of multitudinous colours, and lighting a prospect of verdant woods at the foot of a line of distant hills; a wide, sheltered stoop with deep-seated rocking-chairs; these things were the key to the deeper recesses of the hearts of men who have learned to play the great game of life upon the lonely wastes of a Northern world. ”

“ So far as Inspector Allenwood knew his district had no limits in that direction, unless it were the rugged coast line of the Hudson's Bay itself.
His task left Steve Allenwood without complaint. It was never his way to complain. Doubtless there were moments in his life when he realized the overwhelming nature of it all. But he no more yielded to it than he would yield to the overwhelming nature of a winter storm. That was the man. Patient; alive with invincible courage and dispassionate determination. ”

“ Alone with groping thought, with burning hope, and the undermining of doubt which the strongest cannot always shake off. Steve had taken the plunge which robbed him of human companionship.
It was the prompting of that spirit which borders so closely the line where earthly sanity passes. It was the spirit which finds its inspiration in the Great Purpose which drives on for the achievement of the human task on earth. The dreamer of dreams is born to translate his visions into reality, or to lie broken before the task. Steve was no visionary. ”

“ Again he returns to the comforting warmth to continue his watch, whilst his companions sleep on securely in their arctic, fur-lined bags.
But the threat is real and deadly. Woe betide the foolish human soul who ignores it, or fails to read it aright. The eyes of the forest are wide awake. They are everywhere watching. They are there, in pairs, merciless, savage eyes, only awaiting opportunity. It is the primeval forest world where man is no more than those other creatures who seek to support the life that is thrust upon them. ”

“ A day's work might be a single hill conquered. It might be a moist, clammy valley crossed. Perhaps two miles, three, or even five. Distance remained unconsidered. For always was the next effort no less than the last, till mind, and heart, and body were worn well-nigh threadbare. There was no pause, no hesitation. It must be on, on to the end, or—disaster.
Steve knew. Only the barest necessity of rest could be permitted both for himself, his men, his dogs. ”

“ But even so, there was a strong steadying strain of wisdom in him, the wisdom of the Northland, bought at a price that few can afford to pay. It served to hold the balance under the influence of this new adventure.
It was something more than adventure. There was a significance in the extraordinary encounter with Keeko that dimmed to the commonplace every thrill he had ever experienced in the past. It had lifted him at a bound to that pinnacle of manhood, which until the moment when woman presents herself upon youth's stage of life can never be reached. ”

“ A land of glacial ice, endless snow and ice. Hills everywhere, broken, bald, immense. A range of mountains. In the midst of 'em a giant hill bigger and higher than anything I've ever dreamed. A hill of blasting, endless fire. It never dies out. It burns right along, belching the fiery heart out of the bowels of the earth. And everywhere about, for maybe miles, a blistering tropical heat that defies the deadliest cold the Arctic hands out. ”

“ Steve was anxious that nothing should be omitted that could convince the only man who could assist him in carrying out his plans. Sunset had nearly faded out of the sky by the time it was finished. He told everything as he knew it both from An-ina and the mother of Marcel. Also that which he had learned first hand, and from the diaries of Marcel Brand. The story of the dead chemist who had abandoned everything, even life itself, in the pursuit of the elusive weed lost nothing from his wide sympathy. And the crude use of the drug by the Indians formed a picture full of colour and romance. ”

“ Marcel was great for Indian eyes to gaze upon. Tall as was the woman, comely in her maturing years, she was left dwarfed beside the youthful manhood she had watched grow from its earliest days. The young man had the erect, supple, muscular body of a trained athlete and the face of the mother who had long since been laid to rest in the woods of the Sleeper Indians. He had moreover the strength of the father's unspoiled character, and all the purposeful method which the patient upbringing of "Uncle Steve" had been capable of inspiring. ”

“ It was the sickening flog of a rawhide quirt on a human body. It was her step-father flogging an Indian, with all the brutality of his ungovernable temper.
Keeko's eyes flashed in the direction of the canoes. Inspiration leapt. Where were her boys? They had no concern with the work of the fort. They were hers. Something of the teachings and instincts of the life she had learned stirred her to action. Light as a deer she ran to the landing, and snatched up a rifle lying in one of the boats. It was the instinct of self-preservation. ”

“ When you've thought of that you want to think of a real good woman, all pretty, and bright, with blue eyes and fair hair, and her baby girl the same. You want to reckon she was just about your ages, and was plumb full of life, and ready for all the play going. When you've got that you want to think of her man being away from their home months and months, winter and summer. It was his work. And all the time there's a feller, a mean, low, skunk of a feller with a good-looker face, and the manners and talk of a swell white man, hanging around on that home doorstep. ”

“ Tired nature was making herself felt. She was claiming him in the drooping eyelids, in the nodding head. And her final demand came in the fall of his pipe from the grip of his powerful jaws. He passed across to his blankets.
A thunderous crash from the depths below and Marcel was wide awake again. He was sitting up in the shelter of his fur bag with eyes alight with question. He was alert, with the ready wakefulness which is the habit of the trail. That crash! ”

“ With determination such as this Marcel delayed the start of the return journey to the last possible moment. And Keeko set no obstacle in the way. She asked no margin of time for accident by the way. She was prepared to accept all chances. The last moments before the permanent freeze up must see her back at her home. For the rest this wild, uncouth land was a radiant garden of delight to her.
But time waits no more for lovers than it waits for those whose hope is dying with the years. ”