Swish! Thud! She faced the woods quickly. It was only a sound that she had heard how many hundreds of times! It was the snow slipping from some broad branch of the fir trees to the ground. Yet she started now. Something was on her mind, agitating her senses, affecting her self-control.
“I’ll be jumping out of my boots when the fire snaps, or the frost cracks the ice, next,” she said aloud contemptuously. “I dunno what’s the matter with me. I feel as if someone was hiding somewhere ready to pop out on me. I haven’t never felt like that before.”
She had formed the habit of talking to herself, for it had seemed at first, as she was left alone when her father went trapping or upon journeys for the Government, that by and by she would start at the sound of her own voice, if she didn’t think aloud. So she was given to soliloquy, defying the old belief that people who talked to themselves were going mad. She laughed at that. She said that birds sang to themselves and didn’t go mad, and crickets chirruped, and frogs croaked, and owls hooted, and she would talk and not go crazy either. So she talked to herself and to Shako when she was alone.
How quiet it was inside when her light supper was eaten, bread and beans and pea-soup—she had got this from her French mother. Now she sat, her elbows on her knees, her chin on her hands, looking into the fire. Shako was at her feet upon the great musk-ox rug, which her father had got on one of his hunting trips in the Athabasca country years ago. It belonged as she belonged. It breathed of the life of the north-land, for the timbers of the hut were hewn cedar; the rough chimney, the seats, and the shelves on which a few books made a fair show beside the bright tins and the scanty crockery, were of pine; and the horned heads of deer and wapiti made pegs for coats and caps, and rests for guns and rifles. It was a place of comfort; it had an air of well-to-do thrift, even as the girl’s dress, though plain, was made of good sound stuff, grey, with a touch of dark red to match the auburn of her hair.
A book lay open in her lap, but she had scarcely tried to read it. She had put it down after a few moments fixed upon it. It had sent her thoughts off into a world where her life had played a part too big for books, too deep for the plummet of any save those who had lived through the storm of life’s trials; and life when it is bitter to the young is bitter with an agony the old never know. At last she spoke to herself.
“She knows now. Now she knows what it is, how it feels—your heart like red-hot coals, and something in your head that’s like a turnscrew, and you want to die and can’t, for you’ve got to live and suffer.”
Again she was quiet, and only the dog’s heavy breathing, the snap of the fire, or the crack of a timber in the deadly frost broke the silence. Inside it was warm and bright and home-like; outside it was twenty degrees below zero, and like some vast tomb where life itself was congealed, and only the white stars, low, twinkling, and quizzical, lived-a life of sharp corrosion, not of fire.
Suddenly she raised her head and listened. The dog did the same. None but those whose lives are lived in lonely places can be so acute, so sensitive to sound. It was a feeling delicate and intense, the whole nature getting the vibration. You could have heard nothing had you been there; none but one who was of the wide spaces could have done so. But the dog and the woman felt, and both strained towards the window. Again they heard, and started to their feet. It was far, far away, and still you could not have heard; but now they heard clearly—a cry in the night, a cry of pain and despair. The girl ran to the window and pulled aside the bearskin curtain which had completely shut out the light. Then she stirred the fire, threw a log upon it, snuffed the candles, hastily put on her moccasins, fur coat, wool cap, and gloves, and went to the door quickly, the dog at her heels. Opening it, she stepped out into the night.
“Qui va la? Who is it? Where?” she called, and strained towards the west. She thought it might be her father or Mickey the hired man, or both.
The answer came from the east, out of the homeless, neighbourless, empty east—a cry, louder now. There were only stars, and the night was dark, though not deep dark. She sped along the prairie road as fast as she could, once or twice stopping to call aloud. In answer to her calls the voice sounded nearer and nearer. Now suddenly she left the trail and bore away northward. At last the voice was very near. Presently a figure appeared ahead, staggering towards her.
“Qui va la? Who is it?” she asked.
“Ba’tiste Caron,” was the reply in English, in a faint voice. She was beside him in an instant.
“What has happened? Why are you off the trail?” she said, and supported him.
“My Injun stoled my dogs and run off,” he replied. “I run after. Then, when I am to come to the trail”—he paused to find the English word, and could not—“encore to this trail I no can. So. Ah, bon Dieu, it has so awful!” He swayed and would have fallen, but she caught him, bore him up. She was so strong, and he was as slight as a girl, though tall.
“When was that?” she asked.
“Two nights ago,” he answered, and swayed. “Wait,” she said, and pulled a flask from her pocket. “Drink this-quick.”
He raised it to his lips, but her hand was still on it, and she only let him take a little. Then she drew it away, though she had almost to use force, he was so eager for it. Now she took a biscuit from her pocket.
“Eat; then some more brandy after,” she urged. “Come on; it’s not far. See, there’s the light,” she added cheerily, raising her head towards the hut.
“I saw it just when I have fall down—it safe me. I sit down to die—like that! But it safe me, that light—so. Ah, bon Dieu, it was so far, and I want eat so!” Already he had swallowed the biscuit.
“When did you eat last?” she asked, as she urged him on.
“Two nights—except for one leetla piece of bread—O—O—I fin’ it in my pocket. Grace! I have travel so far. Jesu, I think it ees ten thousan’ miles I go. But I mus’ go on, I mus’ go—O—certainement.”
The light came nearer and nearer. His footsteps quickened, though he staggered now and then, and went like a horse that has run its race, but is driven upon its course again, going heavily with mouth open and head thrown forwards and down.
“But I mus’ to get there, an’ you-you will to help me, eh?”
Again he swayed, but her strong arm held him up. As they ran on, in a kind of dog-trot, her hand firm upon his arm—he seemed not to notice it—she became conscious, though it was half dark, of what sort of man she had saved. He was about her own age, perhaps a year or two older, with little, if any, hair upon his face, save a slight moustache. His eyes, deep sunken as they were, she made out were black, and the face, though drawn and famished, had a handsome look. Presently she gave him another sip of brandy, and he quickened his steps, speaking to himself the while.
“I haf to do it—if I lif. It is to go, go, go, till I get.”
Now they came to the hut where the firelight flickered on the window-pane; the door was flung open, and, as he stumbled on the threshold, she helped him into the warm room. She almost pushed him over to the fire.
Divested of his outer coat, muffler, cap, and leggings, he sat on a bench before the fire, his eyes wandering from the girl to the flames, and his hands clasping and unclasping between his knees. His eyes dilating with hunger, he watched her preparations for his supper; and when at last—and she had been but a moment—it was placed before him, his head swam, and he turned faint with the stress of his longing. He would have swallowed a basin of pea-soup at a draught, but she stopped him, holding the basin till she thought he might venture again. Then came cold beans, and some meat which she toasted at the fire and laid upon his plate.