The wolf trail
Date: 2023-02-04T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Canada; Western -- Fiction

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Title: The wolf trail

Author: Roger Pocock

Release date: February 4, 2023 [eBook #69946]

Language: English

Original publication: United States: D. Appleton and Company, 1923

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/69946

Credits: Al Haines

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WOLF TRAIL ***

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

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Table of Contents

- THE WOLF TRAIL
- CHAPTER I ON LONDON RIVER
- CHAPTER II THE VOYAGE OF THE "BEAVER"
- CHAPTER III IN BRITISH OREGON
- CHAPTER IV KOOTENAY
- CHAPTER V THE WHOLE ARMOR
- CHAPTER VI THE GHOST TRAIL
- CHAPTER VII THE HOLY LODGE
- CHAPTER VIII RISING WOLF
- CHAPTER IX THE STRIKING OF THE CAMP
- CHAPTER X THE TRANSLATION
- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE