The Wilderness Trail Part 7

The afflicted man needed such scourging of impulse. And the scourging might well have failed, had he known all the ghastly truth as to how sorely he was beset. Had sight been granted to him again for a minute, he might have turned readily to the expedient suggested by the half-breed, which he had rejected so firmly--might have drawn the keen blade of the knife across his own throat...

For, stealthily picking their way along the back trail toward Lake Sturgeon, two Indians went swiftly, and they bore with them, divided equally between them, the contents of the lost man's pack. From the moment of Donald's setting forth, these two had followed him, in order to make certain of his death. Last night, they had ventured to camp close to him, since to their eyes of experience it was made plain: by his actions that he was blind. In the morning, when he lost his way, they had stolen his belongings, thereby to insure the end. Then, wearied of their long vigil, they took the homeward trail with glad hearts. They knew beyond any shadow of questioning that death to the wanderer could be only a matter of a few hours now. They could safely report to the council of the brotherhood that the condemned had followed Death Trail to its end.

Mercifully, Donald guessed nothing of all this. So, he held to his slow course eastward with a stolidly patient courage against every obstacle. Very often, he verified his direction by feeling the shoots of the shrubbery, or by the more laborious digging to the moss that grew at the foot of the tree-trunks. Always, the cold a.s.saulted him, and as time pa.s.sed and hunger waxed, its attacks were more difficult to resist. The draining of his energies left him unprotected against the piercing chill of the air. Frequently, he was forced to halt, in order that he might gather chips for a fire, and then crouch, s.h.i.+vering over the blaze for a time ere he dared resume his march. Indeed, as the night drew down on him, he felt himself so enfeebled, so sensitive to the icy wind, that he feared to sleep, lest he might never wake. So, for his life's sake, he kept moving, now by sheer stress of will-power las.h.i.+ng the spent muscles to movement. From time to time, with ever shortening intervals, he stopped to make a little fire, over which he huddled drowsily, but with his will set firm against a moment's yielding to that longing for a sleep which, of necessity, must merge into one from which there could be no awakening... In such manful wise, Donald battled with death through the dragging hours.

When he felt the coming of the sun next morning, the follower of the Death Trail was minded to count his remaining store of matches.

There were just a score of them. It seemed, then, that, after all, the end would come not from starvation, but from freezing, for against the deadly cold he could summon his ally of fire only twenty times, and without that ally his surrender must be swift. Therefore, as he went forward now, he endured the sufferings inflicted by the icy blasts to new limits, jealously h.o.a.rding his meager supply of matches--which had come to, be his milestones as he drew near the end of Death Trail... Donald gave over the reckoning of time then.

He recked nought of minutes or hours, nought of day or of night.

Subconsciously, he still paused often to make sure that the east lay straight before him; but the activities of his mind now were become focused on the ceaseless counting of the matches that measured his span of life. And, as one after another served his need of warmth in the kindling of a fire, so his high courage dwindled steadily, until, when but a single splinter of the precious wood was left him, he gave over the last pretense of bravery, and shook cowardly in the clutch of fear. He continued a staggering advance for a long time, but hope was fled. The desire for food was not so mordant now. In its stead, a raging thirst tortured tongue and throat. He resisted a frantic craving to devour the snow, since he knew well that this would but multiply his torments. Yet, fatigue and thirst and even the stabbing cold, which would at last be his executioner, were not the things that swayed his emotions in these final stages of the Death Trail. Somehow, the matches had come to be his obsession. His physical agony was felt through a blessed medium of apathy now; it was become something curiously remote, almost impersonal. Always, his consciousness was filled with a morbid counting of the matches, the measure of his life. So, when there was only the one, he felt that the end was, indeed, come upon him. He strove his mightiest, but his might was shrunken to a puny sham. He struggled forward valiantly, but his advance was like the progress of a snail. Then, suddenly, another step became an infinite labor--something of which he could not even think. He lurched forward, and fell against a tree-trunk. The concussion aroused him to a clearer understanding. Very slowly, with a dreadful clumsiness of movement, he hacked off fragments of the bark within his reach, piled them in readiness, struck the match, and set it to the loose fibers. It never occurred to him that this last match might fail.

And it did not. Its tiny flame grew in seconds to a cheery, crackling blaze. Donald, on his knees, with hands outspread like a wors.h.i.+per in adoration before his G.o.d--as In truth he was!--felt the penetrant vibrations of the fire with an inexpressible languor of bliss.

This was the last match--the end! But what matter? The lethargy of utter exhaustion dulled familiar suffering. The obsession of the match still held its mastery, and its expression was the hot flame that breathed on him. Donald had no thought of death now, though vaguely he knew that he was p.r.o.ne at the feet of death. It mattered not. Nothing mattered any more--nothing save this luxury of warmth that was shed upon him from the last match; this luxury of warmth, and that other luxury of sleep, which stole upon him now so softly, so caressingly.

CHAPTER VII

JEAN PUTS IT UP TO HER FATHER

Jean Fitzpatrick rose from the breakfast-table at Fort Severn, and asked for the Winnipeg papers. Three days before, the mail-carrier had dashed in with dogs on the gallop, and ever since the white folk at the fort had been having a riot of joy. Months-old letters from almost forgotten friends, and papers many weeks behind their dates had been perused over and over again, until they could almost be recited from memory.

Tongues wagged in gossip over personages perhaps dead by this time, and sage opinions settled questions that had long since pa.s.sed from the minds of men in the glamourous cities of far-off civilization.

Jean pa.s.sed from the dining-room into the drawing-room, where many days before she had sent Donald McTavish from her presence. Her father, who, had eaten earlier, had retired into his private study, pleading business matters of urgency, and the girl settled herself luxuriously near a square, snow-edged window, with a pile of newspapers beside her easy chair.

She had not been reading long when voices raised in argument at the front door distracted her attention.

"No," the servant of the house was saying, "you can't see the factor. He has given orders that he cannot be disturbed."

"But I must see him!" replied a croaking voice, using the Ojibway dialect. "I have come many miles to see him, and must go away to-day."

"Who are you?" asked b.u.t.ts, the British butler, who served the factor's table with all the ceremony to be found in an English manor.

"Maria."

"Maria who?

"Just Maria. I don't need any other name."

"Tell me your message, and I'll give it to him. Then, you can come around later in the day for your answer."

"No, I can't do that. This is something I must say to him myself, and in private," croaked the voice.

"Well, you can't see him, and that's all there is about it," snapped b.u.t.ts with finality, and he slammed the door full in the old Indian woman's face.

At that, Jean sprang up and hurried from the drawing-room into the hallway, her eyes flas.h.i.+ng with resentment.

"Here, b.u.t.ts," she said sharply, "call that woman back, and bring her to me in the sitting-room. I will hear what she has to say, if she will tell me.

"Yes, miss," and the butler, showing vast disapproval in his tone, opened the door.

A minute later, Jean looked up to see a bent, wizened old hag standing in the doorway, bobbing respectfully.

"Come in close to the fire. You must be cold," suggested the girl kindly, noting the pinched brown features. "Then I will talk to you."

A leer of thanks and grat.i.tude spread over the ugly, wrinkled face, and the creature acted on the suggestion.

"Can't you wait to see my father until later? asked Jean.

"No, I go with my son to the hunting-grounds this afternoon," the woman answered.

"Well, if you will tell your message to me, I will see that he gets it."

The squaw made no reply, but searched Jean's face with her bright little eyes. Then, she said suddenly:

"So, you're the one he is in love with?" The girl, taken aback, bristled at the words and tone.

"To whom do you refer?" she asked.

"Captain McTavish. Ha, you start and blus.h.!.+ Then, there are two sides of the matter. It's a pity! It's a pity!"

Jean, now thoroughly angered, both by the woman's temerity and her own involuntary coloring at the mention of Donald McTavish's name, turned on her visitor sharply.

"You will kindly keep to the matter that brought you here, Maria,"

she said, "and leave both myself and Captain McTavish out of it."

"I can leave you out of it, but not McTavish," was the stolid reply.

"What do you mean?"

"Ha, ha! That's it. What do I mean? Sometimes I hardly know myself, but at others it conies back to me clearly enough. But I warn you, pretty miss," and the squaw suddenly pointed a shaking finger at the girl. "Never marry him, this McTavish. Never marry him!

"I haven't the slightest intention of doing so," returned the girl coldly; "but I would like to know why you say what you do, and why you wanted to see my father and tell him all this nonsense."

"Nonsense, you say!" The old woman chuckled. "No, it ain't nonsense.

Your father knows something already, but probably he won't tell you; such things aren't for the ears of young girls, particularly when they blush and grow angry at the mention of a man. But he'll marry you if he can, stain or no stain. That's a man's way."

Jean Fitzpatrick's hands wandered to her throat as though to ease her dress. Her eyes were wide with wonder and her fear of something half-hinted, and the color had gone out of her face. Here they were again, these rumors that had disturbed her mind from time to time.

But, now, they were almost definite--and they were not pleasant!

And her father knew I She had suspected the fact, and yet he had not told her anything, even denying his knowledge when forced to the point.

What was it, this thing that was the prized property of a glittering-eyed Indian hag? She dared hear no more from the crafty, insinuating creature. She would go to her father himself, and find out. She turned to the old woman, who was watching her closely.

"Maria," she said, "I will do what I can to have my father see you before you leave this afternoon. If he will not, then you may know that everything possible has been done. If he will see you, I'll send a boy to find you."

The squaw knew enough of white etiquette to realize that this was a dismissal, and started toward the door.

"He knows, he knows!" she croaked. "Tell him this time that there is money in it, and, if he won't see me now, I'll be back in the spring."