Northern Lights | Page 2

of "border days and deeds"-- of
days before the great railway was built which changed a waste into a
fertile field of civilisation. The remaining stories cover the period

passed since the Royal North-West Mounted Police and the Pullman
car first startled the early pioneer, and sent him into the land of the
farther North, or drew him into the quiet circle of civic routine and
humdrum occupation.
G. P.

Volume 1.
A LODGE IN THE WILDERNESS ONCE AT RED MAN'S RIVER
THE STROKE OF THE HOUR BUCKMASTER'S BOY

A LODGE IN THE WILDERNESS
"Hai--Yai, so bright a day, so clear!" said Mitiahwe as she entered the
big lodge and laid upon a wide, low couch, covered with soft skins, the
fur of a grizzly which had fallen to her man's rifle. "Hai-yai, I wish it
would last for ever--so sweet!" she added, smoothing the fur
lingeringly, and showing her teeth in a smile.
"There will come a great storm, Mitiahwe. See, the birds go south so
soon," responded a deep voice from a corner by the doorway.
The young Indian wife turned quickly, and, in a defiant fantastic mood
--or was it the inward cry against an impending fate, the tragic future of
those who will not see, because to see is to suffer?--she made some
quaint, odd motions of the body which belonged to a mysterious dance
of her tribe, and, with flashing eyes, challenged the comely old woman
seated on a pile of deer-skins.
"It is morning, and the day will last for ever," she said nonchalantly,
but her eyes suddenly took on a faraway look, half apprehensive, half
wondering. The birds were indeed going south very soon, yet had there
ever been so exquisite an autumn as this, had her man ever had so
wonderful a trade--her man with the brown hair, blue eyes, and fair,
strong face?
"The birds go south, but the hunters and buffalo still go north,"
Mitiahwe urged searchingly, looking hard at her mother--Oanita, the
Swift Wing.
"My dream said that the winter will be dark and lonely, that the ice will
be thick, the snow deep, and that many hearts will be sick because of
the black days and the hunger that sickens the heart," answered Swift

Wing.
Mitiahwe looked into Swift Wing's dark eyes, and an anger came upon
her. "The hearts of cowards will freeze," she rejoined, "and to those that
will not see the sun the world will be dark," she added. Then suddenly
she remembered to whom she was speaking, and a flood of feeling ran
through her; for Swift Wing had cherished her like a fledgeling in the
nest till her young white man came from "down East." Her heart had
leapt up at sight of him, and she had turned to him from all the young
men of her tribe, waiting in a kind of mist till he, at last, had spoken to
her mother, and then one evening, her shawl over her head, she had
come along to his lodge.
A thousand times as the four years passed by she had thought how
good it was that she had become his wife--the young white man's wife,
rather than the wife of Breaking Rock, son of White Buffalo, the chief,
who had four hundred horses, and a face that would have made winter
and sour days for her. Now and then Breaking Rock came and stood
before the lodge, a distance off, and stayed there hour after hour, and
once or twice he came when her man was with her; but nothing could
be done, for earth and air and space were common to them all, and
there was no offence in Breaking Rock gazing at the lodge where
Mitiahwe lived. Yet it seemed as though Breaking Rock was
waiting--waiting and hoping. That was the impression made upon all
who saw him, and even old White Buffalo, the chief, shook his head
gloomily when he saw Breaking Rock, his son, staring at the big lodge
which was so full of happiness, and so full also of many luxuries never
before seen at a trading post on the Koonce River. The father of
Mitiahwe had been chief, but because his three sons had been killed in
battle the chieftainship had come to White Buffalo, who was of the
same blood and family. There were those who said that Mitiahwe
should have been chieftainess; but neither she nor her mother would
ever listen to this, and so White Buffalo, and the tribe loved Mitiahwe
because of her modesty and goodness. She was even more to White
Buffalo than Breaking Rock, and he had been glad that Dingan the
white man--Long Hand he was called--had taken Mitiahwe for his
woman. Yet behind this gladness of White Buffalo, and