Northern Lights | Page 8

they'd ask me," said Dingan's partner with a sigh, as he looked
at Lablache. "I want my chance bad, though we've done well
here--good gosh, yes, all through Dingan."
"The winters, they go queeck in Groise," said Lablache. "It is life all
the time, trade all the time, plenty to do and see--and a bon fortune to
make, bagosh!"
"Your old home was in Nove Scotia, wasn't it, Dingan?" asked the
captain in a low voice. "I kem from Connecticut, and I was East to my
village las' year. It was good seein' all my old friends again; but I kem
back content, I kem back full of home-feelin's and content. You'll like
the trip, Dingan. It'll do you good." Dingan drew himself up with a start.
"All right. I guess I'll do it. Let's figure up again," he said to his partner
with a reckless air.
With a smothered cry Mitiahwe turned and fled into the darkness, and

back to the lodge. The lodge was empty. She threw herself upon the
great couch in an agony of despair.
A half-hour went by. Then she rose, and began to prepare supper. Her
face was aflame, her manner was determined, and once or twice her
hand went to her belt, as though to assure herself of something.
Never had the lodge looked so bright and cheerful; never had she
prepared so appetising a supper; never had the great couch seemed so
soft and rich with furs, so homelike and so inviting after a long day's
work. Never had Mitiahwe seemed so good to look at, so graceful and
alert and refined--suffering does its work even in the wild woods, with
"wild people." Never had the lodge such an air of welcome and peace
and home as to-night; and so Dingan thought as he drew aside the wide
curtains of deerskin and entered.
Mitiahwe was bending over the fire and appeared not to hear him.
"Mitiahwe," he said gently.
She was singing to herself to an Indian air the words of a song Dingan
had taught her:
"Open the door: cold is the night, and my feet are heavy, Heap up the
fire, scatter upon it the cones and the scented leaves; Spread the soft
robe on the couch for the chief that returns, Bring forth the cup of
remembrance--"
It was like a low recitative, and it had a plaintive cadence, as of a dove
that mourned.
"Mitiahwe," he said in a louder voice, but with a break in it too; for it
all rushed upon him, all that she had been to him--all that had made the
great West glow with life, made the air sweeter, the grass greener, the
trees more companionable and human: who it was that had given the
waste places a voice. Yet--yet, there were his own people in the East,
there was another life waiting for him, there was the life of ambition
and wealth, and, and home--and children.
His eyes were misty as she turned to him with a little cry of surprise,
how much natural and how much assumed--for she had heard him
enter--it would have been hard to say. She was a woman, and therefore
the daughter of pretence even when most real. He caught her by both
arms as she shyly but eagerly came to him. "Good girl, good little girl,"
he said. He looked round him. "Well, I've never seen our lodge look
nicer than it does to-night; and the fire, and the pot on the fire, and the

smell of the pine-cones, and the cedar-boughs, and the skins, and--"
"And everything," she said, with a queer little laugh, as she moved
away again to turn the steaks on the fire. Everything! He started at the
word. It was so strange that she should use it by accident, when but a
little while ago he had been ready to choke the wind out of a man's
body for using it concerning herself.
It stunned him for a moment, for the West, and the life apart from the
world of cities, had given him superstition, like that of the Indians,
whose life he had made his own.
Herself--to leave her here, who had been so much to him? As true as
the sun she worshipped, her eyes had never lingered on another man
since she came to his lodge; and, to her mind, she was as truly sacredly
married to him as though a thousand priests had spoken, or a thousand
Medicine Men had made their incantations. She was his woman and he
was her man. As he chatted to her, telling her of much that he had done
that day, and wondering how he could tell her of all he had done, he
kept looking round the lodge, his eye resting on