Tales of the Klondyke | Page 4

mockingly back across a
still stretch of river.
In the foreground, against the bank of a lazy eddy, birch-bark canoes
were lined two and three deep. Ivory-bladed spears, bone- barbed
arrows, buckskin-thonged bows, and simple basket-woven traps
bespoke the fact that in the muddy current of the river the salmon-run
was on. In the background, from the tangle of skin tents and drying
frames, rose the voices of the fisher folk. Bucks skylarked with bucks
or flirted with the maidens, while the older squaws, shut out from this
by virtue of having fulfilled the end of their existence in reproduction,
gossiped as they braided rope from the green roots of trailing vines. At
their feet their naked progeny played and squabbled, or rolled in the
muck with the tawny wolf-dogs.
To one side of the encampment, and conspicuously apart from it, stood
a second camp of two tents. But it was a white man's camp. If nothing
else, the choice of position at least bore convincing evidence of this. In
case of offence, it commanded the Indian quarters a hundred yards
away; of defence, a rise to the ground and the cleared intervening space;
and last, of defeat, the swift slope of a score of yards to the canoes
below. From one of the tents came the petulant cry of a sick child and
the crooning song of a mother. In the open, over the smouldering
embers of a fire, two men held talk.
"Eh? I love the church like a good son. Bien! So great a love that my
days have been spent in fleeing away from her, and my nights in
dreaming dreams of reckoning. Look you!" The half- breed's voice rose
to an angry snarl. "I am Red River born. My father was white--as white

as you. But you are Yankee, and he was British bred, and a gentleman's
son. And my mother was the daughter of a chief, and I was a man. Ay,
and one had to look the second time to see what manner of blood ran in
my veins; for I lived with the whites, and was one of them, and my
father's heart beat in me. It happened there was a maiden--white--who
looked on me with kind eyes. Her father had much land and many
horses; also he was a big man among his people, and his blood was the
blood of the French. He said the girl knew not her own mind, and
talked overmuch with her, and became wroth that such things should
be.
"But she knew her mind, for we came quick before the priest. And
quicker had come her father, with lying words, false promises, I know
not what; so that the priest stiffened his neck and would not make us
that we might live one with the other. As at the beginning it was the
church which would not bless my birth, so now it was the church which
refused me marriage and put the blood of men upon my hands. Bien!
Thus have I cause to love the church. So I struck the priest on his
woman's mouth, and we took swift horses, the girl and I, to Fort Pierre,
where was a minister of good heart. But hot on our trail was her father,
and brothers, and other men he had gathered to him. And we fought,
our horses on the run, till I emptied three saddles and the rest drew off
and went on to Fort Pierre. Then we took east, the girl and I, to the hills
and forests, and we lived one with the other, and we were not
married,--the work of the good church which I love like a son.
"But mark you, for this is the strangeness of woman, the way of which
no man may understand. One of the saddles I emptied was that of her
father's, and the hoofs of those who came behind had pounded him into
the earth. This we saw, the girl and I, and this I had forgot had she not
remembered. And in the quiet of the evening, after the day's hunt were
done, it came between us, and in the silence of the night when we lay
beneath the stars and should have been one. It was there always. She
never spoke, but it sat by our fire and held us ever apart. She tried to
put it aside, but at such times it would rise up till I could read it in the
look of her eyes, in the very in-take of her breath.
"So in the end she bore me a child, a woman-child, and died. Then I
went among my mother's people, that it might nurse at a warm breast
and live. But my hands were wet with the blood