Tales of the Klondyke | Page 9

to live at the price of shame.
The missionary rose, for the moment swayed by the mood of sacrifice.
He half crawled over the barricade to proceed to the other camp, but
sank back, a trembling mass, wailing: "As the spirit moves! As the
spirit moves! Who am I that I should set aside the judgments of God?
Before the foundations of the world were all things written in the book
of life. Worm that I am, shall I erase the page or any portion thereof?
As God wills, so shall the spirit move!"
Bill reached over, plucked him to his feet, and shook him, fiercely,
silently. Then he dropped the bundle of quivering nerves and turned his
attention to the two converts. But they showed little fright and a
cheerful alacrity in preparing for the coming passage at arms.
Stockard, who had been talking in undertones with the Teslin woman,
now turned to the missionary.
"Fetch him over here," he commanded of Bill.
"Now," he ordered, when Sturges Owen had been duly deposited
before him, "make us man and wife, and be lively about it." Then he
added apologetically to Bill: "No telling how it's to end, so I just
thought I'd get my affairs straightened up."
The woman obeyed the behest of her white lord. To her the ceremony
was meaningless. By her lights she was his wife, and had been from the
day they first foregathered. The converts served as witnesses. Bill stood
over the missionary, prompting him when he stumbled. Stockard put

the responses in the woman's mouth, and when the time came, for want
of better, ringed her finger with thumb and forefinger of his own.
"Kiss the bride!" Bill thundered, and Sturges Owen was too weak to
disobey.
"Now baptize the child!"
"Neat and tidy," Bill commented.
"Gathering the proper outfit for a new trail," the father explained,
taking the boy from the mother's arms. "I was grub- staked, once, into
the Cascades, and had everything in the kit except salt. Never shall
forget it. And if the woman and the kid cross the divide to-night they
might as well be prepared for pot- luck. A long shot, Bill, between
ourselves, but nothing lost if it misses."
A cup of water served the purpose, and the child was laid away in a
secure corner of the barricade. The men built the fire, and the evening
meal was cooked.
The sun hurried round to the north, sinking closer to the horizon. The
heavens in that quarter grew red and bloody. The shadows lengthened,
the light dimmed, and in the sombre recesses of the forest life slowly
died away. Even the wild fowl in the river softened their raucous
chatter and feigned the nightly farce of going to bed. Only the
tribesmen increased their clamor, war- drums booming and voices
raised in savage folk songs. But as the sun dipped they ceased their
tumult. The rounded hush of midnight was complete. Stockard rose to
his knees and peered over the logs. Once the child wailed in pain and
disconcerted him. The mother bent over it, but it slept again. The
silence was interminable, profound. Then, of a sudden, the robins burst
into full-throated song. The night had passed.
A flood of dark figures boiled across the open. Arrows whistled and
bow-thongs sang. The shrill-tongued rifles answered back. A spear, and
a mighty cast, transfixed the Teslin woman as she hovered above the
child. A spent arrow, diving between the logs, lodged in the
missionary's arm.
There was no stopping the rush. The middle distance was cumbered
with bodies, but the rest surged on, breaking against and over the
barricade like an ocean wave. Sturges Owen fled to the tent, while the
men were swept from their feet, buried beneath the human tide. Hay
Stockard alone regained the surface, flinging the tribesmen aside like

yelping curs. He had managed to seize an axe. A dark hand grasped the
child by a naked foot, and drew it from beneath its mother. At arm's
length its puny body circled through the air, dashing to death against
the logs. Stockard clove the man to the chin and fell to clearing space.
The ring of savage faces closed in, raining upon him spear-thrusts and
bone- barbed arrows. The sun shot up, and they swayed back and forth
in the crimson shadows. Twice, with his axe blocked by too deep a
blow, they rushed him; but each time he flung them clear. They fell
underfoot and he trampled dead and dying, the way slippery with blood.
And still the day brightened and the robins sang. Then they drew back
from him in awe, and he leaned breathless upon his axe.
"Blood of my soul!" cried Baptiste the Red. "But thou art a man. Deny