The Honor of the Big Snows | Page 4

It was then that Jan Thoreau knew what had happened. He forgot
his starvation. He crushed his violin closer, and whispered to himself:
"The white angel ees--gone!"
Cummins rose from the bedside, slowly, like a man who had suddenly
grown old. His moccasined feet dragged as he went to the door. They
stumbled when he went out into the pale star-glow of the night.
Jan followed, swaying weakly, for the last of his strength had gone in
the playing of the violin. Midway in the cabin he paused, and his eyes
glowed with a wild, strange grief as he gazed down upon the still face
of Cummins' wife, beautiful in death as it had been in life, and with the
sweet softness of life still lingering there. Some time, ages and ages ago,
he had known such a face, and had felt the great clutching love of it.
Something drew him to where John Cummins had knelt, and he fell
upon his knees and gazed hungrily and longingly where John Cummins
had gazed. His pulse was beating feebly, the weakness of seven days'
starvation blurred his eyes, and unconsciously he sank over the bed and
one of his thin hands touched the soft sweep of the woman's hair. A
stifled cry fell from him as he jerked himself rigidly erect; and as if for
the desecration of that touch there was but one way of forgiveness, he
drew his violin half to his shoulder, and for a few moments played so
softly that none but the spirit of the woman and himself could hear.
Cummins had partly closed the door after him; but watchers had seen
the opening of it. A door opened here, and another there, and paths of
yellow light flashed over the hard-trodden snow as shadowy life came
forth to greet what message he brought from the little cabin.
Beyond those flashes of light there was no other movement, and no
sound. Dark figures stood motionless. The lonely howl of a sledge-dog
ended in a wail of pain as some one kicked it into terrified silence. The
hollow cough of Mukee's father was smothered in the thick fur of his
cap as he thrust his head from his little shack in the edge of the forest.
A score of eyes watched Cummins as he came out into the snow, and

the rough, loyal hearts of those who looked throbbed in fearful
anticipation of the word he might be bringing to them.
Sometimes a nation ceases to breathe in the last moments of its dying
chief, and the black wings of calamity gather over its people,
enshrouding them in a strange gloom and a stranger fear; and so,
because the greatest of all tragedies had come into their little world,
Cummins' people were speechless in their grief and their waiting for
the final word. And when the word came to them at last, and passed
from lip to lip, and from one grim, tense face to another, the doors
closed again, and the lights went out one by one, until there remained
only the yellow eye of the factor's office and the faint glow from the
little cabin in which John Cummins knelt with his sobbing face crushed
close to that of his dead.
There was no one who noticed Jan Thoreau when he came through the
door of the factor's office. His coat of caribou-skin was in tatters. His
feet thrust themselves from the toes of his moccasins. His face was so
thin and white that it shone with the pallor of death from its frame of
straight dark hair. His eyes gleamed like black diamonds. The madness
of hunger was in him.
An hour before, death had been gripping at his throat, when he
stumbled upon the lights of the post, That night he would have died in
the deep snows. Wrapped in its thick coat of bearskin he clutched his
violin to his breast, and sank down in a ragged heap beside the hot
stove. His eyes traveled about him in fierce demand. There is no
beggary among these strong-souled men of the far North, and Jan's lips
did not beg. He unwrapped the bearskin, and whispered:
"For the museek of the violon--somet'ing to eat!"
He played, even as the words fell from him, but only for a moment--for
the bow slipped from his nerveless grip and his head sank forward upon
his breast.
In the half-Cree's eyes there was something of the wild beauty that
gleamed in Jan's. For an instant those eyes had met in the savage

recognition of blood; and when Jan's head fell weakly, and his violin
slipped to the floor, Mukee lifted him in his strong arms and carried
him to the shack in the edge of the spruce and balsam.
And