The Honor of the Big Snows | Page 6

a queen in her head, the glory of wife and womanhood, the
living, breathing essence of all that was beautiful in her people's honor
of the big snows.
That night Mukee, the half-Cree, slunk around in the edge of the forest
to see that all was well in Cummins' little home. Once Mukee had
suffered a lynx-bite that went clear to the bone, and the woman had
saved his hand. After that, the savage in him was enslaved to her like
an invisible spirit.
He crouched for a few minutes in the snow, looking at the pale filter of
light that came through a hole in the curtain of the woman's window;
and as he looked something came between him and the light. Against
the cabin he saw the shadow of a sneaking human form; and as silently
as the steely flash of the aurora over his head, as swiftly as a lean deer,
he sped through the gloom of the forest's edge and came up behind the
woman's home.
With the caution of a lynx, his head close to the snow, he peered
around the logs. It was the Englishman who stood looking through the
tear in that curtained window.
Mukee's moccasined feet made no sound. His hand fell as gently as a
child's upon the stranger's arm.
"Thees is not the honor of the beeg snows," he whispered. "Come!"
A sickly pallor filled the other man's face; but Mukee's voice was soft
and dispassionate, his touch was velvety in its hint, and he went with
the guiding hand away from the curtained window, smiling in a
companionable way. Mukee's teeth gleamed back. The Englishman
chuckled.

Then Mukee's hands changed. They flew to the thick, reddening throat
of the man from civilization, and without a sound the two sank together
upon the snow.
The next day a messenger behind six dogs set out for Fort Churchill,
with word for the company's home office that the Englishman had died
in the big snow--which was true.
Mukee told this to Jan, for there was the bond of blood between them.
It was a painting of life, and love, and purity. Deep down in the
loneliness of his heart, Jan Thoreau, in his own simple way, thanked
the great God that it had been given to him to play his violin as the
woman died.
CHAPTER III
LITTLE MELISSE
The passing of Cummins' wife was as quiet as had been her coming.
With bare heads, their shaggy hair falling wildly about their faces, their
lips set tight to choke back their grief, the few at the post went, one by
one, into the little cabin, and gazed for the last time upon her face.
There was but one sound other than the gentle tread of their
moccasined feet, and that was a catching, sobbing moan that fell from
the thick gray beard of Williams, the old factor.
After that they carried her to where a clearing had been cut in the edge
of the forest; and at the foot of a giant spruce, towering sentinel-like to
the sky, they lowered her into the frozen earth. Gaspingly, Williams
stumbled over the words on a ragged page that had been torn from a
Bible. The rough men who stood about him bowed their wild heads
upon their breasts, and sobs broke from them.
At last Williams stopped his reading, stretched his long arms above his
head, and cried chokingly:
"The great God keep Mees Cummins!"

As the earth fell, there came from the edge of the forest the low, sweet
music of Jan Thoreau's violin. No man in all the world could have told
what he played, for it was the music of Jan's soul, wild and whispering
of the winds, sweetened by some strange inheritance that had come to
him with the picture which he carried in his throbbing heart.
He played until only the tall spruce and John Cummins stood over the
lone grave. When he stopped, the man turned to him, and they went
together to the little cabin where the woman had lived.
There was something new in the cabin now--a tiny, white, breathing
thing over which an Indian woman watched. The boy stood beside John
Cummins, looking down upon it, and trembling.
"Ah," he whispered, his great eyes glowing. "It ees the LEETLE white
angel!"
"It is the little Mélisse," replied the man.
He dropped upon his knees, with his sad face close to the new life that
was to take the place of the one that had just gone out. Jan felt
something tugging in a strange way at his heart, and he, too, fell upon
his knees beside John Cummins in this first worship of the child.
From this hour of their first kneeling before the little life in