The Night-Born | Page 4

the
way than ever came through. And that was precisely why I tackled the
job. It was a traverse any man would be proud to make. I am prouder of
it right now than anything else I have ever done.
"It is an unknown land. Great stretches of it have never been explored.
There are big valleys there where the white man has never set foot, and
Indian tribes as primitive as ten thousand years ... almost, for they have
had some contact with the whites. Parties of them come out once in a
while to trade, and that is all. Even the Hudson Bay Company failed to
find them and farm them.
"And now the girl. I was coming up a stream--you'd call it a river in
California--uncharted--and unnamed. It was a noble valley, now shut in
by high canyon walls, and again opening out into beautiful stretches,
wide and long, with pasture shoulder-high in the bottoms, meadows

dotted with flowers, and with clumps of timberspruce--virgin and
magnificent. The dogs were packing on their backs, and were
sore-footed and played out; while I was looking for any bunch of
Indians to get sleds and drivers from and go on with the first snow. It
was late fall, but the way those flowers persisted surprised me. I was
supposed to be in sub-arctic America, and high up among the buttresses
of the Rockies, and yet there was that everlasting spread of flowers.
Some day the white settlers will be in there and growing wheat down
all that valley.
"And then I lifted a smoke, and heard the barking of the dogs--Indian
dogs--and came into camp. There must have been five hundred of them,
proper Indians at that, and I could see by the jerking-frames that the fall
hunting had been good. And then I met her--Lucy. That was her name.
Sign language--that was all we could talk with, till they led me to a big
fly--you know, half a tent, open on the one side where a campfire
burned. It was all of moose-skins, this fly--moose-skins, smoke-cured,
hand-rubbed, and golden-brown. Under it everything was neat and
orderly as no Indian camp ever was. The bed was laid on fresh spruce
boughs. There were furs galore, and on top of all was a robe of
swanskins--white swan-skins--I have never seen anything like that robe.
And on top of it, sitting cross-legged, was Lucy. She was nut-brown. I
have called her a girl. But she was not. She was a woman, a nut-brown
woman, an Amazon, a full-blooded, full-bodied woman, and royal ripe.
And her eyes were blue.
"That's what took me off my feet--her eyes--blue, not China blue, but
deep blue, like the sea and sky all melted into one, and very wise. More
than that, they had laughter in them--warm laughter, sun-warm and
human, very human, and . . . shall I say feminine? They were. They
were a woman's eyes, a proper woman's eyes. You know what that
means. Can I say more? Also, in those blue eyes were, at the same time,
a wild unrest, a wistful yearning, and a repose, an absolute repose, a
sort of all-wise and philosophical calm."
Trefethan broke off abruptly.
"You fellows think I am screwed. I'm not. This is only my fifth since

dinner. I am dead sober. I am solemn. I sit here now side by side with
my sacred youth. It is not I--'old' Trefethan--that talks; it is my youth,
and it is my youth that says those were the most wonderful eyes I have
ever seen--so very calm, so very restless; so very wise, so very curious;
so very old, so very young; so satisfied and yet yearning so wistfully.
Boys, I can't describe them. When I have told you about her, you may
know better for yourselves."
"She did not stand up. But she put out her hand."
"'Stranger,' she said, 'I'm real glad to see you.'
"I leave it to you--that sharp, frontier, Western tang of speech. Picture
my sensations. It was a woman, a white woman, but that tang! It was
amazing that it should be a white woman, here, beyond the last
boundary of the world--but the tang. I tell you, it hurt. It was like the
stab of a flatted note. And yet, let me tell you, that woman was a poet.
You shall see."
"She dismissed the Indians. And, by Jove, they went. They took her
orders and followed her blind. She was hi-yu skookam chief. She told
the bucks to make a camp for me and to take care of my dogs. And they
did, too. And they knew enough not to get away with as much as a
moccasin-lace of my outfit. She was a regular
She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed, and I want to tell you