Chapter 2. Mukee's Story

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_ CHAPTER II. MUKEE'S STORY

For many minutes after the last gentle breath had passed from the woman's lips, Jan Thoreau played softly upon his violin. It was the great, heart-broken sob of John Cummins that stopped him. As tenderly as if she had fallen into a sweet sleep from which he feared to awaken her, the man unclasped his arms and lowered his wife's head to the pillow; and with staring black eyes Jan crushed his violin against his ragged breast and watched him as he smoothed back the shimmering hair and looked long and hungrily into the still, white face.

Cummins turned to him, and, in the dim light of the cabin, their eyes met. 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 there was no one who noticed Jan the next day--except Mukee. He was fed. His frozen blood grew warm. As life returned, he felt more and more the pall of gloom that had settled over this spark of life in the heart of the wilderness. He had seen the woman, in life and in death, and he, too, loved her and grieved that she was no more. He said nothing; he asked nothing; but he saw the spirit of adoration in the sad, tense faces of the men. He saw it in the terror-stricken eyes of the wild little children who had grown to worship Cummins' wife. He read it in the slinking stillness of the dogs, in the terrible, pulseless quiet that had settled about him.

It was not hard for Jan to understand, for he, too, worshiped the memory of a white, sweet face like the one that he had seen in the cabin. He knew that this worship at Lac Bain was a pure worship, for the honor of the big snows was a part of his soul. It was his religion, and the religion of these others who lived four hundred miles or more from a southern settlement.

It meant what civilization could not understand--freezing and slow starvation rather than theft, and respect for the tenth commandment above all other things. It meant that up here, under the cold chill of the northern skies, things were as God meant them to be, and that a few of His creatures could live in a love that was neither possession nor sin.

A year after Cummins brought his wife into the North, a man came to the post from Fort Churchill, on Hudson's Bay. He was an Englishman, belonging to the home office of the Hudson's Bay Company in London. He brought with him something new, as the woman had brought something new; only in this instance it was an element of life which Cummins' people could not understand.

It breathed of tragedy from the first, to the men of the post. To the Englishman, on the other hand, it promised to be but an incident--a passing adventure in pleasure. Here again was that difference of viewpoint--the eternity of difference between the middle and the end of the earth.

Cummins was away for a month on a trap-line that went into the Barren Lands. At these times the woman fell as a heritage to those who remained, and they watched over her as a parent might guard its child. Yet the keenest eyes would not have perceived that this was so.

With Cummins gone, the tragedy progressed swiftly toward finality. The Englishman came from among women. For months he had been in a torment of desolation. Cummins' wife was to him like a flower suddenly come to relieve the tantalizing barrenness of a desert; and with the wiles and ways of civilization he sought to breathe its fragrance.

In the days and weeks that followed, he talked a great deal, when heated by the warmth of the box stove and by his own thoughts; and this was because he had not yet measured the hearts of Cummins' people. And because the woman knew nothing of what was said about the box stove, she continued in the even course of her pure life, neither resisting nor encouraging the new-comer, yet ever tempting him with that sweetness which she gave to all alike.

As yet there was no suspicion in her soul. She accepted the Englishman's friendship, for he was a stranger among her people. She did not hear the false note, she saw no step that promised evil. Only the men at the post heard, and saw, and understood.

Like so many faithful beasts, they were ready to spring, to rend flesh, to tear life out of him who threatened the desecration of all that was good and pure and beautiful to them; and yet, dumb in their devotion and faith, they waited and watched for a sign from the woman. The blue eyes of Cummins' wife, the words of her gentle lips, the touch of her hands, had made law at the post. If she smiled upon the stranger and talked with him, and was pleased with him, that was only one other law that she had made for them to respect. So they were quiet, evaded the Englishman as much as possible, and watched--always watched.

One day something happened. Cummins' wife came into the company's store; and a quick flush shot into her cheeks, and the glitter of blue diamonds into her eyes, when she saw the stranger standing there. The man's red face grew redder, and he shifted his gaze. When Cummins' wife passed him, she drew her skirt close to her; and there was the poise of 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. _

Read next: Chapter 3. Little Melisse

Read previous: Chapter 1. The Music

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