Chapter 24. The Rescue

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_ CHAPTER XXIV. THE RESCUE

On the first snow came young Dixon from Fort Churchill. Jean de Gravois met him on the trail near Ledoq's. When the Englishman recognized the little Frenchman he leaped from his sledge and advanced with outstretched hand, his face lighting up with pleasure.

"Bless me, if it isn't my old friend, Jean!" he cried. "I was just thinking of you, Gravois, and how you trimmed me to a finish two winters ago. I've learned a lot about you people up here in the snows since then, and I'll never do anything like that again." He laughed into Jean's face as they shook hands, and his voice was filled with unbounded sincerity. "How is Mrs. Gravois, and the little Gravois--and Melisse?" he added, before Jean had spoken.

"All well, M'seur Dixon," replied Jean. "Only the little Gravois have almost grown into a man and woman."

An hour or so later he said to Iowaka:

"I can't help liking this man Dixon, and yet I don't want to. Why is it, do you suppose?"

"Is it because you are afraid that Melisse will like him?" asked his wife, smiling over her shoulder.

"Blessed saints, I believe that it is!" said Jean frankly. "I hate foreigners--and Melisse belongs to Jan."

"She did, once, but that was a long time ago, Jean."

"It may be, and yet I doubt it, ma bien aimee. If Jan would tell her--"

"A woman will not wait always," interrupted Iowaka softly. "Jan Thoreau has waited too long!"

A week later, as they stood together in front of their door, they saw Dixon and Melisse walking slowly in the edge of the forest. The woman laughed into Jean's face.

"Did I not say that Jan had waited too long?"

Jean's face was black with disapprobation.

"Then you would have taken up with some foreigner if I had remained in the Athabasca country another year or two?" he demanded questioningly.

"Very likely," retorted Iowaka mischievously, running into the cabin.

"The devil!" said Jean sourly, stalking in the direction of the store.

He was angered at the coolness with which Jan accepted the situation.

"This Dixon is with Melisse afternoon and evening, and they walk together every day in the bush," he said to him. "Soon there will be a wedding at Lac Bain!"

"Melisse deserves a good man," replied Jan, unmoved. "I like Dixon."

Deep down in his soul he knew that each day was bringing the end of it all much nearer for him. He did not tell Melisse that he had returned to Lac Bain to be near her once more, nor did he confide in Jean. He had anticipated that this winter at the post would be filled with a certain painful pleasure for him--but he had not anticipated Dixon. Day after day he saw Melisse and the Englishman together, and while they awakened in him none of the fiery jealousy which might have rankled in the bosom of Jean de Gravois, the knowledge that the girl was at last passing from him for ever added a deeper grief to that which was already eating at his heart.

Dixon made no effort to conceal his feelings. He loved Melisse. Frankly he told this to Jean one day, when they were on the Churchill trail. In his honest way he said things which broke down the last of Jean's hereditary prejudices, and compelled him to admit that this was a different sort of foreigner than he had ever known before.

"Diable, I like him," he said to himself; "and yet I would rather see him in the blessed hereafter than have him take Melisse from Jan!"

The big snow decided.

It came early in December. Dixon had set out alone for Ledoq's early in the morning. By noon the sky was a leaden black, and a little later one could not see a dozen paces ahead of him for the snow. The Englishman did not return that day. The next day he was still gone, and Gravois drove along the top of the mountain ridge until he came to the Frenchman's, where he found that Dixon had started for Lac Bain the preceding afternoon. He brought word back to the post. Then he went to Melisse.

"It is as good as death to go out in search of him," he said. "We can no longer use the dogs. Snowshoes will sink like leaden bullets by morning, and to go ten miles from the post means that there will be bones to be picked by the foxes when the crust comes!"

It was dark when Jan came into the cabin. Melisse started to her feet with a little cry when he entered, covered white with the snow. A light pack was strapped to his back, and he carried his rifle in his hand.

"I am going to hunt for him," he said softly. "If he is alive, I will bring him back to you."

She came to him slowly, and the beating of Jan's heart sounded to him like the distant thrumming of partridge-wings. Ah, would he ever forget that look? The old glory was in her eyes, her arms were reaching out, her lips parted. Jan knew how the Great Spirit had once appeared to Mukee, and how a white mist, like a snow-veil, had come between the half-breed's eyes and the wondrous Thing he beheld. That same veil drifted between Jan and the girl. As in a vision, he saw her face so near to him that he felt the touch of her sweet breath, and he knew that one of his rough hands was clasped in both of her own, and that after a moment it was crushed tightly against her bosom.

"Jan, my hero--"

He struggled back, almost sobbing, as he plunged out into the night again. He heard her voice crying after him, but the wild wailing of the spruce, and the storm in his brain, drowned its words. He had seen the glorious light of love in her eyes--her love for Dixon! And he would find him! At last he, Jan Thoreau, would prove that the old love was not dead within him; he would do for Melisse this night--to- morrow--the next day, and until he fell down to die--what he had promised to do on their sledge-ride to Ledoq's. And then--

He went to Ledoq's now, following the top of the mountain, and reached his cabin in the late dawn. The Frenchman stared at him in amazement when he learned that he was about to set out on a search for Dixon.

"You will not find him," he said slowly in French; "but if you are determined to go, I will hunt with you. It is a big chance that we will not come back."

"I don't want you to go," objected Jan. "One will do as much as two, unless we search alone. I came your way to find if it had begun to snow before Dixon left."

"An hour after he had gone, you could not see your hand before your face," replied Ledoq, preparing his pack. "There is no doubt but that he circled out over Lac Bain. We will go that far together, and then search alone."

They went back over the mountain, and stopped when instinct told them that they were opposite the spruce forests of the lake. There they separated, Jan going as nearly as he could guess into the northwest, Ledoq trailing slowly and hopelessly into the south.

It was no great sacrifice for Jan, this struggle with the big snows for the happiness of Melisse. What it was to Ledoq no man ever guessed or knew, for it was not until the late spring snows had gone that the people at Lac Bain found what the foxes and the wolves had left of him, far to the south.

Fearlessly Jan plunged into the white world of the lake. There was neither rock nor tree to guide him, for everywhere was the heavy ghost-raiment of the Indian god. The balsams were bending under it, the spruces were breaking into hunchback forms, the whole world was twisted in noiseless torture under its increasing weight. Out through the still terror of it all Jan's voice went in wild, echoing shouts. Now and then he fired his rifle, and always he listened long and intently. The echoes came back to him, laughing, taunting, and then each time fell the mirthless silence of the storm.

Day came, only a little lighter than the night. He crossed the lake, his snow-shoes sinking ankle-deep at every step, and once each half- hour he fired a single shot from his rifle. He heard shots to the south, and knew that it was Ledoq; each report coming to him more faintly than the last, until they had died away entirely.

Across the lake he struck the forest again, and his shouts echoed in futile inquiry in its weird depths. About him there was no sign of life, no sound except the faint fluttering of falling snow. Under five feet of this snow the four-footed creatures of the wilderness were snugly buried; close against the trunks of the spruces, sheltered within their tent-like coverings, the birds waited like lifeless things for the breaking of the storm.

At noon Jan stopped and ate his lunch. Then he went on, carrying his rifle always upon his right shoulder, so that the steps of his right leg would be shortened, and he would travel in a circle, as he believed Dixon had done.

The storm thickened with the falling of night, and he burrowed himself a great hole in the soft snow and filled it with balsam boughs for a bed. When he awakened, hours later, he stood up, and thrust out his head, and found himself buried to the arm-pits. With the aid of his broad snow-shoes he drew himself out, until he stood knee-deep in the surface.

He lifted his pack. As he swung it before him, one arm thrust through a strap, he gave a startled cry. Half of one side of the pack was eaten away! He thrust his hands through the breach, and a moan of despair sobbed on his lips when he found that his food was gone. A thin trickle of flour ran through his fingers upon the snow. He pulled out a gnawed pound of bacon, a little tea--and that was all.

Frantically he ripped the rent wider in his search, and when he stood up, his wild face staring into the chaos about him, he held only the bit of bacon in his hand. In it were the imprints of tiny teeth--sharp little razor-edged teeth that told him what had happened. While he had slept a mink had robbed him of his food!

With one of his shoes he began digging furiously in the snow. He tore his balsam bed to pieces. Somewhere--somewhere not very far away--the little animal must have cached its theft. He dug down until he came to the frozen earth. For an hour he worked and found nothing.

Then he stopped. Over a small fire he melted snow for tea and broiled a slice of the bacon, which he ate with the few biscuit crumbs he found in the pack. Every particle of flour that he could find he scraped up with his knife and put into one of the deep pockets of his caribou coat. After that he set cut in the direction in which he thought he would find Lac Bain.

Still he shouted for Dixon, and fired an occasional shot from his rifle. By noon he should have struck the lake. Noon came and passed; the gloom of a second night fell upon him. He built himself a fire, and ate two-thirds of what remained of the bacon. The handful of flour in his pocket he did not disturb.

It was still night when he broke his rest and struggled on. His first fears were gone. In place of them, there filled him now a grim sort of pleasure. A second time he was battling with death for Melisse. And this, after all, was not a very hard fight for him. He had feared death in the red plague, but he did not fear the thought of this death that threatened him in the big snows. It thrilled him, instead, with a strange sort of exhilaration. If he died, it would be for Melisse, and for all time she would remember him for what he had done.

When he ate the last bit of his bacon, he made up his mind what he would do when the end came. In the stock of his rifle he would scratch a few last words to Melisse. He even arranged the words in his brain-- four of them--"Melisse, I love you." He repeated them to himself as he staggered on, and that night, beside the fire he built, he began by carving her name.

"To-morrow," he said softly, "I will do the rest."

He was growing very hungry, but he did not touch the flour. For six hours he slept, and then drank his fill of hot tea.

"We will travel until day, Jan Thoreau," he informed himself, "and then, if nothing turns up, we will build our last camp, and eat the flour. It will be the last of us, for there will be no meat above this snow for days."

His snow-shoes were an impediment now, and he left them behind, along with one of his two blankets, which had grown to be like lead upon his shoulders. He counted his cartridges--ten of them. One of these he fired into the air.

Was that an echo he heard?

A sudden thrill shot through him. He strained his ears to catch a repetition of the sound. In a moment it came again--clearly no echo this time.

"Ledoq!" he cried aloud.

He fired again.

Back to him came the distant, splitting crack of a rifle. He forced his way toward it. After a little he heard the signal again, much nearer than before, and he fired in response. A few hundred yards farther on he came to a low mountain ridge, and lifted his voice in a loud shout. A shot came from just over the mountain.

Waist deep in the light snow he began the ascent, dragging himself up by the tops of the slender saplings, stopping every few yards to half- stretch himself out in the soft mass through which he was struggling, panting with exhaustion. He shouted when he gained the top of the ridge. Up through the white blur of snow on the other side there came to him faintly a shout; yet, in spite of its faintness, Jan knew that it was very near.

"Something has happened to Ledoq," he told himself, "but he surely has food, and we can live it out until the storm is over."

It was easier going down the ridge, and he went quickly in the direction from which the voice had come, until a mass of huge boulders loomed up before him. There was a faint odor of smoke in the air, and he followed it in among the rocks, where it grew stronger.

"Ho, Ledoq!" he shouted.

A voice replied a dozen yards away. Slowly, as he advanced, he made out the dim shadow of life in the white gloom--a bit of smoke climbing weakly in the storm, the black opening of a brush shelter--and then, between the opening and the spiral of smoke, a living thing that came creeping toward him on all fours, like an animal.

He plunged toward it, and the shadow staggered upward, and would have fallen had it not been for the support of the deep snow. Another step, and a sharp cry fell from Jan's lips. It was not Ledoq, but Dixon, who stood there with white, starved face and staring eyes in the snow gloom!

"My God, I am starving--and dying for a drink of water!" gasped the Englishman chokingly, thrusting out his arms. "Thoreau, God be praised--"

He staggered, and fell in the snow. Jan dragged him back to the shelter.

"I will have water for you--and something to eat--very soon," he said.

His voice sounded unreal. There was a mistiness before his eyes which was not caused by the storm, a twisting of strange shadows that bothered his vision, and made him sway dizzily when he threw off his pack to stir the fire. He suspended his two small pails over the embers, which he coaxed into a blaze. Both he filled with snow; into one he emptied the handful of flour that he had carried in his pocket --into the other he put tea. Fifteen minutes later he carried them to the Englishman.

Dixon sat up, a glazed passion filling his eyes. He drank the hot tea greedily, and as greedily ate the boiled flour-pudding. Jan watched him hungrily until the last crumb of it was gone. He refilled the pails with snow, added more tea, and then rejoined the Englishman. New life was already shining in Dixon's eyes.

"Not a moment too soon, Thoreau," he said thankfully, reaching over to grip the other's hand.

"Another night and--" Suddenly he stopped. "Great Heaven, what is the matter?"

He noticed for the first time the pinched torture in his companion's face. Jan's head dropped weakly upon his breast. His hands were icy cold.

"Nothing," he murmured drowsily, "only--I'm starving, too, Dixon!" He recovered himself with an effort, and smiled into Dixon's startled face. "There is nothing to eat," he continued, as he saw the other direct his gaze toward the pack. "I gave you the last of the flour. There is nothing--but salt and tea." He rolled over upon the balsam boughs with a restful sigh. "Let me sleep!"

Dixon went to the pack. One by one, in his search for food, he took out the few articles that it contained. After that he drank more tea, crawled back into the balsam shelter, and lay down beside Jan. It was broad day when he awoke, and he called hoarsely to his companion when he saw that the snow had ceased falling.

Jan did not stir. For a moment Dixon leaned over to listen to his breathing, and then dragged himself slowly and painfully out into the day. The fire was out. A leaden blackness still filled the sky; deep, silent gloom hung in the wake of the storm.

Suddenly there came to Dixon's ears a sound. It was a sound that would have been unheard in the gentle whispering of a wind, in the swaying of the spruce-tops; but in this silence it fell upon the starving man's hearing with a distinctness that drew his muscles rigid and set his eyes staring about him in wild search. Just beyond the hanging pails a moose-bird hopped out upon the snow. It chirped hungrily, its big, owl-like eyes scrutinizing Dixon. The man stared back, fearing to move. Slowly he forced his right foot through the snow to the rear of his left, and as cautiously brought his left behind his right, working himself backward step by step until he reached the shelter. Just inside was his rifle. He drew it out and sank upon his knees in the snow to aim. At the report of the rifle, Jan stirred but did not open his eyes; he made no movement when Dixon called out in shrill joy that he had killed meat. He heard, he strove to arouse himself, but something more powerful than his own will seemed pulling him down into oblivion. It seemed an eternity before he was conscious of a voice again. He felt himself lifted, and opened his eyes with his head resting against the Englishman's shoulder.

"Drink this, Thoreau," he heard.

He drank, and knew that it was not tea that ran down his throat.

"Whisky-jack soup," he heard again. "How is it?"

He became wide-awake. Dixon was offering him a dozen small bits of meat on a tin plate, and he ate without questioning. Suddenly, when there were only two or three of the smallest scraps left, he stopped.

"Mon Dieu, it was whisky-jack!" he cried. "I have eaten it all!"

The young Englishman's white face grinned at him.

"I've got the flour inside of me, Thoreau--you've got the moose-bird. Isn't that fair?"

The plate dropped between them. Over it their hands met in a great, clutching grip, and up from Jan's heart there welled words which almost burst from his lips in voice, words which rang in his brain, and which were an unspoken prayer--"Melisse, I thank the great God that it is this man whom you love!" But it was in silence that he staggered to his feet and went out into the gloom.

"This may be only a lull in the storm," he said. "We must lose no time. How long did you travel before you made this camp?"

"About ten hours," said Dixon. "I made due west by compass until I knew that I had passed Lac Bain, and then struck north."

"Ah, you have the compass," cried Jan, his eyes lighting up. "M'seur Dixon, we are very near to the post if you camped so soon! Tell me which is north."

"That is north."

"Then we go south--south and east. If you traveled ten hours, first west and then north, we are northwest of Lac Bain."

Jan spoke no more, but got his rifle from the shelter and put only the tea and two pails in his pack; leaving the remaining blanket upon the snow. The Englishman followed close behind him, bending weakly under the weight of his gun. Tediously they struggled to the top of the ridge, and as Jan stopped to look through the gray day about him, Dixon sank down into the snow. When the other turned toward him he grinned up feebly into his face.

"Bushed," he gasped. "Don't believe I can make it through this snow, Thoreau."

There was no fear in his eyes; there was even a cheerful ring in his voice.

A sudden glow leaped into Jan's face.

"I know this ridge," he exclaimed. "It runs within a mile of Lac Bain. You'd better leave your rifle behind."

Dixon made an effort to rise and Jan helped him. They went on slowly, resting every few hundred yards, and each time that he rose from these periods of rest, Dixon's face was twisted with pain.

"It's the flour and water anchored amidships," he smiled grimly. "Cramps--Ugh!"

"We'll make it by supper-time," assured Jan cheerfully.

Dixon leaned heavily on his arm.

"I wish you'd go on alone," he urged. "You could send help--"

"I promised Melisse that I would bring you back if I found you," replied Jan, his face turned away. "If the storm broke again, you would be lost."

"Tell me--tell me--" he heard Dixon pant eagerly, "did she send you to hunt for me, Thoreau?"

Something in the Englishman's voice drew his eyes to him. There was an excited flush in his starved cheeks; his eyes shone.

"Did she send you?"

Jan struggled hard to speak calmly.

"Not in words, M'seur Dixon. But I know that if I get you safely back to Lac Bain she will be very happy."

Something came in Dixon's sobbing breath which Jan did not hear. A little later he stopped and built a fire over which he melted more snow and boiled tea. The drink stimulated them, and they went on. A little later still and Jan hung his rifle in the crotch of a sapling.

"We will return for the guns in a day or so," he said.

Dixon leaned upon him more heavily now, and the distances they traveled between resting periods became shorter and shorter. Three times they stopped to build fires and cook tea. It was night when they descended from the ridge to the snow-covered ice of Lac Bain. It was past midnight when Jan dragged Dixon from the spruce forest into the opening at the post. There were no lights burning, and he went with his half-conscious burden to the company's store. He awakened Croisset, who let them in.

"Take care of Dixon," said Jan, "and don't arouse any of the people to-night. It will be time enough to tell what has happened in the morning."

Over the stove in his own room he cooked meat and coffee, and for a long time sat silent before the fire. He had brought back Dixon. In the morning Melisse would know. First she would go to the Englishman, then--then--she would come to him!

He rose and went to the rude board table in the corner of his room.

"No, Melisse must not come to me in the morning," he whispered to himself. "She must never again look upon Jan Thoreau."

He took pencil and paper and wrote. Page after page he crumpled in his hand and flung into the fire. At last, swiftly and despairingly, he ended with half a dozen lines. What he said came from his heart, in French:

"I have brought him back to you, my Melisse, and pray that the good God may give you happiness. I leave you the old violin, and always when you play, it will tell you of the love of Jan Thoreau."

He folded the page and sealed it in one of the company's envelopes. Very quietly he went from his room down into the deserted store. Without striking a light he found a new pack, a few articles of food, and ammunition. The envelope, addressed to Melisse, he left where Croisset or the factor would find it in the morning. His dogs were housed in a shack behind the store, and he called out their names softly and warningly as he went among them. As stealthily as their master they trailed behind him to the edge of the forest, and close under the old spruce that guarded the grave Jan stopped, and silently he stretched out his arms to the little cabin.

The dogs watched him. Kazan, the one-eyed leader, glared from him into the dimness of the night, whining softly. A low, mourning wind swept through the spruce tops, and from Jan's throat there burst sobbingly words which he had heard beside this same grave more than seventeen years before, when Williams' choking voice had risen in a last prayer for the woman.

"May the great God care for Melisse!"

He turned into the trail upon which Jean de Gravois had fought the Englishman, led his dogs and sledge in a twisting path through the caribou swamp, and stood at last beside the lob-stick tree that leaned out over the edge of the white barrens. With his knife he dug out the papers which he had concealed in that whisky-jack hole.

It was near dawn when he recovered the rifle which he had abandoned on the mountain top. A little later it began to snow. He was glad, for it would conceal his trail.

For thirteen days he forced his dogs through the deep snows into the south. On the fourteenth they came to Le Pas, which is the edge of civilization. It was night when he came out of the forest, so that he could see the faint glow of lights beyond the Saskatchewan.

For a few moments, before crossing, he stopped his tired dogs and turned his face back into the grim desolation of the North, where the aurora was playing feebly in the skies, and beckoning to him, and telling him that the old life of centuries and centuries ago would wait for him always at the dome of the earth.

"The good God bless you, and keep you, and care for you ever more, my Melisse," he whispered; and he walked slowly ahead of his dogs, across the river, and into the Other World. _

Read next: Chapter 25. Jack Thornton

Read previous: Chapter 23. Jan Returns

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