Part 11 (2/2)

As easily as I could have lifted an infant, the great savage with his unengaged hand swung me from my feet, and contemptuously dropped me on my chair again, after which he took a long draught out of the bottle, and then handed it to his companion. The effect of the liquor upon their savage natures showed itself almost immediately; they began to yell and shout, and putting their hands around their mouths uttered cries like prairie wolves. I shrank closer to the wall.

In ten minutes they had finished the bottle, and were become nothing better than howling maniacs. They joined hands and capered round the stove, stamping the floor viciously with their moccasined feet. Again, they would wave their long arms about their heads in the most grotesque manner, uttering at the same time the most blood-curdling war-whoops.

In their eyes was the baleful light of the wild beast. The coal-oil light, which but dimly lit up the room, threw a yellow shade upon their dark, brutal faces, making them look like emissaries from the evil one, dancing in fiendish glee over some evil deed. The storm, as though in sympathy with the savage scene, had risen to a hurricane, shrieking like a mad thing, and through the cas.e.m.e.nt and ill-constructed door piled up miniature snow-banks.

Every moment I expected my unwelcome visitors would seize me, and in their insane glee practise upon me some savage torture. Would they never cease? For nearly thirty minutes I sat still as death, where they had flung me. Safety lay in not attracting their attention; but a dreadful ordeal was in store for me.

The instrument, which had been silent for a time, again awoke to life.

The dispatcher was calling my office. Like a flash the order to detain the down express that he had sent came back to my memory, and with a thrill of horror I remembered that I had omitted to turn the red lamp.

The dispatcher, I knew, wanted to ask me if the train had arrived.

Involuntarily I started to my feet.

The only sounds now to be heard were the ticking of the instrument and the ceaseless cries of the storm. The Indians, the instant they heard the former, ceased their uncivilized mirth, again looked apprehensively at the mysterious instrument, and hurriedly glanced at me. Their treacherous, suspicious natures were thoroughly aroused on seeing me looking eagerly toward the instrument. I knew not how near the train might be; act I must. I thought of the fearful loss of life which would surely occur unless I could reach the cord that hung above the instrument, and with one pull swing round the red lamp and let it beam across the track. I had received the order to expose the light, and unless I did so I knew full well the Company would hold me responsible for any accident that might occur. I had written the order in the order-book when receiving it.

All this pa.s.sed through my mind like a flash. I did not dread the Company, but I could not let scores of lives be sacrificed in order to save my own. I had always thought I was not the stuff brave men are made of, but when put to the test I gloried in finding that I was not a coward.

I was quite calm as I began carelessly to walk over to the instrument.

The drunken savages were upon me almost immediately. As they felled me to the floor, my ears caught the distant rumbling of the east-bound locomotive. The Indians also had heard the noise, and as they turned to listen I once more sprang to my feet and dashed past them. One of them I pa.s.sed in safety, but as I dodged the big brave he struck viciously at me with the broken bottle.

His aim was but too true; the ragged mouth of the bottle opened my face like a conical bullet. I had only a few more steps to go. Before I fell I knew that I had turned the light.

The conductor put me on the train and took me to Winnipeg, where I remained in the hospital for three weeks.

The Indians had gone when he entered the station. He had seen the order in the book, and had waited the arrival of the west-bound express, which arrived five minutes later. Had he not seen the red light he would have gone on, and the trains would have met about two miles east of the station.

The detectives tried to trace the two brutal savages, but did not succeed.

Yes, as long as I live I shall remember that Christmas when I was employed in the far west by the great Canadian Pacific Railway.

Le Loup-Garou.

The fear of it is killing me, Baptiste, for it is on my mind all the time. Think of it: for seven long years he has neither been to confession nor partaken of the blessed sacrament, and he is drinking and growing wickeder every day. This is the last night of the seventh year, and the curse may fall upon him now at any moment. She buried her wrinkled, fear-stricken face in her thin trembling hands, and wept as though her heart was breaking. ”O Marie, blessed Virgin!” she whispered, ”save our son, our Pierre; let not the fate of the loup-garou fall upon him.” A thin stream of light shone through an ancient crack in the old-fas.h.i.+oned box-stove, and fell caressingly across the bowed head, making its silvery hair look pathetically thin.

The bent shoulders of the sorrowing mother shook convulsively.

Baptiste gazed with a troubled look at the bar of light on his wife's head, and his heart went out to her as only a husband's can to a wife who for half a century has borne with him the joys and trials of the pa.s.sing years. As he looked at the thin white hair, memory drifted back to the time when it was as black as a raven's wing, and fell in great glossy folds far below her waist. A tender smile stole into his face as he remembered how, on account of the waywardness of the beautiful hair and its rebellion against imprisonment, he had more than once heard her chide it; yes, and at times when more than usually arrogant, threaten to use the shears upon it. He observed, too, how round her shoulders had grown, and noted many other signs of old age which the glow from the stove made so cruelly apparent. It had taken sixty years of life just to streak her hair with grey; but the past seven years had remorselessly thinned and whitened it, and now not even one black hair was to be seen. All these things and many more he thought of as he gazed upon his sorrowing wife.

Distressfully the old man put his hand to his forehead, and then thought reverted to himself, and he recalled the days when his head was subject to his will and did not, with painful persistency, nod and tremble the long day through. The infirmity of age was strong upon him; seventy years is a long time to have lived and toiled as French-Canadian farmers toil in eastern Canada. He thought, too, how much he had aged the last seven years, and of the one who had caused those years to be fraught with so much suffering to them both. He realized, indeed, that sorrow ages more quickly than years!

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