Part 20 (1/2)
”'Who's here?' says I.
”'He is here--Father Orloff,' and her eyes was round and scared so that I took her up and kissed her while she clung to me--she was such a little girl.
”'He spoke to me at the water-hole, ”I have come for you.” I ran very fast, but he came behind. ”Where is George?”' he said.
”I went out of the cabin down to the Mission, and into the house of Father Barnum. He was there.
”'Orloff! What do ye want?' I says.
”Father Barnum speaks up--'he's known for a good man the length of the river. George,' says he, 'Father Orloff tells me you stole the girl Metla from her tribe. 'Tis a shameful thing for a white to take a red girl for his wife, but it's a crime to live as you do.'
”'What?' says I.
”'We can't sell you provisions nor allow you to stay in the village.'
”Orloff grins. 'You must go on,' he says, 'or give her up.'
”'No! I'll do neither.' And I shows the paper from the missionary at Nulato statin' that we were married. 'She's my wife,' says I, 'and too good for me. She's left her people and her G.o.ds, and I'll care for her.' I saw how it hurt Orloff, and I laid my hand on his shoulder close to the neck. 'I distrust ye, and sure as Fate ye'll die the shocking death if ever harm comes to the little one.'
”That was the winter of the famine, though every winter was the same then, and I went to Anvik for grub--took all the strong men and dogs in the village. I was afraid when I left, too, for 'twas the time I should have been with her, but there was no one else to go.
”'When you come back,' she said, 'there will be another--a little boy--and he will grow mighty and strong, like his father.' She hung her arms around me, Cap, and I left with her kisses warm on my lips.
”It was a terrible trip, the river wet with overflows and the cut-offs drifted deep, so I drove back into Holy Cross a week late with bleedin' dogs and frozen Indians strainin' at the sled ropes.
”I heard the wail of the old women before. I come to the cabin, and when Metla had sobbed the story out in her weakness, I went back into the dark and down to the Mission. I remember how the Northern Lights flared over the hills above, and the little spruces on the summit looked to me like headstones, black against the moon--and I laughed when I saw the snow red in the night glare, for it meant blood and death.
”It was as l.u.s.ty a babe as ever crowed, but Orloff had come to the sick bed and sent her squaws away. Baptism and such things he said he'd do. The little fellow died that night.
”They say the Mission door was locked and barred, but I pushed through it like paper and came into Father Barnum's house, where they sat. Fifty below is bad for the naked flesh. I broke in, bare-headed, mittenless, and I'd froze some on the way down. He saw murder in my eyes and tried to run, but I got him as he went out of the room. He tore his throat loose from my stiffened fingers and went into the church, but I beat down the door with my naked fists, mocking at his prayers inside, and may I never be closer to death than Orloff was that night.
”Then a squaw tugged at my parka.
”'She is dying, Anguk,' she said, and I ran back up the hill with the cold bitin' at my heart.
”There was no death that night in Holy Cross, though G.o.d knows one naked soul was due to walk out onto the snow. At daylight, when I came back for him, he had fled down the river with the fastest dogs, and to this day I've never seen his face, though 'tis often I've felt his hate.
”He's grown into the strongest missionary on the coast, and he never lets a chance go by to harry me or the girl.
”D'ye mind the time 'Skagway' Bennet died? We was pardners up Norton Sound way when he was killed. They thought he suicided, but I know.
I found a cariboo belt in the brush near camp--the kind they make on the Kuskokwim, Father Orion's country. His men took the wrong one, that's all.
”I'm sorry I didn't tell ye this, Cap, before we started, for now we're into the South Country, where he owns the natives. He knows we've come, as the blood-token of the guide showed. He wants my life, and there's great trouble comin' up. I'm hopin' ye'll soon get your sight, for by now there's a runner twenty miles into the hills with news that we're blind in the church at Togiak. Three days he'll be goin', and on the fifth ye'll hear the jangle of Russian dog-bells. He'll kill the fastest team in Nus.h.a.gak in the comin', and G.o.d help us if we're here.”
George sc.r.a.ped a bit of frost-lace from the lone window pane. Dark figures moved over the snow, circling the chapel, and he knew that each was armed. Only their reverence for the church held them from doing the task set by Orloff, and he sighed as he changed the bandages on his suffering mate.
They awoke the next morning to the moan of wind and the sift of snow clouds past their walls. Staring through his peep-hole, George distinguished only a seethe of whirling flakes that greyed the view, blotting even the neighbouring huts, and when the early evening brought a rising note in the storm the trouble lifted from his face.
”A three-day blizzard,” he rejoiced, ”and the strongest team on the coast can't wallow through it under a week. These on-sh.o.r.e gales is beauts.”
For three days the wind tore from off the sea into the open bight at whose head lay Togiak, and its violence wrecked the armour of sh.o.r.e ice in the bay till it beat and roared against the spit, a thres.h.i.+ng maelstrom of shattered bergs. The waters piled into the inlet driven by the lash of the storm till they overflowed the river ice behind the village, submerging and breaking it into ragged, dangerous confusion.