CHAPTER XIV
A FRIGID IDYL
Arrived back at the little shanty, they set about their housekeeping
at once. The situation might have been delicate in other periods
and climes, but here no false sentimentality clouded the grisly
facts. Face to face with them stood hunger and cold, two relentless
enemies. Hunger, in a land where the temperature burns up the
tissues as a freight-engine on a grade eats coal, makes no truces;
it sets its fangs when October comes, and tries its malignant best
to keep them set until May or June.
Cold is something that persons of a temperate clime never experience.
When the temperature reaches ten below zero the papers are full of
it, and there is general consternation. But, here, in latitude
fifty-four north, the mercury goes down to fifty or sixty below,
and life becomes something that is at best only mere existence,
and at worst, annihilation.
And these were the two foes that a hardy man and a delicately
natured woman set themselves to defeat.
“I—I can't very well sleep outside the shanty,” said Donald as
indifferently as possible. “I have no tent or sleeping-bag. I should
freeze to death.”
The girl colored slightly, and asked:
“Is there no way to make a partition?” The man pondered a minute,
and then shook his head.
“Of course,” he explained, “a wood partition is out of the question,
because any real tree would break ax steel into brittle bits.
However, there are the robes and blankets you traveled in. If we
find we can spare one of those, we'll fix a partition—otherwise
not. We can't risk freezing our faces or our bodies at night.”
He spoke with a tone of genial friendliness, but there was a note
of undisputable authority in his voice that silenced whatever
objection the girl might have offered. Already, she began to feel
that this man knew. He would cherish her to his last breath, but
what he said she must obey, both for his sake and her own. There
was no equivocation possible; he had taken command; he would give
orders, which he expected her to obey promptly; he would do everything
for the best. He knew, and she did not. Therefore, she would
trust herself to him. So, she surrendered her will to his, and felt
little thrills of admiration as he walked about deep in thought,
planning their temporary life in this wretched hovel, which, somehow,
had stolen a little of the sunshine from the snow, and become a
dear and sacred dwelling-place.
Leaving her to set the place in order as much as possible, Donald
returned to the river and the upturned sledge. The latter, grounding
in a shallow, had stopped the down-stream drift and now, with its
dead dogs, was freezing solid in the ice. With his knife, he chopped
away around the edges, and found the pack thongs still around the
sledge. Hazardous poking with a hooked branch brought the pack to
light from beneath the sleigh, but it was a flat and sickly reminder
of what it had once been. The flour was gone, but the tea, which
had been in a canister, was unspoiled. A chunk of fat meat might
prove of some value after treatment. A few battered tin dishes and
utensils Donald greeted as priceless finds, and a rusted woodsman's
ax sent him into a war-dance of joy. Last of all, a single steel
trap came to light. He examined it closely, and discovered why it
had been taken on the trip by Charley Seguis and his companions.
It was broken, and no doubt one of the trappers had expected to
mend it some night by the camp-fire. Just now, Donald could not
tell whether it was beyond his skill or not.
Laden with his finds, he returned to the shanty, where Jean had
succeeded in coaxing a fire to burn in the old stone chimney at
one end. Near by lay the remainder of the fish he had caught in
the morning.
“Those will do for to-night,” he said, “but, after supper, I must
catch some more, and look about the banks of that little river. I
thought I noticed several things there this morning.”
“Oh, don't go away and leave me alone,” pleaded the girl, forgetting
that for two nights and days she had braved the wilderness
single-handed.
“We'll go together then, princess,” he replied, smiling. It was
now late in the afternoon, and almost dark, so they set about
dinner, which consisted of fish and tea. During the meal, Donald
regarded Jean for a little in quizzical silence.
“I'm glad Mr. Gates, the missionary, is with your father,” he said,
at last.
“I'm not, particularly; he's only in the way, and wants to preach
all the time, when there's fighting to be done. Why are you glad?”
“Just for the convenience of the thing, that's all. When we join
the men from Fort Severn, he can marry us at once.”
“Well, well, young man!” replied the girl, severely. “I can't say
that we have to rush into matrimony the moment we perceive a cassock.
Personally, next June at the fort, when the brigades have come
down, and there are flowers, and so forth, I shall be more ready
to talk the matter over with you.” She looked at him with eyebrows
lifted in mock condescension while she stirred the fish with a tin
spoon.
Donald, in the first bliss of happiness realized, leaned over to
kiss her, but this time the eyes that met his were serious. He took
the upraised hand in his banteringly, but listened to what she
said, nevertheless.
“Donald, of course we have to be a little foolish sometimes, but
I must ask you to agree with me that we only be good friends
after—oh, say three o'clock in the afternoon. From then on, no
foolishness, it will spare us a lot.”
Donald looked at the girl, keenly surprised. The same thought had
been in his mind, but he had not dared express it for fear of having
to entangle himself in impossible explanations. But, now, her
woman's intuition felt the thing he knew, that love, fierce, burning,
desirous, comes in the northland as well as in the tropics. With
a few words, they made their rule and he dropped her hand.
“But, to return to the preacher,” he resumed presently, as they
had more fish, “I think it will be better for all hands, if we
marry at once. This little honeyless honeymoon won't stand the
strain of months, dearest, for in that time it will have been
discussed from Labrador to the Columbia, and from the Coppermine
to Lake Superior, and I don't want you on the tongues of men at
all. I am glad you love me, for now our marriage has to be.”
“But, Donald, think of father! This is the last thing in the world
he will allow,” Jean protested. “Why, if he thought I had such a
step in mind he'd have apoplexy, I'm sure. Really, you don't know
how strongly he feels about it, and about you.”
“In reference to this Charley Seguis, whom I failed to bring in?”
“No, it isn't that. He disposed of that by putting you in the
guard-house.”
“It can't be my escape then, for he hasn't heard of that.”
“No,” said the girl, sitting back, her eyes troubled; “it isn't
any of these things, but something else more dreadful or hurtful
to you. I have tried so hard to learn what it is, but he won't tell
me! Old Maria knows, and hinted at it—”
“Old Maria!” cried Donald, in disgust. “What can that old hag know
about me? Little girl, my life has been clean, and yet these accursed
rumors fly around me like a flock of hawks over a grouse-nest.
Even your father, a just man in his way, will not give me a chance
to prove or disprove. In heaven's name, Jean, if you know anything
more tell me, and I'll run the thing to earth, if it takes all my
life.”
The girl lifted her calm eyes to his troubled ones, and he knew
that he would hear the frank truth.
“Poor boy!” she said. “I don't know anything definite. Old Maria
hinted at a stain on your life, and father, when I demanded the
facts from him, said that he wouldn't tell me if he could, for it
wasn't proper for me to hear them. That's all I know. But, Donald,
never for a moment have I doubted you, or lost faith that you could
upset this whole tissue of rumor as soon as you laid hold of it.”
“Good little princess!” he said gratefully, and pressed her hand
for a moment. “My conscience is clear, and, if I have your faith
and love, I can fight anything. God help these breeders of slander,
if I get hold of them, that's all,” he added, grimly.
A little while later, armed with ax and knife, and accompanied by
Jean, who carried the home-made fish-line, Donald led the way
through the woods to the river that had brought him such precious
freight on the tide of tragedy. That morning while angling, his
eyes had seen many things. Fifty feet from where he sat, he had
observed an iced pool in which a back-set from the swift stream
probably moved sluggishly. He had noticed little tracks of five-toed,
webbed feet on the thin drift of powdery snow that led to the bank
above this pool. Last of all, he had seen a smooth incline worn
by these webbed feet down to the brink of the pool.
“Otter!” he had said to himself; and he had resolved to come back
later.
Now, with crisp instructions as to silence, he advanced noiselessly,
trying every bit of crust before he set his weight upon it, avoiding
tufts of underbrush, and repressing his breathing. Jean, a true
daughter of the North, sensed these precautions almost by instinct,
and followed his example. He did not seek the fishing-hole of the
morning, but rather a clump of trees on the bank back of the incline,
thanking fortune that the light wind was in his face, so that the
man-smell could not be carried down to the pool. With infinite
care, the two approached the shelter of the trees, and, presently,
when the wind rustled among the boughs, parted them and looked
through.
There, on the bank, was the whole colony of otters, engaged in an
exhilarating pastime. Head-first, tail-first, sidewise, singly and
in groups, the little animals were coasting down the toboggan-like
path they had worn from the top of the bank to the water's edge.
No sooner did they roll to the bottom than they raced to the top
and started all over again, slithering, careening, tumbling. To
the girl, it was a strangely ludicrous sight, but to Donald it was
familiar enough. The otters were indulging in the favorite amusement
of their kind—sliding down a snow-bank.
The two observers turned away soon, and, with exaggerated care,
made their way back to the little shanty, where Donald at once set
about mending the broken trap. In two hours' time, he had succeeded
in fixing it temporarily. Then, after wrapping Jean in her blankets
and furs on the spruce-coveted bunk, he rolled up in his own
coverings before the fire for the night.
The next morning, Donald caught a fish for breakfast, and then
returned to the otter-slide with his trap and the piece of meat he
had rescued from the pack. Baiting the trap with part of a fish,
he buried it in the snow at a point where the otter must come down
the slide to the pool. Then, he rubbed the meat in the tracks where
he had stepped, and brushed snow across them, obliterating every
trace of his presence. After that, he returned to the shanty, for
there was still much to be done.
On his way to the fish pool that morning, he had seen a number of
sharply impressed, three-toed clusters of footprints, and recognized
the tracks of the hare. Now, he searched the by-ways of the low
ground in the vicinity, and finally discovered a line of undergrowth
like a hedge, through which a passage had been forced. The hard-packed
runway told him that here the long-ears passed through on their
foraging expeditions. He cut a number of small sticks and planted
them across this opening, leaving barely enough room for a small
animal to pass. Then, he took from his pocket the string of
moose-gut that had made part of the fish-line, and fashioned it
into a running noose. This he hung across the opening, and tied
the other end to a bent twig, which would spring up immediately a
pull dislodged it from its caught position. Here, too, he carefully
effaced any man-trace, and afterward went on to the second hedge,
where he set a snare made of his moccasin strings. At noon, he
returned to his snares, and found two strangled rabbits hanging in
mid air, frozen to the consistency of granite. Releasing them, he
reset the snares, and returned jubilantly to the cabin with his
catch. . . . And they had rabbit stew that day.
This was only the beginning. It was food, and no more. As the days
passed, Donald spent many hours in the forest, chopping saplings
and underbrush for the fire, going farther and farther from the
cabin in his search for the proper materials. Long since, he had
chopped the broken and battered sledge out of the ice, and hauled
it home. But it was damaged beyond repair, the smooth boards that
made its riding surface having been broken and splintered hopelessly.
But there was still use for it. With remarkable ingenuity, he
fashioned a small sleigh, some four or five feet long. Then, from
the harness of the dead dogs, he made trappings for Mistisi, who,
apparently anxious to help in all he saw going on around him, took
to them kindly. After this, it was easy work to gather wood,
however far distant. The dog made regular round trips from the
cabin to the spot where the man was at work, and shortly a great
pile of wood formed a wind-break for the shanty.
Jean Fitzpatrick now attended to the fishing alone, and what they
did not use for food was packed away out of Mistisi's eager reach
in the preserving cold. The rabbit-snares with two settings yielded
three or four of the animals every day, and these, skinned and
cleaned, added to the store of reserve food.
The otter-trap worked successfully, but required repairing after
each catch, so that it was scarcely worth the trouble of setting,
since rabbits and fish continued plentiful. One night, however,
after a series of sharp sniffs at the door while the rabbit was
broiling, and the discovery of padded prints in the snow next day,
Donald worked more carefully over the contrivance, and set it to
catch larger game—for bob-cats were about.
The evenings, too, were busy, for the rabbit skins must be cured.
Donald hewed out a wedge-shaped slab of cedar. This he spliced.
Then into a pelt, with the fur side turned in, he shoved this slab,
forcing into the splicing a smaller wedge of wood. Hammering this,
the larger block widened, and thus stretched the skin. When the
proper tautness was obtained, he fixed the pelt to another board
with pegs of wood, and hung it to dry.
Now, there were a number of these skins, and Jean wished to satisfy
her longing for privacy. A tiny rabbit-bone, whittled to a point,
and rabbit sinews, white and tough and secured with great difficulty,
supplied the means. So, for several days, she sewed the skins
together, and at last hung before her bed of boughs a heavy curtain.
Two weeks passed, and the man and girl had successfully set the
vicious world at naught. Their supplies were piling up fast, and
they bade fair to be comfortable all winter.
Before the fire one night, when there was no work to do, Donald
pulled comfortably at his pipe, and observed the girl on the opposite
side of the rude fireplace, busy with her rabbit-bone needle. Where
she had seemed sweet, gracious, and gentle before, now, after their
enforced intimate comradeship, his love for her was something the
wonder of which he had never dreamed possible. If only a priest
might come by on some evangelizing journey to the Eskimo! He would
marry her then and there, and live thus until spring, or her father,
came. Since their perfect relationship it seemed utterly impossible
for him to exist without her.
Suddenly, with a shake, Donald jerked himself back from these
dreams, and looked at her again, very sadly. The announcement he
was about to make appeared all the harder.
“Jean,” he said at last, “in about two days, we start back for Fort
Severn.”
The girl raised her head, and showed a face of pouting disappointment.
“Why?” she queried. “Here, we are comfortable and safe; we are in
bad shape to travel without a sledge, and the dangers are many,
especially since you have no gun. Let's stay here until somebody
finds us. It's been a wonderfully happy time for me. You're the
dearest, bravest, most chivalrous man alive, Donald.”
The lover flushed with pleasure, but his brows drew down nevertheless,
and his jaw set, for the temptation was strong upon him.
“I've been very happy, too, princess,” he rejoined; “but we mustn't
stay any longer. Before the world, neither of us would have a valid
excuse. We have provisions enough now for a week in the woods,
and public opinion would demand the reason for our delay. It's
hard, but we've got to go.”
And, with a little sigh, the girl meekly accepted the ultimatum.
