 CHAPTER XXIV On the first snow came young Dixon from Fort Churchill. Jean de Gravois met him on the trail near Les Docks. 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 Mélis?' he added, before Jean had spoken. "'All well, Monsieur 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 Mélis will like him?' asked his wife, smiling over her shoulder. "'Blessed saints, I believe that it is,' said Jean frankly. "'I hate foreigners, and Mélis belongs to Yan.' She did once, but that was a long time ago, Jean. "'It may be, and yet I doubt it, ma belle amie. If Yan would tell her, "'A woman will not wait always,' interrupted Iowaka softly. Yan Thoreau has waited too long. A week later, as they stood together in front of their door, they saw Dixon and Mélis walking slowly in the edge of the forest. The woman laughed into Jean's face. Did I not say that Yan 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 Yan accepted the situation. This Dixon is with Mélis afternoon and evening, and they walk together every day in the bush,' he said to him. "'Soon there will be a wedding at Lac Ban.' "'Mélis deserves a good man,' replied Yan, 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 Mélis that he had returned to Lac Ban 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 Mélis and the Englishmen 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 forever added a deeper grief to that which was already eating at his heart. Dixon made no effort to conceal his feelings. He loved Mélis. 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 Mélis from Jean. The big snow decided. It came early in December. Dixon had set out alone for Ledocs 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 Lacben that proceeding afternoon. He brought word back to the post. Then he went to Mélis. 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 up by the foxes when the crust comes. It was dark when Jean came into the cabin. Mélis 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 Mookie, 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 Turot, would prove that the old love was not dead within him. He would do for Melisse this night, tomorrow, the next day, and until he fell down to die, what he had promised to do on their sledge-ride to Les Docks. And then he went to Les Docks 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 Les Docks, preparing his pack. There is no doubt that he circled out over Lac Ban. 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, Les Docks trailing slowly and hopelessly into the south. It was no great sacrifice for Jan, this struggle with the big snows, for the happiness of Mélis. What it was to Les Docks no man ever guessed or knew, for it was not until the late spring snows had gone that the people at Lac Ban 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 snowshoes 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 Ladakh, 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-bows for a bed. When he awakened, hours later, he stood up and thrust out his head, and found himself buried to the armpits. With the aid of his broad snowshoes 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 nod-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 cast 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 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 out in the direction in which he thought he would find lack-bent. 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 Melyce. 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 Melyce, 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 Melyce. He even arranged the words in his brain, four of them. Melyce, 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. Tomorrow, he said softly, I will do the rest. He was growing very hungry, but he did not touch the flower. For six hours he slept, and then drank his fill of hot tea. We will travel until day, Yantaro, he informed himself. And then, if nothing turns up, we will build our last camp and eat the flower. It will be the last of us, for there will be no meat above this snow for days. His snowshoes 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. LADUCK! 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. Waste 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, YAH knew that it was very near. "'Something has happened to LADUCK!' 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. "'HOO! LADUCK!' 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 Yann's lips. It was not Laduck, 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. "'Tero! God be praised!' He staggered and fell in the snow. Yann 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 pales 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. Yann watched him hungrily until the last crumb of it was gone. He refilled the pales with snow, added more tea, and then rejoined the Englishman. New life was already shining in Dixon's eyes. "'Not a moment too soon, Thero!' 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. Yann'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 Yann. It was broad day when he awoke, and he called hoarsely to his companion when he saw that the snow had ceased falling. Yann 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 leadened 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 moosebird 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, Tyro!' he heard. He drank and knew that it was not tea that ran down his throat. "'Whiskey-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, twenty-eight without questioning. Suddenly when there were only two or three of the smallest scraps left, he stopped. "'Come on, dear! 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, Tyro. 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 Yon's heart there welled words which almost burst from his lips and voice, words which rang in his brain, and which were an unspoken prayer. "'Melys, 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-Bin and then struck north. "'Ah! You have the compass!' cried Yon, his eyes lighting up. "'Monsieur Dixon, we are very near to the post if you camp so soon. Tell me which is north!' "'That is north!' "'Then we go south, south and east. If you travel ten hours, first west and then north, we are north-west of Lac-Bin.' Yon 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 Yon 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 Yon's face. "'I know this ridge,' he exclaimed. It runs within a mile of Lac-Bin. You'd better leave your rifle behind!' Dixon made an effort to rise, and Yon 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 amid ships,' he smiled grimly. "'Cramps! Oh!' "'We'll make it by supper-time,' assured Yon cheerfully.' Dixon leaned heavily on his arm. "'I wish you'd go on alone,' he urged. "'You could send help. "'I promised Mélisse that I would bring you back if I found you,' replied Yon, 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 to row?' 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?' Yon struggled hard to speak calmly. "'Not in words, Monsieur Dixon. "'But I knew that if I get you safely back to Lecbert, she will be very happy.' Something came in Dixon's sobbing breath, which Yon 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 Yon 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 Ban. It was past midnight when Yon 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 Quassé who let them in. "'Take care of Dixon,' said Yon, and don't arouse any of the people to-night. It'll 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 Melyce would know. First she would go to the Englishman, then she would come to him. He rose and went to the rude board-table in the corner of his room. "'No, Melyce must not come to me in the morning,' he whispered to himself. "'She must never again look upon Yon Taro.' 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 Melyce, 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 Yon Taro. 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 Melyce, he left where Quassé 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, Yon 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 morning wind swept through the spruce tops, and from Yon's throat there burst sobbingly words which he had heard beside this same grave more than seventeen years before, when William's choking voice had risen in a last prayer for the woman. May the great God care for Melyce! 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 whiskey-jack hole. It was near dawn when he recovered the rifle which he had abandoned on the mountaintop. 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 day 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 evermore, my Mélise, he whispered, and he walked slowly ahead of his dogs, across the river, and into the other world. CHAPTER XXV There was music that night in Le Pas. John heard it before he came to the first of the scattered lights, and the dogs pricked up their ears. Kazan, the one eyed, whined under his breath, and the weight at Jan's heart grew heavier as the dog turned up his head to him in the starlight. It was strange music, nothing like Jan had ever heard. It was strange to Kazan, and set him whining, and he thrust his muzzle up to his master's touch inquiringly. They passed on like shadows, close to a big, lighted log-building from which the music came, and with it a tumult of laughter, of shuffling and stamping feet, of coarse singing and loud voices. A door opened, and a man and a woman came out. The man was cursing, and the woman was laughing at him, laughing as Jan had never heard a woman laugh before, and he held his breath as he listened to the taunting mockery in it. Others followed the first man and the first woman. Some passed quietly. A woman, escorted between two men, screamed with merriment as she flung toward his shadowy figure an object which fell with a crash against the sledge. It was a bottle. Kazan snarled. The trace-dog slunk close to the leader's heels. With a low word Jan led them on. Close down to the river, where the Saskatchewan swung a half-moon to the south and west, he found a low, squat-building with a light hung over the door, illuminating a bit of humor in the form of a printed legend which said that it was King Edward's Hotel. The scrub-bush of the forest grew within a hundred yards of it, and in this bush Jan tied his dogs and left his sledge. It did not occur to him that now, when he had entered civilization, he had come also into the land of lock and bolt, of robbers and thieves. It was loneliness and not suspicion that sent him back to unleash Kazan and take him with him. They entered the hotel, Kazan with suspicious caution. The door opened into a big room, lighted by an oil lamp, turned low. The room was empty except for a solitary figure sitting in a chair, facing a wide window which looked into the north. Making no sound that he might not disturb this other occupant, Jan also seated himself before the window. Kazan laid his wolfish head across his master's knees, his one eye upon him steadily and questioningly. Never in all his years of life had Jan felt the depth of loneliness that swept upon him now as he looked into the north. Below him the Saskatchewan lay white and silent. Beyond it he could see the dark edge of the forest, and far, far beyond that, hovering low in the sky, the polar star. It burned faintly now, almost like a thousand other stars that he saw, and the aurora was only a fading glow. Something rose up in Jan's throat and choked him, and he closed his eyes with his fingers clutching Kazan's head. In spite of the battle that he had fought, his mind swept back, back through the endless silent spaces, over mountains and through forests, swift, resistless, until once more the polar star flashed in all its glory over his head, and he was at lack-ban. He did not know that he was surrendering to hunger, exhaustion, the cumulative effects of his thirteen days' fight in the forests. He was with Melisse again, with the old violin, with the things that they had loved. He forgot in these moments that there was another in the room. He heard no sound as the man shifted his position so that he looked steadily at him and Kazan. It was the low, heartbroken sob of grief that fell from his own lips that awakened him again to a consciousness of the present. He jerked himself erect, and found Kazan with his fangs gleaming. The stranger had risen. He was standing close to him, leaning down, staring at him in the dim lamplight, and as Yann lifted his own eyes he knew that in the pale, eager face of the man above him there was written a grief which might have been a reflection of his own. For a full breath or two they looked, neither speaking, and the hair along Kazan's spine stood stiff. Something reached out to Yann and set his tired blood tingling. He knew that this man was not a forest man. He was not of his people. His face bore the stamp of the people to the south, of civilization. And yet something passed between them, leaped all barriers, and made them friends before they had spoken. The stranger reached down his hand, and Yann reached up his. All of the loneliness, the clinging to hope, the starving desire of two men for companionship passed in the long grip of their hands. You have just come down, said the man half-questioningly. That was your sledge out there? Yes, said Yann. The stranger sat down in the chair next to Yann. From the camps, he questioned eagerly. What camps, monsieur? The railroad camps, where they are putting the new line through beyond Wacusco. I know of no camps, said Yann simply. I know of no railroad, except this that comes to Lipa. I come from Lac-Ben on the edge of the barren lands. You have never been down before, asked the stranger softly. Yann wondered at the light in his eyes. A long time ago, he said, for a day, I have passed all of my life up there. Yann pointed to the north, and the other's eyes turned to where the polar star was fading low in the sky. And I have passed all of my life down there, he replied, nodding his head to the south. A year ago I came up here for—for health and happiness. He laughed nervously. I found them both. But I'm leaving them. I'm going back to-morrow. My name is Thornton, he added, holding out his hand again. I come from Chicago. My name is Thoreau, Yann Thoreau, said Yann. I have read of Chicago in a book, and have seen pictures of it. Is it larger than the city that is called Winnipeg? He looked at Thornton, and Thornton turned his head a little so that the light did not shine in his face. The grip of his fingers tightened about Yann's hand. Yes, it is larger. The officers of the great company are at Winnipeg, and look a missionary. Are they not, monsieur? Of the Hudson's Bay Company, yes. And if there was business to do, important business, monsieur, would it not be best to go to le commissinaire, questioned Yann? Thornton looked hard at the tense eagerness in Yann's face. There are nearer headquarters at Prince Albert, he said. That is not far, exclaimed Yann, rising. And they would do business there, important business? He dropped his hand to Quezon's head, and half turned toward the door. Perhaps better than the commissioner, replied Thornton. It might depend on what your business is. To them, as each stood for a moment in silence, there came the low wailing of a dog out in the night. They are calling for Quezon, said Yann quietly, as though he had not read the question in Thornton's last words. Good night, monsieur! The dogs were sitting upon their haunches, waiting, when Yann and Quezon went back to them. Yann drew them farther back, where the thick spruce shut them out from the clearing, and built a fire. Over this he hung his coffee-pale and a big chunk of frozen caribou meat, and tossed frozen fish to the hungry dogs. Then he pulled down spruce bows and spread his heavy blankets out near the fire, and waited for the coffee and meat to cook. The huskies were through when he began eating, and they laid down in their bellies, close about his feet, ready to snap at the scraps which he threw them. Yann noticed, as he ate, that there was left in them none of the old, fierce fighting spirit. They did not snap or snarl. There was no quarreling when he threw bits of meat to them, and he found himself wondering if they, too, were filled with the sickness which was eating at his own heart. With this sickness, this deathly feeling of loneliness and heartache, there had entered into Yann now a strange sensation that was almost excitement, an eagerness to fasten the dogs in their traces, to hurry on, in spite of his exhaustion, to that place which Thornton had told him of, Prince Albert, and to free himself there, for all time, of the thing which had oppressed him since that night many years ago, when he had staggered into Loch Bant to play his violin as Cummins' wife died. He reached inside his skin coat, and there he felt papers which he had taken from the hole in the lob-stick tree. They were safe. For twenty years he had guarded them. Tomorrow he would take them to the great company at Prince Albert, and after that, after he had done this thing, what would there remain in life for Yann Tareau? Perhaps the company might take him, and he would remain in civilization. That would be best for him. He would fight against the call of his forests as years and years ago he had fought against that call of the other world that had filled him with unrest for a time. He had killed that. If he did return to his forests he would go far to the west, or far to the east. No one that had ever known him would hear again of Yann Tareau. Kazan had crept to his blanket, daring to encroach upon it inch by inch, until his great wolf had lay upon Yann's arm. It was ten years ago that Yann had taken Kazan a little half-blind puppy that he and Melyce had chosen from a litter of half a dozen stronger brothers and sisters. Kazan was all that was left to him now. He loved the other dogs, but they were not like Kazan. He tightened his arm about the dog's head. Exhaustion and the warmth of the fire made him drowsy, and after a time he slept with his head thrown back against the tree. Having awoke him hours afterward, he opened his eyes and found that the fire was still burning brightly. On the far side of it, beyond the dogs, sat Thornton. A look at the sky where the stars were dying, and Yann knew that it was just before the gray break of dawn. He sat upright. Thornton laughed softly at him, and puffed out clouds of smoke from his pipe. You were freezing, he said, as Yann stared, and sleeping like a dead man. I waited for you back there, and then hunted you up. You know, I thought— He hesitated and knocked the ash from his pipe-bowl. Then he looked frankly and squarely at Yann. See here, old man, if your hard up had trouble of any sort, bad luck, but no money. Won't you let me help you out? Thank you, monsieur. I have money," said Yann. I prefer to sleep outside with the dogs. Monture, I guess I would have been stiff with the frost if you had not come. You have been here all night? Thornton nodded. And it is morning, exclaimed Yann, rising and looking above the spruce tops. You are kind, monsieur. I wish I might do as much for you. You can, said Thornton quietly. Where are you going from here? To the company's offices at Prince Albert. We will start within an hour. Will you take me with you? Thornton asked. With pleasure, cried Yann. But it will be a hard journey, monsieur. I must hurry, and you may not be accustomed to running behind the dogs. Thornton rose and stretched out a hand. It can't be too hard for me, he said. I wish— He stopped, and something in his low voice made Yann look straight into his eyes. For a moment they gazed at each other in silence, and again Yann saw in Thornton's face the look of loneliness and grief which he had first seen in the half-gloom of the hotel. It was the suppressed note in Thornton's voice, of despair almost, that struck him deepest, and made him hold the other's hand a moment longer. Then he turned to his pack upon the sledge. I've got meat and coffee and hard biscuits, he said. Will you have breakfast with me? That day Yann and Thornton made fifty miles westward over the level surface of the Sasseram, and camped again on the Saskatchewan. The second day they followed the river past the Sipinok, and struck south and west over the snow-covered ice for Prince Albert. It was early afternoon of the fourth day when at last they came to the town. We will go to the offices of the great company, said Yann. We will lose no time. It was Thornton who now guided him to the century-old building at the west edge of the town. It was Thornton who led him into an office filled mostly with young women, who were laboring at clicking-machines. And it was Thornton who presented a square bit of white card to a grey-haired man at a desk, who, after reading it, rose from his chair, bowed, and shook hands with him. And a few moments later a door opened, and Yann Thoreau alone passed through it, his heart quivering, his breath choking him, his hand clutching at the papers in his breast-pocket. Outside Thornton waited. An hour passed, and still the door did not reopen. The man at the desk glanced curiously at Thornton. Two girls at typewriters exchanged whispered opinions as to who might be this wild-looking creature from the north who was taking up an hour of the sub-commissioner's time. Nearly two hours passed before Yann appeared. Thornton, still patient, rose as the door opened. His eyes first encountered the staring face of the sub-commissioner. Then Yann came out. He had aged five years and two hours. There was a tired stoop to his shoulders, a strange pallor in his cheeks. To Thornton his thin face seemed to have grown thinner. With bowed head, looking nowhere but ahead of him, Yann passed on, and as the last door opened to let them out into the pale winter sun, Thornton heard the muffled sobbing of his breath. His fingers gripped Yann's arm, his eyes were blazing. "'If you're getting the wrong end of anything up there,' he cried fiercely. "'If you're in trouble and they're taking the blood out of you, tell me and I'll put the clamps on them, so help me, God!' They'll buck the devil when they buck Jack Thornton, and if it needs money to show him so, I've got half a million to teach him the game. "'Thanks, monsieur,' struggled Yann, striving to keep a lump out of his throat. "'It's nothing like that. I don't need money. Half a million would just about buy what I've given away up there.' He clutched his hand for an instant to the empty pocket where the papers had been. End of CHAPTER XXV That night, leaving Thornton still at supper in the little old Windsor Hotel, Yann slipped away and, with Cazan at his heels, crossed the frozen Saskatchewan to the spruce forest on the north shore. He wanted to be alone, to think, to fight with himself against a desire which was almost overpowering him. Once long ago he had laid his soul bare to Jean de Gravois and Jean had given him comfort. Night he longed to go to Thornton, as he had gone to Jean, and to tell him the same story, and what had passed that day in the office of the sub-commissioner. In his heart there had grown something for Thornton that was stronger than friendship, something that would have made him fight for him and die for him, as he would have fought and died for Jean de Gravois. It was a feeling cemented by a belief that something was troubling Thornton, that he too was filled with a loneliness and a grief which he was trying to conceal. And yet he fought to restrain himself from confiding in his new friend. It would do no good, he knew, except by relieving him of a part of his mental burden. He walked along the shore of the river and recrossed it again near the company's offices. All were dark, with the exception of the sub-commissioner's room. In that there glowed a light. The sub-commissioner was keeping his promise. He was working. He worked until late, for Jean came back two hours after and saw the light still there. A week it might be ten days, the sub-commissioner had told him, and it would be over. Always something in the north drew Jean's eyes and he looked there now, wondering what would happen to him after that week was over. Lights were out and people were in bed when he and Quezon returned to the hotel. But Thornton was up, sitting by himself in the gloom as Jean had first seen him at La Pa. Jean sat down beside him. There was an uneasy tremor in Thornton's voice when he said, Jean, did you ever love a woman, love her until you were ready and willing to die for her? The suddenness of the question rung the truth from Jean's lips in a low, choking voice. For an instant he thought that Thornton must have guessed his secret. Yes, monsieur? Thornton leaned toward him, gripping his knees, and the misery in his face was deeper than Jean had ever seen it before. I love a woman like that, he went on tensely. A girl, not a woman, and she is one of your people, Jean, of the north, as innocent as a flower, more beautiful to me than all the women I have ever seen before. She is at Oxford House. I am going home to save myself. Leave yourself, cried Jean. Mon Dieu, monsieur, does she not love you? She would follow me to the end of the earth. Then Thornton straightened himself and wiped his pale face. Suddenly he rose to his feet and motioned for Jean to follow him. He walked swiftly out into the night, and still faster after that until they passed beyond the town. From where he stopped they could look over the forests far into the pale light of the south. That's hell for me, said Thornton, pointing. It's what we call civilization, but it's mostly hell, and it's all hell for me. It's a hell of big cities, of strife, of bloodletting, of wickedness. I never knew how great a hell it was until I came up here, among you. I wished to God I could stay, always. You love her, breathed Jean. You can stay. I can't, groaned Thornton. I can't unless—what, monsieur?—unless I lose everything but her. Jean's fingers trembled as they sought Thornton's hand. And everything is—is—nothing when you give it for love and happiness, he urged. The great God, I know—everything, cried Thornton. Don't you understand? I said everything. He turned almost fiercely upon his companion. I'd give up my name for her. I'd bury myself back there in the forests and never go out of them for her. I'd give up fortune, friends, lose myself forever for her. But I can't. Good God, don't you understand? Jean stared. His eyes grew large and dark. I've spent ten years of worse than hell down there with a woman, went on Thornton. It happens among us, frequently, this sort of hell. I came up here to get out of it for a time. You know, now. There is a woman down there who—who is my wife. She would be glad if I never returned. She is happy now when I am away, and I have been happy for a time. I know what love is. I have felt it. I have lived it. God forgive me, but I am almost tempted to go back to her. He stopped at the change which had come in Jan, who stood as straight and as still as the blank spruce behind them, with only his eyes showing that there was life in him. Those eyes held Thornton's. They burned upon him through the gray gloom as he had never seen human eyes burn before. He waited, half startled, and Jan spoke. In his voice there was nothing of that which Thornton saw in his eyes. It was low and soft. And though it had that which rung like steel, Thornton could not have understood or feared it more. Mr.—how far have you gone with her? Thornton understood and advanced with his hands reaching out to Jan. Only as far as one might go with the purest thing on earth, he said. I have sinned in loving her and in letting her love me. But that is all, Jantero. I swear that is all. And you are going back into the south? Yes, I am going back into the south. The next day Thornton did not go. He made no sign of going on the second day. So it was with the third, the fourth, and the fifth. On each of these days Jan went once in the afternoon to the office of the sub-commissioner, and Thornton always accompanied him. At times when Jan was not looking there was a hungry light in his eyes as he followed the other's movements, and once or twice Jan caught what was left of this look when he turned unexpectedly. He knew what was in Thornton's mind and he pitied him, grieved with him in his own heart, until his own secret almost rung itself from his lips. Somehow in a way that he could not understand, Thornton's sacrifice to honor and his despair gave Jan strength, and a hundred times he asked himself if a confession of his own misery would do as much for the other. He repeated this thought to himself again and again on the afternoon of the ninth day when he went to the sub-commissioner's office alone. This time Thornton had remained behind. He had left him in a gloomy corner of the hotel room from which he had not looked up when Jan went out with Quezon. This ninth day was the last day for Jan to row. In a dazed sort of way he listened as the sub-commissioner told him that the work was ended. They shook hands. It was dark when Jan came out from the company's offices. Dark with a pale gloom through which the stars were beginning to glow with a ghostly gloom, lightened still more in the north with the rising fires of the northern lights. Alone Jan stood for a few moments close down to the river. Across from him was the forest, silent, black, reaching to the end of the earth, and over it, like a signal light beckoning him back to his world, the aurora sent out its shafts of red and gold. And as he listened there came to him faintly a distant wailing sound that he knew was the voice from that world, and at the sound the hair rose along Quezon's spine and he whined deep down in his throat. Quezon's breath grew quicker, his blood warmer. Over there, across the river, his world was calling to him, and he, Jan to row, was now free to go. This very night he would bury himself in the forest again, and when he lay down to sleep it would be with his beloved stars above him, and the winds whispering sympathy and brotherhood to him in the spruce tops. He would go, now. He would say good-bye to Thornton and go. He found himself running, and Quezon ran beside him. He was breathless when he came to the one lighted street of the town. He hurried to the hotel and found Thornton sitting where he had left him. "'It is ended, monsieur,' he cried in a low voice. "'It is over, and I am going. I am going to-night.' Thornton rose. "'Tonight?' he repeated. "'Yes, to-night, now. I am going to pick up my things. Will you come?' He went ahead of Thornton to the bare little room in which he had slept while at the hotel. He did not notice the change in Thornton until he had lighted a lamp. Thornton was looking at him doggedly. There was an unpleasant look in his face, a flush about his eyes, a rigid tenseness in the muscles of his jaws. "'And I—I, too, am going to-night,' he said. "'Into the south, monsieur?' "'No, into the north.' There was a fierceness in Thornton's emphasis. He stood opposite Jaan, leaning over the table on which the light was placed. "'I've broken loose,' he went on. "'I'm not going south, back to that hell of mine. I'm never going south again. I'm dead down there, dead for all time. They'll never hear of me again. They can have my fortune, everything. I'm going north. I'm going to live with you people, and God, and her.' Jaan sank into a chair. Thornton sat down and won across from him. "'I'm going back to her,' he repeated. "'No one will ever know.' He could not account for the look in Jaan's eyes, nor for the nervous twitching of the lithe-brown hands that reached half across the table. But Quezon's one eye told him more than Thornton could guess, and in response to it that ominous shivering wave rose along his spine. Thornton would never know that Jaan's fingers twitched for an instant in their old mad desire to leap at a human throat. "'You will not do that,' he said quietly. "'Yes, I will,' replied Thornton. "'I have made up my mind. Nothing can stop me but death.' "'There is one other thing that can stop you, and will, monsieur,' said Jaan as quietly as before. "'I, Jaan Tiro, will stop you.' Thornton rose slowly, staring down into Jaan's face. The flush about his eyes grew deeper. "'I will stop you,' repeated Jaan, rising also. "'And I am not death.' He went to Thornton and placed his two hands upon his shoulders. And in his eyes there glowed now that gentle light which had made Thornton love him as he had loved no other man on earth. "'Monsieur, I will stop you,' he said again, speaking as though to a brother. "'Sit down. I am going to tell you something. And when I have told you this, you will take my hand, and you will say, Jaan Tiro, I thank the great God that something like this has happened before, and that it has come to my ears in time to save the one I love. "'Sit down, monsieur.' End of chapter 26. Recording by Roger Maline. Chapter 27 of The Honor of the Big Snows. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Roger Maline. The Honor of the Big Snows by James Oliver Kerwood. Chapter 27. Jaan's Story. Jaan had aged five years during those two hours in the office of the sub-commissioner. He aged now as Thornton looked at him. There came the same tired, hopeless glow into his eyes, the same tense lines in his face. And yet, quickly, he changed as he had not changed on that afternoon. Two livid spots began to burn in his cheeks as he sat down opposite Thornton. He turned the light low, and his eyes glowed more darkly, and with an animal-like luster in the half-gloom. Something in him now, a quivering, struggling passion that lay behind those eyes, held Thornton white and silent. Monsieur, he began, in the low voice which Thornton was beginning to understand, I am going to tell you something which I have told to but two other human beings. It is the story of another man, a man from civilization, like you, who came up into this country of ours years and years ago, and who met a woman as you have met this girl at Oxford House, and who loved her as you love this one, and perhaps more. It is singular that the case should be so similar, Monsieur, and it is because of this that I believe our blessed lady gives me courage to tell it to you. For this man, like you, left a wife and two children when he came into the North. Monsieur, I pray the great God to forgive him, for he left a third child unborn. Yawn leaned upon his hand so that it shaded his face. It is not so much of that as of what followed that I am going to tell you, Monsieur, he went on. It was a beautiful love on the woman's part, and it would have been a beautiful love on the man's part, if it had been pure. For her he gave up everything, even his God, as you would give up everything, and your God, for this girl at Oxford House. Monsieur, I will speak mostly of the woman now. She was beautiful. She was one of the three most beautiful things that God ever placed in our world, and she loved this man. She married him, believed in him, was ready to die for him, to follow him to the ends of the earth, as our women will do for the men that they love. God in heaven, can you not guess what happened to Monsieur? A child was born. So fiercely did Yawn cry out the words that Thornton jerked back as though a blow had been struck at him from out of the gloom. A child was born, repeated Yawn, and Thornton heard his nails digging in the table. That was the first curse of God, a child. La churron, le bet de churron, that is what we call them, beasts of carrion, and carrion-eaters, breeders of devils and sin. Montier, that is what happened. A child was born with the curse of God upon him. Yawn stopped, his nails digging deeper, his breath escaping from him as though he had been running. Down in your world he would have grown up a man, he continued, speaking more calmly. I have heard that since. It is common down there to be a two-legged carrion, a man or a woman born out of wedlock. I have been told so, and that it is a curse not without hope. But here it is different. The curse never dies. It follows day after day, year after year. And this child, more unfortunate than the wild things, was born one of them. Do you understand, Monsieur? If the winds had whispered the secret, nothing would have come near him. The Indian women would sooner have touched the plague. He would have been an outcast, despised as he grew older, pointed at and taunted, called names which are worse than those called to the lowest and meanest dogs. That is what it means to be born under that curse up here. He waited for Thornton to speak, but the other sat silent and moveless across the table. The curse worked swiftly, Monsieur. It came first in remorse to the man. It gnawed at his soul, ate him alive, and drove him from place to place with the woman and the child. The purity and love of the woman added to his suffering, and at last he came to know that the hand of God had fallen upon his head. The woman saw his grief, but did not know the reason for it, and so the curse first came to her. They went north, far north, above the barren land, and the curse followed there. It gnawed at his life until he died. That was seven years after the child was born. The oil lamp sputtered and began to smoke, and with a quick movement, Jan turned the wick down until they were left in darkness. Monsieur, it was then that the curse began to fall upon the woman and the child. Do you not believe that about the sins of the fathers falling upon others? Mon Dieu, it is so, it is so. It came in many small ways, and then the curse, it came suddenly, like this. Jan's voice came in a hissing whisper now. Thornton could feel his hut breath as he leaned over the table, and in the darkness Jan's eyes shone like two coals of fire. It came like this, panted Jan. There was a new missionary at the post, a Christian from the south, and he was a great friend to the woman and preached God, and she believed him. The boy was very young and saw things, but did not understand at first. He knew afterward that the missionary loved his mother's beauty, and that he tried hard to win it, and failed, for the woman, until death, would love only the one to whom she had given herself first. Great God, it happened then, one night when every soul was about the big fires at the caribou roast, and there was no one near the lonely little cabin where the boy and his mother lived. The boy was at the feast, but he ran home with a bit of dripping meat as a gift for his mother, and he heard her cries, and ran in to be struck down by the missioner. It happened then, and even the boy knew, and followed the man, shrieking that he had killed his mother. There was a terrible calmness now in Jan's voice. Monsieur, it was true. She wasted away like a flower after that night. She died and left the boy alone with the curse, and that boy, Monsieur, was Jan Turot, the woman was his mother. There was silence now, a dead, pulseless quiet, broken after a moment by a movement. It was Thornton groping across the table. Jan felt his hands touch his arm. They groped farther in the darkness, until Jan Turot's hands were clasped tightly in Thornton's. And that is all, he questioned hoarsely. No, it is but the beginning, said Jan softly. The curse has followed me, Monsieur, until I am the unhappiest man in the world. Today I have done all that is to be done. When my father died, he left papers which my mother was to give to me when I had attained manhood. When she died, they came to me. She knew nothing of that which was in them, and I am glad. For they told the story that I have told to you, Monsieur, and from his grave my father prayed to me to make what restitution I could. When he came into the North for good, he brought with him most of his fortune, which was large, Monsieur, and placed it where no one would ever find it in the stock of the great company. A half of it, he said, should be mine. The other half he asked me to return to his children and to his real wife if she were living. I have done more than that, Monsieur. I have given up all, for none of it is mine. A half will go to the two children whom he deserted. The other half will go to the child that was unborn. The mother is dead. After a time, Thornton said, There is more, Jan. Yes, there is more, Monsieur, said Jan. So much more that if I were to tell it to you, it would not be hard for you to understand why Jan Tereau is the unhappiest man in the world. I have told you that this is but the beginning. I have not told you of how the curse has followed me and robbed me of all that is greatest in life. How it has haunted me day and night, Monsieur, like a black spirit, destroying my hopes, turning me at last into an outcast without people, without friends, without that which you, too, will give up in this girl at Oxford House. Monsieur, am I right? You will not go back to her. You will go south, and some day the great God will reward you. He heard Thornton rising in the dark. Shall I strike a light, Monsieur? No, said Thornton, close to him. In the gloom their hands met. There was a change in the other's voice now, something of pride, of triumph, of a glory just achieved. Jan, he said softly, I thank you for bringing me face to face with a God like yours. I have never met him before. We send missionaries up to save you. We look upon you as wild and savage and with only half a soul. And we are blind. You have taught me more than has ever been preached into me, and this great, glorious world of yours is sending me back a better man for having come into it. I am going south. Someday I will return, and I will be one of this world and one of your people. I will come and I will bring no curse. If I could send this word to her, ask her forgiveness. Tell her what I have almost been, and that I still have hope, faith, I could go easier down into that other world. You can, said Jan. I will take this word for you, Monsieur, and I will take more, for I will tell her what it has been the kind fate for Jan Thoreau to find in the heart of Monsieur Thornton. She is one of my people, and she will forgive and love you more for what you have done. For this, Monsieur, is what the Cree God has given to his people as the honor of the great snows. She will still love you, and if there is to be hope, it will burn in her breast, too, Monsieur. Something like a sob broke through Thornton's lips as he moved back through the darkness. And you, I will find you again. They will know where I go from Oxford House. I will leave word with her, said Jan. Good-bye, said Thornton, huskily. Jan listened until his footsteps had died away, and for a long time after that he sat with his head buried in his arms upon the little table. And Quezon, whining softly, seemed to know that in the darkened room had come to pass the thing which broke at last his master's overburdened heart. End of Chapter 27. Recording by Roger Maline. Chapter 28 of The Honor of the Big Snows. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Roger Maline. The Honor of the Big Snows by James Oliver Kerwood. Chapter 28. The Music Again. That night Yantaro passed for the last time back into the shelter of his forests. And all that night he travelled, and with each mile that he left behind him, something larger and bolder grew in his breast until he cracked his whip in the old way, and shouted to the dogs in the old way, and the blood in him sang to the wild spirit of the wilderness. Once more he was home. To him the forest had always been home, filled with the low voice of whispering winds and trees, and to-night it was more his home than ever. Lonely and sick at heart, with no other desire than to bury himself deeper and deeper into it, he felt the life and sympathy and love of it creeping into his heart, grieving with him in his grief, warming him with its hope, pledging him again the eternal friendship of its trees, its mountains, and all of the wild that had held therein. And from above him the stars looked down like a billion tiny fires kindled by loving hands to light his way. The stars that had given him music, peace since he could remember, and that had taught him more of the silent power of God than the lips of man could ever tell. From this time forth Yantaro knew that these things would be his life, his God. A thousand times in fanciful play he had given life and form to the stars' shadows about him, to the shadows of the tall spruce, the twisted shrub, the rocks, and even the mountains. And now it was no longer play, with each hour that passed this night, and with each day and night that followed, they became more real to him, and his fires in the black gloom painted him pictures as they had never painted them before, and the trees and the rocks and the twisted shrub comforted him more and more in his loneliness, and gave to him the presence of life in their movement, in the coming and going of their shadow forms. Everywhere they were the same old friends, unvarying and changeless. The spruce shadow of tonight, nodding to him in its silent way, was the same that had nodded to him last night, a hundred nights ago. The stars were the same, the winds whispering to him in the treetops were the same. Everything was as it was yesterday, years ago, unchanged, never leaving him, never growing cold in their devotion. He had loved the forest, now he worshipped it. In its vast silence he still possessed Mélis. It whispered to him still of her old love, of their days and years of happiness, and with his forest he lived these days over and over again, and when he slept with his forest he dreamed of them. Nearly a month passed before he reached Oxford House and found the sweet-faced girl whom Thornton loved. He did as Thornton had asked, and went on into the north and east. He had no mission now except to roam in his forests. He went down the haze, getting his few supplies at Indian camps, and stopped at last, with the beginning of spring, far up on the cutaway. Here he built himself a camp and lived for a time, setting deadfalls for bear. Then he struck north again, and still east, keeping always away from lack-bent. When the first chill winds of the bay brought warning of winter down to him, he was filled for a time with the longing to strike north and west, to go once more back to his barren land. But instead he went south, and so it came to pass that a year after he had left Lac-Ben, he built himself a cabin deep in the forest of God's River, fifty miles from Oxford House, and trapped once more for the company. He had not forgotten his promise to Thornton, and at Oxford House left word where he could be found if the man from civilization should return. In late mid-winter, Jan returned to Oxford House with his furs. It was on the night of the day that he came into the post that he heard a Frenchman who had come down from the north speak of Lac-Ben. None noticed the change in Jan's face as he hung back in the shadows of the company's store. A little later he followed the Frenchman outside and stopped him where there were no others near to over here. Monsieur, you spoke of Lac-Ben, he said in French. You have been there? Yes, replied the other. I was there for a week waiting for the first sledge snow. It is my old home, said Jan, trying to keep his voice natural. I have wondered if there are changes. You saw Cummins the factor? Yes, he was there. And Jean de Gravois, the chief man? He was away. Montier, listen to that, the dogs are fighting out there. A moment, Monsieur, begged Jan as the Frenchman made a movement as if to run in the direction of the tumult. The factor had a daughter, Mélis. She left Lac-Ben a long time ago, Monsieur, interrupted the trapper, making a tremendous effort to be polite as he edged toward the sound of battle. Monsieur Cummins told me that he had not seen her in a long time. I believe it was almost a year. Soc, listen to that. They are tearing one another to bits, and they are my dogs, Monsieur, for I can tell their voices among a thousand. He sprang through the darkness and Jan made a movement to follow. Then he stopped and turned instead to the company store. He took his pack to the sledge and dogs in the edge of the spruce, and Quezon leaped to greet him at the end of his babish. This night, as Jan travelled through the forest, he did not notice the stars or the friendly shadows. A year, he repeated to himself again and again, and once, when Quezon rubbed against his leg and looked up into his face, he said, Ah Quezon, our may least went away with the Englishman. May the great God give them happiness. The forest claimed him more than ever after this. He did not go back to Oxford House in the spring, but sold his furs to a passing half-breed and wandered through all of that spring and summer in the country to the west. It was January when he returned to his cabin when the snows were deepest, and three days later he set out to outfit at the Hudson's Bay Post on God's Lake, instead of at Oxford House. It was while they were crossing a part of the lake that Quezon leaped aside for an instant in his traces and snapped at something in the snow. Jan saw the movement but gave no attention to it until a little later when Quezon stopped and fell upon his belly, biting at the harness and whining in pain. The thought of Quezon's sudden snap at the snow came to him then like a knife thrust, and with a low cry of horror and fear he fell upon his knees beside the dog. Quezon whimpered, and his bushy tail swept the snow as Jan lifted his great wolfish head between his two hands. No other sound came from Jan's lips now, and slowly he drew the dog up to him until he held him in his arms as he might have held a child. Quezon stilled the whimpering sounds in his throat. His one eye rested on his master's face, faithful, watching for some sign, for some language there, even as the burning fires of a strange torture nod at his life, and in that eye Jan saw the deepening reddish film which he had seen a hundred times before in the eyes of foxes and wolves killed by poison bait. A moan of anguish burst from Jan's lips, and he held his face close down against Quezon's head, and sobbed now like a child, while Quezon rubbed his hut muzzle against his cheek, and his muscles hardened in a last desire to give battle to whatever was giving his master grief. It was a long time before Jan lifted his face from the shaggy head, and when he did, he knew that the last of all love, of all companionship, of all that bound him to flesh and blood in his lonely world was gone. Quezon was dead. From the sledge he took a blanket and wrapped Quezon in it, and carried him a hundred yards back from the trail. With bowed head he came behind his four dogs into God's house. Half an hour later he turned back into the wilderness with his supplies. It was dark when he returned to where he had left Quezon. He placed him upon the sledge, and the four huskies whined as they dragged on their burden, from which the smell of death came to them. They stopped in the deep forests beyond the lake, and Jan built a fire. This night, as on all nights in his lonely life, Jan drew Quezon close to him, and he shivered as the other dogs slunk back from him suspiciously, and the fire and the spruce tops broke the stillness of the forest. He looked at the crackling flames, at the fitful shadows which they set dancing and grimacing about him, and it seemed to him now that they were no longer friends, but were taunting him, gloating in Quezon's death, and telling him that he was alone, alone, alone. He let the fire die down, stirring it into life only when the cold stiffened him, and when at last he fell into an unquiet slumber, it was still to hear the spruce tops whispering to him that Quezon was dead, and that in dying he had broken the last fragile link between Jan Thoreau and Mélis. He went on at dawn, with Quezon wrapped in his blanket on the sledge. He planned to reach the cabin that night, and the next day he would bury his old comrade. It was dark when he came to the narrow plain that lay between him and the river. The sky was brilliant with stars when he slowly climbed the big barren ridge at the foot of which was his home. At the summit he stopped and seated himself on the edge of a rock, with nothing but a thousand miles of space between him and the pale glow of the northern lights. At his feet lay the forest, black and silent, and he looked down to where he knew his cabin was waiting for him, black and silent too. For the first time it came upon him that this was home, that the forest and the silence and the little cabin hidden under the spruce tops below held a deeper meaning for him than a few hours before when Quezon was a leaping, living comrade at his side. Quezon was dead. Down there he would bury him, and he had loved Quezon. He knew now, as he clutched his hands to his aching breast, that he would have fought for Quezon, given up his life for him, as he would have done for a brother. Down there under the silent spruce, he would bury the last that had remained to him of the old life, and there swelled up in his heart a longing, almost a prayer, that Melisse might know that he, Jan Tereau, would have nothing left to him tomorrow but a grave, and that in that grave was their old chum, their old playmate, Quezon. Hutt Tereau's blinded Jan's eyes, and he covered his face with his hands, and sobbed as he had sobbed years before when in the southern wilderness word came to him that Melisse was dying. Melisse, Melisse, he moaned her name aloud, and stared through the Hutt film in his eyes away into the north, sobbing to her, calling to her in his grief, and looking through that thousand miles of starlit space as though from out of it her sweet face would come to him once more. And as he called, there seemed to come to him from out of that space a sound so sweet and low and tender, that his heart stood still, and he stood up straight and stretched his arms up to heaven, for Jan Tereau knew that it was the sound of a violin that came to him from out of the north that Melisse, an infinity away, had heard his call, his prayer, and was playing for him in Quezon. And suddenly, as he listened, his arms fell to his sides, and they're shot into his eyes all of the concentrated light of the stars, for the music came nearer and nearer, and still nearer to him, until he caught Quezon in his arms and ran with him down the side of the mountain. It died now in the forest, then rose again softer and more distant it seemed to him, luring him on into the forest gloom. For a few moments consciousness of all else but that sound remained with him only in a dazed, half-real way, and as John Cummins had called upon the angels at Lac Bain many years ago, when he too had gone out into the night to meet this wonderful music, so Jan Tereau's soul cried to them now as he clutched Quezon to him and stumbled on. Then suddenly he came upon the cabin, and in the cabin there was a light. Gently he laid Quezon down upon the snow, and for a full minute he stood and listened, and heard, lower and sweeter still, the gentle music of the violin. Someone was in his cabin, living hands were playing. After all, it was not the spirit of Mellice that had come to him in the hour of his deepest grief, and a saw rose in his throat. He went on, step by step, and at the door he stopped again, wondering if he was mad, if the spirits of the forest were taunting him still, if, if... One step more. The great God, he heard it now, the low, sweet music of the old Cree love-song, played in the old, old way, with all of its old sadness, its whispering joy, its weeping song of life, of death, of love. With a great cry he flung open the door and leaped in, with his arms reaching out, his eyes blinded for a moment by the sudden light, and with a cry as piercing as his own, something ran through that light to meet him. Mellice, the old, glorious Mellice, crushing her arms about his neck, sobbing his name, pleading with him in her old, sweet voice to kiss her, kiss her, kiss her, while Jan Taro, for the first time in his life, felt sweeping over him a resistless weakness, and in this vision he knew the Jean de Gravois came to him too, and held him in his arms, and that as the light faded away from about him, he still heard Mellice calling to him, felt her arms about him, her face crushed to his own, and as the deep gloom enveloped him more densely, and he felt himself slipping down through it, he whispered to the faces which he could no longer see. Quezon died to-night. For a long time Jan fought to throw off the darkness, and when he succeeded, and opened his eyes again, he knew that it was Mellice who was sitting beside him, and that it was Mellice who flung her arms about him when he awoke from his strange sleep, and held his wild head pressed against her bosom. Mellice, with her glorious hair flowing about her as he had loved it in their old days, and with the old love shining in her eyes, only more glorious now as he heard her voice. Jan, Jan, we have been hunting for you so long— She cried softly. We have been searching ever since you left Lac Ban. Jan, dear Jan, I loved you so, and you almost broke my heart. Dear, dear Jan— She sobbed, stroking his face now. I know why you ran away. I know, and I love you so that I will die if you go away again. You know, breathed Jan. He was in his cot and raised himself, clasping her beautiful face between his two hands, staring at her with the old horror in his eyes. You know, and you come to me? I love you, said Mellice. She slipped up to him and laid her face upon his breast, and with her fingers clutched in his long hair, she leaned over to him and kissed him. I love you! Jan's arms closed about her, and he bowed his face so that it was smothered in her hair, and he felt against it the joyous tremble of her bosom. I love you! she whispered again, and under her cloud of hair their lips met, and she whispered again, with her sweet breath still upon his lips. I love you! Outside, Jean de Gravois was dancing up and down in the starlit edge of the forest, and Iawaka was looking at him. And now what do you think of your Jean de Gravois? cried Jean for the hundredth time, at least. Now what do you think of him, my beautiful one? And he caught Iawaka's head in his arms for the hundredth time too, and kissed her until she pushed him away. Was it not right for me to break my oath to the blessed virgin and tell Mellice why Jan Taro had gone mad? Was it not right, I say? And did not Mellice do as I told that fool of a Jan that she would do? And didn't she hate the Englishman all the time? Eh, can you not speak, my raven-haired angel? He hugged Iawaka again in his arms, and this time he did not let her go, but turned her face so that the starlight fell upon it. And now what if Jan Taro still feels that the curse is upon him? He asked softly. Ho, ho, we have fixed that. You, my sweet Iawaka, and your husband, Jean de Gravois, I have it here in my pocket the letter signed by the sub-commissioner at Prince Albert, to whom I told Jan's story when I followed his trail down there, the letter which says that the other woman died before the man who was to be Jan Taro's father married the woman who was to be his mother. And now do you understand why I did not tell me lease of this letter, machéry? It was to prove to that fool of a Jan Taro that she loved him whatever he was. Now what do you think of Jan de Gravois, you daughter of a princess, you wife of the greatest man in the world? laughed Iawaka softly. Come, my foolish Jean, we cannot stand out forever. I am growing cold. And besides, do you not suppose that Jan would like to see me? Foolish, foolish, foolish, murmured Jean as they walked hand in hand through the starlight. She, my Iawaka, my beloved, says that I am foolish. And after this, mon Dieu, what can a man do to make himself great in the eyes of his wife? THE END END OF CHAPTER XXVIII Recording by Roger Maline END OF THE HONOR OF THE BIG SNOWS by James Oliver Kerwood