The Law-bringers/Chapter 11

by G. B. Lancaster

 

CHAPTER XI

"IL M'AIME, JE VOUS DIS"

Miss Chubb was kneading bread on the morning when Tempest went over to the Mission on some business and stayed a while in the kitchen to talk. Miss Chubb usually expected it, and produced cake, or apples, or a cup of tea as an offering. And Tempest usually got good medicine out of her real common-sense and cheerful outlook in her cramped life. This morning he had something rather special to tell her, for the confirmation of his Inspectorship had come up by the last mails, and there would probably be big changes for him before long. He explained this to Miss Chubb, sitting back against the kitchen shelf and watching her thin hands glancing and turning in the tin pan.

Miss Chubb stopped her work abruptly, staring at Tempest. There was a smudge of flour on her sandy eyebrow, and it gave the suggestion of a terrier with its ears cocked.

"You don't say!" she said. "Well, I do call that fierce."

"That is not the usual manner in which to convey congratulations," suggested Tempest; but he laughed as Miss Chubb went to work again.

"Why—maybe not. But we're not to be congratulated. They didn't make you Inspector to leave you in this little hole, did they?"

"I can't tell you. It is not likely . I shall be sent somewhere else, I'm——"

He stopped abruptly, but Miss Chubb knew that the end of the sentence would be "I'm afraid." She set her pale lips together. For she knew, too, why Tempest would be afraid to leave Grey Wolf.

"I suppose," she said, "Grey Wolf isn't big enough to stand such style. They'll send you expeditioning some place—or cleaning up a post that's let its standard own." She laughed, half-nervously. "You have the name for being a real moral influence where you go."

Tempest's answering laugh was constrained.

"I didn't come over here to be abused, Miss Chubb," he said.

"Why——" Miss Chubb proceeded to set out the bread-pans with a celerity born of much practice. They did not seem to aid her in her completion of the sentence, and she turned to the back door as three black-eyed, black-haired, mahogany-skinned heads thrust themselves in, whimpering. Then she slammed a pan down in sudden desperation.

"I wish there were no Saturdays in the week. I certainly do! What has got you children this morning? Some of you have been under my feet all day. What's wrong, Annie? Jane, did you make Pauline cry any more?"

The children sidled in, with fingers in mouths and eyes glancing through the elf-locks which Miss Chubb had brushed and plaited into neatness a few hours since. From their whispers, punctuated by covert peeps at Tempest, the fact was elicited that David Mikwas had fallen out of the swing on top of Pauline. Miss Chubb examined bruises; sent the two elder children out again, and gave Pauline a dab of dough to play with. Then she returned to her work with a sigh that seemed to come straight through her thin body from the toes.

"Mr. Barnes always goes off for the whole day, Saturdays," she said. "I don't blame him. I should if I was teaching the alphabet and simple division all week. But those children do choose to have all their accidents on Saturdays, and Miss Hemming isn't much use with them. Pauline's been left here all summer, too, poor little mite. That father of hers ought to do something for her, Sergeant. I—I mean——"

"Never mind." Tempest laughed. "It's too new yet, isn't it? Job Kesikaw is her father, Barnes told me. A clever trapper, and he must be making a good living. Doesn't he pay anything for Pauline's up-keep?"

"Never a penny. And the way he treated Florestine was cruel. You knew he was married to Pauline's mother first? Well, he was. A good trapper, you call him? I call him a bad lot."

She slapped the dough into one pan after the other, and set them aside to rise. There was not time for pause in this Mission life of the West.

"I can't make him pay, you know, Miss Chubb." Tempest glanced down at the little brown ball whose chubby fingers were rapidly making the white dough as brown. "But if I come across him I'll see what I can do. On the Reserve, is he?"

"Why, I suppose." Miss Chubb scraped the pan with a noisy knife. "He came to see Pauline yesterday, and got a good square meal for nothing. These Indians know how to time their meal-hours. And then he carried off a hunk of pie in his hat.

Tempest laughed and stood up.

"I will certainly remind him of that when I see him. Here are some visitors for your bale-room, Miss Chubb. Why—it looks like Grange's wife; but I don't know who's driving her——"

"Oh, dear." Miss Chubb rubbed vigorously at her flour-caked arms. "Thanks be we probably won't wear clothes in Heaven, or I suppose someone would be set to the distribution job. Yes; it's Moosta. And she'll buy one pinafore, and talk for an hour about those wonderful pictures of Andree."

"Pictures of Andree?"

"Why——" Miss Chubb looked at him. Then she went white. "It's nothing," she said. "Mr. Heriot has been sketching her, as he does everyone else, you know."

"Oh," said Tempest indifferently. "I see. I just hadn't thought of it."

He made his good-bye cheerfully, and Miss Chubb never guessed at the suspicion and the fierce jealously which quickened into concrete fear at her words. But she looked after him as the tinkling sleigh slid over the white ground, and her eyes were tender and pitying.

"There's a good man spoiled," she said. "Unless Dick Heriot has put a spoke in his wheel. And I don't know if that will mend matters much."

That night Tempest found occasion to go into Grange's back-parlour for the first time. Moosta only was there, among her babies; and, as usual, her English and her comprehension fled before Tempest. But he looked at that face which hung in its dark beauty below the Madonna; and Moosta, in her pride, dragged Dick's portfolio from the corner, and spread it before him.

"Him s'pose Andree trés jolie," she said. "Goot, eh?"

"Very good," assented Tempest, and laid his hands upon those bold, merciless paintings with their alluring dashes of colour and their suggestive tragedies.

And then he went home, and he did not sleep at all. Dick had interpreted Andree's beauty as even Tempest had never realised it. There were faults, plenty of them, in the workmanship; but the power was undeniable. And Dick had done more, much more. He had shown out the animal side of her terribly, callously, and yet with that strange charm which made men love Andree even when they recoiled from her. Those pictures were clever, cruelly clever. Dick had never done such good work before, and he would not do it again. For not again would he have such a model or such a reason. Tempest threshed from side to side of his bed, burning with a righteous anger and grief.

Dick was his friend: his friend. And Andree was the woman he loved. And it was Dick who was taking Andree away from him. Dick who had perhaps been doing it all these months. Dick, who had reviled her, laughed at her, urged Tempest to shake himself free of her. Dick, who had held her up to contempt as he now held her up to the unlawful admiration of any man who happened to stray into Grange's back-parlour. Tempest shivered, guessing for how many eyes Moosta might have dragged out that portfolio with her placid grins and her "Goot, eh?" To Tempest in his reverence the thing was an indecency, a profanity, an outrage. His fury against Dick became a live thing through that night; but he said no word to the man because the thought of the woman over-rode all else in his heart. He must get Andree away from this life—now, at once. By bribery, by stratagem, by persuasion—any method would do as long as it took her from Grey Wolf.

It happened in the next afternoon that Dick found the fat German who had bought Robison's land in the bar, and he stayed so long talking to him of possibilities concerning the Canada Home-lot Extension Company, which, as Dick warmly hoped, were now finding themselves baffled along this line of extension, that he had no time to spare for Andree. And it was the first day he had been in the hotel that week, too, for he had been chasing a defaulting freighter along the Moon-Dance trail. He went out at last by the back passage, and there Andree stood waiting for him; half-defiant, half-piteous. He took her face between his hands, and her strange, lawless beauty unsteadied him as it had done more than once or twice of late.

"I will not have you come and not come to me, Dick," she said. "You must speak with me. You must."

"Do you think I let a girl say must to me, Andree?" He laughed a little, but he did not move his eyes from her face. "What have you got that red thing round your head for? You look like a Bacchante—or a bit like the Fornarina."

Andree did not know what they were. But she knew how to meet the unwilling admiration in Dick's eyes. Very softly she drew the lids shut with her fingers. Then she said:

"Your looking does go through me. And I do not understand. And your eyes do hurt, some days. And some days Tempest does make his eyes hurt me too. Why?"

Dick's opportunities offered often enough. But he would not take them. He would not take this one.

"How should I know? Let me open my eyes and see if they'll hurt you this time. Now, what do they say to you?"

He was half-laughing, and yet idly curious. And he was not sure that he wanted those eyes interpreted fully just now.

Andree looked, drawing her delicate brows into a line. Then she pulled his face forward.

"Ah—Dick——" she said, and met his lips with her warm ones.

He had kissed her a hundred times before; carelessly, or in thoughtless amusement. But the swift passion in those clinging lips thrilled him as anything that Andree said or did had never thrilled him before. He put his hands on her shoulders and kissed her back, twice. Then he let her go, and went down to the barracks with the memory of that first kiss tingling his blood yet.

Andree flung on her fur cap and her coat, and went out. And as she passed the bar Jimmy reached an arm to catch her waist.

"Haven't seen you to-day, Andree," he said. "What——"

"Ah—diable!" said Andree, through her teeth, and she boxed his ear with a swinging blow, and ran out.

Jimmy rubbed his ear, looking after her ruefully.

"Lord, she's a handful," he said. "I wouldn't want to be the man she chose to settle down wi'."

Andree fled down the street and along the forest-trail with her eyes bright, and her blood racing in her veins. The keen, sharp air brought the brilliance to her cheeks and quickened her breath, and some vague excitement was driving her. She did not account for it; did not try. She just ran for the joy of running, and the joy of living; skimming over the tramped frozen surface, fleetly and surely as a hare. Then the gladness left her face suddenly, and she stopped, shrugging her shoulders. For Tempest had turned the corner of the trail, and he came to her swiftly. But there was a shiver of superstition in his heart. It was here he had first found Grange's Andree a year ago. Was it here that he was to lose her? He spoke of other things first, to steady himself. Then again he asked her to marry him as he had done so many times before.

"And I can give you so much now that I am Inspector," he added. "So much that you would enjoy having."

He knew better now than to plead to Andree for love. That happiness was not for him yet; perhaps not at all. But all his tenderness, all his manhood was struggling for the right to protect and cherish Grange's Andree. She pulled her hand from his petulantly, and for the first time there was no shy fear of him in her voice. That kiss of Dick's had lit in her something which Tempest could not quench. She did not know it consciously. She was far too stupid for that. But instinct told her without hesitation or surprise.

"I do not want to marry you," she said.

"But I can give you so much, dear. Think! A carriage. And pretty dresses. And servants to do as you tell them."

She pouted, looking away from his tense, earnest face. Neither could see the tragedy of that wooing. To the girl it was merely a tiresome interlude which yet pleased her vanity. To the man it was the swing in the balance of the soul he loved best.

"I—I do not want servants," she said. "I would rather have Dick to paint me."

For all Tempest's care his voice took a changed note.

"You won't have Dick long. He will soon find someone else to paint. And then what will you do?"

"He no fin' anozzer si belle." Andree flashed round on him. "He say so. Him say me best. Him love me, an' I love him."

She had no intention of being brutal. She spoke the thing as she believed it, simply and directly. But for a space the man at her side could not answer. Then he said, slowly:

"Does that mean that you are going to marry him?"

She spread her hands out.

"What matter?" she said. "I suppose. But I do not care for marry. He want me an' I want him. That 'nough."

"You are sure of this, Andree?"

She did not notice anything in the low, steady voice.

"Mais certainment," she said. "I do love him."

"No! No, you don't. You love me. Me. You want to come to me—not to him. Andree! Andee!"

He was holding her by both her arms, and his white face was very near. Unguessed-at defiance rose in her. She held her head back.

"I love Dick," she cried. "I love Dick! I love Dick!"

He held her, searching the fire in her face and eyes. And he believed it. The immortal thing was there. Born but to die in Andree, perhaps. But it was there. He let her go.

"I see you do," he said slowly. "I see you do."

He looked down the white trail whither she had come to him twice.

"Andree," he cried sharply. "Are you sure that he cares for you?"

And then the absurdity of the question struck him. How could Grange's Andree know the heart of a man? How could she know Dick's heart when Tempest, friend of his youth and companion of his manhood, did not know it? But Andree had no doubts.

She looked at him with bright cheeks and sparkling eyes. Her words had seemed to drive home to her a truth which she had not known. She was exulting in the discovey of something new; something which belonged to her to her very self.

"Oui," she said violently. "C'est vrai. Il m'aime, je vous did. Ah—je lui connais."

For a moment more Tempest looked at her in silence. In the dull track she looked bright and vivid almost as a flame. But he could not ask again for that which Nature and not Andree had denied him. He would never ask for it any more. It was not to be for him to shield her from the dangers which crowded round her careless feet. He could do nothing for her. Nothing. And she needed guidance as few creatures of God's earth needed it. And then, for the last time, he took her hand and kissed it. He had never kissed her face.

"God guard you, Andree," he said, and left her. And along the winter trail she ran and ran, intoxicated with her unreasoning joy.

Dick opened the front door of the barracks to Tempest, and his voice was quick and eager.

"Watson is starting to-night instead of to-morrow morning," he said. "Can we get those permit-papers filed to send out with him?"

Through the open kitchen and up the passage the red of the winter sunset flooded up behind him, striking his outline tall and black and strong. His voice was strong, and the brown hand shut on the papers was strong. Tempest looked at him, feeling the vigour and virility in him, and in one blinding flash, realisation leapt to him. It was Dick who had done this thing to him. Dick, his friend, who had done it—knowingly, secretly, wilfully.

He went giddy for a moment, and put his hand on the wall. Then he thrust past, speaking thickly.

"No," he said. "Leave them." And he walked into the office, and turned the key on himself.

The yellow and egg-shell blue went out of the sky. Dick went upstairs, whistling, to pack his kit for a three-days' trip to Lower Landing. Light drew back from the zenith, leaving it naked to the stars, and across the river the dark pine-forest settled into night.

But the night of the soul was on Tempest in the little bare, cold office where he sat still, staring at the wall. All round him were the maps, the blue books, the filed memoranda, the pencils, pens and rulers of his work. He had come back to that work as Dick would have gone in like case to the forest. Come back, blindly, unconsciously, that it might help him through with his pain; that work which had once meant most of all to him; that work which he had forsaken for a personal and private love, and which had its grip on all his fibres still. It reproached him now; cruelly and bitterly. It mocked at him, asking what life had given him in place of it. A friend? Aye; a friend who had faced death with him, and had now delivered him to worse than death. A woman to love? Yes, and his right to love her was taken from him, and his prayer that he might guard her denied.

Twice Poley came to the door, intimating the advisability of meals. But Tempest had one answer only for him.

"I cannot be disturbed. I am busy," he said, and went on sitting motionless in his chair and staring at the hazy maps on the wall. Later he heard Dick and Kennedy going to bed in the room at the head of the stairs. Dick was in a wild and reckless mood, and Kennedy's bellowing laugh broke loose in strangled sputters more than once. Then night and stillness dropped on Grey Wolf, and still Tempest sat in his chair, staring at the wall.

A man had once said of Tempest that he had reduced religion and philosophy to a satisfactory working basis by fusing in himself the physical and spiritual elements until the whole was a sound leaven. This was somewhat true, and because of it Tempest suffered rather more than an ordinary man might do. For he could not blindly blame the universe and his God and the other man, and so exculpate himself. Like one of an earlier day he had set out to build a tower to Heaven and had digged a pit for his own feet instead. He had betrayed his work even as Dick had betrayed him, and he dared not call Dick the most guilty.

Beside him on the desk lay an unfinished report. It should have gone down with to-day's mail, even as those other papers should have gone. On the floor under the window were an unopened pile of official envelopes and three text-books with the pages uncut. Down at Pitcher Portage Randal was waiting to see him in regard to some trouble with the breeds there. He had been waiting more than a month. These were a handful of things only. Tempest knew the multitude that bore witness against him.

Very still he sat, and faced the array of them as they trod past him through the night. And faced also the merciless, never-ending problem of life. Why should duty and desire clash for ever? Why should spirit and flesh be constantly at war? Why should a man's knowledge of his own sin not render him more merciful towards the sins of others? Tempest knew well the need for fight in the human soul. He knew that stagnation is a bitterer, because a more final, thing than the beating out of a heart in foam upon the rocks. But he knew also that a man's duty lies neither on the rocks nor in the backwater, but down the steady, strenuous, sanely direct stream of Life.

Tempest had dropped into a backwater to please himself with his private loves and desires. And now he was on the rocks. He knew it, and because the pain in him would not let him be he stayed there, bruising his spirit and beating it with rods. For he could not forgive Dick; he could not let Andree go, and he could not take up his life again. And he understood that, as a man, as an immortal soul, as the one firm human link between Time and Eternity, he must do all three.

The lamp on the desk burned low and went out, leaving an evil smell of smoke and kerosine. Down the side street among the naked cotton-woods a starved Indian dog was yelping to the sky his qualifications for a canine heaven through his eternal purging away of all the fleshly joys. Insensibly that dog, emblem of his race, obtruded himself on Tempest's thought. Unfed, cursed and kicked the summer through; strapped into the traces all the winter; harness-galled, sore-footed, strained by the dragging of interminable sledges, it yet had the unflagging heart which did not fail, the warm tongue for its master's hand, the ready and obedient ear for his voice. Tempest bowed his head down in his hands and thought that matter out. In some way it made his own conduct seem less excusable, less righteous.

Through long hours of struggle and wordless prayer Tempest won back to himself his belief in mankind. Dick had not betrayed him. He had been called by Nature even as Tempest himself, and the strain in the man's eyes and voice, and the thinner lines of his big body bore witness that he had recognised Tempest's prior right and had attempted to yield to it. It was Tempest who had sinned in doubting his friend. It was Tempest who had judged another man unheard. It was Tempest who had no right, no choice. Tempest who must tread the barren trail of duty, leaving the younger man free to love.

He sprang up, walking the room with his light rapid steps. This thing had gone beyond him. The sacrifice was his to make, whether he would or no. It only remained for him to make it manfully, ungrudgingly, gallantly, believing that when the great day of understanding came he would be glad of it.

But he loved Andree well, and the other man was his friend. And he was human as all strong men of flesh and blood and temper are human. Morning caught him walking still, with his fight half-fought and the future yet dim and cold before him. For he loved Andree. He loved her at this moment better than his God; and it was his friend who had taken her from him.

For Tempest the next day was filled with the ordinary routine of the post. There was the inspection of the barracks, of the stables, of the prisoners. There were complaints to listen to from one and rebukes to be administered to another. There was a consultation with Poley concerning the amount of food consumed in the cells and in the mess-room; there were orders to give to Kennedy and to Dick. And there were the dull hours of clerical work; checking accounts, formulating reports; examining receipts and bills from the Hudson Bay on orders drawn in favour of some Indian perhaps six months back and six hundred miles away. These latter often necessitated the turning up of old diaries and note-books, and usually Tempest called in Dick to aid him here.

But he could not bear those keen eyes and that assertive presence to-day. He sent Dick out to investigate the complaint of a settler who had missed two sacks of oats from his barn, and he ground his way through his labours alone, with Kennedy doing his prisoner-patrol in the back-yard, and Poley whistling unmusically as he clumsily handled his pans and kettles in the kitchen.

Poley was of the breed of whom it is said that they "come from the Devil knows where, and are bound for the same place." Some under-tug of his life had beached him to Grey Wolf, and a curious grumbling love for Tempest had kept him there. He rolled up the passage now, and hammered on Tempest's door with his foot, his hands being otherwise occupied. Tempest halted his pen on a long column of figures to bid him enter, and Poley appeared, balancing a bowl of steaming soup on a square lump of bread. He had not treated Tempest with added deference since his promotion because, having predicted it for so long, he naturally took much of the credit of its occurrence to himself.

"Ye had no supper las' night," he said, and put the bowl down on the table. "Ner yer didn't sleep any, I guess. Where are yer at, Inspector? That sort o' game kin put a man away quicker'n anything. Now, you go right ahead an' git outsider that, for I'll bet yer breakfus' ain't lef yer wi' much to yer."

Tempest looked up at the red, rough old face, and the rheumy blue eyes. A long, lonely life had not soured the milk of human kindness in Poley, and this knowledge happened to be the very thing needful for Tempest just now.

He accepted both the votive and the hidden offerings gratefuly, and he did not pour the soup from the window nor scatter the bread to the few hungry birds until Poley's harsh piping whistle was raised in the kitchen quarters again. And when he settled back to his work the cloud on his face was lightened. Although it had only made a yellow-ochre patch in the snow outside, Poley's soup had strengthened Tempest's heart quite as fully as the old man ever intended it to strengthen his stomach.

It was still evening, with a red sun dropping through a clear sky when Dick came into make his report. He was cold and invigorated and cheerful, and he struck, more strongly than usual, the life-note which Tempest felt to be slackening in himself. And yet in him it had once been the strongest.

Dick gave his report succinctly, standing tall against the window-light.

"Morgan missed those sacks yesterday morning," he said. "But of course he thought to-day time enough to let us know, after they had churned the snow up all round in order to obliterate all they might want to find out. Fortunately they hadn't gone beyond the place where they water the horses, and I tracked my man through there, and followed up to that Cree camp at Dog Point. There I found the corner of a new burnt sack being chewed by a gidde, and an old horse belonging to Double-Toed Pigeon which looked as if he had lately been assisting at a blow-out. They didn't want to tell me anything about it." He paused a moment. "The man is Job Kesikaw—down at the Reserve."

"Oh, well, I was wanting to see the man myself." A sudden impulse came over Tempest; a sudden warmth towards the man opposite. "I'll go down with you after supper," he said. "It's full moon. Tell Poley he can put it forward a little, but not too much, and I'll have mine here to save time. But I have to see Holland first. He was complaining about the man who is renting his river-lot"

Dick gave the order to Poley, and flung himself into the big chair in the mess-room to doze and warm himself until supper came in. Something in Tempest's voice made him uneasy, and brought up sternly in his mind again the knowledge which he had been avoiding with all his strength. He faced that knowledge to-night in his usual clear-sightedness, and it made him wince.

He had gone into this game with Andree in the primal direct motive of taking her from Tempest since he could not take Tempest from her. He had lost sight of that motive long since. His primal idea now was to amuse himself. He did not love Andree. Jennifer had all his heart, and she always would have it. But Andree's beauty attracted him, and her wild spirit struck a flame from the like thing in himself. He did not love Andree, but he was losing Jennifer for her. She was dulling memory of Jennifer's pure high thoughts and words. He had not written to Jennifer lately, and well he knew why. And Andree was losing him Tempest. She was destroying in him the power to say to Tempest, "I did this for you alone." She was destroying in him the power to help Tempest along that road which he should travel, and, by so doing, it might be that Tempest would never take that road. He knew Tempest's nature so well. That fine, nervous, excitable temperament could be so easily broken by certain things; so easily battered down on its knees. Dick did not believe that Tempest would ever go lower than his knees. But he would stay there, bowing his head in his repentance. He would take the lower place for ever, when Nature and the world ordained him for the higher.

And Dick was daily stripping from himself the right to help Tempest to take that higher place. He was doing more. He was prolonging the torment which he had set out to end. Any time in the last three months he could have brought this to a crisis for Tempest. Any time before the last month—perhaps the last six weeks, he could have said honestly to Tempest, "I am doing this for you." He could not say that now. He was afraid to tell Tempest now, because there were no honest words which he could use. He was dishonourable; a traitor to his friend, and he knew it. And yet self had sapped the will in him for so long that he could not resist it. Jennifer and Tempest meant many thousand times more to him than Andree's kisses. But he would not forego those kisses. Almost he felt that he could not. He did not blind himself here. He had deliberately slacked in himself the forces which would have fought for him against temptation, and now he had to suffer for it. And he did suffer. He had been so eager to do what seemed to him one of the real unselfish things of his life, for he had known that he might lose Tempest's friendship through it. He had known that Jennifer might hear garbled tales.

Well, he would lose Tempest's friendship—when Tempest found out. And Jennifer might hear tales—and he could not deny them. He smiled in that bitter humour which seldom forsook him. He had tried to play the honest man; the unselfish friend. In his hands it had turned to this already, and what it might turn to in the future he did not care to think. But, as had happened to him so many times in his life, he had seen the good all the way through, and had done the wrong.

Poley came in clattering with the lamp and the tray, and Dick got up and went to his room. Kennedy was there, writing a letter with stiff, cold fingers. He looked up with his ruddy boyish face perplexed.

"How do you spell niece?" he asked.

Dick gave the information. Then he looked at the lad. Kennedy was such a frank-hearted, honest fellow, and he hoped that none of the hottest fires of life would ever sear him.

"Whose niece is she, Kennedy?" he asked. But Kennedy's brow was calm.

"My own," he said. "I've got a married sister. I sent the kiddie a Christmas present from her Uncle Jack. My, I just know how her eyes'll stick out when she gets it."

Dick left him chewing his pen-handle and chuckling, and ran down again. From his own room Tempest heard him pass along the passage, and he halted a moment in the putting on of his riding gear. His eyes were dark with the struggle that had grown more fierce in Dick's presence. He had not won out yet. For all his knowledge, all his training, all his belief, all his strength he had not yet won the staying point. Because the staying point needs such infinitely deeper anchorage than the arriving point, by reason of the constant ebb and flow of a man's will.

The night was silver-white where a full moon flooded the earth, and the keen crystal air seemed to prickle like champagne. Over the hard snow along these beaten trails the horses swung easily, and the men rode side by side, speaking little. For each man his own thoughts were full enough company. On the edge of the moonlight the first shacks of the Reserve showed, low and darkly. Naked scrub and undergrowth made scratchy shadows to the very doors, and like shadows too, a handful of Indian dogs flicked out, leaping and barking and rolling in the snow. A sore-withered pony raised its head; then returned to its investigations among the bare twigs, and where a red fire darkened the forest to ink a few women moved with the light trembling on their black hair and eyes and dull stuff dresses. For, to the partially civilised Indian woman, bright colours are a reproach. They make her appear "too Indian."

Not many men stayed on the Reserve through the winter. But Christmas had brought some of them in, and among those Dick expected to find Job Kesikaw. They halted by the woman, and Clouds-of-Sunrise glanced up from her work of spitting moose-meat on sharp sticks for the roasting, and her broad, high-boned face was lit with humour.

"Had no meat for t'e veek," she said. "I vas s'pose some men come—eat it up for us!"

"Why," said Dick, "what have Peter and Mike and Eusta been doing? All at the hunting, eh? And wouldn't Eusta take you this time?"

Clouds-of-Morning had been at the Mission School long enough to understand more English than she spoke. She, giggling, looking on the other women who stood about in beaming approval.

"All to hunt," she said. "Akonaqui kill him."

She pointed from a girl with the lean, eager face of a hunter to the moose-meat, and the women grunted their acquiescence, watching the white men with the giggles and rallying coquetry of a company of school-girls.

"Our man's not here," said Tempest underbreath, and Dick nodded.

"We'll find him at Sebompa's, I expect," he said, and they rode on; taking the narrow twisting trails through the white woods with accurate knowledge of their intricacies; hearing Indian talk that carried far through the silence, and seeing, all about, the winking lights of the fires outside the shacks and tepees. In a trail they passed an old Indian, bent double, and stumbling over the snow by help of a stick. His tall son strode beside him, dragging a hand-sled, and both greeted the Policemen with the frankness of men who know their friends. Tempest halted, speaking in his broken Cree-French.

"Is Tommy Joseph hunting this season, Selok?" he asked, and the old man groaned, swaying his shaggy head until the white hair covered his face.

The son looked his disapproval. Tommy Joseph was own brother to him, but that was no reason why his father should show emotion.

"Him seeck away to Chipewyan," he said. "Go die soon, me t'ink."

"What made him sick?" asked Tempest, and the old man groaned again.

"Him chase Job Kesikaw in canoe. Git in brulé upset. Too col'. Seek in 'tomach. Goo'bye."

"Where is Job Kesikaw?" asked Dick idly.

"No can tell. Some place roun' 'bout." The young man spread his hands to the universe. "No talk wit' heem."

Lights grew closer as they followed that winding trail. In all that great Reserve, where each of the wild men can live his own wild life unmolested if he so desire, there were some who desired the contact of their fellows; making a scattered village, built without method or meaning of any sort, along the throat of a coulée where little running streams gave water in the summer and the high walls made a natural corral for the horses. Out of the dark, away from the distant blinking lights that spelt homes, Dick and Tempest rode up the coulée where the knots of shacks and tepees thickened; where the half-savage dogs swarmed noisily around them, and the camp-fires were big and lurid, shooting tongues of flame against the sky.

Men were here in numbers; smoking lazily about the fires, or working until the busy women round the pots and spits, where meat sizzled, should call them to feed. Children ran about clad in furs or in thick long-trousered or long-frocked garments from Miss Chubb's bale-room. One fat yellow-brown urchin, in a skin shirt and scanty drawers, anchored by one suspender, stood sheer in the firelight and spat at them. A hand of correction reached out of the dark, and withdrew him bodily, and after-sounds told that reproof had not stopped there. The men of the North-West Mounted Police understood that they were herewith greeted as friends.

On the Grey Wolf Reserve were chiefly Crees and Beavers who accepted the white man's protection and took Treaty payments to prove it. But there were some breeds also who had reverted to the call of the Indian blood which was in them, and it was among the latter that Job Kesikaw was rated. In the eternally-shifting crowds along the river-ways Dick and Tempest had probably seen Job more than once; but he was one of the weed-rack of earth, drifting ever.

"And I've never located him yet," said Dick to his brain, and ran his quick eye round the half-seen groups. "And fancy the description I've got from old The-Back-of-To-morrow won't help me at all."

He went over that description internally. It suggested Job as a stocky, clumsy man of middle height; bull-necked and bull-strong; sinewed like a wolf, and with the eyes of a wolf; dark as the earth where the moss grows, and cunning, and greasily fat.

There were at least ten men within sight who filled that picture, line on line. One was lacing the corded sinews through a half-made snowshoe with his heavy face intent on the crossing of each mesh. Two more, on their knees by the fire, were charring lengths of pliant green wood into the angles of sled-runners. Yet another sliced raw moose-hide into slender strips for tie or snowshoe thongs. Sheer in the fire-glow a young muscular breed was pegging out the skin of a wolverine on a flat board. He grinned at Dick in swift delight.

"Huh! You Carcajou," he said. "You no git you man kill, is it not?"

Dick recognised this reference to Robison whom a severe attack of pneumonia had so far salvaged from the gallows. He slid out of the saddle, and shook hands with the breed cheerfully.

"Aha," he said. "Him gone sick. But by-an'-bye him get well again. Then they punish him down in Fort Saskatchewan, Beaver Tail."

He was looking on the other men as he spoke, and across the face of him who sliced the moose-hide he saw fear flicker and darken. An almost imperceptible motion of his hand brought Tempest to the ground also, and then Dick went on with his salutations.

Many of the men were known to him, and he shook hands with each, asking the names of those he did not know. The breeds were laughing, entering into the game with the joyousness of children, and at the cooking-fires where the smell of meat was thick and warm, women halted in their labours, watching the two clean-run white men in their close uniforms with admiring curiosity.

Dick stopped before the man whose hands were red and greasy with the hide.

"I guess I'm the friend of all here," he said, and held his hand out. "But I don't know your name, my friend."

Someone piped it out. And then Job Kesikaw, thrusting out his paw reluctantly, felt himself seized in a sudden trap-like grip, and heard the new note in Dick's voice.

"I want you, Job Kesikaw," he said, and Job sprang back, jerking free with the full weight of his body.

Dick's grasp was strong, but the greasy hand slid from it. Job turned and dived into the darkness, whipping up his rifle as he fled. And into the dark, close on his heels, leapt Dick and Tempest.

"Wah! Wah!" said Beaver Tail, astonished and interested. The men around him grunted; looked at each other doubtfully for a little space, and then fell to their work again.

Principally they were amazed at the audacity of Job in defying the Big Law. Partly they were amused and contemptuous; and partly, in virtuous knowledge of their own presumably clean sheets, they arraigned him mercilessly in that he had brought himself under the terror of that law.

"Him done some dam follishness, me s'pose," said Beaver Tail, laying the pegged skin aside. "Huh! What him want run from Carcajou, anyway? T'ink him no catch? Huh!"

"Huh!" said the chorus of derision out of the dark, and appeared to lose outward interest in the fate of Job.

Ahead of the two men, through the forest, Job's progress seemed to make the dark roar with sound. Sticks snapped, and crashed; branches whipped back as the great body hurled itself through them and the white men followed; catching the slashing twigs across their faces; stabbed by a broken stick; stumbling, jumping, climbing, pushing ever through the tangling growth, burst apart by the man ahead, and clogged by the soft snow.

Job was evilly fat and short of wind. The white men were muscle-hard and lean with the strenuous work of the summer. Job heard them gaining, and in a clearing where the white moon light was sharp on the white ground, he halted, turned, and flung his rifle up. Dick heard the bullet whistle as he ducked, still running. He heard the trigger click again; and then Tempest's weight bore on him, swinging him aside, and Tempest fired, even in the moment when he fell.

Dick had no time to understand that Tempest had possibly given one life to save the other. He scrambled up, feeling the sandy snow grit in his ungloved hands, and rushed in on Job without taking breath. Job's trigger-arm swung loose from the elbow, and Dick was glad. He looked on the big man sitting in the snow and crying like a frightened baby, and then he looked on the other man lying still in the moonlight.

"I fancy you'll wait till I'm ready to strap that," he said, and ran over to Tempest's side.

How or when he knew it he could not tell. But he understood why Tempest had taken the bullet which should have been his. Tempest knew this thing which Dick had done to him; and because Dick had exacted the sacrifice of his love, Tempest, following Biblical methods, had offered his life also. Not even in the first moment did he do Tempest the dishonour of thinking that he had sought a way for himself out of this trouble. He knew the spirit of the man too well for that. And he knew also that, if Tempest lived, the thing which he had to say to him was going to be infinitely more terrible than he had expected it to be.

There was blood on Tempest's face and in his hair. Dick wiped it off and found the bullet-graze on the temple which had stunned him. He sat back with a breath of relief and pulled out his flask. It was empty, as it had been too many times of late, and Dick felt the burn of shame as he tilted it. Tempest had no flask, and so Dick flung snow over the still face; softening it first by the warmth of his hands. Presently Tempest shivered, feeling the icy air strike into him. Across the snow Job was wailing and shuddering with chattering teeth. Then Tempest sat up with Dick's aid; sick and giddy, and stupidly feeling the blood than ran on his face. He seemed fully as ashamed as Dick himself of the thing which he had done; and, by consent, both ignored causes and spoke only of effects as Dick washed the skin round the wound and bound it up with torn handkerchiefs. He had to use a piece of his shirt when he came to Job, and the man wept aloud at the stout and effective tournoquet, and at the winding of the broken limb into a hastily-stripped cradle of birch-bark.

"I guess you've lost enough blood to cool that courage of yours," remarked Dick, dragging him up to his feet. "Now, show us the way back to camp. You should know these trails better than I do."

Both Dick's patients were staggering with weakness when they reached the camp, and it was an hour later when they took the trail to Grey Wolf; Tempest riding a little behind, silent, and somewhat giddy still, and Dick two yards ahead, with Job Kesikaw on the lame Indian pony at his knee. The moon was gone, but, for the first time in several months, the Northern Lights pulsed in the sky, in long direct streamers, lividly-blue and pure. They hung the forest-trees with a dim, unearthly sheen, and in the light of it Dick saw the night animals pass and pass again, without sound. There was little pleasure to Dick in that ride home. He was thinking grimly of what would have to be said on the morrow. But over Tempest a curious hush and a deep content had descended. He could forgive now. He could forgive, because he had given Dick's life back to him, and in so doing he had given him all else.

Cheerfully, with eyes bright and head up, he rode home. For all his strength and love he was fitting himself to bring that offering which the other man—having demanded and obtained of him—must throw away.