Steve was confronted with six months
of desperate winter on the plateau of Unaga.
It was an outlook that demanded all the strength of
his simple faith. He was equal to the tasks lying
before him, but not for one moment did he underestimate
them.
For all the harshness of the life
which claimed him Steve’s whole nature was imbued
with a saneness of sympathy, a deep kindliness of spirit
that left him master of himself under every emotion.
The great governing factor in his life was a strength
of honest purpose. A purpose, in its turn, prompted
by his sense of right and justice, and those things
which have their inspiration in a broad generosity
of spirit. So it was that under all conditions
his conscience remained at peace.
It was supported by such feelings
that he faced the tasks which the desperate heart
of Unaga imposed upon him. He had the care of
an orphaned child, he had the care of that child’s
Indian nurse, and the lives and well-being of his
own two men charged up against him. He also had
the investigations which he had been sent to make,
and furthermore, there was his own life to be preserved
for the woman he loved, and the infant child of their
love, waiting for his return a thousand miles away.
The work was the work of a giant rather than a man;
but never for one moment did his confidence fail him.
The days following the arrival at
the post were urgent. They were days of swift
thought and prompt action. The open season was
gone, and the struggle for existence might begin without
a moment’s warning. Steve knew. Everyone
knew. That is, everyone except little Marcel.
The boy accepted every changing condition
without thought, and busied himself with the preparations
of his new friends. It had no significance for
him that all day long the forest rang with the clip
of the felling axe. Neither did the unceasing
work of the buck-saw, as it ploughed its way through
an endless stream of sapling trunks, afford him anything
beyond the joy of lending his assistance. Then,
too, the morning survey of the elemental prospect,
when his elders searched the skies, fearing and hoping,
and grimly accepting that which the fates decreed,
was only one amongst his many joys. It was all
a great and fascinating game, full of interest and
excitement for a budding capacity which Steve was quick
to recognize.
But the child’s greatest delight
was the moment when “Uncle Steve” invited
him to assist him in discovering the economic resources
of his own home. As the examination proceeded
Steve learned many things which could never have reached
him through any other source. He obtained a peep
into the lives of these people through the intimate
eyes of the child, and his keen perception read through
the tumbling, eager words to the great truths of which
the child was wholly unaware. And it was a story
which left him with the profoundest admiration and
pity for the dead man who was the genius of it all.
Not for one moment did Steve permit
a shadow to cross the child’s sunny, smiling
face. From the first moment when the responsibility
for Marcel’s little life had fallen into his
hands his mind was made up. By every artifice
the boy must be kept from all knowledge of the tragedy
that had befallen him. When he asked for his
mother he was told that she was so sick that she could
not be worried. This was during the first two
days. After that he was told that she had gone
away. She had gone away to meet his father, and
that when she came back she would bring his “pop”
with her. A few added details of a fictitious
nature completely satisfied, and the child accepted
without question that which his hero told him.
He was permitted to see nothing of
the little silent cortege that left the post late
on the second night. He saw nothing of the grief-laden
eyes of An-ina as she followed the three men bearing
their burden of the dead mother, enclosed in a coffin
made out of the packing cases with which the fort
was so abundantly supplied. He had seen the men
digging in the forest earlier in the day, and had
been more than satisfied when “Uncle Steve”
assured him they were digging a well. Later on
he would discover the great beacon of stones which
marked the “well.” But, for the moment,
while the curtain was being rung down on the tragedy
of his life, he was sleeping calmly, and dreaming
those happy things which only child slumbers may know.
Good fortune smiled on the early efforts
at the fort For ten days the arch-enemy withheld his
hand. For ten days the weary sun was dragged
from its rest by the evil “dogs” which
seemed to dominate its movements completely.
But each day their evil eyes grew more and more portentious
and threatening as they watched the human labourers
they seemed to regard with so much contempt.
Then came the change. It was
the morning of the eleventh day. The “dogs”
had hidden their faces and the weary sun remained obscured
behind a mass of grey cloud. The crisp breeze
which had swept the valley with its invigorating breath
had died out, and the world had suddenly become threateningly
silent.
A few great snowflakes fluttered silently
to the ground. Steve was at the gateway of the
stockade, and his constant attendant was beside him
in his bundle of furs. The man’s eyes were
measuring as they gazed up at the grey sky. Little
Marcel was wisely studying, too.
“Maybe us has snow,” he
observed sapiently at last, as he watched the falling
flakes.
“Yes. I guess we’ll get snow.”
Steve smiled down at the little figure beside him.
“Wot makes snow, Uncle Steve?” the boy
demanded.
“Why, the cold, I guess.
It just freezes the rain in the clouds. And when
they get so heavy they can’t stay up any longer,
why they just come tumbling down and makes
folk sit around the stove and wish they wouldn’t.”
“Does us wish they wouldn’t?”
“Most all the time.”
The child considered deeply. Then his face brightened
hopefully.
“Bimeby us digs, Uncle Steve,” he said.
“Boy likes digging.”
Steve held out a hand and Marcel yielded his.
“Boy’ll help ‘Uncle Steve,’
eh?”
“I’s always help Uncle Steve.”
The spontaneity of the assurance remained unanswerable.
Steve glanced back into the enclosure.
Then his hand tightened upon the boy’s with
gentle pressure.
“Come on, old fellow. We’ll
get along in, and make that stove, and wish
it wouldn’t.”
He led the way back to the house.
The snowfall grew in weight and density.
Silent, still, the world of Unaga seemed to have lost
all semblance of life. White, white, eternal
white, and above the heavy grey of an overburdened
sky. Solitude, loneliness, desperately complete.
It was the silence which well nigh drives the human
brain to madness. From minutes to hours; from
inches to feet. Day and night. Day and night.
Snow, snow all the time, till the tally of days grew,
and the weeks slowly passed. It almost seemed
as if Nature, in her shame, were seeking to hide up
the sight of her own creation.
For three silent weeks the snow continued
to fall without a break. Then it ceased as abruptly
as it had begun, leaving the fort buried well nigh
to the eaves. The herald of change was a wild
rush of wind sweeping down the valley from the broken
hills which formed its northern limits. And,
within half an hour, the silence was torn, and ripped,
and tattered, and the world transformed, and given
up to complete and utter chaos. A hurricane descended
on the post, and its timbers groaned under the added
burden. The forest giants laboured and protested
at the merciless onslaught, while the crashing of
trees boomed out its deep note amidst the shriek of
the storm. As the fury of it all rose, so rose
up the snowfall of weeks into a blinding fog which
shut out every sight of the desolate plateau as though
it had never been.
Five weeks saw the extent of winter’s
first onslaught. And after that for awhile, the
battle resolved itself into a test of human endurance,
with the temperature hovering somewhere below 60 deg.
below zero. For a few short hours the sun would
deign to appear above the horizon, prosecute its weary
journey across the skyline, and ultimately die its
daily death with almost pitiful indifference.
Then some twenty hours, when the world was abandoned
to the starry magnificence of the Arctic night, supported
by the brilliant light of a splendid aurora.
It was during this time that Steve
pursued his researches into the lives of these people.
He was sitting now in the laboratory, which was a
building apart from all the rest. It was the home
of the chemist’s research. It was equipped
with wonderful completeness. Besides the shelves
containing all the paraphernalia of a chemist’s
profession, and the counter which supported a distilling
apparatus, and which was clearly intended for other
experiment as well, there was a desk, and a small
wood stove, which was alight, and radiating a pleasant
heat.
It was the desk which held most interest
for Steve. It was here he looked to find, in
the dead man’s papers, in his letters, in his
records and books, the answer to every question in
his mind.
For some hours he had been reading
from one of the volumes of the man’s exhaustive
diary. It was a living document containing a fascinating
story of the chemist’s hopes and fears for the
great objects which had led to his abandonment of
the civilized world for the bitter heights of Unaga.
And in every line of it Steve realized it could only
have been written by a man of strong, deep conviction
and enthusiasm, a man whose purpose soared far above
the mere desire for gain. He felt, in the reading,
he was listening to the words of a man who was all
and more, far more, than his wife had claimed for
him.
At last the fire in the stove shook
down and he became aware of the work of busy shovels
going on just outside. He pulled out his watch,
and the yellow light of the oil lamp told him that
he had been reading for nearly three hours. Setting
a marker in the book he closed it reluctantly, and
prepared to return the litter of documents to the
drawers which stood open beside him.
At that moment the door opened, and
the tall figure of the squaw An-ina stood in the framing.
“Him supper all fixed,”
she announced, in her quietly assured fashion.
Steve looked up, and his eyes gazed
squarely into the woman’s handsome face.
He was thinking rapidly.
“Say An-ina,” he began
at last. “I’ve been reading a whole
heap. It’s what the man, Brand, wrote.
He seems to have been a pretty great feller.”
The woman nodded as he paused.
“Heap good man,” she commented.
Her eyes lit with an emotion there
could be no misunderstanding. For all the savage
stock from which she sprang the dead white man had
claimed a great loyalty and devotion.
“You see, An-ina,” Steve
went on, “I came along up here to chase up the
murder of two men. My work’s to locate all
the facts, arrest the murderers, take them back to
where I come from, and make my report.”
“Sure. That how An-ina mak it so.”
The woman’s eyes were questioning.
She was wondering at the meaning of all this preliminary.
And she was not without disquiet. She had come
to realize that, with the death of her mistress, only
this man and his scouts stood between her and disaster.
She could not rid herself of the dread which pursued
her now. Little Marcel was a white child.
This man was white. She she was just
a squaw. She was of the colour of these “Sleeper”
Indians. Would they take the child of her mother
heart from her, and leave her to her fate amongst
these folk who slept the whole winter through?
“Yes,” Steve was gazing
thoughtfully at the light which came from under the
rough cardboard shade of the lamp. “Well,
the whole look of things has kind of changed since
I’ve ” he indicated the papers
on the desk “taken a look into all
these.”
“Him read much. Him look always
look. So.”
Steve nodded.
“That’s so. Well,
I’ve got to get busy now, and do the things I
was sent up to do. But it seems likely there’s
going to be no murderer to take back with me.
It looks like a report of two men dead, by each other’s
hand, a woman dead through accident, and you, and little
Marcel left alive. That being so I guess I can’t
leave you two up here. Do you get that?”
He set his elbows on the desk and rested his chin on
his hands. “There’s the boy, he’s
white,” he said, watching the squaw’s troubled
face. “He’s got to go right back with
me, when my work’s done. And you why,
you’d best come, too. I’d hate to
rob you of the boy. You’ll both need to
come right along. And the big folk will say what’s
to be done with you when we get back. How do
you say?”
The trouble had completely vanished
from the woman’s eyes. It was like the
passing of a great shadow. Their velvet softness
radiated her thankfulness, her gratitude.
“It good. Much good,”
she cried, with a sudden abandonment of that stoic
unemotional manner which was native to her. “An-ina
love white boy. She love him much. Boy go?
Then An-ina all go dead. An-ina wait. So
storm devil him come. Then An-ina go out, and
sleep, sleep, and not wake never no more. An-ina
keep boy? Then An-ina much happy. An-ina
help white man officer. An-ina strong. Mak
long trail. An-ina no sick. No mak tire.
Work all time. An’ help much
help white man officer. So.”
Steve’s smiling eyes indicated
his acceptance of the woman’s protestations.
“That’s all right,”
he said. Then he went on after a moment’s
thought: “Now, you know these folk.
These ‘Sleepers.’ Do you know their
lingo their language? I’ve got
to make a big pow-wow with their head man. I
guess that can’t be done till they wake.
You figger they wake at intervals, and they dope themselves
again. If that’s so, I’ve got to get
their big chief right at that time. D’ you
guess you could take me right along to get a look
at these folk, and, after that, fix things so I can
grab their big man first time he wakes?”
The woman nodded at once, and her
eyes wore a contented smile.
“Sure. An-ina know.
Show him white man officer. Oh, yes. Show
him all this folk. Oh, yes. When? Now?
Oh, yes. Him not snow. It good. Then
sometime An-ina watch. She watch, watch, all time,
and when him wake, an’ eat, then him white man
come an’ mak pow-wow. Good?”
“Fine.” Steve returned
all the papers to the drawers in the desk and stood
up. “Guess I’ll eat right away, and
after that we’ll get along an’ take a
peek at these folks. The boys got the snow clear
outside?”
“Him dig much. Snow plenty gone.”
“Good. And little Marcel?”
Steve enquired, with a tender smile. “Has
he been digging?”
The squaw’s eyes lit.
“Oh, yes, him boy dig.
An’ Julyman, an’ him Oolak all laff.
Boy dig all time, everywhere.” An-ina laughed
in her silent way. Then she sobered, and a great
warmth shone in her eyes. “Boss white man
officer love him boy? Yes?”
Steve nodded in his friendly way.
“Oh, I guess so,” he admitted.
“You see, I’ve got a little girl baby of
my own way back where I come from.”
“So.”
There was no mistaking the understanding
in the woman’s significant ejaculation.
Steve and An-ina passed out into the
wonderful glowing twilight. There was no need
for the sun in the steely glittering heavens.
The full moonlight of the lower latitudes was incomparable
with the Arctic night. From end to end in a great
arc the aurora lit the world, and left the stars blazing
impotently. The cold was at its lowest depths,
and not a breath of wind stirred the air. Up
to the eyes in furs the two figures moved out beyond
the stockade into the shadowed world.
The squaw led the way, floundering
over the frozen snow-drifts with the gentle padding
sound of her moccasined feet. Steve kept hard
behind her yielding himself entirely to her guidance.
Out in the open no sign remained of
the dome-roofed settlement of the Sleepers. The
huts had served to buttress the snow for the blizzard.
They were buried deep under the great white ridges
which the storm had left.
It was something upon which Steve
had not calculated. And he swiftly drew the squaw’s
attention.
“Say,” he cried, pointing
at the place where the huts had been visible, “I
kind of forgot the snow.”
The squaw’s eyes were just visible
under her fur hood. Their brightness suggested
a smile.
“No ‘Sleeper’ man
by this hut. Oh, no,” she exclaimed decidedly.
“No winter, then him ‘Sleeper’ man
live by this hut. Winter come, then him sleep
by woods. Much hut. Plenty. All cover,
hid-up. Come, I show.”
Steve was more than relieved.
The snow had looked like upsetting all his calculation.
Once clear of the banked snow-drifts,
which rose to the height of the stockade, they moved
rapidly over the crusted surface towards the dark
wall of woods which frowned down upon them in the twilight,
and, in a few moments, the light of the splendid aurora
was shut out, and the myriad of night lights were
suddenly extinguished.
“Keep him much close,”
An-ina cried, her mitted hand grasping Steve by the
arm. “Bimeby him bush go all thick.
An-ina know.”
They trudged on, and as they proceeded
deeper and deeper into the darkness of the forest,
Steve’s eyes became accustomed. The snow
broke into patches, and soon they found themselves
more often walking over the underlay of rotting pine
cones than the winter carpet of the Northern world.
The temperature, too, rose, and Steve, at least, was
glad to loosen the furs from about his cheeks and
nose.
Half an hour of rapid walking proved
the squaw’s words. The lank tree-trunks,
down aisles of which they had been passing, became
lost in a wealth of dense undergrowth. It was
here that the woman paused for her bearings.
But her fault was brief, and in a few moments she picked
up the opening of a distinct but winding pathway.
The windings, the entanglement of the growth which
lined it, made the path seem interminable. But
the confidence and decision of his guide left Steve
without the slightest doubt. Presently his confidence
was justified.
The path led directly to the entrance
of a stoutly constructed habitation. Even in
the darkness Steve saw that the hut exactly occupied
a cleared space. The surrounding bush, in its
wild entanglement, completely overgrew it. The
result was an extraordinarily effective hiding.
Only precise knowledge could ever have hoped to discover
it.
An-ina paused at the low door and pointed beyond.
“Track him go long way.
More hut. Much, plenty. Oh, yes. Much
hut. This, big man chief. All him fam’ly.
Come.”
She bent low, and passed into the
tunnel-like entrance, built of closely interlaced
Arctic willow. A dozen paces or more brought them
to a hanging curtain of skins. The woman raised
this, and held it while Steve passed beyond.
A few paces farther on was a second curtain, and An-ina
paused before she raised it.
“So,” she said, pointing at it. “All
him Sleepers.”
Steve understood. And with a
queer feeling, almost of excitement, he waited while
the woman cautiously raised the last barrier.
He scarcely knew what to expect. Perhaps complete
darkness, and the sound of stertorous, drugged slumber.
That which was revealed, however, came as a complete
surprise.
The first thing he became aware of
was light, and a reeking atmosphere of burning oil.
The next was the warmth and flicker of two wood fires.
And after that a general odour which he recognized
at once. It was the same heavy, pungent aroma
that pervaded the fort where the dead chemist stored
the small but precious quantities of the strange weed
he traded.
They stepped cautiously within, and
stood in silent contemplation of the fantastic picture
revealed by the three primitive lights. They emanated
from what looked like earthenware bowls of oil, upon
which some sort of worsted wicks were floating.
These were augmented by the ruddy flicker of two considerable
wood fires, which burned within circular embankments
constructed on the hard earthen floor.
The lights and fires were a revelation
to the man, and he wondered at them, and the means
by which they were tended. But his speculations
were quickly swallowed up by the greater interest
of the rest of the scene.
The hut was large. Far larger
than might have been supposed; and Steve estimated
it at something like thirty feet long by twenty wide.
The roof was thatched with reedy grass, bound down
with thongs of rawhide to the sapling rafters.
The ridge of the pitched roof was supported by two
tree-trunks, which had been cut to the desired height,
and left rooted in the ground, while the two ends
of it rested upon the end walls. The walls themselves
were constructed of thick mud plaster, overlaying a
foundation of laced willow branches. The whole
construction was of unusual solidity, and the smoke-blackened
thatch yielded two holes, Indian fashion, through
which the fire smoke was permitted exit.
But Steve’s main interest lay
in the drug-suspended life which the place contained.
It was there, still, silent. It lay in two rows
down the length of either side of the great interior.
In the dim light he counted it. There were forty-two
distinct piles of furs, each yielding the rough outline
of a prone human figure beneath it. Each figure
was deathly still. And the whole suggested some
primitive mortuary, with its freight, awaiting identification.
For many moments Steve remained powerless
to withdraw his fascinated gaze. And all the
while he was thinking of Julyman, and the story he
had been told so long ago. He remembered how
he had derided it as beyond belief.
At last the fascination passed, and
he turned his gaze in search of those things which
made this extraordinary scene possible. They were
there. Oh, yes. Julyman had not lied.
No one had lied about these creatures of hibernation.
Piles of food were set out in earthenware bowls, similar
to the bowls which contained the floating lights.
Then there were other vessels, set ready to hand beside
the food, and he conjectured their contents to be
the necessary brew of the famous drug.
An-ina’s voice broke in upon his reflections.
“Him all much sleep,” she said. “No
wake now. Bimeby. Oh, yes.”
She spoke in her ordinary tone.
She had no fear of waking these “dead”
creatures.
“Tell me,” Steve said
after a pause, “who keeps these fires going?
Who watches them? And those oil lights.
Do they burn by themselves?”
An-ina made a little sound. It was almost a laugh.
“Him light burn all time.
Him seal oil,” she explained. “Indian
man much ’fraid for devil-man come. Him
light keep him devil-man ’way all time.
Winter, yes. Summer, yes. Plenty oil.
Only wind mak him blow out. Fire, oh yes.
When him wakes bimeby him mak plenty fire. Each
man. Him sit by fire all time eat. Then
him sleep once more plenty. Each man wake, each
man mak fire. So fire all time. No freeze
dead.”
“None awake now,” demurred
Steve lowering his voice unconsciously.
“Oh, no,” returned the
squaw. “No man wake now. Bimeby yes.
H’st!”
The woman’s sudden, low-voiced
warning startled Steve. Her Indian eyes had been
quicker than his. There was a movement under the
fur robes of one of the curious heaps in the distance,
to the left, and she pointed at it.
Steve followed the direction indicated.
Sure enough there was movement. One of the men
had turned over on his back.
“Him wake bimeby,” whispered
the squaw. “Come!”
She moved towards the doorway, and
Steve followed closely. In a moment they had
passed the curtained barriers out into the fresh night
air.
Steve paused.
“Would that be the headman?” he demanded.
An-ina shook her head.
“Him headman by door. Him
sleep where we stand. Him sleep by door.
Him brave. Keep devil-man away. So.”
“I see,” Steve moved on
down the path. “Well, we’ll get right
back. I’m going to reckon on you, An-ina.
Each day you go. When the headman wakes you speak
with him. You tell him white man officer of the
Great White Chief come. He looks for dead white
men. You must tell him to keep awake while you
bring white man officer. See?”
“Sure. An-ina know. An-ina mak him
fix all so.”