WHERE NORTHERN LIGHTS COME DOWN O' NIGHTS
The Mission House at Togiak stands forlornly on a wind-swept Alaskanspit, while huddled around it a swarm of dirt-covered "igloos" grovelin an ecstacy of abasement.
Many natives crawled out of these and stared across the bay as down agully came an Arctic caravan, men and dogs, black against, the deadlywhiteness. Ahead swung the guide, straddling awkwardly on his fivefoot webs, while the straining pack pattered at his heels. BigGeorge, the driver, urged them with strong words, idioms of theNorthland, and his long whip bit sharply at their legs.
His companion, clinging to the sled, stumbled now and then, while hisface, splitting from the snap of the frost, was smothered in amuffler. Sometimes he fell, plunging into the snow, risingpainfully, and groaning with the misery of "snow-blindness."
"Most there now. Cap, keep up your grit."
"I'm all right," answered the afflicted man, wearily. "Don't mindme."
George, too, had suffered from the sheen of the unbroken whiteness,and, while his eyes had not wholly closed, he saw but dimly. Hischeeks were grease-smeared, and blackened with charred wood to breakthe snow-glare, but through his mask showed signs of suffering, whilehis blood-shot eyes dripped scalding tears and throbbeddistressfully. For days he had not dared to lose sight of the guide.Once he had caught him sneaking the dogs away, and he feared he hadkilled the man for a time. Now Jaska broke trail ahead, his sullen,swollen features baleful in their injury.
Down the steep bank they slid, across the humped up sea ice at theriver mouth and into the village.
At the greeting of their guide to his tribesmen, George started.Twelve years of coast life had taught him the dialect from PointBarrow south, and he glanced at Captain to find whether he, too, hadheard the message. As Jaska handed a talisman to the chief he strodeto him and snatched it.
"Oho! It's Father Orloff, is it? D---- him!" He gazed at thetoken, a white spruce chip with strange marks and carvings.
"What does it mean, George?" said the blind man.
"It's a long story, Charlie, and black. You should have known itbefore we started. I'm a marked man in this coast country. It'sOrloff's work, the renegade. 'Father,' he calls himself. Father tothese devils he rules and robs for himself in the name of the Church.His hate is bitter, and he'd have my life if these watery-liveredcurs didn't dread the sound of my voice. God help him when we meet."
He shook his hairy claws at the hostile circle, then cried to thechief in the native tongue:--
"Oh, Shaman! We come bleeding and weary. Hunger grips us and ourbones are stiff with frost. The light is gone from my brother's eyesand we are sick. Open you the door to the Mission House that the'Minoks' may rest and grow strong."
The Indians clustered before the portal, with its rude cross above,and stared malignantly, while the chief spoke. At the name of hisenemy the unsightly eyes of George gleamed, and he growledcontemptuously, advancing among them. They scattered at the mannerof his coming, and he struck the padlocked door till it rattledstiffly. Then spying the cross overhead he lifted up and gripped thewood. It came away ripping, and with wails of rage and horror at thesacrilege, they closed about him.
"Here, Cap! Bust her in quick!" He dragged Captain before theentrance, thrusting the weapon upon him, then ran ferociously amongthe people. He snatched them to him, cuffing like a bear andtrampling them into the snow. Those who came into the reach of hisknotty arms crumpled up and twisted under his feet. He whirled intothe group, roaring hoarsely, his angry, grease-blackened face hideouswith rage. The aborigine is not a fighting machine; for him theside-step and counter have no being. They melted ahead of hisblazing wrath, and he whisked them, fleeing, by their garments, sothat they felt the stamp of his moccasined heels.
Captain dragged the team within, and George following, blocked theshattered door.
"We're safe as long as we stay in the Church," said he.
"Right of sanctuary, eh? Does it occur to you how we're going to getout?"
"Never mind, we'll get out somehow," said he, and that night, asCharlie Captain, late University man and engineer, lay with eyesswathed in steaming cloths, the whaler spoke operosely and with thebitterness of great wrong.
"It happened when we rocked the bars of Forty Mile, before ever aChechako had crossed the Chilcoot. I went over to the headwaters ofthe Tanana. Into the big valley I went and got lost in the Flats.'Tis a wild country, rimmed by high mountains, full of niggerheadsand tundra, with the river windin' clean back to the source of theCopper. I run out of grub. We always did them days, and built araft to float down to the Yukon. A race with starvation, and a deadheat it near proved, too, though I had a shade the best of it. Idrifted out into the main river, ravin' mad, my 'Mukluks' eat off andmy moose-hide gun cover inside of me.
"A girl spied me from the village, and 'twas her brought me ashore inher birch-bark and tended me in her wick-i-up till reason came andthe blood ran through me again.
"I mind seein' a white man stand around at times and hearin' him begher to leave me to the old squaws. She didn't though. She gave mebits of moose meat and berries and dried salmon, and when I come toone day I saw she was little and brown and pleadin' and her clothesall covered with beads. Her eyes was big and sad, Cap, and dimplespoked into her cheeks when she laughed.
"'Twas then that Orloff takes a hand--the white man. A priest hecalled himself; breed, Russian. Maybe he was, but a blacker heartedthief never wronged a child. He wanted the girl, Metla, and so didI. When I asked her old man for her he said she was promised to theRussian. I laughed at him, and a chief hates to be mocked. You knowwhat sway the Church has over these Indians. Well, Orloff is astrong man. He held 'em like a rock. He worked on 'em till one daythe tribemen came to me in a body and said, 'Go!'
"'Give me the girl, and I will,' says I.
"Orloff sneered. 'She was mine for a month before ye came,' says hewith the fiend showin' back of his eyes. 'Do ye want her now?'
"For a minute I believed him. I struck once to kill, and he wentdown. They closed on me as fast as I shook 'em off. 'Twas abeautiful sight for a ruction, on the high banks over the river, butI was like water from the sickness. I fought to get at their priestwhere he lay, to stamp out his grinning face before they downed me,but I was beat back to the bluff and I battled with my heels over theedge. I broke a pole from the fish-rack and a good many went down.Then I heard Metla calling softly from below:--
"'Jump!' she said. 'Big one, jump.'
"She had loosed a canoe at the landing and now held it in the boilingcurrent underneath, paddling desperately.
"As they ran out of the tents with their rifles I leaped.
"A long drop and cold water, but I hit feet first. When I rose thelittle girl was alongside.
"It's a ticklish thing to crawl over the stern of a canoe in thespatter of slugs, with the roar of muzzle-loaders above. It'sshakin' to the nerves, but the maid never flinched, not even when abullet split the gunnel. She ripped a piece of her dress and pluggeda hole under the water line while I paddled out of range.
"The next winter at Holy Cross she ran to me shaking one day.
"'He is here! He is here! Oh, Big man, I am afraid!'
"'Who's here?' says I.
"'He is here--Father Orloff,' and her eyes was round and scared sothat I took her up and kissed her while she clung to me--she was sucha little girl.
"'He spoke to me at the water-hole, "I have come for you." I ranvery fast, but he came behind. "Where is George?"' he said.
"I went out of the cabin down to the Mission, and into the house ofFather Barnum. He was there.
"'Orloff! What do ye want?' I says.
"Father Barnum speaks up--'he's known for a good man the length ofthe river. George,' says he, 'Father Orloff tells me you stole thegirl Metla from her tribe. 'Tis a shameful thing for a white to takea red girl for his wife, but it's a crime to live as you do.'
"'What?' says I
.
"'We can't sell you provisions nor allow you to stay in the village.'
"Orloff grins. 'You must go on,' he says, 'or give her up.'
"'No! I'll do neither.' And I shows the paper from the missionaryat Nulato statin' that we were married. 'She's my wife,' says I,'and too good for me. She's left her people and her gods, and I'llcare for her.' I saw how it hurt Orloff, and I laid my hand on hisshoulder close to the neck. 'I distrust ye, and sure as Fate ye'lldie the shocking death if ever harm comes to the little one.'
"That was the winter of the famine, though every winter was the samethen, and I went to Anvik for grub--took all the strong men and dogsin the village. I was afraid when I left, too, for 'twas the time Ishould have been with her, but there was no one else to go.
"'When you come back,' she said, 'there will be another--a littleboy--and he will grow mighty and strong, like his father.' She hungher arms around me, Cap, and I left with her kisses warm on my lips.
"It was a terrible trip, the river wet with overflows and thecut-offs drifted deep, so I drove back into Holy Cross a week latewith bleedin' dogs and frozen Indians strainin' at the sled ropes.
"I heard the wail of the old women before. I come to the cabin, andwhen Metla had sobbed the story out in her weakness, I went back intothe dark and down to the Mission. I remember how the Northern Lightsflared over the hills above, and the little spruces on the summitlooked to me like headstones, black against the moon--and I laughedwhen I saw the snow red in the night glare, for it meant blood anddeath.
"It was as lusty a babe as ever crowed, but Orloff had come to thesick bed and sent her squaws away. Baptism and such things he saidhe'd do. The little fellow died that night.
"They say the Mission door was locked and barred, but I pushedthrough it like paper and came into Father Barnum's house, where theysat. Fifty below is bad for the naked flesh. I broke in,bare-headed, mittenless, and I'd froze some on the way down. He sawmurder in my eyes and tried to run, but I got him as he went out ofthe room. He tore his throat loose from my stiffened fingers andwent into the church, but I beat down the door with my naked fists,mocking at his prayers inside, and may I never be closer to deaththan Orloff was that night.
"Then a squaw tugged at my parka.
"'She is dying, Anguk,' she said, and I ran back up the hill with thecold bitin' at my heart.
"There was no death that night in Holy Cross, though God knows onenaked soul was due to walk out onto the snow. At daylight, when Icame back for him, he had fled down the river with the fastest dogs,and to this day I've never seen his face, though 'tis often I've felthis hate.
"He's grown into the strongest missionary on the coast, and he neverlets a chance go by to harry me or the girl.
"D'ye mind the time 'Skagway' Bennet died? We was pardners up NortonSound way when he was killed. They thought he suicided, but I know.I found a cariboo belt in the brush near camp--the kind they make onthe Kuskokwim, Father Orion's country. His men took the wrong one,that's all.
"I'm sorry I didn't tell ye this, Cap, before we started, for nowwe're into the South Country, where he owns the natives. He knowswe've come, as the blood-token of the guide showed. He wants mylife, and there's great trouble comin' up. I'm hopin' ye'll soon getyour sight, for by now there's a runner twenty miles into the hillswith news that we're blind in the church at Togiak. Three days he'llbe goin', and on the fifth ye'll hear the jangle of Russiandog-bells. He'll kill the fastest team in Nushagak in the comin',and God help us if we're here."
George scraped a bit of frost-lace from the lone window pane. Darkfigures moved over the snow, circling the chapel, and he knew thateach was armed. Only their reverence for the church held them fromdoing the task set by Orloff, and he sighed as he changed thebandages on his suffering mate.
They awoke the next morning to the moan of wind and the sift of snowclouds past their walls. Staring through his peep-hole, Georgedistinguished only a seethe of whirling flakes that greyed the view,blotting even the neighbouring huts, and when the early eveningbrought a rising note in the storm the trouble lifted from his face.
"A three-day blizzard," he rejoiced, "and the strongest team on thecoast can't wallow through it under a week. These on-shore gales isbeauts."
For three days the wind tore from off the sea into the open bight atwhose head lay Togiak, and its violence wrecked the armour of shoreice in the bay till it beat and roared against the spit, a threshingmaelstrom of shattered bergs. The waters piled into the inlet drivenby the lash of the storm till they overflowed the river ice behindthe village, submerging and breaking it into ragged, dangerousconfusion.
On the third day, with Arctic vagary, the wind gasped reluctantly andscurried over the range. In its wake the surging ocean churnedloudly and the back-water behind the town, held by the dam offreezing slush-ice at the river mouth, was skimmed by a thinice-paper, pierced here and there by the up-ended piles from beneath.This held the night's snow, so that morning showed the village girton three sides by a stream soft-carpeted and safe to the eye, butfailing beneath the feet of a child.
"You're eyes are comin' along mighty slow," worried George. "I'mhopin' his reverence is up to his gills in drifts back yonder. "Wemust leave him a sled trail for a souvenir."
"How can we, with the place guarded?"
"Hitch the dogs and run for it by night, He'll burn us out when hecomes. Fine targets we'd make on the snow by the light of a burningshack. If ye can see to shoot we'll go tonight. Hello! What'sthat?"
Outside came the howl of malamoots and the cry of men. Leaping tothe window, George rubbed it free and stared into the sunshine.
"Too late! Too late!" he said. "Here he comes! It's time I killedhim." He spoke gratingly, with the dull anger of years.
On the bright surface of the opposite hillside a sled bearing amuffled figure appeared silhouetted against the glisten of the crust.Its team, maddened by the village scent, poured down the inclinetoward the river bank and the guide swung onto the runners behind,while the voice of the people rose to their priest. In a whirl ofsoft snow they drove down onto the treachery of the ice. The screamsof the natives frenzied the pack and they rioted out onto the bendingsheet, while the long sledge, borne by its momentum, shot forwardtill the splitting cry of the ice sounded over the lamentations. Itslackened, sagged and disappeared in a surge of congealing waters.The wheel dogs were dragged into the opening and their mates aheadjerked backward onto them. In a fighting tangle, all settled intothe swirl.
Orloff leaped from the sinking sled, but hindered by his furswaddling, crashed through and lunged heavily in his struggles tomount the edge of the film. As he floundered onto the caving surfaceit let him back and the waters covered him time and again. Hepitched oddly about, and for the first time they saw his eyes werebound tightly with bandages, which he strove to loosen.
"My God! He's snow-blind!" cried George, and in a moment he appearedamong the frantic mob fringing the shore.
The guide broke his way toward a hummock of old ice forming an isletnear by, and the priest half swam, half scrambled behind, till theycrawled out upon this solid footing. Here the wintry wind searchedthem and their dripping clothes stiffened quickly. Orloff draggedthe strips from his face, and as the sun glitter pierced his eyes hewrithed as though seared by the naked touch of hot steel.
He shouted affrightedly in his blindness, but the mocking voice ofBig George answered him and he cowered at the malevolence in thewords.
"Here I am, Orloff. It's help ye want, is it? I'll shoot the manthat tries to reach ye. Ha, ha! You're freezin' eh? Georgie willtalk to keep ye awake. A dirty trick of the river to cheat me so.I've fattened for years on the hope of stampin' your life out and nowit's robbed me. But I'll stick till ye're safe in Hell."
The man cried piteously, turning his bleared eyes toward the sound.
"Shoot, why don't you, and end it? Can't you see we're freezing?"He stood up in his carapace of stiffened clothes, shi
vering palsiedly.
"The truest thing ye ever said," cried George, and he swung his coltsinto view. "It'll favour you and I'll keep my vow." He raised thegun. The splashing of the distant dogs broke the silence. A nativeknelt stiffly.
"George! George!" Captain had stumbled down among them and pluckedat his arm, peering dimly into his distorted face. "Great God, areyou a murderer? They'll be dead before we can save them."
"Save 'em ?" said George, while reason fought with his mania. "Whosegoin' to save 'em? He needs killin'. I'm hungry for his life."
"He's a man, George. They're both human, and they're dying in sightof us. Give him a chance. Fight like a man."
As he spoke the fury fell away from the whaler and he became thealert, strong man of the frontier, knowing the quick danger andmeeting it.
He bellowed at the natives and they fled backward before his voice,storming the cache where lay the big skin canoes. They slid one downand seizing paddles crushed the ice around it till it floated, thensupported by the prow, George stamped the ice into fragments ahead,and they forced their way slowly along the channel he made. Soakedto the armpits he smashed a trail through which they reached thehummock where the others lay, too listless for action.
At the shore they bore the priest to their shelter while the guidewas snatched into a near-by hut. They hacked off his brittle clothesand supported him to the bed. As he walked his feet clattered on theboard floor like the sound of wooden shoes. They were white andsolid, as were his hands.
"He's badly frozen," whispered Captain, "can we save him?" Theyrubbed and thawed for hours, but the sluggish blood refused to flowinto the extremities and Captain felt that this man would die forlack of amputation.
Through all the Russian was silent, gazing strangely at George.
"'Tis no use," finally said the big man, despairingly, "I've seen toomany of 'em; we've done our best."
He disappeared, and there sounded the jingle of harness as the dogswere hitched. As he entered for the camp outfit Orloff spoke:
"George Brace, I've harmed you bitterly these many years, and you'rea good man to help me so. It's no use. We have both fought the ColdDeath, and know when to quit. I came here to kill you, but you willgo out across the mountains free, while I rave in madness and themedicine men make charms over me. When you come into Bethel MissionI'll be dead. Good-bye."
"Good Hell! We're takin' ye to Bethel and a doctor in ten minutes.A week's travel as the trail goes, but we'll save a chunk of ye yet,old man."
Five days later a broken team crawled over the snow to the MoravianMission, urged by two men gaunt from the trail, and blistered by thecold. From the sledge came shrieks and throaty mutterings, horridgabblings of post-freezing madness and Dr. Forrest, lifting back therobe, found Orloff lashed into his couch.
"Five days from Togiak. Two hundred miles in heavy trails,"explained George wearily, as the cries of the maniac dimmed behindthe log walls.
Two hours later Forrest spoke gravely as they nursed their frostbites in his room.
"We have operated. He will recover."
"It's a sad, sad day,"' mourned George. "It just takes the taste outof everything for me. He's a cripple now, eh ?"
"Yes! Helpless! I did not know Father Orloff had many--er--friendshereabout," continued the doctor. "He was thought to be hated by thewhites. I'm glad the report was wrong."
"Friends be damned," said the other strongly. "What's a friend? Yecan get them any place, but where can ye find another enemy like thatman?"