CHAPTER XIV
A LONG WAITING
The next morning Jan struck out over his old trail to the Hasabala. TheCrees were gone. He spent a day swinging east and west, and found oldtrails leading into the north.
"They have gone up among the Eskimos," he said to himself. "Ah, Kazan,what in the name of the saints is that?"
The leading dog dropped upon his haunches with a menacing growl as alone figure staggered across the snow toward them. It was Croisset.With a groan, he dropped upon the sledge.
"I am sick and starving!" he wailed. "The fiend himself has got into mycabin, and for three days I've had nothing but snow and a rawwhisky-jack!"
"Sick!" cried Jan, drawing a step away from him.
"Yes, sick from an empty belly, and this, and this!" He showed aforearm done up in a bloody rag, and pointed to his neck, from whichthe skin was peeling. "I was gone ten days with that red cloth you gaveme; and when I came back, if there wasn't the horror itself grinning atme from the top of my own shanty! I tried to get in, but my wife barredthe door, and said that she would shoot me if I didn't get back intothe woods. I tried to steal in at night through a window, and shedrenched me in hot water. I built a wigwam at the edge of the forest,and stayed there for five days. Hon-gree! Blessed saints, I had nomatches, no grub; and when I got close enough to yell these things toher, she kept her word and plunked me through a crack in the door, sothat I lost a pint of blood from this arm."
"I'll give you something to eat," laughed Jan, undoing his pack. "Howlong has the red flag been up?"
"I've lost all count of time, but it's twelve days, if an hour, and Iswear it's going to take all winter to get it down!"
"It's not the plague. Go back and tell your wife so."
"And get shot for my pains!" groaned Croisset, digging into meat andbiscuit. "I'm bound for Lac Bain, if you'll give me a dozen matches.That whisky-jack will remain with me until I die, for when I ate him Iforgot to take out his insides!"
"You're a lucky man, Croisset. It's good proof that she loves you."
"If bullets and hot water and an empty belly are proofs, she loves me agreat deal, Jan Thoreau! Though I don't believe she meant to hit me. Itwas a woman's bad aim."
Jan left him beside a good fire, and turned into the southwest to burnLanglois and his cabin. The red flag still floated where he had seen itweeks before. The windows were thicker with frost. He shouted, beatupon the door with the butt of his rifle and broke in the windows. Thesilence of death quickened the beating of his heart when he stopped tolisten. There was no doubt that Langlois lay dead in his little home.
Jan brought dry brushwood from the forest, and piled it high againstthe logs. Upon his sledge he sat and watched the fire until the cabinwas a furnace of leaping flame.
He continued westward. At the head of the Porcupine he found theremains of three burned wigwams, and from one of them he dug outcharred bones. Down the Porcupine he went slowly, doubling to the eastand west, until, at its junction with Gray Otter Creek, he met a Cree,who told him that twenty miles farther on there was an abandonedvillage of six teepees. Toward these he boldly set forth, praying as hewent that the angels were guarding Melisse at Post Lac Bain.
Croisset reached the post forty-eight hours after he had encounteredJan.
"The red flag is everywhere!" he cried, catching sight of the signalover Mukee's cabin. "It is to the east and west of the Hasabala asthick as jays in springtime!"
The Cree from the Gray Otter drove in on his way north.
"Six wigwams with dead in them," he reported in his own language toWilliams. "A company man, with a one-eyed leader and four trailers,left the Gray Otter to burn them."
Williams took down his birch-bark moose-horn and bellowed a weirdsignal to Cummins, who opened a crack of his door to listen, withMelisse close beside him.
"Thoreau is in the thick of it to the south," he called. "There's toomuch of it for him, and I'm going down with the dogs. Croisset willstay in the store for a few days."
Melisse heard the words, and her eyes were big with fear when herfather turned from closing and bolting the door. In more than achildish way, she knew that Jan had gone forth to face a great danger.The grim laws of the savage world in which she lived had already begunto fix their influence upon her, quickening her instinct and reason,just as they hastened the lives of Indian children into theresponsibilities of men and women before they had reached fifteen.
She knew what the red flag over Mukee's cabin meant. She knew that theair of this world of hers had become filled with peril to those whobreathed it, and that people were dying out in the forests; that allabout them there was a terrible, unseen thing which her father calledthe plague, and that Jan had gone forth to fight it, to breathe it,and, perhaps, to die in it. Their own door was locked and boltedagainst it. She dared not even thrust her head from the window whichwas opened for a short time each day; and until Cummins assured herthat there was no danger in the sunshine, she shunned the few pale raysthat shot through the cabin-window at midday.
Unconsciously, Cummins added to her fears in more ways than one, and ashe answered her questions truthfully, her knowledge increased day byday. She thought more and more of Jan. She watched for him through thetwo windows of her home. Every sound from outside brought her to themwith eager hope; and always, her heart sank with disappointment, andthe tears would come very near to her eyes, when she saw nothing butthe terrible red flag clinging to the pole over Mukee's cabin.
In the little Bible which her mother had left there was written, on theragged fly-leaf, a simple prayer. Each night, as she knelt beside hercot and repeated this prayer, she paused at the end, and added:
"Dear Father in Heaven, please take care of Jan!"
The days brought quick changes now. One morning the moose-horn calledCummins to the door. It was the fifth day after Williams had gone south.
"There was no smoke this morning, and I looked through the window,"shouted Croisset. "Mukee and the old man are both dead. I'm going toburn the cabin."
A stifled groan of anguish fell from Cummins' lips as he went like adazed man to his cot and flung himself face downward upon it. Melissecould see his strong frame shaking, as if he were crying like a child;and twining her arms tightly about his neck, she sobbed out herpassionate grief against his rough cheek. She did not know the partthat Mukee had played in the life of the sweet woman who had once livedin this same little cabin; she knew only that he was dead; that theterrible thing had killed him and that, next to her father and Jan, shehad loved him more than any one else in the world.
Soon she heard a strange sound, and ran to the window. Mukee's cabinwas in flames. Wild-eyed and tearless with horror, she watched the fireas it burst through the broken windows and leaped high up among theblack spruce. In those flames was Mukee! She screamed, and her fathersprang to her with a strange cry, running with her from the window intothe little room where she slept.
The next morning, when Cummins went to awaken her, his face went aswhite as death. Melisse was not asleep. Her eyes were wide open andstaring at him, and her soft cheeks burned with the hot glow of fire.
"You are sick, Melisse," he whispered hoarsely. "You are sick!"
He fell upon his knees beside her, and lifted her face in his hands.The touch of it sent a chill to his heart--such as he had not feltsince many years ago, in that other room a few steps away.
"I want Jan," she pleaded. "I want Jan to come back to me!"
"I will send for him, dear. He will come back soon. I will go out andsend Croisset."
He hid his face from her as he dragged himself away. Croisset saw himcoming, and came out of the store to meet him. A hundred yards awayCummins stopped.
"Croisset, for the love of God, take a team and go after Jan Thoreau,"he called "Tell him that Melisse is dying of the plague. Hurry, hurry!"
"Night and day!" shouted Croisset.
Twenty minutes later, from the cabin window, Cummins saw him start.
"Jan will b
e here very soon, Melisse," he said, running his fingersgently through her hair.
It fell out upon the pillow in thick brown waves, and the sight of itchoked him with the memory of another vision which would remain withhim until the end of time. It was her mother's hair, shining softly inthe dim light; her mother's eyes looked up at him as he sat beside herthrough all this long day.
Toward evening there came a change. The fever left the child's cheeks.Her eyes closed, and she fell asleep. Through the night Cummins satnear the door, but in the gray dawn, overcome by his long vigil, hishead dropped upon his breast, and he slumbered.
When he awoke the cabin was filled with light He heard a sound, and,startled, sprang to his feet. Melisse was at the stove building a fire!
"I'm better this morning, father. Why didn't you sleep until breakfastwas ready?"
Cummins stared. Then he gave a shout, made a rush for her, and catchingher up in his arms, danced about the cabin like a great bear,overturning the chairs, and allowing the room to fill with smoke in hiswild joy.
"It's what you saw through the window that made you sick, Melisse," hecried, putting her down at last. "I thought--" He paused, and added,his voice trembling: "I thought you were going to be sick for more thanone day, my sweet little woman!"
He opened one of the windows to let in the fresh air of the morning.
When Croisset returned, he did not find a red flag over Cummins' cabin;nor did he bring word of Jan. For three days he had followed the trailsto the south without finding the boy. But he brought back other news.Williams was sick with the plague in a Cree wigwam on the lowerPorcupine. It was the last they ever heard of the factor, except thathe died some time in March, and was burned by the Crees.
Croisset went back over the Churchill trail, and found his wife readyto greet him with open arms. After that he joined Per-ee, who came infrom the north, in another search for Jan. They found neither trace norword of him after passing the Gray Otter, and Cummins gave up hope.
It was not for long that their fears could be kept from Melisse. Thisfirst bitter grief that had come into her life fell upon her with aforce which alarmed Cummins, and cast him into deep gloom. She nolonger loved to play with her things in the cabin. For days at a timeshe would not touch the books which Jan had brought from Churchill, andwhich he had taught her to read. She found little to interest her inthe things which had been her life a few weeks before.
With growing despair, Cummins saw his own efforts fail. As the dayspassed Melisse mingled more and more with the Indian and half-breedchildren, and spent much of her time at the company's store, listeningto the talk of the men, silent, attentive, unresponsive to any effortsthey might make to engage her smiles. From her own heart she looked outupon a world that had become a void for her. Jan had been mother,brother, and everything that was tender and sweet to her--and he wasgone. Mukee, whom she had loved, was gone. Williams was gone. The worldwas changed, terribly and suddenly, and it added years to herperspective of things.
Each day, as the weeks went on, and the spring sun began to soften thesnow, she became a little more like the wild children at Lac Bain andin the forest. For Jan, she had kept her hair soft and bright, becausehe praised her for it and told her it was pretty. Now it hung intangles down her back.
There came a night when she forgot her prayer, and Cummins did notnotice it. He failed to notice it the next night, and the next. Plungeddeep in his own gloom, he was unobservant of many other things, sothat, in place of laughter and joy and merry rompings, only gloomy andoppressive shadows of things that had come and gone filled the life ofthe little cabin.
They were eating dinner, one day in the early spring, with the sunshineflooding in upon them, when a quick, low footfall caused Melisse tolift her eyes in the direction of the open door. A strange figure stoodthere, with bloodless face, staring eyes, and garments hanging intatters--but its arms were stretched out, as those same arms had beenheld out to her a thousand times before, and, with the old glad cry,Melisse darted with the swiftness of a sun-shadow beyond Cummins,crying:
"Jan, Jan--my Jan!"
Words choked in Cummins' throat when he saw the white-faced figureclutching Melisse to its breast.
At last he gasped "Jan!" and threw out his arms, so that both werecaught in their embrace.
For an instant Jan turned his face up to the light The other stared andunderstood.
"You have been sick," he said, "but it has left no marks."
"Thank God!" breathed Jan.
Melisse raised her head, and stroked his cheeks with her two hands.That night she remembered her prayer, and at its end she added:
"Dear Father in Heaven, thank you for sending back Jan!"