XIII
THE NEWLY-MARRIED PAIR
Out on the bosom of that infinite prairie, which rolls its unmeasuredmiles north and west of the Spirit River, a last place of mystery anddreams, still unharnessed by the geographers, and reluctantly writtendown "unexplored" on their maps, two human figures were riding slowly,with their horses' heads turned away from the last habitations of men.The prairie undulated about them like a sea congealed in motion--butseemingly vaster than the sea; for at sea the horizon is ever near athand; while here the very unevenness of the ground marked, and fixed,and opened up the awful distances. The grass was short, rich and brownedby the summer sun; and it mantled the distant rounds and hollows withthe changing lights of beaver fur. The only breaks in its expanse werehere and there, springing in the sheltered hollows, coppices or bluffsof slender poplar saplings, with crowding stems, as close and even ashair. The leaves were yellowed by the first frosts.
The man rode ahead, slouching on the back of his wretched cayuse, witheyes blank alike of inward thought or outward observation. He was notyet forty years old, but bore the cast of premature decay, more agedthan age. What showed of his hair beneath his hat was sparse and faded;and of his visible teeth he had no more than a perishing stump or twoleft in his jaws. His discontented, satiated, exhausted mien, had astrange look there in the fresh and potent wilderness.
The girl who followed with a travoise dragging at her pony's heels, was,on the other hand, in harmony with the land. Of the extremes to which thebreeds run in looks, she was of the rare beauties of that strange race.Her features were moulded in a delicate, definite harmony that would havemarked her out in any assemblage of beauty; and the spirit of beautywas there too. There were actually pride and dignity under the archedbrows--so capricious is Nature in shaping her wilder daughters--and in thedeep soft eyes brooded, even when she was happiest, a heart-disquietingquality of wistfulness. She was happy now; and ever and anon she raisedher eyes to the slouching back of the man riding ahead with a look ofpassionate abandon in which there was nothing civilized at all. She wasslenderer than the run of brown maidens, and her clumsy print dress couldnot hide the girlish, perfect contour of her shoulders. In her duskycheeks there glowed a tinge of deep rose; testimony to the lingeringinfluence of the white blood in her veins.
Topping a rise, the man paused for her to overtake him.
"Here we are, Rina," he said indifferently. His voice was oddly cracked.His manner toward her expressed a good-humoured tolerance. His eyesapproved her casually; inner tenderness there was none.
The girl apparently was sensible of no lack--but the breeds do not bringup their daughters to expect tenderness. Her eyes sparkled. "How prettyit is, 'Erbe't!" she breathed. "Ver' moch good land!" She spoke thepretty, clipped English of the convent school.
At their feet lay a shallow valley, hidden close until the very momentof stumbling upon it. In it was a sparkling slough but large enough tobe dignified with the name of lake. It was something the shape of agourd, with a long end that curved out of sight below, a very girdle ofblue velvet binding the waists of the brown hills. At their left theshores of the wider part of the lake, the bulb of the gourd, were, inunexpected contrast to the bareness of the uplands, heavily wooded withgreat cottonwood trees and spruce. A grassy islet ringed with willowsseemed to be moored here like the barge of some woodland princess. Awaybeyond, elevated on a grassy terrace at the head of the lake, andoverlooking its whole expanse, stood a tiny weather-beaten shack,startlingly conspicuous in that great expanse of untouched nature.Sheltered by the hills from the howling blasts of the prairie above; andwith wood, water and unlimited game at its door, it was a whollydesirable situation for a Northern dwelling--but it was seventy-fivemiles off the trail.
The girl brought her pony alongside Mabyn's; and slipped her hand intohis. "It is jus' right!" she whispered. "We will be ver' happy,'Erbe't!"
He let her hand fall carelessly. "It's damn lonesome!" he grumbled.
All the shy boldness of an enamoured girl peeped out of Rina's eyes, asshe whispered: "I'm glad it's lonesome! I don' want nobody to come--butyou!"
Mabyn was unimpressed. He struck the ribs of his tired pony with hisheels. "Come on," he said; and led the way down the incline.
Later, reaching the shack, on the threshold Rina spread out her armswith an unconscious gesture. "This is my home!" she cried. "I will jus'love it!"
Mabyn looking around at the gaping walls, the empty panes and the foullitter, laughed jeeringly at her simplicity.
The girl was too happy to feel the sting. "I will fix it!" she saidstoutly. "I will mak' it like an outside house. It will be as nice thanthe priest's parlour in the Settlement!" She clasped her hands againsther breast in the intensity of her eagerness. "Jus' you wait, 'Erbe't!Some day I will have white curtains in the window! and a piece of carpeton the floor! and a holy picture on the wall! Oh! I will work so hard!"
"Get about the supper, Rina," said Mabyn shortly.
She prepared the meal at the rough mud fireplace built across the cornerof the shack, for they had no stove; and they ate squatting on the floorin the breed fashion, for neither was there a table. Afterward Mabyndragged the bench--a relic of the former tenant, and sole article offurniture they possessed--outside the door; and sat upon it, smoking,yawning, looking across the lake with lack-lustre eyes.
Rina having redd up the shack, came to the doorway, where she stoodlooking at him wistfully. Finally she hovered toward him and retreated;and her hands stole to her breast. She was longing mightily to sitbeside him; but she did not dare. In a breed's wife it would have beenhighly presumptuous, and would very likely have been rewarded with ablow; but Rina had a dim notion that a white man's wife had the right tosit beside him--still she was afraid. In the end her desire overcame herfears; drifting hither and thither toward the bench like a frond ofthistledown, she finally alighted on the edge, and her cheek dropped onhis shoulder. The act must have been subtly suggested by the tincture ofwhite blood in her veins, for it is not a redskin attitude. The manneither repulsed nor welcomed her.
"'Erbe't," she whispered, "my head is so full of things I am near crazywit' thoughts! And my tongue is in a snare; I cannot speak at all!"
Mabyn's only comment was a sort of grunt, which meant anything--ornothing.
Rina was encouraged to creep a little closer. "Oh, 'Erbe't, I love you!"she whispered. "I am loving you every minute! I so glad you marry me,'Erbe't!"
The man took his pipe out of his mouth, and uttered his brief, jeeringcackle of laughter. "That wasn't altogether a matter of choice, mygirl," he said. "It was a little preliminary insisted on by your fatherand mother."
Rina hardly took the sense of this. "But you do love me, 'Erbe't? jus' alittle?" she pleaded.
"You're all right, Rina," he said patronizingly. "I never was one tomake much of a fuss about a woman."
Little by little gathering courage, she began to pour out her soul forthe man she loved. "I never love any man but you, 'Erbe't," so ran thenaive confession; "the breed boys, they always come aroun' and show off.I not lak them. They foolish and dirty; they eat same lak cocouche; andthey know not'ing; but they think themself so fine. They mak' me sick!My mot'er say to me; 'You eighteen year old, Rina; w'en you go tomarry?' I say to my mot'er, 'I never marry a pig-man; I want to stay toyou.'"
Her voice changed, borrowing the soft, passionate music of thenightingale she had never heard. "Then bam-bye w'en the spring come, an'we pitch by Ostachegan creek, an' the crocus flowers are coming up onSah-ko-da-tah prairie so many as stars in the sky--then you come by ourcamp, 'Erbe't; and you so poor an' sick I feel ver' bad for you! An' youtalk so pretty, and know so much, my heart him fly straight out of mybreast like a bird, 'Erbe't; an' perch on your shoulder; an' him goeverywhere you go; an' I got no heart any more. I empty lak a nest inthe snow-time!
"So you stay to us," she went on, "and I mad to see all the men mock atyou, an' treat you bad, an' mak' you eat after all have finished, andmak' you lie o
utside the fire. They t'ink themself better than a whiteman, hey! All the time you ask me to come away from the camp with you;an' you t'ink I don' want to come, but you don' know. Many, many nightsI not sleep, 'Erbe't. I want so bad to come to the ot'er side of thetepee where you are, but I hold to my mot'er's blanket!"
The man looked up. "Hm! You did, eh?" he exclaimed. "If I had known!"
"But I t'ink I mos' not let you see I love you. So I mak' show I don'care at all. An' it hurt me ver' moch in my empty breast, 'Erbe't. Butwhy I do it?--I want you so to marry me! an' bam-bye you marry me; an' Iso scare and happy lak I was lose my head! Four days I married now! Younot mad at me, 'Erbe't, 'cause I mak' you marry me?"
He shrugged. "What's the diff?" he said carelessly.
Rina dared to let her arm creep around his shoulders. "But bam-bye youver' glad you marry me," she whispered. "For I mak' me ver' nice! Iwhite woman now. I go no more to the breeds. I spik only Engliss now; wewill sit in chairs and eat pretty with knives and forks; and always saygood morning and good night, lak white people. 'Erbe't, you will teachme all the ways of white people, lak they do outside? I want so bad tobe ver' nice, jus' lak white woman!"
"Sure!" said Mabyn vaguely.
Rina was silent for a while. "'Erbe't," she said at last, "you nevertell me about your folks; about your house where you live outside.Please tell me."
He muttered, and writhed uncomfortably on the bench. "What's the use ofbringing that up?" he said at last. "You wouldn't understand if I triedto tell you."
"Loving makes me onderstan' moch," she softly pleaded.
He was silent.
"Have you any sisters outside, 'Erbe't?" she gently persisted.
"No," he said.
"Your mot'er, she is not dead?"
"No."
"She mos' be ver' nice, I think."
"She's a lady!" he blurted out.
Rina nodded wisely. "I know what that is," she said. "A lady is a ver'nice woman." Her voice dropped very low. "'Erbe't," she whispered, withinfinite, passionate desire in her voice--stroking his cheek, "will youteach me to be a lady?"
He laughed. "You 'tend to your work about the place," he said, "anddon't bother your head over that."
Tears slowly welled up in Rina's eyes, and stole one after another downher cheeks. "I do so ver' moch want to be a lady," she whispered, moreto herself than to him. He did not know she wept, she was so still.
By and by she raised her head, and shook the tears away. "To-morrow, Iwill begin to fix things nice for you, 'Erbe't," she said with renewed,soft tenderness.
He vented his hopeless, jeering chuckle. "Nice!" he echoed. "My God,Rina! What are you going to begin on?"
"I show you!" she said eagerly. "I have a whole tanned buckskin myfather give to me when I go 'way; and my mot'er, she give silk, allcolours. I make seven, eight, maybe ten pairs of glove, with cuffs; andwork them with silk flowers! No woman can work so good with silk thanme! I work all the time there is light; and when all are done I getforty dollar in trade at the store! And I buy cartridges and traps andgrub, and another skin to work. Not any more will you be poor, 'Erbe't!"
"Lord! How will we ever drag out the winter in this God-forsaken spot!"he grumbled--unconsciously shifting the initiative to her shoulders.
Her arm tightened about him. "We will do fine!" she said eagerly. "Wewill mak' moch money. There is no plentier place for fur; and we willhave it all! Me, I can set traps and snares as good as Michel Whitebear.Maybe I will get a silver fox, or a black one. I know the fox! In thespring we will have plenty good credit at the store. We can travel tothe Settlement then, and you will not be lonesome. There are many whitemen. We could stay in the Settlement all summer; and I would cook mealsfor the freighters and the travellers and mak' more money. I am a goodworker, 'Erbe't. Everybody say so!"
Mabyn partly roused himself. "That's not a bad idea," he said. "Undercover of the restaurant, it would be dead easy to run in a littlewhiskey over the Berry Mountain trail, and make a pot of money. Fiftycents a drink, by Gad!"
Rina drew away from him. "I will not help you do that, 'Erbe't," shesaid quietly.
"You'll do what I tell you to do," he said coolly.
Rina remained silent. Her breast heaved and trembled with terror at herown temerity in defying her husband--but there were both firmness andreproach in her attitude. It was more than the weak Mabyn could bear forlong in silence.
"Good God!" he burst out. "Have I married a breed to tell me what Iought to do, and ought not to do? Better learn once for all, my girl,that I'm the head of this outfit, and I mean to do whatever I damnedplease!"
Rina sat gripping her hands together in her lap to control theirtrembling. Her head was bowed. "I am only a breed girl," she said. "Youare my 'osban', and you can beat me, and you can kill me, but I wouldnot cry out, or think bad of you. But you cannot mak' me help you tomak' a pig of you again. I will mak' you to have good credit, an' to bea rich and strong man, an' you can go back and spit on the poor breedsthat mock you before. I will not help you trade in whiskey; whiskey mak'you poor, an' sick, an' crazy!"
Mabyn got up. "God! Women are all alike, white or brown!" he mutteredindifferently. "Come on in."
But he had yielded the point. The regeneration of Herbert Mabyn had beenundertaken.