"Why!" she exclaimed, regarding him curiously, "To pay for the meat, of course. A caribou is worth a cross fox, and----"
Brent felt the blood mounting to his face. Abruptly, almost roughly he released the girl"s hand. "I did not offer to sell you the meat," he answered, a trifle stiffly. "They need it, and they"re welcome to it."
Snowdrift, too, had been thrilled by that handclasp, and the thrill had repeated itself at the gentle pressure of the strong fingers, and she was quick to note the change in the man"s manner, and stood uncertainly regarding her bared hand until a big snowflake settled upon it and melted into a drop of water. Then she thrust the hand into her big fur mitten, and as her glance met his, Brent saw that the dark eyes were deep with concern: "I--I do not understand," she said, softly. "I have made you angry. I do not want you to be angry with me. Do you mean that you want to give them the meat? People do not give meat, excepting to members of their own tribe when they are very poor. But you are not of the tribe. You are not even an Indian. White men do not give Indians meat, ever."
Already Brent was cursing himself for his foolish flare of pride. Again his heart thrilled at the wonder of the girl"s absolute unsophistication. Swiftly his hand sought hers, but this time she did not remove it from the mitten. "I am not angry with you, Snowdrift!" he exclaimed, quickly, "I was a fool! It was I who did not understand. But, I want you to understand that here is one white man who does give meat to Indians. And I wish I were a member of your tribe. Sometime, maybe----"
"Oh, no, no! You would not want to be one of us. We are very poor, and we are Indians. You are a white man. Why should you want to live with us?"
"Some day I will tell you why," answered the man, in a voice so low that the dark eyes searched his face wonderingly. "And, now, won"t you give me your hand again? To show me that you are not angry with me."
The girl laughed happily: "Angry with you! Oh, I would never be angry with you! You are good. You are the only good white man I have known who was not a priest, or a factor, or a policeman--and even they do not give the Indians meat." With a swift movement she slipped her hand from the mitten and once more placed it within his, and this time there was nothing unconscious in the pressure of Brent"s clasp. He fancied that he felt the slender hand tremble ever so lightly within his own, and glanced swiftly into the girl"s face. For an instant their eyes met, and then the dark eyes dropped slowly before his gaze, and very gently he released her hand.
"May I come and see you, soon?" he asked.
"Why, yes, of course! Why did you ask me that?" she inquired, wonderingly, "You know the way to our camp, and you know that now I know you are not a hooch trader."
"Why," smiled Brent, "I asked because--why, just because it seemed the thing to do--a sort of formality, I reckon."
The girl"s smile met his own: "I do not understand, I guess.
Formality--what is that? A custom of the land of the white man? But I have not read of that in books. Here in the North if anybody wants to go a place, he goes, unless he has been warned to stay away for some reason, and then if he goes he will get shot. I will shoot the hooch traders if they come to the camp. The first time I will tell them to go--and if they come back I will kill them."
"You wouldn"t kill them--really?" smiled Brent, amazed at the matter of fact statement coming from this slip of a girl, whose face rimmed in its snow-covered parka hood was, he told himself, the most beautiful face he had ever looked upon. "Didn"t they teach you in the mission that it is wrong to kill?"
"It is wrong to kill in anger, or for revenge for a wrong, or so that you may steal a man"s goods. But it is not wrong to kill one who is working harm in the world. You, too, know that this is true, because in the books I have read of many such killings, and in some books it was openly approved, and other books were so written that the approval was made plain."
"But, there is the law," ventured Brent.
"Yes, there is the law. But the law is no good up here. By the time the policemen would get here the hooch trader would be many miles away. And even if they should catch him, the Indians would not say that he traded them hooch. They would be afraid. No, it is much better to kill them.
They take all the fur in trade for hooch, and then the women have nothing to eat, and the little babies die."
Brent nodded, thoughtfully; "I reckon you"re right," he agreed, "But, I wish you would promise me that if any hooch runners show up, you will let me deal with them."
"Oh, will you?" cried the girl, her eyes shining, "Will you help me? Oh, with a white man to help me! With _you_--" she paused, and as Brent"s glance met hers, the dark eyes drooped once more, and the man saw that the cheeks were flushed through their tan.
"Of course I"ll help you!" he smiled rea.s.suringly, "I would love to, and between us we"ll make the Coppermine country a mighty unhealthy place for the hooch runners."
"You will come to see me," reminded the girl, "And I will come to see you, and we will hunt together, and you will show me how to find gold."
"Yes," promised Brent, "We will see each other often--very often. And we will hunt together, and I will show you all I know about finding gold.
Good bye, and if you need any help getting the meat into camp, let me know and Joe Pete and I will come down with the dogs."
"We won"t need any help with the meat. There are plenty of us to haul it in. That is squaw"s work, Good bye."
The girl stood motionless and watched Brent until his form was hidden by a bend of the river. Then, slowly, she turned and struck off up stream.
And as she plodded through the ever deepening snow her thoughts were all of the man who had come so abruptly--so vitally into her life, and as she pondered she was conscious of a strange unrest within her, an awakening longing that she did not understand. Subconsciously she drew off her heavy mitten and looked at the hand that had lain in his. And then, she raised it to her face, and drew it slowly across her cheek.
In the cabin, she answered the questions of old Wananebish in monosyllables, and after a hearty meal, she left the cabin abruptly and entered another, where she lifted a very tiny red baby from its bed of blankets and skins, and to the astonishment of the mite"s mother, seated herself beside the little stove, and crooned to it, and cuddled it, until the short winter day came to a close.
Early the following day Snowdrift piloted a dozen squaws with their sleds and dog teams to the place of the kill. One of Brent"s three caribou was gone, and the girl"s eyes lighted with approval as she saw that his trail was partially covered with new-fallen snow. "He came back yesterday--he and his Indian, and they got the meat. He is strong," she breathed to herself, "Stronger than I, for I was tired from walking in the loose snow, and I did not come back."
Leaving the squaws to bring in the meat, the girl shouldered her rifle and struck into the timber, her footsteps carrying her unerringly toward the patch of scrub in which she and Brent had sought shelter from the storm. She halted beside the little wikiup, snow-buried, now--even the hole through which they had crawled was sealed with the new-fallen snow.
For a long time she stood looking down at the little white mound. As she turned to go, her glance fell upon a trough-like depression, only half filled with snow. The depression was a snowshoe trail, and it ended just beyond the little mound.
"It is _his_ trail," she whispered, to a Canada jay that chattered and jabbered at her from the limb of a dead spruce. "He came here, as I came, to look at our little wikiup. And he went away and left it just as it was." Above her head the jay flitted nervously from limb to limb with his incessant scolding. "Why did he come?" she breathed, "And why did I come?" And, as she had done upon the river, she drew her hand from her mitten and pa.s.sed it slowly across her cheek. Then she turned, and striking into the half-buried trail, followed it till it merged into another trail, the trail of a man with a dog-sled, and then she followed the broader trail to the northwestward.
At nine o"clock that same morning Brent threw the last shovelful of the eight-inch thawing of gravel from the shallow shaft, and leaving Joe Pete to build and tend the new fire, he picked up his rifle, and under pretense of another hunt, struck off up the river in the direction of the Indian camp.
Joe Pete watched with a puzzled frown until he had disappeared. Then he carried his wood and lighted the fire in the bottom of the shaft.
An hour and a half later Brent knocked at the door of the cabin from which Snowdrift had stepped, rifle in hand, upon the occasion of their first meeting. The door was opened by a wrinkled squaw, who looked straight into his eyes as she waited for him to speak. There was unveiled hostility in the stare of those beady black eyes, and it was with a conscious effort that Brent smiled: "Is Snowdrift in?" he inquired.
"No," the squaw answered, and as an after-thought, "She has gone with the women to bring in the meat."
The man was surprised that the woman spoke perfect English. The Indians who had come to trade, had known only the word "hooch." His smile broadened, though he noticed that the glare of hostility had not faded from the eyes: "She told you about our hunt, then? It was great sport.
She is a wonder with a rifle."
"No, she did not tell me." The words came in a cold, impersonal monotone.
"Can"t I come in?" Brent asked the question suddenly. "I must get back to camp soon. I just came down to see--to see if I could be of any help in bringing in the meat."
"The women bring in the meat," answered the woman, and Brent felt as though he had been caught lying. But, she stepped aside and motioned him to a rude bench beside the stove. Brent removed his cap and glanced about him, surprised at the extreme cleanliness of the interior, until he suddenly remembered that this was the home of the girl with the wondrous dark eyes. Covertly he searched the face of the old squaw, trying to discover one single feature that would proclaim her to be the mother of the girl, but try as he would, no slightest resemblance could he find in any line or lineament of the wrinkled visage.
She had seated herself upon the edge of the bunk beyond the little stove.
"Can"t we be friends?" he asked abruptly.
The laugh that greeted his question sounded in his ears like the snarl of a wolf: "Yes, if you will let me kill you now--we can be friends."
"Oh, come," laughed Brent, "That"s carrying friendship a bit too far, don"t you think?"
"I had rather you had traded hooch to the men," answered the woman, sullenly, "For then she would even now hate you--as someday she will learn to hate you!"
"Learn to hate me! What do you mean?"
"You know what I mean!" cried the squaw, her voice quivering with anger, "You white men are devils! You come, and you stay a while, and then you go your way, and you stop again, and your trail is a trail of misery--of misery, and of father-less half-breed babies! I wish she had killed you that day you stood out there in the snow! Maybe the harm has been already done----"
"What do you mean?" roared Brent, overturning the bench and towering above the little stove in his rage. "You can"t talk to me like that! Out with it! What do you mean?"
The squaw, also, was upon her feet, cowering at the side of the bunk, as she hurled her words into Brent"s face. "Where were you last night?
And, where was she?"
Two steps and Brent was before her, his face thrust to within a foot of her own: "We were together," he answered in a voice that cut cold as steel, "In a wikiup that we built in the blinding snow and the darkness to protect us from the storm. Half of the night, while she slept upon her robe, I sat and tended the fire, and then, because she insisted upon it, she tended the fire while I slept." As the man spoke never for a moment did the glittering eyes of the squaw leave his close-thrust, blazing eyes, and when he finished, she sank to the bunk with an inarticulate cry. For in the righteous wrath of the blazing eyes she had read the truth--and in his words was the ring of truth.
"Can it be?" she faltered, "Can it be that there is such a white man?"
The anger melted from Brent"s heart as quickly as it had come. He saw huddled upon the bunk not a poison-tongued, snake-eyed virago, but a woman whose heart was torn with solicitude for the welfare of her child.
But, was Snowdrift her child? Swiftly the thought flitted into Brent"s brain, and as swiftly flashed another. Her child, or another"s--what matter? One might well question her parentage--but never her love.