"The Colonel"ll have to take over the breeches," said the Boy, with the air of one wandering in his head. Then, desperately: "What _am_ I to do? What am I to _say?_"
"Say? You say you no like girl scream, no like her fight like Anna.
Heh? So, me--I come like your girls--quite, quite good.... Heh?"
"You don"t understand, Muckluck. I--you see, I could never find that Orange Grove if you came along."
"Why?"
"Well--a--no woman ever goes to help to find an Orange Grove.
Th-there"s a law against it."
"Heh? Law?"
Alas! she knew too little to be impressed by the Majesty invoked.
"You see, women, they--they come by-and-by--when the Orange Grove"s all--all ready for "em. No man _ever_ takes a woman on that kind of hunt."
Her saddened face was very grave. The Boy took heart.
"Now, the Pymeuts are going in a week or two, Nicholas said, to hunt caribou in the hills."
"Yes."
"But they won"t take you to hunt caribou. No; they leave you at home.
It"s exactly the same with Orange Groves. No nice girl _ever_ goes hunting."
Her lip trembled.
"Me--I can fish."
"Course you can." His spirits were reviving. "You can do anything--except hunt." As she lifted her head with an air of sudden protest he quashed her. "From the beginning there"s been a law against that. Squaws must stay at home and let the men do the huntin"."
"Me ... I can cook"--she was crying now--"while you hunt. Good supper all ready when you come home."
He shook his head solemnly.
"Perhaps you don"t know"--she flashed a moment"s hope through her tears--"me learn sew up at Holy Cross. Sew up your socks for you when they open their mouths." But she could see that not even this grand new accomplishment availed.
"Can help pull sled," she suggested, looking round a little wildly as if instantly to ill.u.s.trate. "Never tired," she added, sobbing, and putting her hands up to her face.
"Sh! sh! Don"t wake the Colonel." He got up hastily and stood beside her at the smouldering fire. He patted her on the shoulder. "Of course you"re a nice girl. The nicest girl in the Yukon"--he caught himself up as she dropped her hands from her face--"that is, you will be, if you go home quietly."
Again she hid her eyes.
Go home? How could he send her home all that way at this time of night?
It was a bothering business!
Again her hands fell from the wet unhappy face. She shivered a little when she met his frowning looks, and turned away. He stooped and picked up her mitten. Why, you couldn"t turn a dog away on a night like this--
Plague take the Pymeuts, root and branch! She had shuffled her feet into her snow-shoe straps, and moved off in the dimness. But for the sound of sobbing, he could not have told just where, in the softly-falling snow, Muckluck"s figure was fading into the dusk. He hurried after her, conscience-stricken, but most unwilling.
"Look here," he said, when he had caught up with her, "I"m sorry you came all this way in the cold--very sorry." Her sobs burst out afresh, and louder now, away from the Colonel"s restraining presence. "But, see here: I can"t send you off like this. You might die on the trail."
"Yes, I think me die," she agreed.
"No, don"t do that. Come back, and we"ll tell the Colonel you"re going to stay by the fire till morning, and then go home."
She walked steadily on. "No, I go now."
"But you can"t, Muckluck. You can"t find the trail."
"I tell you before, I not like your girls. I can go in winter as good as summer. I _can_ hunt!" She turned on him fiercely. "Once I hunt a owel. Ketch him, too!" She sniffed back her tears. "I can do all kinds."
"No, you can"t hunt Orange Groves," he said, with a severity that might seem excessive. "But I can"t let you go off in this snowstorm--"
"He soon stop. Goo"-bye."
Never word of sweeter import in his ears than that. But he was far from satisfied with his conduct all the same. It was quite possible that the Pymeuts, discovering her absence, would think he had lured her away, and there might be complications. So it was with small fervour that he said: "Muckluck, I wish you"d come back and wait till morning."
"No, I go now." She was in the act of darting forward on those snow-shoes, that she used so skillfully, when some sudden thought cried halt. She even stopped crying. "I no like go near blow-hole by night. I keep to trail--"
"But how the devil do you do it?"
She paid no heed to the interruption, seeming busy in taking something over her head from round her neck.
"To-morrow," she said, lowering her tear-harshened voice, "you find blow-hole. You give this to Yukon Inua--say I send it. He will not hate you any more." She burst into a fresh flood of tears. In a moment the dim sight of her, the faint trail of crying left in her wake, had so wholly vanished that, but for the bit of string, as it seemed to be, left in his half-frozen hands, he could almost have convinced himself he had dreamt the unwelcome visit.
The half-shut eye of the camp fire gleamed cheerfully, as he ran back, and crouched down where poor little Muckluck had knelt, so sure of a welcome. Muckluck, cogitated the Boy, will believe more firmly than ever that, if a man doesn"t beat a girl, he doesn"t mean business. What was it he had wound round one hand? What was it dangling in the acrid smoke? _That_, then--her trinket, the crowning ornament of her Holy Cross holiday attire, that was what she was offering the old ogre of the Yukon--for his unworthy sake. He stirred up the dying fire to see it better. A woman"s face--some Catholic saint? He held the medal lower to catch the fitful blaze. "_D. G. Autocratrix Russorum_." The Great Katharine! Only a little crown on her high-rolled hair, and her splendid chest all uncovered to the Arctic cold.
Her Yukon subjects must have wondered that she wore no parki--this lady who had claimed sole right to all the finest sables found in her new American dominions. On the other side of the medal, Minerva, with a Gorgon-furnished shield and a beautiful bone-tipped harpoon, as it looked, with a throwing-stick and all complete. But she, too, would strike the Yukon eye as lamentably chilly about the legs. How had these ladies out of Russia and Olympus come to lodge in Ol" Chief"s ighloo?
Had Glovotsky won this guerdon at Great Katharine"s hands? Had he brought it on that last long journey of his to Russian America, and left it to his Pymeut children with his bones? Well, Yukon Inua should not have it yet. The Boy thrust the medal into a pocket of his chaparejos, and crawled into his snow-covered bed.
CHAPTER XI
HOLY CROSS
"Raise the stone, and ye shall find me; cleave the wood, and there am I."
The stars were shining frostily, in a clear sky, when the Boy crawled out from under his snow-drift in the morning. He built up the fire, quaking in the bitter air, and bustled the breakfast.
"You seem to be in something of a hurry," said the Colonel, with a yawn stifled in a shiver.
"We haven"t come on this trip to lie abed in the morning," his pardner returned with some solemnity. "I don"t care how soon I begin caperin"
ahead with that load again."