The Gaunt Gray Wolf Part 27

"Were they goin' right back home?"

"No, they 'bides t' th' post with Tom Black's folks till th' end o'

th' week, an' Bessie goes back with un t' be company with your mother.

Oh, I were forgettin'! Here's somethin' your mother were sendin';" and Ed reached under the bunk and drew forth a package.

Upon opening the package Bob discovered a quant.i.ty of sweet cakes, a loaf of plum bread, and a letter. He pa.s.sed the cakes around, then drawing up to the candle proceeded at once to read hungrily his mother's letter.

It was a message of love and encouragement, closing with the news of the bank failure and consequent loss of the little fortune with which he had planned to do so many things. Presently looking up he said, in a shaking voice:

"Why--Ed--Mother's sayin' th' bank's broke--an' all our money's gone."

"Aye," admitted Ed, his voice sympathetic and sorrowful. "'Tis broke, lad--I were hopin' she wouldn't write you that, an' you wouldn't know till you gets home. But don't worry about un, now, lad. 'Twon't do no good. If you hadn't known about un now, you wouldn't be worryin' about un. An' now you knows, 'twon't help none."

"I suppose you're right, Ed. But 'twill be hard not t' worry. I were plannin' so."

"'Tain't so bad as t' have some o' your folks die, now. An' I been noticin' all my life that sometimes things happens t' me I thinks is 'most more'n I can stand, an' I feels like givin' up. Then somethin'

comes along that's better'n anything I ever thought o' gettin'. An'

then when I thinks un out, I finds th' good couldn't ha' come without me havin' th' trouble first. So don't get feelin' too bad about un, Bob. This may be just openin' th' way for some wonderful good luck better 'n all th' money you loses," soothed Ed.

There was a postscript which Bob had overlooked. Now in folding the letter his eye caught it and he read it--a brief line added by Bessie, telling him not to think too much about his loss, for she was sure it would all be well in the end, and not to forget it was the Lord's will or it could not have happened, adding, "Remember, Bob, the Lord is always near you."

Nevertheless, Bob was very quiet at supper. He could not forget his tumbled air castles. He could not forget the fact that the returns from the present year's trapping would be insufficient to buy the next year's outfit.

"They was a band o' Injuns comes t' th' post just before I leaves, pretty nigh on their last legs," remarked Ed, when they had finished eating and he had lighted his pipe. "They was about as nigh starved as any pa.s.sel o' men I ever seen, an' if they'd been starved much more they'd been dead. I hears some o' th' band did die before these gets out."

"Who were they?" asked Bob.

"Mountaineers," answered Ed. "They was back in th' country huntin', but don't find th' deer. They's camped down t' th' post now."

"Did you hear where 'bouts they was huntin'?" inquired d.i.c.k. "In th'

nu'th'ard or s'uth'ard?"

"They all comes from th' nu'th'ard and west'ard o' th' post," said Ed.

"They tells me they finds it th' worst year for fur an' game up that way they ever seen, an' I tells un 'tis th' same here."

"I wonders, now, how Shad an' th' Injuns he's with is makin' out.

They'll be wonderful bad off, an' they don't run on th' deer,"

suggested d.i.c.k.

"They'll be likely t' find un up where they finds un when I was with un," rea.s.sured Bob, "but 'tis a long cruise there an' back."

Bob's loss was a keen disappointment to him. For several days it robbed him of ambition, and he tramped along the trails and attended to his traps dully and methodically, with a heavy heart. Then he began to say to himself:

"'Tis th' Lard's way. 'Tweren't right for me to go tradin' or t' have th' money, an' th' Lord knowin' it takes th' money away."

This thought, with his natural buoyancy of temperament, restored again to a large extent his interest and ambition in his work; and when he remembered that he was, after all, the owner of two unenc.u.mbered trails, with all their traps, he almost forgot his disappointment--but not altogether; that was impossible.

With the end of February ptarmigans began to reappear among the willows along the river bank. They were welcomed by the trappers, for they supplied a much needed variety to the diet. They offered hope, too, that the period of famine was nearing its end.

Ed Matheson's report of the condition of the Indians appearing at the Eskimo Bay post gave the men food for thought. When they gathered again at the river tilt two weeks later, the chief subject of conversation was Shad's continued absence, and many speculations were put forth as to the probable movements of Shad and their Indian friends. Whether or not they were likely to find caribou, where they would go and what they would be likely to do should they fail, were questions which they discussed at length. And they did not conceal from one another the fact that they were deeply concerned for Shad's safety.

When the trappers gathered again at the rendezvous on Friday, the sixth of March, they fully expected that Shad would be there to greet them, but they were disappointed. His failure to appear at this late date excited alarm, but no course of action that would be in the least likely to lead to results presented itself.

They agreed that the Indians had beyond doubt left a cache at the Great Lake, for Sishetakus.h.i.+n had stated to Bob that he would do so; and upon returning to that point it was believed Shad would have sufficient food to proceed to the river tilt. Any search beyond the Great Lake would be fruitless, for none could know in what direction to search.

Still there was no Shad on Friday, the twentieth of March. They ate their supper and resumed their speculations.

"I'm thinkin', now, t' make a cruise t' th' place where th' Injuns was camped when I left un," declared Bob. "If they ain't there, I'll come back, unless I sees signs of un. And, anyway, 'twill make me feel better."

"An' I'll go along," said Ed. "We'll be startin' in th' mornin' early, an' we may's well get our stuff out t'-night, ready t' pack."

They had blown out the candle and were lying in their bunks, discussing still Shad's long absence, when the door of the tilt was pushed quietly open and the figure of a man appeared in the moonlight at the entrance.

They sprang from their bunks, and Ed Matheson, striking a match, applied it to a candle. As the light flared up the man entered, and Mookoomahn stood before them.

XXIV

THE MESSENGER

They looked at the Indian in awed and speechless horror. His tale of suffering was told before he spoke. He had come from a land of Tragedy. He had been stalking side by side with Death.

This was a mere shadowy caricature of the Mookoomahn Bob had known.

The face was fleshless as that of a skeleton head, with the skin of the former inhabitant stretched and dried upon the bones; the lips so shrunken that they scarcely served to cover the two white lines of teeth; the eyes deep fallen into gaping cavities below the frontal bone.

Drawing his skeleton hands from their mittens, and raising them in an imploring gesture, Mookoomahn looked, as he stood there in the dim candlelight under the low log ceiling, more a spectre--a ghostly phantom visitor--than a living human being.

Then he spoke in a voice low and broken:

"White Brother of the Snow, Mookoomahn has long been tormented by the Spirit of Hunger. When he slept the Spirit of Starvation sat by his side, never sleeping. When he travelled the Spirit of Starvation stalked at his heels, never tiring. For many suns the Spirit of Death has had his cold fingers on Mookoomahn's shoulder."

Gently Bob removed the caribou-skin coat from the starving and exhausted traveller, and made him comfortable while the others brewed tea and heated some cold boiled ptarmigan in the pan.

"'Twon't do t' give he much at first," cautioned d.i.c.k Blake, setting before Mookoomahn a small portion of the meat and a small piece of bread with a cup of the hot tea. "He's like t' be wonderful sick, anyway, th' carefullest we is. We'll let he have a small bit at a time, an' let he have un often."

No questions were asked until after the Indian had eaten. It seemed almost that no questions were necessary. The man had come alone. He was in the last stages of starvation. These facts spoke loudly enough.

They told the tale of wasting strength, of hopeless struggle, of tragic death that had taken place in the bleak wild wastes above.

The food revived and the tea stimulated Mookoomahn, and when he spoke again, in answer to Bob's urgent request that he tell them of the fate of Shad and the others, his voice was stronger.

He described the journey to the Lake of Willows, and thence to the camp of starving Indians. He told how the shaman had made medicine to the spirits; how the spirits had revealed to the shaman the things that it was required the Indians do; how the Indians in their starved condition were not able to fulfil the requirements laid upon them by the spirits; and how in consequence the wrath of the spirits was not placated.

He described the journey to the cache on the northern lake; Sishetakus.h.i.+n's instructions, and gift of Manikawan to White Brother of the Snow; of the parting from Sishetakus.h.i.+n.

Vividly he detailed the long and tedious return to the Great Lake; and how the angry spirits reaching up had seized Shad, cast him into the snow, and lamed him.

"The friend of White Brother of the Snow could not walk. The Matchi Manitu had wounded his knee. Manikawan, the sister of Mookoomahn, had promised White Brother of the Snow that she would not leave his friend until he came.