The Heart of Unaga Part 44

CHAPTER X

THE FAREWELL

A burden of grey hung depressingly over the world. A bleak north wind came down the river gorge. The sun's power had weakened before the advance of the Arctic night. Beaten, dismayed, it lived only just above the skyline.

The sightless sockets of the old moose stared wide-eyed down the river.

They were fulfilling the task that had been set them. The howling of the gale, the polar cold, the blinding storm of snow; these things would have no power to turn them from their vigil. The wide-antlered, bleaching skull was the guardian of the tryst, and its sole concern was its watch and ward.

The chill and cheerlessness of it all was reaching at the hearts of the boy and girl who were at the moment of parting. Marcel was silently whittling a stout twig of tamarack, whose toughness threatened to dull the keen edge of his sheath-knife. Keeko was standing a few feet from him, within a yard or so of the precipice which dropped sheer to the waters below. Her eyes were following the direction of the gaze of the old moose, and the picture her mind was dwelling upon was far removed from what she beheld.

It was of the long, lonesome winter, with her mother dying by inches, while she, herself, spent her days in the avoidance of her step-father whom she had learned to fear as well as to hate. Marcel had no such bitterness to look out upon. But he was none the less weighted down that the farewell must be spoken.

The hot blood of youth was surging through his veins. Manhood's reckless pa.s.sion was beating in heart and brain. A desperate desire to yield to the call of Nature was urging him mercilessly. Yet, through it all, he knew that the farewell must be said now, for both their sakes, for the sake of honour, of loyalty, for the sake of Love itself.

Oh, yes. He knew how easy it would be to sweep along on the tide of pa.s.sion. But he loved Keeko. Loved her with all his simple heart and body, and his love was bound up with an honour which he had no power to outrage.

Time and again in the madness of the moment he thought to urge Keeko to abandon all and return with him to the home which he knew would hold nothing but welcome for her. He thought of all that happiness which might be hers in the kindly a.s.sociations of Uncle Steve and An-ina. He thought of all the wretchednesses of soul he would save her from, the dread of that step-father, whom she had declared to be a murderer at heart. Then he remembered the dying mother whose one care was the child of her heart, and he realized that his own desire must not be. The farewell must be taken now.

Once he thought to continue the journey with her to help her complete her final task of trading her pelts. But he remembered in time, and thrust temptation from him. There was An-ina demanding his protection in Uncle Steve's absence during the winter. There was his pledge to that man who never questioned his given word.

Looking up his ardent gaze rested on the figure poised so near the brink of the gorge.

"Keeko!"

His voice was deep with feeling. Its tone was imperative, too.

"Yes--Marcel?"

Keeko's reply was low-voiced and almost humble. She felt his gaze even before he spoke. Had she not intercepted it a hundred times in their work together? Oh, yes. She knew it. And that which she had seen, and read, had been the answer she most desired to all the yearnings of her woman's heart. Now she knew that the moment she most dreaded had come at last. And she wondered and feared as she had never feared in her life before.

Marcel drove his knife deeply in a diagonal cut into the hard wood of the tamarack.

"You've a month to the freeze up," he said. "It's the limit you need.

I've figgered it. I've talked it out with Little One Man."

"Yes. I can make home in a month."

Keeko drew a sharp breath. She could make home. Never in her life had she felt as she felt now. Home!

Marcel ripped his knife in an opposite diagonal on the reverse of the wood. The force he applied seemed almost vicious.

"Are--you glad?"

"I--s'pose so."

"You--s'pose so? Of course you are. There's your poor sick mother."

"Yes."

The girl's reply was almost inaudible. Marcel wrenched the wood in half with his powerful hands. It snapped, and he examined the p.r.o.nged ends critically.

With an effort Keeko bestirred herself from her despondency.

"Yes," she cried desperately. "I must get home. I want to. I love my mother, Marcel. She's suffered. Oh, how she suffers. Yet through it all she thinks only of me. She schemes and hopes only for me. Maybe I can't hope to save her life, but I can tell her the things that'll let her die almost happy. It's the best I can do, and I--I'm glad to do it."

Marcel nodded over his two pieces of wood.

"That's how I feel about it," he said. "It seems to me we haven't any sort of right to set up the things that 'ud please us against the happiness of those who've been good to us. I'd thought of beating down this river with you, to see things through for you. Then I remembered a sort of mother woman who looks to me for the help of a son. Then I thought of asking you to cut the home with a step-father, who's a murderer at heart, and come along where you'd find only love and friends.h.i.+p. Then I remembered your sick mother. I'm guessing the self of things is mighty big, but there's something bigger. Still--Say, come and sit right here!"

He was smiling. But his eyes were full of a deep tenderness.

Keeko obeyed. She had no desire to deny him. He seemed to have robbed her of all will of her own. His will had become wholly her desire. She took her seat on the tree-trunk, just removed from his side by a rift in the great log which was hidden under a growth of lichen.

Marcel's eyes sought hers. But she had turned from him. She was gazing out at the moose head set up over the gorge.

"How am I to hear if you're needing my help?" he demanded. "I can't make here till the first break of spring. There's just one h.e.l.l of a long winter before that."

Marcel was endeavouring to smother his feeling. Keeko shook her head.

Had she not thought and thought over this very thing?

"I won't need help," she said. "Not now. You've helped me through my only worry. If mother lives, things'll just go on the same. If--she doesn't? She and I--we got it fixed. I hit right out for myself as we've planned it--that's all."

But the hot blood had mounted to Marcel's head. "It's not!" he cried with startling force. "D'you think you're going out of my life that way?

You?" Suddenly he broke into a laugh that echoed down the gorge. He pointed out at the moose head. "Look at the old feller," he cried. "He's winking his old eyes and flapping the comic ears he hasn't got. I swear if you could only hear it he's busting his sides laffing at the joke of you reckoning to cut yourself out of my life that way. No, sir! I'm coming right along here at the first break of spring, and if I don't find you around, or a sign from you, I'm beating up this river to look for you, if I have to chase it sheer up to its source. Say, you can't hide yourself in a corner of this darnation territory I won't find you in. And I guess I'm just as obstinate as a she-wolf chasing a feed of human meat. It can't be done, Keeko. Not now. I tell you it can't be done."

The man's force was no less for all his smiling eyes. And Keeko made no pretence.

"But why?" she cried, with a gesture of her hands that made him desire to imprison them. "Why should you worry? You've helped me to the things that'll leave me free of--everything. I haven't a right. I haven't any sort of right to take you from your folks, and from those things it's your work to do for them. Besides, who said I figgered to cut myself out of your life?" She smiled up into his eyes with an almost child-like confidence. "I don't want to. I--I hadn't a thought that way. Say, if I thought I'd never see you again I'd feel like nothing in the world ever could matter. The thing I'm guessing to make plain is when we quit here you don't need to worry a thing. I'll get through, and next spring I'll come right along up and tell you how I'm fixed."

Marcel sat up, and, reaching out, caught and imprisoned the hands he desired.

"You'll do that?" he cried, while he drew her round so that she faced him. "Sure? Sure you mean that? You'll come right along up here with the break of winter, and we'll----"

"I certainly will."

Keeko's youth was no less than Marcel's. Her eyes were without any shyness. She looked into his fearlessly, and read without shame all that they expressed. She was glad. Her heart was full of a delight of which even parting could not rob her. The memory of that which she beheld now would be hers during the long, drear months of winter, a sheet anchor of hope, of joy, something to tell her always that, whatever might chance, life still held for her a priceless treasure of which it could never wholly rob her.

Marcel released her hands lingeringly.

"Here," he cried holding up the pieces of tamarack he had cut. "These darned bits of wood." Then he raised the lichen, which had been carefully loosened, and revealed the gaping rift in the tree-trunk beneath it. "Our cache," he added. "Say, maybe when spring breaks there's things might make it so you can't get along up here. You see, it's a chance. You can't just say. Maybe I'm scared. Anyway, I got a notion you might need me in a hurry. I'm scared for you. That's it. I'm scared for you. Well? You've got your boys. Either of 'em could make this place in the winter. Here, grab this little old stick. I'll keep the other. It's just a token. I've set your name on it. Well, send it along up, and cache it in this cache, and when I come along and find it here, instead of you, at the break of spring, I'll know you're held up and need me, and you can gamble your big white soul I'll beat the trail to your help like a cyclone in a hurry. Oh, I know. You'll guess nothing can happen that way. But it's just my notion, and you're going to kind of humour me. Git that? When I find that token set in this cache I'll make up the river just as hard as h.e.l.l'll let me."

In spite of her confidence Keeko accepted the stick the boy pa.s.sed to her and sat gazing at it. It was then that she discovered the lettering that had been cut on it. There were just two words in letters crudely formed: "LITTLE KEEKO."

For a while her eyes dwelt upon them absorbing all the tenderness they conveyed. Then, in a moment, all the truth in her, the woman, roused into active purpose. She handed it back to him.