The Honor of the Big Snows - James Oliver Curwood (best ereader for pdf and epub .txt) 📗

/> When Cummins came back from Fort Churchill in the autumn, he brought with him a pack full of things for Melisse, including new books and papers, for which he had spent a share of his season's earnings. As he was freeing these treasures from their wrapping of soft caribou skin, with Jan and Melisse both looking on, he stopped suddenly and glanced from his knees up at the boy.
"They're wondering over at Churchill what became of the missionary who left with the mail, Jan. They say he was last seen at the Etawney."
"And not here?" replied Jan quickly.
"Not that they know of," said Cummins, still keeping his eyes on the boy. "The man who drove him never got back to Churchill. They're wondering where the driver went, too. A company officer has gone up to the Etawney, and it is possible he may come over to Lac Bain. I don't believe he'll find the missionary."
"Neither do I," said Jan quite coolly. "He is probably dead, and the wolves and foxes have eaten him before this--or mebby ze feesh!"
Cummins resumed his task of unpacking, and among the books which he brought forth there were two which he gave to Jan.
"The supply ship from London came in while I was at Churchill, and those came with it," he explained. "They're school-books. There's going to be a school at Churchill next winter, and the winter after that it will be at York Factory, down on the Hayes." He settled back on his heels and looked at Jan. "It's the first school that has ever come nearer than four hundred miles of us. That's at Prince Albert."
For many succeeding days Jan took long walks alone in the forest trails, and silently thrashed out the two problems which Cummins had brought back from Churchill for him. Should he warn Jean de Gravois that a company officer was investigating the disappearance of the missionary?
At first his impulse was to go at once into Jean's haunts beyond the Fond du Lac, and give him the news. But even if the officer did come to Post Lac Bain, how would he know that the missionary was at the bottom of the lake, and that Jean de Gravois was accountable for it? So in the end Jan decided that it would be folly to stir up the little hunter's fears, and he thought no more of the company's investigator who had gone up to the Etawney.
But the second problem was one whose perplexities troubled him. Cummins' word of the school at Churchill had put a new and thrilling thought into his head, and always with that thought he coupled visions of the growing Melisse. This year the school would be at Churchill, and the next at York Factory, and after that it might be gone for ever, so that when Melisse grew up there would be none nearer than what Jan looked upon as the other end of the world. Why could not he go to school for Melisse, and store up treasures which in time he might turn over to her?
The scheme was a colossal one, by all odds the largest that had ever entered into his dreams of what life held for him--that he, Jan Thoreau, should learn to read and write, and do other things like the people of the far South, so that he might help to make the little creature in the cabin like her who slept under the watchful spruce. He was stirred to the depths of his soul, now with fear, again with hope and desire and ambition; and it was not until the first cold chills of approaching winter crept down from the north and east that the ultimate test came, and he told Cummins of his intention.
Once his mind was settled, Jan lost no time in putting his plans into action. Mukee knew the trail to Churchill, and agreed to leave with him on the third day--which gave Williams' wife time to make him a new coat of caribou skin.
On the second evening he played for the last time in the little cabin; and after Melisse had fallen asleep he took her up gently in his arms and held her there for a long time, while Cummins looked on in silence. When he replaced her in the little bed against the wall, Cummins put one of his long arms about the boy's shoulders and led him to the door, where they stood looking out upon the grim desolation of the forest that rose black and silent against the starlit background of the sky. High above the thick tops of the spruce rose the lone tree over the grave, like a dark finger pointing up into the night, and Cummins' eyes rested there.
"She heard you first that night, Jan," he spoke softly. "She knew that you were coming long before I could hear anything but the crackling in the skies. I believe--she knows--now--"
The arm about Jan's shoulder tightened, and Cummins' head dropped until his rough cheek rested upon the boy's hair. There was something of the gentleness of love in what he did, and in response to it Jan caught the hand that was hanging over his shoulder in both his own.
"Boy, won't you tell me who you are, and why you came that night?"
"I will tell you, now, that I come from ze Great Bear," whispered Jan. "I am only Jan Thoreau, an' ze great God made me come that night because"--his heart throbbed with sudden inspiration as he looked up into his companion's face--"because ze leetle Melisse was here," he finished.
For a time Cummins made no move or sound; then he drew the boy back into the cabin, and from the little gingham-covered box in the corner he took a buckskin bag.
"You are going to Churchill for Melisse and for HER" he said in a voice pitched low that it might not awaken the baby. "Take this."
Jan drew a step back.
"No, I fin' work with ze compan-ee at Churchill. That is ze gold for Melisse when she grow up. Jan Thoreau is no--what you call heem?"
His teeth gleamed in a smile, but it lasted only for an instant. Cummins' face darkened, and he caught him firmly, almost roughly, by the arm.
"Then Jan Thoreau will never come back to Melisse," he exclaimed with finality. "You are going to Churchill to be at school, and not to work with your hands. THEY are sending you. Do you understand, boy? THEY!" There was a fierce tremor in his voice. "Which will it be? Will you take the bag, or will you never again come back to Lac Bain?"
Dumbly Jan reached out and took the buckskin pouch. A dull flush burned in his cheeks. Cummins looked in wonder upon the strange look that came into his eyes.
"I pay back this gold to you and Melisse a hundred times!" he cried tensely. "I swear it, an' I swear that Jan Thoreau mak' no lie!"
Unconsciously, with the buckskin bag clutched in one hand, he had stretched out his other arm to the violin hanging against the wall. Cummins turned to look. When he faced him again the boy's arm had fallen to his side and his cheeks were white.
The next day he left. No one heard his last words to Melisse, or witnessed his final leave-taking of her, for Cummins sympathized with the boy's grief and went out of the cabin an hour before Mukee was ready with his pack. The last that he heard was Jan's violin playing low, sweet music to the child. Three weeks later, when Mukee returned to Lac Bain, he said that Jan had traveled to Churchill like one who had lost his tongue, and that far into the nights he had played lonely dirges upon his violin.


CHAPTER XII
A RUMOR FROM THE SOUTH
It was a long winter for Cummins and Melisse. It was a longer one for Jan. He had taken with him a letter from the factor at Lac Bain to the factor at Churchill, and he found quarters with the chief clerk's assistant at the post--a young, red-faced man who had come over on the ship from England. He was a cheerful, good-natured young fellow, and when he learned that his new associate had tramped all the way from the Barren Lands to attend the new public school, he at once invested himself with the responsibilities of a private tutor.
He taught Jan, first of all, to say "is" in place of "ees." It was a tremendous lesson for Jan, but he struggled with it manfully, and a week after his arrival, when one evening he was tuning his violin to play for young MacDonald, he said with eager gravity:
"Ah, I have it now, Mr. MacDonald. It ees not 'EES,' it ees 'EES!'"
MacDonald roared, but persisted, and in time Jan began to get the twist out of his tongue.
The school opened in November, and Jan found himself one of twenty or so, gathered there from forty thousand square miles of wilderness. Two white youths and a half-breed had come from the Etawney; the factor at Nelson House sent up his son, and from the upper waters of the Little Churchill there came three others.
From the first, Jan's music found him a premier place in the interest of the tutor sent over by the company. He studied by night as well as by day, and by the end of the second month his only competitor was the youth from Nelson House. His greatest source of knowledge was not the teacher, but MacDonald. There was in him no inherent desire for the learning of the people to the south. That he was storing away, like a faithful machine, for the use of Melisse. But MacDonald gave him that for which his soul longed--a picture of life as it existed in the wonderful world beyond the wilderness, to which some strange spirit within him, growing stronger as the weeks and months passed, seemed projecting his hopes and his ambitions.
Between his thoughts of Melisse and Lac Bain, he dreamed of that other world; and several times during the winter he took the little roll from the box of his violin, and read again and again the written pages that it contained.
"Some time I will go," he assured himself always. "Some time, when Melisse is a little older, and can go too."
To young MacDonald, the boy from Lac Bain was a "find." The Scottish youth was filled with an immense longing for home; and as his homesickness grew, he poured more and more into Jan's attentive ears his knowledge of the world from which he had come. He told him the history of the old brass cannon that lay abandoned among the vines and bushes, where a fort had stood at Churchill many years before. He described the coming of the first ship into the great bay; told of Hudson and his men, of great wars that his listener had never dreamed of, of kings and queens and strange nations. At night he read a great deal to Jan out of books that he had brought over with him.
As the weeks and months passed, the strange spirit that was calling to the forest boy out of that other world stirred more restlessly within him. At times it urged him to confide in MacDonald what was hidden away in the box of his violin.
The secret nearly burst from him one Sunday, when MacDonald said:
"I'm going home on the ship that comes over next summer. What do you say to going back with me, Jan?"
The spirit surged through Jan in a hot flood, and it was only an accident that kept him from saying what was in his heart.
They were standing with