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

had spoken. She had never known this Jan before, and her fortitude left her as she approached him, wonderingly, silent, her hands reaching out to him.
"Jan!" she said.
Her voice trembled; her lips quivered. There was the old glorious pleading in her eyes, and before it Jan bowed his unkempt head, and crushed her hands tightly in his own. For a half-minute there was silence, and in that half-minute there came a century between them. At last Jan spoke.
"I'm glad to see you again, Melisse. It has seemed like a very long time!"
He lifted his eyes. Before them the girl involuntarily shrank back, and Jan freed her hands. In them she saw none of the old love-glow, nothing of their old comradeship. Inscrutable, reflecting no visible emotion, they passed from her to the violin hanging on the wall.
"I have not played in so long," he said, turning from her, "that I believe I have forgotten."
He took down the instrument, and his fingers traveled clumsily over the strings. His teeth gleamed at her from out his half-inch growth of beard, as he said:
"Ah, you must play for me now, Melisse! It has surely gone from Jan Thoreau."
He held out the violin to her.
"Not now, Jan," she said tremulously. "I will play for you to-night." She went to the door of her room, hesitating for a moment, with her back to him. "You will come to supper, Jan?"
"Surely, Melisse, if you are prepared."
He hung up the violin as she closed the door, and went from the cabin. Jean de Gravois and Iowaka were watching for him, and Jean hurried across the open to meet him.
"I am coming to offer you the loan of my razor," he cried gaily. "Iowaka says that you will be taken for a bear if the trappers see you."
"A beard is good to keep off the black flies," replied Jan. "It is approaching summer, and the black flies love to feast upon me. Let us go down the trail, Jean. I want to speak with you."
Where there had been wood-cutting in the deep spruce they sat down, facing each other. Jan spoke in French.
"I have traveled far since leaving Lac Bain," he said. "I went first to Nelson House, and from here to the Wholdaia. I found them at Nelson House, but not on the Wholdaia."
"What?" asked Jean, though he knew well what the other meant.
"My brothers, Jean de Gravois," answered Jan, drawing his lips until his teeth gleamed in a sneering smile. "My brothers, les betes de charogne!"
"Devil take Croisset for telling you where they were!" muttered Jean under his breath.
"I saw the two at Nelson House," continued Jan. "One of them is a half-wit, and the other"--he hunched his shoulders--"is worse. Petraud, one of the two who were at Wholdaia, was killed by a Cree father last winter for dishonoring his daughter. The other disappeared."
Jean was silent, his head leaning forward, his face resting in his hands.
"So you see, Jean de Gravois, what sort of creature is your friend Jan Thoreau!"
Jean raised his head until his eyes were on a level with those of his companion.
"I see that you are a bigger fool than ever," he said quietly. "Jan Thoreau, what if I should break my oath--and tell Melisse?"
Unflinching the men's eyes met. A dull glare came into Jan's. Slowly he unsheathed his long knife, and placed it upon the snow between his feet, with the gleaming end of the blade pointing toward Gravois. With a low cry Jean sprang to his feet.
"Do you mean that, Jan Thoreau? Do you mean to give the knife- challenge to one who has staked his life for you and who loves you as a brother?"
"Yes," said Jan deliberately. "I love you, Jean more than any other man in the world; and yet I will kill you if you betray me to Melisse!" He rose to his feet and stretched out his hands to the little Frenchman. "Jean, wouldn't you do as I am doing? Wouldn't you have done as much for Iowaka?"
For a moment Gravois was silent.
"I would not have taken her love without telling her," he said then. "That is not what you and I know as honor, Jan Thoreau. But I would have gone to her, as you should now go to Melisse, and she would have opened her arms to me, as Melisse would opens hers to you. That is what I would have done."
"And that is what I shall never do," said Jan decisively, turning toward the post. "I could kill myself more easily. That is what I wanted to tell you, Jean. No one but you and I must ever know!"
"I would like to choke that fool of a Croisset for sending you to hunt up those people at Nelson House and Wholdaia!" grumbled Jean.
"It was best for me."
They saw Melisse leaving Iowaka's home when they came from the forest. Both waved their hands to her, and Jan cut across the open to the store.
Jean went to the Cummins cabin as soon as he was sure that he was not observed. There was little of the old vivacity in his manner as he greeted Melisse. He noted, too, that the girl was not her natural self. There was a redness under her eyes which told him that she had been crying.
"Melisse," he said at last, speaking to her with his eyes fixed on the cap he was twisting in his fingers, "there has come a great change over Jan."
"A very great change, Jean. If I were to guess, I should say that his heart has been broken down on the Nelson trail."
Gravois caught the sharp meaning in her voice, which trembled a little as she spoke. He was before her in an instant, his cap fallen to the floor, his eyes blazing as he caught her by the arms.
"Yes, the heart of Jan Thoreau is broken!" he cried. "But it has been broken by nothing that lives on the Nelson House trail. It is broken because of--YOU!"
"I!" Melisse drew back from him with a breathless cry. "I--I have broken--"
"I did not say that," interrupted Jean. "I say that it is broken because of you. Mon Dieu, if only I might tell you!"
"Do-DO, Jean! Please tell me!" She put her hands on his shoulders. Her eyes implored him. "Tell me what I have done--what I can do, Jean!"
"I can say that much to you, and no more," he said quietly. "Only know this, ma chere--that there is a great grief eating at the soul of Jan Thoreau, and that because of this grief he is changed. I know what this grief is, but I am pledged never to reveal it. It is for you to find out, and to do this, above all else--let him know that you love him!"
The color had faded from her startled face, but now it came back again in a swift flood.
"That I love him?"
"Yes. Not as a sister any longer, Melisse, but as a WOMAN!"


CHAPTER XXII
HER PROMISE
Gravois did not stay to see the effect of his last words. Only he knew, as he went through the door, that her eyes were following him, and that if he looked at her she would call him back. So he shut the door quickly behind him, fearing that he had already said too much.
Cummins and Jan came in together at suppertime. The factor was in high humor. An Indian from the Porcupine had brought in two silver fox that morning, and he was immensely pleased at Jan's return--a combination of incidents which put him in the best of moods.
Melisse sat opposite Jan at the table. She had twisted a sprig of red bakneesh into her glossy braid, and a cluster of it nestled at her throat, but Jan gave no sign that he had noticed this little favor, which was meant entirely for him. He smiled at her, but there was a clear coolness in the depths of his dark eyes which checked any of the old familiarity on her part.
"Has MacVeigh put in his new trap-line?" Cummins inquired, after asking Jan many questions about his trip.
"I don't know," replied Jan. "I didn't go to MacVeighs'."
Purposely he held his eyes from Melisse. She understood his effort, and a quick flush gathered in her cheeks.
"It was MacVeigh who brought in word of you," persisted the factor, oblivious of the effect of his questions.
"I met him in the Cree Lake country, but he said nothing of his trap- lines."
He rose from the table with Cummins, and started to follow him from the cabin. Melisse came between. For a moment her hand rested upon his arm.
"You are going to stay with me, Jan," she smiled. "I want your help with the dishes, and then we're going to play on the violin."
She pulled him into a chair as Cummins left, and tied an apron about his shoulders.
"Close your eyes--and don't move!" she commanded, laughing into his surprised face as she ran into her room.
A moment later she returned with one hand held behind her back. The hot blood surged through Jan's veins when he felt her fingers running gently through his long hair. There came the snip of scissors, a little nervous laugh close to his head, and then again the snip, snip, snip of the scissors.
"It's terribly long, Jan!" Her soft hand brushed his bearded cheek. "Ugh!" she shuddered. "You must take that off your face. If you don't--"
"Why?" he asked, through lack of anything else to say.
She lowered her head until her cheek pressed against his own.
"Because it feels like bristles," she whispered.
She reddened fiercely when he remained silent, and the scissors snipped more rapidly between her fingers.
"I'm going to prospect the big swamp along the edge of the Barrens this summer," he explained soon, laughing to relieve the tension. "A beard will protect me from the black flies."
"You can grow another."
She took the apron from about his shoulders, and held it so that he could see the result of her work. He looked up, smiling.
"Thank you, Melisse. Do you remember when you last cut my hair?"
"Yes--it was over on the mountain. We had taken the scissors along for cutting bakneesh, and you looked so like a wild Indian that I made you sit on a rock and let me trim it."
"And you cut my ear," he reminded.
"For which you made me pay," she retorted quickly, almost under her breath.
She went to the cupboard behind the stove, and brought out her father's shaving-mug and razor.
"I insist that you shall use them," she said, stirring the soap into a lather, and noting the indecision in his face. "I am afraid of you!"
"Afraid of me?"
He stood for a moment in front of the little mirror, turning his face from side to side. Melisse handed him the razor and cup.
"You don't seem like the Jan that I used to know once upon a time. There has been a great change in you since--since--"
She hesitated.
"Since when, Melisse?"
"Since the day we came in from the mountain and I put up my hair." With timid sweetness she added: "I haven't had it up again, Jan."
She caught a glimpse of his lathered face in the glass, staring at her with big, seeking eyes. He turned them quickly away when he saw that she was looking, and Melisse set to work at the dishes. She had washed them before he finished shaving. Then she took down the old violin from the wall and began to play, her low, sweet voice accompanying