The Barrier by Rex Beach (universal ebook reader .txt) 📗

girl, and had formed a strong admiration for Burrell. Two of them took his announcement quietly, the other cried out strenuous objections. It was the one-eyed miner.

"Right away! Not on your life! It's too onexpected. You've got to hold 'em apart for an hour, anyhow, till I get dressed." He slid down from his seat upon the counter. "What do you reckon I got all them clothes for?"

"Come as you are," urged the Father, but Lee fought his point desperately.

"I'll bust it up if you don't gimme time. What's an hour or two when they've got a life sentence comin' to 'em. Dammit, you jest ought to see them clothes!" And by very force of his vociferations he succeeded in exacting the promise of a brief stay in the proceedings before he bolted out, the rags of his yellow mackinaw flapping excitedly.

The priest returned to Necia, leaving the trader and Poleon alone.

"I s'pose it's best," said the former.

"Yes!"

"Beats the deuce, though, how things work out, don't it?"

"I'm glad for see dis day," said the Frenchman. "He's good man, an' he ain' never goin' to hurt her none." He paused. "Dere's jus' wan t'ing I want for ask it of you, John—you 'member dat day we stop on de birch grove, an' you spik 'bout her an' tol' me dose story 'bout her moder? Wal, I was dreamin' dat tam', so I'm goin' ask it you now don' never tell her w'at I said."

"Doesn't she know, my boy?"

"No; I ain' never spoke 'bout love. She t'inks I'm broder wit' her, an'—dat's w'at I am, ba Gar!" He could not hold his voice even—it broke with him; but he avoided the old man's gaze. Gale took him by the shoulders.

"There ain't nothing so cruel in the world as a gentle woman," said he; "but she wouldn't hurt you for all the world, Poleon; only the blaze of this other thing has blinded her. She can't see nothing for the light of this new love of hers."

"I know! Dat's w'y—nobody onderstan's but you an' me—"

Gale looked out through the open door, past the sun-lit river which came from a land of mystery and vanished into a valley of forgetfulness, past the forest and the hills, in his deep-set eyes the light of a wondrous love that had lived with him these many weary years, and said:

"Nobody else CAN understand but me—I know how it is. I had even a harder thing to bear, for you'll know she's happy at least, while I—" His voice trembled, but, after a pause, he continued: "They neither of them understand what you've done for them, for it was you that brought her back; but some time they'll learn how great their debt is and thank you. It'll take them years and years, however, and when they do they'll tell their babes of you, Poleon, so that your name will never die. I loved her mother, but I don't think I could have done what you did."

"She's purty hard t'ing, for sure, but I ain' t'ink 'bout Poleon Doret none w'en I'm doin' it. No, I'm t'ink 'bout her all de tarn'. She's li'l' gal, an' I'm beeg, strong feller w'at don' matter much an' w'at ain' know much—'cept singin', an' lovin' her. I'm see for sure now dat I ain' fit for her—I'm beeg, rough, fightin' feller w'at can't read, an' she's de beam of sunlight w'at blin' my eyes."

"If I was a fool I'd say you'd forget in time, but I've lived my life in the open, and I know you won't. I didn't."

"I don' want to forget," the brown man cried, hurriedly. "Le bon Dieu would not let me forget—it's all I've got to keep wit' me w'en I'm lookin' for my 'New Countree.'"

"You're not goin' to look for that 'New Country' any more," Gale replied.

"To-day," said the other, quietly.

"No."

"To-day! Dis affernoon! De blood in me is callin' for travel, John. I'm livin' here on dis place five year dis fall, an' dat's long tarn' for voyageur. I'm hongry for hear de axe in de woods an' de moose blow at sundown. I want for see the camp-fire t'rough de brush w'en I come from trap de fox an' dem little wild fellers. I want to smell smoke in de dusk. My work she's finish here, so I'm paddle away to-day, an' I'll fin' dat place dis tam', for sure—she's over dere." He raised his long arm and pointed to the dim mountains that hid the valley of the Koyukuk, the valley that called good men and strong, year after year, and took them to itself, while in his face the trader saw the hunger of his race, the unslaked longing for the wilderness, the driving desire that led them ever North and West, and, seeing it, he knew the man would go.

"Have you heard the news from the creeks?"

"No."

"Your claims are blanks; your men have quit."

The Frenchman shook his head sadly, then smiled—a wistful little smile.

"Wal, it's better I lose dan you—or Necia; I ain' de lucky kin', dat's all; an', affer all, w'at good to me is riche gol'-mine? I ain' got no use for money—any more."

They stood in the doorway together, two rugged, stalwart figures, different in blood and birth and every other thing, yet brothers withal, whom the ebb and flow of the far places had thrown together and now drew apart again. And they were sad, these two, for their love was deeper than comes to other people, and they knew this was farewell; so they remained thus side by side, two dumb, sorrowful men, until they were addressed by a person who hurried from the town.

He came as an apparition bearing the voice of "No Creek" Lee, the mining king, but in no other way showing sign or symbol of their old friend. Its style of face and curious outfit were utterly foreign to the miner, for he had been bearded with the robust, unkempt growth of many years, tanned to a leathery hue, and garbed perennially in the habit of a scarecrow, while this creature was shaved and clipped and curried, and the clothes it stood up in were of many startling hues. Its face was scraped so clean of whiskers as to be a pallid white, but lack of adornment ended at this point and the rest was overladen wondrously, while from the centre of the half-brown, half-white face the long, red nose of Lee ran out. Beside it rolled his lonesome eye, alive with excitement.

He came up with a strut, illumining the landscape, and inquired:

"Well, how do I look?"

"I'm darned if I know," said Gale. "But it's plumb unusual."

"These here shoes leak," said the spectacle, pulling up his baggy trousers to display his tan footgear, "because they was made for dry goin'—that's why they left the tops off; but they've got a nice, healthy color, ain't they? As a whole, it seems to me I'm sort of nifty." He revolved slowly before their admiring gaze, and while to one versed in the manners of the Far East it would have been evident that the original owner of these clothes had come from somewhere beyond the Susquehanna, and had either been a football player or had travelled with a glee club, to these three Northmen it seemed merely that here was the modish echo of a distant civilization.

"Wat's de matter on your face?" said Poleon. "You been fightin'?"

"I ain't shaved in a long time, and this here excitement has kind of shattered my nerves. I didn't have no lookin'-glass, neither, in my shack, so I had to use a lard-can cover. Does it look bad?"

"Not to my way of thinkin'," said Gale, allaying "No Creek's" anxiety. "It's more desp'rate than bad, but it sort of adds expression." At which the miner's pride burst bounds.

"I'll kindly ask you to note the shirt—ten dollars a copy, that's all! I got it from the little Jew down yonder. See them red spear-heads on the boosum? 'Flower dee Lizzies,' which means 'calla lilies' in French. Every one of 'em cost me four bits. On the level—how am I?"

"I never see no harness jus' lak it mese'f!" exclaimed Doret. "You look good 'nough for tin-horn gambler. Say, don' you wear no necktie wit' dem kin' of clothes?"

"No, sir! Not me. I'm a rude, rough miner, and I dress the part. Low-cut, blushin' shoes and straw hats I can stand for, likewise collars—they go hand-in-hand with pay-streaks; but a necktie ain't neither wore for warmth nor protection; it's a pomp and a vanity, and I'm a plain man without conceit. Now, let's proceed with the obsequies."

It was a very simple, unpretentious ceremony that took place inside the long, low house of logs, and yet it was a wonderful thing to the dark, shy maid who hearkened so breathlessly beside the man she had singled out—the clean-cut man in uniform, who stood so straight and tall, making response in a voice that had neither fear nor weakness in it. When they had done he turned and took her reverently in his arms and kissed her before them all; then she went and stood beside Gale and the red wife who was no wife, and said, simply:

"I am very happy."

The old man stooped, and for the first time in her memory pressed his lips to hers, then went out into the sunlight, where he might be alone with himself and the memory of that other Merridy, the woman who, to him, was more than all the women of the world; the woman who, each day and night, came to him, and with whom he had kept faith. The burden she had laid upon him had been heavy, but he had borne it long and uncomplainingly; and now he was very glad, for he had kept his covenant.

The first word of the wedding was borne by Father Barnum, who went alone to the cabin where the girl's father lay, entering with trepidation; for, in spite of the pleas of justice and humanity, this stony-hearted, amply hated man had certain rights which he might choose to enforce; hence, the good priest feared for the peace of his little charge, and approached the stricken man with apprehension. He was there a long time alone with Stark, and when he returned to Gale's house he would answer no questions.

"He is a strange man—a wonderfully strange man: unrepentant and wicked; but I can't tell you what he said. Have a little patience and you will soon know."

The mail boat, which had arrived an hour after the Mission boat, was ready to continue its run when, just as it blew a warning blast, down the street of the camp came a procession so strange for this land that men stopped, eyed it curiously, and whispered among themselves. It was a blanketed man upon a stretcher, carried by a doctor and a priest. The face was muffled so that the idlers could not make it out; and when they inquired, they received no answer from the carriers, who pursued their course impassively down the runway to the water's edge and up the gang-plank to the deck. When the boat had gone, and the last faint cough of its towering stacks had died away, Father Barnum turned to his friends:

"He has gone away, not for a day, but for all time. He is a strange man, and some things he said I could not understand. At first I feared greatly, for when I told him what had occurred—of Necia's return and of her marriage—he became so enraged I thought he would burst open his wounds and die from his very fury; but I talked a long, long time with him, and gradually I came to know somewhat of his queer, disordered soul. He could not bring himself to face defeat in the eyes of men, or to see the knowledge of it in their bearing; therefore, he fled. He told me that he would be a hunted animal all his life; that the news of his whipping would travel ahead of him; and that his enemies would search him out to take advantage of him. This I could not grasp, but it seemed a big thing in his eyes—so big that he wept. He said the only decent thing he could or would do was to leave the daughter he had never known to that happiness he had never experienced, and wished me to tell her that she was very much like her mother, who was the best woman in the world."

CHAPTER XIX THE CALL OF THE OREADS

There was mingled rejoicing and lamentation in the household of John Gale this afternoon. Molly and Johnny were in the throes of an overwhelming sorrow, the noise of which might be heard from the barracks to the Indian village.