A HIGHWAY THROUGH THE HILLS

The woman made only an inarticulate sound of welcome and motioned Hugh to come in. Like all Indians she preferred to converse through grunts and signs rather than by means of such English as she had at her command. When Hugh had entered she made no further comment, merely pointed silently at a bunk in the corner.

There, half propped up amid a mass of torn and dirty blankets, lay Half-Breed Jake. He did not move or speak when Hugh came near, but his little pale eyes turned quickly and his heavy black brows knitted in a scowl. The boy stood looking from one to another, puzzled, not yet knowing the meaning of that signal flying above the roof. At last the Indian woman, seeing his bewilderment, condescended to explain.

“I think—dying,” she remarked briefly in her thick English.

Jake’s pale eyes flickered at the words, but still he did not speak. Hugh went closer to look at him and saw that his hands and feet were clumsily wound with rags and that the dirty bandage had slipped down from one wrist, showing the angry discoloration of flesh that had been frozen. He asked Laughing Mary many questions, but received no answers but shakings of the head.

Finally he unbuckled his revolver, took off his cap and mackinaw and turned his attention to doing what he could for the helpless man. He had a feeling of intense repulsion when first he touched him, but none the less he bathed the swollen hands and feet and rebandaged them. He had a certain knack in such matters, inherited from his father and increased by such training as he had got in helping him. He set the filthy mass of rags in order to make some semblance of a bed; he built up the fire and showed the woman how to make civilized broth from the abundant deer’s meat in the storeroom.

As she stood stirring the pot he made another attempt to question her, trying again and again to get some explanation of how affairs had come to such a pass. But Laughing Mary merely jerked her head toward the bunk and said:

“Old—live hard—die.”

Thus she summed up what was, to her, the most ordinary thing in life.

It was the second time that he had tended a sick person in that house, so that Hugh already knew the full resources of the Jasper Peak cabin. In John Edmonds’ behalf he had worked feverishly, feeling nervous, excited, starting at every sound from his patient, wondering and puzzled as to what to do next. Now he felt himself entirely calm, at no loss what to do even though the state of this man was far more desperate than the other’s. He realized how much even a small amount of experience can do and how immeasurably older he had grown even in the month that had passed since he had been in this same place.

He came and went steadily until at last he had done all he could, then he sat down by the fire to wait, and to watch for results. Laughing Mary sat on her heels on the floor opposite him, nodding with drowsiness while both of them were watched unwaveringly, as the long hours passed, by the pale eyes of that helpless figure in the bunk, the broken, ruined Pirate of Jasper Peak.

And Laughing Mary, since no one pressed her for her story, or disturbed her dim, wandering mind by questions, finally began to speak. She startled Hugh first by rising suddenly, fetching something from the corner and flinging it upon his knee.

“Should be yours—make all the trouble,” she said brokenly.

Hugh, in wonder, held it up to the firelight. It was the brown bear’s skin!

He had learned by now that it was better to say nothing and so sat silent, without question or comment for a long time. He was rewarded by her telling him the whole truth at last in abrupt, queerly-spoken sentences, uttered at long intervals, often after an hour had gone by without a word. Little by little he was able to piece together all the facts that had puzzled him so long and to learn the truth about that adventure in which he had so unexpectedly become involved.

As he listened he knew at last that the vital figure in the whole affair was Laughing Mary. Nothing had happened as it should and every plan had gone awry, merely through the strange irresponsibility of an Indian woman’s mind. He and the Edmonds boys who did not know her well, and Oscar and Linda and Half-Breed Jake who did, had all been equally deceived. They had been drawn together by a strange web of circumstance of which she was the center. They had all of them had their own ambitions and hopes and misgivings and fears, and the rock they had all split upon was Laughing Mary.

Jake, it seemed, had long ago formed the plan of setting the two brothers adrift in the forest and of casting suspicion on John Edmonds’ memory. He had applied to the Indian Kaniska to help him, but the man had refused on account of his friendship for John. So the matter had apparently ended until one night, passing through Two Rivers, Jake had shown the Indians his furs and Laughing Mary had seen the brown bear’s skin.

Indians have still so much of the child in them that, when they see something they greatly desire, they will barter away their last property on earth to gain possession of it. With just such longing did the woman covet the bear skin. Jake’s price was her husband’s help in his scheme against the Edmonds and that was the bargain they finally made. Certainly she had not realized fully what Jake had in mind, or known, when she lent herself to do his bidding, what she had really done.

Only when the days passed and the Edmonds boys did not come back, when she discovered, moreover, that Jake was withholding the bear skin and had no intention of really giving it to her, did she begin to see in the depths of her fumbling, clouded mind, what it was she had brought about. She had gained possession of the coveted skin by threatening to tell the whole truth to Hugh, as the Edmonds’ friend, and she had learned, from the consternation of both Jake and her husband, just how ugly a deed they had accomplished between them.

She had learned more of the gravity of the matter when Hugh went through Two Rivers to seek help from Oscar Dansk; she had sat brooding by the fire day after day, more and more repentant yet never knowing what to do. She had finally come through the forest to learn for herself how matters stood and had arrived the night of the fire, just before the storm. She had been imprisoned in the cabin with Jake during those five days of fierce snowfall and she made Hugh understand, even in her halting English, that it was much the same as being within the same four walls with a madman. Her husband had returned to Two Rivers, so that she was alone with Jake and must listen hour after hour to the tumult of words that she scarcely understood. All his hopes of holding the valley, of keeping Oscar from establishing his claim, of proving that no one could successfully defy him, all this must stand or fall by whether the boys could hold the cottage and Oscar Dansk could register his claim.

At first he had been certain that they would go the moment their stores were destroyed. When he had learned from the smoke in their chimney and the steady light in their windows that they were to stay, his fury knew no bounds. Even during the storm, in which no ordinary man could walk abroad and live, he went forth every night to go close to the cottage on the hill and see if its defenders were not weakening. It had been the last stab to Laughing Mary’s dumbly repentant heart to hear that the boys were starving in the cabin opposite and it had been she who, the moment the snowfall cleared, had robbed Jake’s larder and toiled across the valley to bring them food.

Jake had already been behaving strangely that night, his rage, excitement and the long life of hardships and excesses had probably brought him near to the breaking point. He had tried to follow Laughing Mary, had floundered into a drift and had lain there in the fearful cold until she found him and dragged him home. His desperate fury at what she had done made her fear to come near him, and his terrible, helpless suffering from his frozen hands and feet made her feel that she must call for aid.

“When white man give up—wave white flag,” she said and pointed upward toward where she had raised the signal on the roof. That was the end of her story.

To all of it Jake had listened, with never a change of expression, never moving his eyes from Hugh, powerless to interrupt or to deny. Only when the Indian woman once mentioned Linda Ingmarsson’s name there was a change, a momentary wincing and a quivering of those steady eyes. Perhaps Hugh’s sensibilities had been sharpened by his recent experiences, for certainly he guessed quickly and as surely as though some one had told him that Jake must have loved Linda long ago, but that his bullying ways had failed before her courageous scorn of him.

“Old—live hard—die,” said Laughing Mary again when she came to the end. Such was her only comment on the fall of that once-feared master of Jasper Peak.

Hugh sat musing, stroking the bear skin on his knee and wondering what he might say to the woman, who looked up at him with such unhappy eyes.

“It might have been,” he said at last, “that if you and Kaniska had refused to do what Jake wanted, he would have found some one who would, some one who did not care so much and who would never have helped us in the end, as you have done. So perhaps the brown bear’s skin has saved us all.”

She seemed to go over his words laboriously, as though their meaning came very slowly. Then, when she had caught what he meant, she gave a quick little cry and turned away. The stoical Indians never weep; if Hugh had not known that well, he would have sworn that there was a glint of tears in her eyes.

So intently had he been listening, pondering and putting together the story from her fragments of information, that he had paid no heed to the passage of time. He saw now, as he got up from his seat, that the flame in the smoky lantern was burning very dim, that faint moonlight was coming in at the little windows and that the night was far advanced. He went over to stand by the helpless man.

“Is there nothing you want, is there nothing I can do for you?” he asked.

He felt a strange wave of pity for this broken being who had lived his life so hopelessly wrong and who was so near the end. Nothing he could do? What could be done, thought Hugh, so late as this? Plainly the man was of the same opinion, for his eyes looked only dull and weary hatred and, although his lips moved a little, he did not speak.

“Do you want to rest?” Hugh asked Laughing Mary, but she shook her head. “Then watch for me a little, for I am dead for sleep.”

It was bright morning when he opened his eyes and started up in dismay at having slept so long. Laughing Mary, sitting beside Jake’s bunk, looked up at him and gave him a smile, a smile of relief and gratitude this time, not the queer empty one that had given her the name. There seemed to be little change in Jake, his pulse was a trifle weaker, perhaps, and his eyes stayed shut for longer and longer at a time. Hugh went into the storeroom to see what food would be best for him; he looked carefully through every box and canister to make certain what was there. So occupied was he that he did not hear the swishing of snowshoes over the frozen slopes outside nor even heed a quiet knock at the door. It was not until some one came into the room and laid a hand upon his arm that he turned quickly to see Oscar Dansk.

That their greeting was a joyful one need hardly be said, but the first words of Hugh’s eager welcome were broken off by his shout of delight when he saw what Oscar was pulling from his pocket, a great handful of letters addressed in his father’s handwriting.

“Miss Christina, at the postoffice, has been much worried about the way your mail was piling up,” said Oscar. “She said I was to give these to you before I said a word, for she was sure I would forget them if we once got to talking.”

Hugh snatched the letters, sat down upon a box and then and there read them all through to the end. They told of the voyage, of Dr. Arnold’s arrival at the base hospital, of his work and his associates and the war. One of the letters, the last, made Hugh exclaim aloud in delighted happiness. It said:

“Since I have been here and have seen how things stand and have thought the matter well over, I have begun to think that there might, after all, be a place for you in this hospital work. I know that I will be sent home in the spring, for a month, on some business for the Medical Department, and it is possible—remember, I make no promises—it is possible that I may consider taking you back with me.”

Hugh looked up from his letter to tell the good news to his friend, but did not speak, so struck was he by the odd expression on Oscar’s face. His eyes shone in a way that the boy had never seen before, while there was about him the air of suppressing some excited secret.

“What is it?” Hugh cried.

“I will show you,” returned the other.

He opened the door into the main room and went in, Hugh following, filled with curiosity and wonder. As they crossed the cabin, he caught Oscar’s sleeve and began to tell him of Half-Breed Jake.

“We will speak of that later,” was the answer. “Put on your coat, come quickly.”

They went outside into the clear, glittering cold: how good it seemed after the close, dark little shack! Oscar led Hugh across the clearing, in the opposite direction from his own house, along the ridge that ran down to the lake. The sun was very bright, the air absolutely still. He stopped where the ground was so open that they could see out across the forest.

“Look,” he said, and pointed.

Crowning the top of the next hill stood a giant pine that towered high above its fellows. As Hugh watched, its branches commenced to tremble, although never a breath of wind was stirring. The whole tree began to rock and sway, to bow forward as though shaken by a furious gale; then with a roar that sounded through the whole valley, it fell crashing and disappeared.

“Oscar,” cried Hugh, “what does it mean?”

There was a little silence, then Oscar spoke in a voice husky with excitement.

“It means the road,” he said; “they are clearing the way to build it at last.”

They watched another tree fall and another, as they stood there in the breathless cold, while Oscar told his story. His return with John Edmonds and his news that Jake had been unable to prevent the establishing of a claim, had stirred the people to belief in his plan at last. First a few and then more and more had agreed to help him, until now nearly all the men of Rudolm were at work in the forest, clearing the way, and hauling out the logs over the frozen ground, preparatory to building the road in the spring.

“Now that they know the land is mine, safe in spite of Jake, there are a hundred more who are ready to dare the same thing. Ingmarsson and my sister Linda will come first, others will follow; they will be here soon enough to break the ground and plant it in wheat this spring. The road will be slower; it has many hills and valleys to cross, but by summer when the harvest is ripe, it will be ready to carry the grain away. Some day we will be able to fill one of those great ships whose sailing once so nearly broke my heart.”

“And that man there?” questioned Hugh, motioning upward toward the cabin that lowered at them from above on Jasper Peak.

“We can carry him out to Rudolm, now that the way is cleared,” Oscar answered. “I think he may live a little time longer, but his power to do harm is gone forever. Yet when he tried to burn the cottage he came, but for you, very near to beating us at last.”

They walked down the hill to the edge of the lake so that Hugh might catch a glimpse, around an intervening spur, of the line of cleared ground that wound across the valleys. They sat down upon a snowy log and talked long and earnestly of what had passed and of what was to come. Suddenly Hugh looked down and recognized the big tree trunk upon which they sat.

“Look,” he said, “it is the very tree that made a bridge for us to cross the creek when it was in flood. Here are even the marks where the bullets cut the bark.”

It had been washed ashore and lay now, one end frozen in the ice, one high and dry upon the bank. Here it would lie for years to come, peaceful and undisturbed, the sun hot upon it, fishes darting about its outer end, the turtles climbing up to bask in the noonday summer heat. So it would lie, unmindful of the part it had played in the events of that stirring night, lie until the valley of the Promised Land was settled, until Oscar’s road, white and travel-worn, lay slanting across the hills to bear the gifts of the new country to the old. It would fall slowly into decay and the sharp hoof of the last of the wild deer or giant moose, coming down to drink, would stamp it into powder in the end. For the close of the struggle had come and peace had settled over the domain of the Pirate of Jasper Peak.

“You will stay to help us?” Oscar was saying. “You will see the fields planted and watch the harvest come in.”

“I will help you this winter,” Hugh answered, “and perhaps stay in the spring to see the planting. But,” and he patted the letter in his pocket, “by the time the harvest comes I will be in France.”

He wished a moment after that he had not spoken, for Oscar’s face clouded, yet quickly cleared again.

“Yet there will always be things to do at home,” he said, “for us who are not so lucky as you who go to France.”

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