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The Honor of the Big Snows

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THE HONOR OF THE BIG SNOWS

By JAMES OLIVER CURWOOD

Author of "The Danger Trail," "The Courage of Captain Plum," etc.

NEW YORK

1911



CHAPTER I

THE MUSIC

"Listen, John--I hear music--"

The words came in a gentle whisper from the woman's lips. One white,
thin hand lifted itself weakly to the rough face of the man who was
kneeling beside her bed, and the great dark eyes from which he had
hidden his own grew luminously bright for a moment, as she whispered
again:

"John--I hear--music--"

A sigh fluttered from her lips. The man's head drooped until it rested
very near to her bosom. He felt the quiver of her hand against his
cheek, and in its touch there was something which told John Cummins
that the end of all life had come for him and for her. His heart beat
fiercely, and his great shoulders shook with the agony that was eating
at his soul.

"Yes, it is the pretty music, my Mélisse," he murmured softly, choking
back his sobs. "It is the pretty music in the skies."

The hand pressed more tightly against his face.

"It's not the music in the skies, John. It is real--REAL music that I
hear--"

"It's the sky music, my sweet Mélisse! Shall I open the door so that
we can hear it better?"

The hand slipped from his cheek. Cummins lifted his head, slowly
straightening his great shoulders as he looked down upon the white
face, from which even the flush of fever was disappearing, as he had
seen the pale glow of the northern sun fade before a thickening snow.
He stretched his long, gaunt arms straight up to the low roof of the
cabin, and for the first time in his life he prayed--prayed to the God
who had made for him this world of snow and ice and endless forest
very near to the dome of the earth, who had given him this woman, and
who was now taking her from him.

When he looked again at the woman, her eyes were open, and there
glowed in them still the feeble fire of a great love. Her lips, too,
pleaded with him in their old, sweet way, which always meant that he
was to kiss them, and stroke her hair, and tell her again that she was
the most beautiful thing in the whole world.

"My Mélisse!"

He crushed his face to her, his sobbing breath smothering itself in
the soft masses of her hair, while her arms rose weakly and fell
around his neck. He heard the quick, gasping struggle for breath
within her bosom, and, faintly again, the words:

"It--is--the--music--of--my--people!"

"It is the music of the angels in the skies, my sweet Mélisse! It is
OUR music. I will open the door."

The arms had slipped from his shoulders. Gently he ran his rough
fingers through the loose glory of the woman's hair, and stroked her
face as softly as he might have caressed the cheek of a sleeping
child.

"I will open the door, Mélisse."

His moccasined feet made no sound as he moved across the little room
which was their home. At the door he paused and listened; then he
opened it, and the floods of the white night poured in upon him as he
stood with his eyes turned to where the cold, pale flashes of the
aurora were playing over the pole. There came to him the hissing,
saddening song of the northern lights--a song of vast, unending
loneliness, which they two had come to know as the music of the skies.

Beyond that mystery-music there was no sound. To the eyes of John
Cummins there was no visible movement of life. And yet he saw signs of
it--signs which drew his breath from him in choking gulps, and which
sent him out into the night, so that the woman might not hear.

It was an hour past midnight at the post, which had the Barren Lands
at its back door. It was the hour of deep slumber for its people; but
to-night there was no sleep for any of them. Lights burned dimly in
the few rough log homes. The company's store was aglow, and the
factor's office, a haven for the men of the wilderness, shot one
gleaming yellow eye out into the white gloom. The post was awake. It
was waiting. It was listening. It was watching.

As the woman's door opened, wide and brimful of light, a door of one
of the log houses opened, and then another, and out into the night,
like dim shadows, trod the moccasined men from the factor's office,
and stood there waiting for the word of life or death from John
Cummins. In their own fashion these men, who, without knowing it,
lived very near to the ways of God, sent mute prayers into the starry
heavens that the most beautiful thing in the world might yet be spared
to them.

It was just two summers before that this beautiful thing had come into
Cummins' life, and into the life of the post. Cummins, red-headed,
lithe as a cat, big-souled as the eternal mountain of the Crees, and
the best of the company's hunters, had brought Mélisse thither as his
bride. Seventeen rough hearts had welcomed her. They had assembled
about that little cabin in which the light was shining now, speechless
in their adoration of this woman who had come among them, their caps
in their hands, their faces shining, their eyes shifting before the
glorious ones that looked at them and smiled at them as the woman
shook their hands, one by one.

Perhaps she was not strictly beautiful, as most people judge; but she
was beautiful here, four hundred miles beyond civilization. Mukee, the
half-Cree, had never seen a white woman, for even the factor's wife
was part Chippewayan; and no one of the others went down to the edge
of the southern wilderness more than once each twelvemonth or so.

Melisse's hair was brown and soft, and it shone with a sunny glory
that reached far back into their conception of things dreamed of but
never seen. Her eyes were as blue as the early wild flowers that came
after the spring floods, and her voice was the sweetest sound that had
ever fallen upon their ears. So these men thought when Cummins first
brought home his wife, and the masterpiece which each had painted in
his soul and brain was never changed. Each week and month added to the
deep-toned value of that picture, as the passing of a century might
add to a Raphael or a Vandyke.

The woman became more human, and less an angel, of course, but that
only made her more real, and allowed them to become acquainted with
her, to talk with her, and to love her more. There was no thought of
wrong, for the devotion of these men was a great, passionless love
unhinting of sin. Cummins and his wife accepted it, and added to it
when they could, and were the happiest pair in all that vast
Northland.

The girl--she was scarce more than budding into womanhood--fell
happily into the ways of her new life. She did nothing that was
elementally unusual, nothing more than any pure woman reared in the
love of God and of a home would have done. In her spare hours she
began to teach the half-dozen wild little children about the post, and
every Sunday she told them wonderful stories out of the Bible. She
ministered to the sick, for that was a part of her code of life.
Everywhere she carried her glad smile, her cheery greeting, her
wistful earnestness, to brighten what seemed to her the sad and lonely
lives of these silent men of the North.

And she succeeded, not because she was unlike other millions of her
kind, but because of the difference between the fortieth degree and
the sixtieth--the difference in the viewpoint of men who fought
themselves into moral shreds in the big game of life and those who
lived a thousand miles nearer to the dome of the earth.

A few days before there had come a wonderful event in the history of
the company's post. A new life was born into the little cabin of
Cummins and his wife. After this the silent, wordless worship of their
people was filled with something very near to pathos. Cummins' wife
was a mother! She was one of them now, an indissoluble part of their
existence--a part of it as truly as the strange lights for ever
hovering over the pole, as surely as the countless stars that never
left the night skies, as surely as the endless forests and the deep
snows!

Then had come the sudden change, and the gloom, that brought with it
the shadow of death, fell like a pall upon the post, stifling its
life, and bringing with it a grief that those who lived there had
never known before.

There came to them no word from Cummins now.

He stood for a moment before his lighted door, and then went back, and
the word passed softly from one to another that the most beautiful
thing in the world was still living her sweet life in that little
cabin at the end of the clearing.

"You hear the music in the skies--now, my Mélisse?" whispered the man,
kneeling beside her again. "It is very pretty to-night!"

"It was not that," repeated the woman.

She attempted to stroke his face, but Cummins saw nothing of the
effort, for the hand lay all but motionless. He saw nothing of the
fading softness that glowed in the big, loving eyes, for his own eyes
were blinded by a hot film. And the woman saw nothing of the hot film,
so torture was saved them both. But suddenly the woman quivered, and
Cummins heard a thrilling sound.

"It is the music!" she panted. "John, John, it is--the music--of--my--
people!"

The man straightened himself, his face turned to the open door. He
heard it now! Was it the blessed angels coming for his Mélisse? He
rose, a sobbing note in his throat, and went, his arms stretched out,
to meet them. He had never heard a sound like that--never in all his
life in this endless wilderness.

He went from the door out into the night, and, step by step, through
the snow toward the black edge of the spruce forest. The sobs fell
chokingly from his lips, and his arms were still reaching out to greet
this messenger of the God of his beloved; for Cummins was a man of the
wild and mannerless ways of a savage world, and he knew not what to
make of this sweetness that came to them from out of the depths of the
black forest.

"My Mélisse! My Mélisse!" he sobbed.

A figure came from the shadows, and with the figure came the music,
sweet and soft and low. John Cummins stopped and turned his face
straight up to the sky. His heart died within him.

The music ceased, and when he looked again the figure was close to
him, staggering as it walked, and a face white and thin and starved
came with it. It was a boy's face.

"For the museek of the violon--somet'ing to eat!" he heard, and the
thin figure swayed and fell almost into his arms. The voice came weak
again. "Thees is Jan--Jan Thoreau--and his violon--"

The woman's bloodless face and her great staring dark eyes greeted
them as they entered the cabin. As the man knelt beside her again, and
lifted her head against his breast, she whispered once more:

"It is the--music--of my people--the violin!"

John Cummins turned his head.

"Play!" he breathed.

"Ah, the white angel is seek--ver' seek," murmured Jan, and he drew
his bow gently across the strings of his violin.

From the instrument there came something so soft and sweet that John
Cummins closed his eyes as he held the woman against his breast and
listened. Not until he opened them again, and felt a strange chill
against his cheek, did he know that his beloved's soul had gone from
him on the gentle music of Jan Thoreau's violin.




CHAPTER II

MUKEE'S STORY


For many minutes after the last gentle breath had passed from the
woman's lips, Jan Thoreau played softly upon his violin. It was the
great, heart-broken sob of John Cummins that stopped him. As tenderly
as if she had fallen into a sweet sleep from which he feared to awaken
her, the man unclasped his arms and lowered his wife's head to the
pillow; and with staring black eyes Jan crushed his violin against his
ragged breast and watched him as he smoothed back the shimmering hair
and looked long and hungrily into the still, white face.

Cummins turned to him, and, in the dim light of the cabin, their eyes
met. It was then that Jan Thoreau knew what had happened. He forgot
his starvation. He crushed his violin closer, and whispered to
himself:

"The white angel ees--gone!"

Cummins rose from the bedside, slowly, like a man who had suddenly
grown old. His moccasined feet dragged as he went to the door. They
stumbled when he went out into the pale star-glow of the night.

Jan followed, swaying weakly, for the last of his strength had gone in
the playing of the violin. Midway in the cabin he paused, and his eyes
glowed with a wild, strange grief as he gazed down upon the still face
of Cummins' wife, beautiful in death as it had been in life, and with
the sweet softness of life still lingering there. Some time, ages and
ages ago, he had known such a face, and had felt the great clutching
love of it.

Something drew him to where John Cummins had knelt, and he fell upon
his knees and gazed hungrily and longingly where John Cummins had
gazed. His pulse was beating feebly, the weakness of seven days'
starvation blurred his eyes, and unconsciously he sank over the bed
and one of his thin hands touched the soft sweep of the woman's hair.
A stifled cry fell from him as he jerked himself rigidly erect; and as
if for the desecration of that touch there was but one way of
forgiveness, he drew his violin half to his shoulder, and for a few
moments played so softly that none but the spirit of the woman and
himself could hear.

Cummins had partly closed the door after him; but watchers had seen
the opening of it. A door opened here, and another there, and paths of
yellow light flashed over the hard-trodden snow as shadowy life came
forth to greet what message he brought from the little cabin.

Beyond those flashes of light there was no other movement, and no
sound. Dark figures stood motionless. The lonely howl of a sledge-dog
ended in a wail of pain as some one kicked it into terrified silence.
The hollow cough of Mukee's father was smothered in the thick fur of
his cap as he thrust his head from his little shack in the edge of the
forest. A score of eyes watched Cummins as he came out into the snow,
and the rough, loyal hearts of those who looked throbbed in fearful
anticipation of the word he might be bringing to them.

Sometimes a nation ceases to breathe in the last moments of its dying
chief, and the black wings of calamity gather over its people,
enshrouding them in a strange gloom and a stranger fear; and so,
because the greatest of all tragedies had come into their little
world, Cummins' people were speechless in their grief and their
waiting for the final word. And when the word came to them at last,
and passed from lip to lip, and from one grim, tense face to another,
the doors closed again, and the lights went out one by one, until
there remained only the yellow eye of the factor's office and the
faint glow from the little cabin in which John Cummins knelt with his
sobbing face crushed close to that of his dead.

There was no one who noticed Jan Thoreau when he came through the door
of the factor's office. His coat of caribou-skin was in tatters. His
feet thrust themselves from the toes of his moccasins. His face was so
thin and white that it shone with the pallor of death from its frame
of straight dark hair. His eyes gleamed like black diamonds. The
madness of hunger was in him.

An hour before, death had been gripping at his throat, when he
stumbled upon the lights of the post, That night he would have died in
the deep snows. Wrapped in its thick coat of bearskin he clutched his
violin to his breast, and sank down in a ragged heap beside the hot
stove. His eyes traveled about him in fierce demand. There is no
beggary among these strong-souled men of the far North, and Jan's lips
did not beg. He unwrapped the bearskin, and whispered:

"For the museek of the violon--somet'ing to eat!"

He played, even as the words fell from him, but only for a moment--for
the bow slipped from his nerveless grip and his head sank forward upon
his breast.

In the half-Cree's eyes there was something of the wild beauty that
gleamed in Jan's. For an instant those eyes had met in the savage
recognition of blood; and when Jan's head fell weakly, and his violin
slipped to the floor, Mukee lifted him in his strong arms and carried
him to the shack in the edge of the spruce and balsam.

And there was no one who noticed Jan the next day--except Mukee. He
was fed. His frozen blood grew warm. As life returned, he felt more
and more the pall of gloom that had settled over this spark of life in
the heart of the wilderness. He had seen the woman, in life and in
death, and he, too, loved her and grieved that she was no more. He
said nothing; he asked nothing; but he saw the spirit of adoration in
the sad, tense faces of the men. He saw it in the terror-stricken eyes
of the wild little children who had grown to worship Cummins' wife. He
read it in the slinking stillness of the dogs, in the terrible,
pulseless quiet that had settled about him.

It was not hard for Jan to understand, for he, too, worshiped the
memory of a white, sweet face like the one that he had seen in the
cabin. He knew that this worship at Lac Bain was a pure worship, for
the honor of the big snows was a part of his soul. It was his
religion, and the religion of these others who lived four hundred
miles or more from a southern settlement.

It meant what civilization could not understand--freezing and slow
starvation rather than theft, and respect for the tenth commandment
above all other things. It meant that up here, under the cold chill of
the northern skies, things were as God meant them to be, and that a
few of His creatures could live in a love that was neither possession
nor sin.

A year after Cummins brought his wife into the North, a man came to
the post from Fort Churchill, on Hudson's Bay. He was an Englishman,
belonging to the home office of the Hudson's Bay Company in London. He
brought with him something new, as the woman had brought something
new; only in this instance it was an element of life which Cummins'
people could not understand.

It breathed of tragedy from the first, to the men of the post. To the
Englishman, on the other hand, it promised to be but an incident--a
passing adventure in pleasure. Here again was that difference of
viewpoint--the eternity of difference between the middle and the end
of the earth.

Cummins was away for a month on a trap-line that went into the Barren
Lands. At these times the woman fell as a heritage to those who
remained, and they watched over her as a parent might guard its child.
Yet the keenest eyes would not have perceived that this was so.

With Cummins gone, the tragedy progressed swiftly toward finality. The
Englishman came from among women. For months he had been in a torment
of desolation. Cummins' wife was to him like a flower suddenly come to
relieve the tantalizing barrenness of a desert; and with the wiles and
ways of civilization he sought to breathe its fragrance.

In the days and weeks that followed, he talked a great deal, when
heated by the warmth of the box stove and by his own thoughts; and
this was because he had not yet measured the hearts of Cummins'
people. And because the woman knew nothing of what was said about the
box stove, she continued in the even course of her pure life, neither
resisting nor encouraging the new-comer, yet ever tempting him with
that sweetness which she gave to all alike.

As yet there was no suspicion in her soul. She accepted the
Englishman's friendship, for he was a stranger among her people. She
did not hear the false note, she saw no step that promised evil. Only
the men at the post heard, and saw, and understood.

Like so many faithful beasts, they were ready to spring, to rend
flesh, to tear life out of him who threatened the desecration of all
that was good and pure and beautiful to them; and yet, dumb in their
devotion and faith, they waited and watched for a sign from the woman.
The blue eyes of Cummins' wife, the words of her gentle lips, the
touch of her hands, had made law at the post. If she smiled upon the
stranger and talked with him, and was pleased with him, that was only
one other law that she had made for them to respect. So they were
quiet, evaded the Englishman as much as possible, and watched--always
watched.

One day something happened. Cummins' wife came into the company's
store; and a quick flush shot into her cheeks, and the glitter of blue
diamonds into her eyes, when she saw the stranger standing there. The
man's red face grew redder, and he shifted his gaze. When Cummins'
wife passed him, she drew her skirt close to her; and there was the
poise of a queen in her head, the glory of wife and womanhood, the
living, breathing essence of all that was beautiful in her people's
honor of the big snows.

That night Mukee, the half-Cree, slunk around in the edge of the
forest to see that all was well in Cummins' little home. Once Mukee
had suffered a lynx-bite that went clear to the bone, and the woman
had saved his hand. After that, the savage in him was enslaved to her
like an invisible spirit.

He crouched for a few minutes in the snow, looking at the pale filter
of light that came through a hole in the curtain of the woman's
window; and as he looked something came between him and the light.
Against the cabin he saw the shadow of a sneaking human form; and as
silently as the steely flash of the aurora over his head, as swiftly
as a lean deer, he sped through the gloom of the forest's edge and
came up behind the woman's home.

With the caution of a lynx, his head close to the snow, he peered
around the logs. It was the Englishman who stood looking through the
tear in that curtained window.

Mukee's moccasined feet made no sound. His hand fell as gently as a
child's upon the stranger's arm.

"Thees is not the honor of the beeg snows," he whispered. "Come!"

A sickly pallor filled the other man's face; but Mukee's voice was
soft and dispassionate, his touch was velvety in its hint, and he went
with the guiding hand away from the curtained window, smiling in a
companionable way. Mukee's teeth gleamed back. The Englishman
chuckled.

Then Mukee's hands changed. They flew to the thick, reddening throat
of the man from civilization, and without a sound the two sank
together upon the snow.

The next day a messenger behind six dogs set out for Fort Churchill,
with word for the company's home office that the Englishman had died
in the big snow--which was true.

Mukee told this to Jan, for there was the bond of blood between them.
It was a painting of life, and love, and purity. Deep down in the
loneliness of his heart, Jan Thoreau, in his own simple way, thanked
the great God that it had been given to him to play his violin as the
woman died.




CHAPTER III

LITTLE MELISSE


The passing of Cummins' wife was as quiet as had been her coming. With
bare heads, their shaggy hair falling wildly about their faces, their
lips set tight to choke back their grief, the few at the post went,
one by one, into the little cabin, and gazed for the last time upon
her face. There was but one sound other than the gentle tread of their
moccasined feet, and that was a catching, sobbing moan that fell from
the thick gray beard of Williams, the old factor.

After that they carried her to where a clearing had been cut in the
edge of the forest; and at the foot of a giant spruce, towering
sentinel-like to the sky, they lowered her into the frozen earth.
Gaspingly, Williams stumbled over the words on a ragged page that had
been torn from a Bible. The rough men who stood about him bowed their
wild heads upon their breasts, and sobs broke from them.

At last Williams stopped his reading, stretched his long arms above
his head, and cried chokingly:

"The great God keep Mees Cummins!"

As the earth fell, there came from the edge of the forest the low,
sweet music of Jan Thoreau's violin. No man in all the world could
have told what he played, for it was the music of Jan's soul, wild and
whispering of the winds, sweetened by some strange inheritance that
had come to him with the picture which he carried in his throbbing
heart.

He played until only the tall spruce and John Cummins stood over the
lone grave. When he stopped, the man turned to him, and they went
together to the little cabin where the woman had lived.

There was something new in the cabin now--a tiny, white, breathing
thing over which an Indian woman watched. The boy stood beside John
Cummins, looking down upon it, and trembling.

"Ah," he whispered, his great eyes glowing. "It ees the LEETLE white
angel!"

"It is the little Mélisse," replied the man.

He dropped upon his knees, with his sad face close to the new life
that was to take the place of the one that had just gone out. Jan felt
something tugging in a strange way at his heart, and he, too, fell
upon his knees beside John Cummins in this first worship of the child.

From this hour of their first kneeling before the little life in the
cabin, something sprang up between Jan Thoreau and John Cummins which
it would have been hard for man to break. Looking up after many
moments' contemplation of the little Mélisse, Jan gazed straight into
Cummins' face, and whispered softly the word which in Cree means
"father." This was Jan's first word for Mélisse.

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