On every hand stretched the forest primeval,--the home of noisy comedy and silent tragedy.Here the struggle for survival continued to wage with all its ancient brutality.Briton and Russian were still to overlap in the Land of the Rainbow's End--and this was the very heart of it--nor had Yankee gold yet purchased its vast domain.The wolf-pack still clung to the flank of the cariboo-herd, singling out the weak and the big with calf, and pulling them down as remorselessly as were it a thousand, thousand generations into the past.The sparse aborigines still acknowledged the rule of their chiefs and medicine men, drove out bad spirits, burned their witches, fought their neighbors, and ate their enemies with a relish which spoke well of their bellies.
But it was at the moment when the stone age was drawing to a close.Already, over unknown trails and chartless wildernesses, were the harbingers of the steel arriving,--fair-faced, blue-eyed, indomitable men, incarnations of the unrest of their race.By accident or design, single-handed and in twos and threes, they came from no one knew whither, and fought, or died, or passed on, no one knew whence.The priests raged against them, the chiefs called forth their fighting men, and stone clashed with steel; but to little purpose.Like water seeping from some mighty reservoir, they trickled through the dark forests and mountain passes, threading the highways in bark canoes, or with their moccasined feet breaking trail for the wolf-dogs.They came of a great breed, and their mothers were many; but the fur-clad denizens of the Northland had this yet to learn.So many an unsung wanderer fought his last and died under the cold fire of the aurora, as did his brothers in burning sands and reeking jungles, and as they shall continue to do till in the fulness of time the destiny of their race be achieved.
It was near twelve.Along the northern horizon a rosy glow, fading to the west and deepening to the east, marked the unseen dip of the midnight sun.The gloaming and the dawn were so commingled that there was no night,--simply a wedding of day with day, a scarcely perceptible blending of two circles of the sun.Akildee timidly chirped good-night; the full, rich throat of a robin proclaimed good-morrow.From an island on the breast of the Yukon a colony of wild fowl voiced its interminable wrongs, while a loon laughed mockingly back across a still stretch of river.
In the foreground, against the bank of a lazy eddy, birch-bark canoes were lined two and three deep.Ivory-bladed spears, bone-barbed arrows, buckskin-thonged bows, and simple basket-woven traps bespoke the fact that in the muddy current of the river the salmon-run was on.In the background, from the tangle of skin tents and drying frames, rose the voices of the fisher folk.
Bucks skylarked with bucks or flirted with the maidens, while the older squaws, shut out from this by virtue of having fulfilled the end of their existence in reproduction, gossiped as they braided rope from the green roots of trailing vines.At their feet their naked progeny played and squabbled, or rolled in the muck with the tawny wolf-dogs.
To one side of the encampment, and conspicuously apart from it, stood a second camp of two tents.But it was a white man's camp.
If nothing else, the choice of position at least bore convincing evidence of this.In case of offence, it commanded the Indian quarters a hundred yards away; of defence, a rise to the ground and the cleared intervening space; and last, of defeat, the swift slope of a score of yards to the canoes below.From one of the tents came the petulant cry of a sick child and the crooning song of a mother.In the open, over the smouldering embers of a fire, two men held talk.
"Eh? I love the church like a good son.Bien! So great a love that my days have been spent in fleeing away from her, and my nights in dreaming dreams of reckoning.Look you!" The half-breed's voice rose to an angry snarl."I am Red River born.My father was white--as white as you.But you are Yankee, and he was British bred, and a gentleman's son.And my mother was the daughter of a chief, and I was a man.Ay, and one had to look the second time to see what manner of blood ran in my veins; for Ilived with the whites, and was one of them, and my father's heart beat in me.It happened there was a maiden--white--who looked on me with kind eyes.Her father had much land and many horses; also he was a big man among his people, and his blood was the blood of the French.He said the girl knew not her own mind, and talked overmuch with her, and became wroth that such things should be.
"But she knew her mind, for we came quick before the priest.And quicker had come her father, with lying words, false promises, Iknow not what; so that the priest stiffened his neck and would not make us that we might live one with the other.As at the beginning it was the church which would not bless my birth, so now it was the church which refused me marriage and put the blood of men upon my hands.Bien! Thus have I cause to love the church.
So I struck the priest on his woman's mouth, and we took swift horses, the girl and I, to Fort Pierre, where was a minister of good heart.But hot on our trail was her father, and brothers, and other men he had gathered to him.And we fought, our horses on the run, till I emptied three saddles and the rest drew off and went on to Fort Pierre.Then we took east, the girl and I, to the hills and forests, and we lived one with the other, and we were not married,--the work of the good church which I love like a son.