The Buffalo Runners: A Tale of the Red River Plains. Robert Michael Ballantyne

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СКАЧАТЬ to obey. She received the morsel, ate it with much relish, and wished earnestly for more.

      “Now, you’ll lie down and go to sleep,” she said, after her father had washed down the last morsel of food with the last cup of hot tea, “and I’ll gather a few more sticks to keep the fire going till morning. I think it is not so cold as it was, and the wind is quite gone. They have been away five days now, or more. I think that God, in His mercy, will send us relief in the morning.”

      “You are a goot lass, my tear,” said the old man, allowing himself to be made as comfortable as it was in his daughter’s power to accomplish; “what you say is ferry true. The weather feels warmer, and the wind is down. Perhaps they will find us in the mornin’. Goot-night, my tear.”

      It was one of the characteristics of this testy old man, that he believed it quite possible for a human being to get on quite well enough in this world without any distinct recognition of his Maker.

      Once, in conversation with his youngest son and namesake Duncan junior, he had somehow got upon this subject, not by any means in a reverential, but in an argumentative, controversial spirit, and had expressed the opinion that as man knew nothing whatever about God, and had no means of finding out anything about Him, there was no need to trouble one’s head about Him at all.

      “I just go about my work, Tuncan,” he said, “an’ leave preachin’ an’ prayin’ an’ psalm-singin’ to them that likes it. There’s Elspie, now. She believes in God, an’ likes goin’ to churches an’ meetin’s, an’ that seems to make her happy. Ferry goot—I don’t pelieve in these things, an’ I think I’m as happy as hersel’.”

      “Humph!” grunted the son in a tone of unconcealed contempt; “if ye are as happy as hersel’, faither, yer looks give the lie to your condeetion, whatever. An’ there’s this great dufference between you an’ her, that she’s not only happy hersel’, but she does her best to mak other folk happy—but you, wi’ your girnin’ an’ snappin’, are always doin’ the best ye can to mak everybody aboot ye meeserable.”

      “Tuncan,” retorted the sire, with solemn candour, “it iss the same compliment I can return to yoursel’ with interest, my boy—whatever.”

      With such sentiments, then, it is not remarkable that Duncan McKay senior turned over to sleep as he best could without looking to a higher source than earth afforded for help in his extremity. Happily his daughter was actuated by a better spirit, and when she at last lay down on her pile of brushwood, with her feet towards the fire, and her head on a buffalo robe, the fact of her having previously committed herself and her father to God made her sleep all the sounder.

      In another clump of wood not many miles distant from the spot where the father and daughter lay, two hunters were encamped. One was Duncan McKay, to whom we have just referred as being in discord with his father. The other was a Canadian named Henri Perrin.

      Both men were gaunt and weakened by famine. They had just returned to camp from an unsuccessful hunt, and the latter, being first to return, had kindled the fire, and was about to put on the kettle when McKay came in.

      “I’ve seen nothing,” remarked McKay as he flung down his gun and then flung himself beside it. “Did you see anything?”

      “No, nothing,” answered Perrin, breaking off a piece of pemmican and putting it into the pot.

      “How much is left?” asked McKay.

      “Hardly enough for two days—for the two of us; four days perhaps for one!” answered the other.

      McKay looked up quickly, but the Canadian was gazing abstractedly into the pot. Apparently his remark had no significance. But McKay did not think so. Since arriving in the colony he had seen and heard much about deception and crime among both Indians and half-breeds. Being suspicious by nature, he became alarmed, for it was evident enough, as Perrin had said, that food to last two men for three days would last one man for six, and the one who should possess six days’ provisions might hope to reach the Settlement alive, even though weakened by previous starvation.

      The dark expression which had procured for Duncan McKay junior the sobriquet of Cloudbrow from La Certe and his wife, deepened visibly as these thoughts troubled his brain, and for some time he sat gazing at the fire in profound abstraction.

      Young McKay was not by any means one of the most depraved of men, but when a man is devoid of principle it only requires temptation strong enough, and opportunity convenient, to sink him suddenly to the lowest depths. Starvation had so far weakened the physique of the hunters that it was obviously impossible for both of them to reach the Settlement on two days’ short allowance of food. The buffalo had been driven away from that neighbourhood by the recent storm, and the hope of again falling in with them was now gone. The starving hunters, as we have said, had broken up camp, and were scattered over the plains no one could tell where. To find them might take days, if not weeks; and, even if successful, of what avail would it be to discover groups of men who were in the same predicament with themselves? To remain where they were was certain and not far-distant death! The situation was desperate, and each knew it to be so. Yet each did not take it in the same way. McKay, as we have said, became abstracted and slightly nervous. The Canadian, whatever his thoughts, was calm and collected, and went about his culinary operations as if he were quite at ease. He was about to lift the pot off the hook that suspended it over the fire, when his companion quietly, and as if without any definite purpose, took up his gun.

      Perrin observed the action, and quickly reached out his hand towards his own weapon, which lay on the ground beside him.

      Quick as lightning McKay raised his gun and fired. Next moment his comrade lay dead upon the ground—shot through the heart!

      Horror-struck at what he had done, the murderer could scarcely believe his eyes, and he stood up glaring at the corpse as if he had been frozen to death in that position. After standing a long time, he sat down and tried to think of his act and the probable consequences.

      Self-defence was the first idea that was suggested clearly to him; and he clung to it as a drowning man is said to cling to a straw. “Was it not clear,” he thought, “that Perrin intended to murder me? If not, why so quick to grip his gun? If I had waited it would have been me, not Perrin, that would be lying there now!”

      His memory reminded him faithfully, however, that when he first thought of taking up his gun, Conscience had sternly said,—“Don’t.” Why should Conscience have spoken thus, or at all, if his motive had been innocent?

      There are two ways in which a wicked man gets rid of conscientious troubles—at least for a time. One way is by stout-hearted defiance of God, and ignoring of Conscience altogether. The other is by sophistical reasoning, and a more or less successful effort to throw dust in his own eyes.

      Duncan McKay took the latter method. It is an easy enough method—especially with the illogical—but it works indifferently, and it does not last long.

      Conscience may be seared; may be ignored; may be trampled on, but it cannot be killed; it cannot even be weakened and is ever ready at the most unseasonable and unexpected times to start up, vigorous and faithful to the very end, with its emphatic “Don’t!” and “No!”

      Dragging the body out of the camp, McKay returned to take his supper and reason the matter out with himself.

      “I could not help myself,” he thought; “when I took up my gun I did not intend to kill the man.”

      Conscience again reminded him of its “Don’t!”

      “And СКАЧАТЬ