A Romany of the Snows, Complete. Gilbert Parker

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СКАЧАТЬ though his heart went out to women, and his tongue was of the race that beguiles, he stood to his “lines” like a man, and people wondered. Even Wonta, the daughter of Foot-in-the-Sun, only bent him, she could not break him to her will. Pierre turned her shy coaxing into irony—that was on the day when all Fort O’Angel conspired to prove Macavoy a child and not a warrior. But when she saw what she had done, and that the giant was greater than his years of brag, she repented, and hung a dead coyote at Pierre’s door as a sign of her contempt.

      Pierre watched Macavoy, sitting with a sponge of vinegar to his head, for he had had nasty joltings in his great fight. A little laugh came crinkling up to the half-breed’s lips, but dissolved into silence.

      “We’ll start in the morning,” he said.

      Macavoy looked up. “Whin you plaze; but a word in your ear; are you sure she’ll not follow us?”

      “She doesn’t know. Fort Ste. Anne is in the south, and Fort Comfort, where we go, is far north.”

      “But if she kem!” the big man persisted.

      “You will be a king; you can do as other kings have done,” Pierre chuckled.

      The other shook his head. “Says Father Nolan to me,” says he, “tis till death us do part, an’ no man put asunder’; an’ I’ll stand by that, though I’d slice out the bist tin years av me life, if I niver saw her face again.”

      “But the girl, Wonta—what a queen she’d make!”

      “Marry her yourself, and be king yourself, and be damned to you! For she, like the rest, laughed in me face, whin I told thim of the day whin I—”

      “That’s nothing. She hung a dead coyote at my door. You don’t know women. There’ll be your breed and hers abroad in the land one day.”

      Macavoy stretched to his feet—he was so tall that he could not stand upright in the room. He towered over Pierre, who blandly eyed him. “I’ve another word for your ear,” he said darkly. “Keep clear av the likes o’ that wid me. For I’ve swallowed a tribe av divils. It’s fightin’ you want. Well, I’ll do it—I’ve an itch for the throats av men, but a fool I’ll be no more wid wimin, white or red—that hell-cat that spoilt me life an’ killed me child, or—”

      A sob clutched him in the throat.

      “You had a child, then?” asked Pierre gently.

      “An angel she was, wid hair like the sun, an’ ‘d melt the heart av an iron god: none like her above or below. But the mother, ah, the mother of her! One day whin she’d said a sharp word, wid another from me, an’ the child clinging to her dress, she turned quick and struck it, meanin’ to anger me. Not so hard the blow was, but it sent the darlin’s head agin’ the chimney-stone, and that was the end av it. For she took to her bed, an’ agin’ the crowin’ o’ the cock wan midnight, she gives a little cry an’ snatched at me beard. ‘Daddy,’ says she, ‘daddy, it hurts!’ An’ thin she floats away, wid a stitch av pain at her lips.”

      Macavoy sat down now, his fingers fumbling in his beard. Pierre was uncomfortable. He could hear of battle, murder, and sudden death unmoved—it seemed to him in the game; but the tragedy of a child, a mere counter yet in the play of life—that was different. He slid a hand over the table, and caught Macavoy’s arm. “Poor little waif!” he said.

      Macavoy gave the hand a grasp that turned Pierre sick, and asked: “Had ye iver a child av y’r own, Pierre-iver wan at all?”

      “Never,” said Pierre dreamily, “and I’ve travelled far. A child—a child—is a wonderful thing. … Poor little waif!”

      They both sat silent for a moment. Pierre was about to rise, but Macavoy suddenly pinned him to his seat with this question: “Did y’ iver have a wife, thin, Pierre?”

      Pierre turned pale. A sharp breath came through his teeth. He spoke slowly: “Yes, once.”

      “And she died?” asked the other, awed.

      “We all have our day,” he replied enigmatically, “and there are worse things than death. … Eh, well, mon ami, let us talk of other things. To-morrow we go to conquer. I know where I can get five men I want. I have ammunition and dogs.”

      A few minutes afterwards Pierre was busy in the settlement. At the Fort he heard strange news. A new batch of settlers was coming from the south, and among them was an old Irishwoman who called herself now Mrs. Whelan, now Mrs. Macavoy. She talked much of the lad she was to find, one Tim Macavoy, whose fame Gossip had brought to her at last.

      She had clung on to the settlers, and they could not shake her off. “She was comin’,” she said, “to her own darlin’ b’y, from whom she’d been parted manny a year, believin’ him dead, or Tom Whelan had nivir touched hand o’ hers.”

      The bearer of the news had but just arrived, and he told it only to the Chief Trader and Pierre. At a word from Pierre the man promised to hold his peace. Then Pierre went to Wonta’s lodge. He found her with her father alone, her head at her knees. When she heard his voice she looked up sharply, and added a sharp word also.

      “Wait,” he said; “women are such fools. You snapped your fingers in his face, and laughed at him. Bien, that is nothing. He has proved himself great. That is something. He will be greater still, if the other woman does not find him. She should die, but then some women have no sense.”

      “The other woman!” said Wonta, starting to her feet; “who is the other woman?”

      Old Foot-in-the-Sun waked and sat up, but seeing that it was Pierre, dropped again to sleep. Pierre, he knew, was no peril to any woman. Besides, Wonta hated the half-breed, as he thought.

      Pierre told the girl the story of Macavoy’s life; for he knew that she loved the man after her heathen fashion, and that she could be trusted.

      “I do not care for that,” she said, when he had finished; “it is nothing. I would go with him. I should be his wife, the other should die. I would kill her, if she would fight me. I know the way of knives, or a rifle, or a pinch at the throat—she should die!”

      “Yes, but that will not do. Keep your hands free of her.”

      Then he told her that they were going away. She said she would go also. He said no to that, but told her to wait and he would come back for her.

      Though she tried hard to follow them, they slipped away from the Fort in the moist gloom of the morning, the brown grass rustling, the prairie-hens fluttering, the osiers soughing as they passed, the Spirit of the North, ever hungry, drawing them on over the long Divides. They did not see each other’s faces till dawn. They were guided by Pierre’s voice; none knew his comrades. Besides Pierre and Macavoy, there were five half-breeds—Noel, Little Babiche, Corvette, Josh, and Jacques Parfaite. When they came to recognise each other, they shook hands, and marched on. In good time they reached that wonderful and pleasant country between the Barren Grounds and the Lake of Silver Shallows. To the north of it was Fort Comfort, which they had come to take. Macavoy’s rich voice roared as of old, before his valour was questioned—and maintained—at Fort O’Angel. Pierre had diverted his mind from the woman who, at Fort O’Angel, was even now calling heaven and earth to witness that “Tim Macavoy was her Macavoy and no other, an’ she’d find him—the СКАЧАТЬ