The Silent Places by Steward Edward White

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"We'd be right back where we started. I think it would pay us to go down
to Brunswick House and get a new outfit. It's only about a week up the
Missinaibie." Then, led by inevitable association of ideas, "Wonder if
those Crees had a good time? And I wonder if they've knocked our friend
Ah-tek, the Chippewa, on the head yet? He was a bad customer."

"You better hope they have," replied Sam. "He's got it in for you."

Dick shrugged his shoulders and laughed easily.

"That's all right," insisted the older man; "just the same, an Injun
never forgets and never fails to get even. You may think he's forgotten,
but he's layin' for you just the same," and then, because they happened
to be resting in the lea of a bank and the sun was at its highest for
the day, Sam went on to detail one example after another from his wide
observation of the tenacity with which an Indian pursues an obligation,
whether of gratitude or enmity. "They'll travel a thousand miles to get
even," he concluded. "They'll drop the most important business they
got, if they think they have a good chance to make a killing. He'll run
up against you some day, my son, and then you'll have it out."

"All right," agreed Dick, "I'll take care of him. Perhaps I'd better get
organised; he may be laying for me around the next bend."

"I don't know what made us talk about it," said Sam, "but funnier things
have happened to me." Dick, with mock solicitude, loosened his knife.

But Sam had suddenly become grave. "I believe in those things," he said,
a little fearfully. "They save a man sometimes, and sometimes they help
him to get what he wants. It's a Chippewa we're after; it's a Chippewa
we've been talkin' about. They's something in it."

"I don't know what you're driving at," said Dick.

"I don't know," confessed Sam, "but I have a kind of a hunch we won't
have to go back to the Nipissing." He looked gropingly about, without
seeing, in the manner of an old man.

"I hope your hunch is a good one," replied Dick. "Well, mush on!"

The little cavalcade had made barely a dozen steps in advance when Sam,
who was leading, came to a dead halt.

"Well, what do you make of that?" he asked.

Across the way lay the trunk of a fallen tree. It had been entirely
covered with snow, whose line ran clear and unbroken its entire length
except at one point, where it dipped to a shallow notch.

"Well, what do you make of that?" Sam inquired again.

"What?" asked Dick.

Sam pointed to the shallow depression in the snow covering the prostrate
tree-trunk.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Dick looked at his companion a little bewildered.

"Why, you must know as well as I do," he said, "somebody stepped on top
of that log with snow-shoes, and it's snowed since."

"Yes, but who?" insisted Sam.

"The trapper in this district, of course."

"Sure; and let me tell you this,--that trapper is the man we're after.
That's his trail."

"How do you know?"

"I'm sure. I've got a hunch."

Dick looked sceptical, then impressed. After all, you never could tell
what a man might not learn out in the Silent Places, and the old
woodsman had grown gray among woods secrets.

"We'll follow the trail and find his camp," pursued Sam.

"You ain't going to ambush him?" inquired Dick.

"What's the use? He's the last man we have to tend to in this district,
anyway. Even if it shouldn't be Jingoss, we don't care if he sees us.
We'll tell him we're travelling from York to Winnipeg. It must be pretty
near on the direct line from here."

"All right," said Dick.

They set themselves to following the trail. As the only persistences of
it through the last storm were to be found where the snow-shoes had left
deep notches on the fallen timber, this was not an easy matter. After a
time the affair was simplified by the dogs. Dick had been breaking
trail, but paused a moment to tie his shoe. The team floundered ahead.
After a moment it discovered the half-packed snow of the old trail a
foot below the newer surface, and, finding it easier travel, held to it.
Between the partial success at this, and an occasional indication on the
tops of fallen trees, the woodsmen managed to keep the direction of the
fore-runner's travel.

Suddenly Dick stopped short in his tracks.

"Look there!" he exclaimed.

Before them was a place where a man had camped for the night.

"He's travelling!" cried Sam.

This exploded the theory that the trail had been made by the Indian to
whom the trapping rights of the district belonged. At once the two men
began to spy here and there eagerly, trying to reconstruct from the
meagre vestiges of occupation who the camper had been and what he had
been doing.

The condition of the fire corroborated what the condition of the trail
had indicated. Probably the man had passed about three days ago. The
nature of the fire proclaimed him an Indian, for it was small and round,
where a white man's is long and hot. He had no dogs; therefore his
journey was short, for, necessarily, he was carrying what he needed on
his back. Neither on the route nor here in camp were any indications
that he had carried or was examining traps; so the conclusion was that
this trip was not merely one of the long circles a trapper sometimes
makes about the limits of his domain. What, then, was the errand of a
single man, travelling light and fast in the dead of winter?

"It's the man we're after," said Sam, with conviction. "He's either
taken the alarm, or he's visiting."

"Look," called the girl from beneath the wide branches of a spruce.

They went. Beneath a lower limb, whose fan had protected it from the
falling snow, was the single clear print of a snow-shoe.

"Hah!" cried Sam, in delight, and fell on his knees to examine it. At
the first glance he uttered another exclamation of pleasure, for, though
the shoe had been of the Ojibway pattern, in certain modifications it
suggested a more northerly origin. The toes had been craftily upturned,
the tails shortened, the webbing more closely woven.

"It's Ojibway," induced Sam, over his shoulder, "but the man who made it
has lived among the Crees. That fits Jingoss. Dick, it's the man we're
after!"

It was by now almost noon. They boiled tea at the old camp site, and
tightened their belts for a stern chase.

That afternoon the head wind opposed them, exasperating, tireless in its
resistance, never lulling for a single instant. At the moment it seemed
more than could be borne. Near one o'clock it did them a great despite,
for at that hour the trail came to a broad and wide lake. There the snow
had fallen, and the wind had drifted it so that the surface of the ice
was white and smooth as paper. The faint trail led accurately to the
bank--and was obliterated.

Nothing remained but to circle the shores to right and to left until the
place of egress was discovered. This meant long work and careful work,
for the lake was of considerable size. It meant that the afternoon would
go, and perhaps the day following, while the man whose footsteps they
were following would be drawing steadily away.

It was agreed that May-may-gwan should remain with the sledge, that Dick
should circle to the right, and Sam to the left, and that all three
should watch each other carefully for a signal of discovery.

But now Sam happened to glance at Mack, the wrinkle-nosed hound. The
sledge had been pulled a short distance out on the ice. Mack,
alternately whining and sniffing, was trying to induce his comrades to
turn slanting to the left.

"What's the matter with that dog?" he inquired on a sudden.

"Smells something; what's the difference? Let's get a move on us,"
replied Dick, carelessly.

"Hold on," ordered Sam.

He rapidly changed the dog-harness in order to put Mack in the lead.

"Mush! Mush on!" he commanded.

Immediately the hound, his nose low, uttered a deep, bell-like note and
struck on the diagonal across the lake.

"Come on," said Sam; "he's got it."

Across the white waste of the lake, against the bite of the unobstructed
wind, under the shelter of the bank opposite they ran at slightly
accelerated speed, then without pause into the forest on the other side.

"Look," said the older woodsman, pointing ahead to a fallen trunk. It
was the trail.

"That was handy," commented Dick, and promptly forgot about it. But Sam
treasured the incident for the future.

And then, just before two o'clock, the wind did them a great service.
Down the long, straight lines of its flight came distinctly the creak
of snow-shoes. Evidently the traveller, whoever he might be, was
retracing his steps.

At once Sam overturned the sledge, thus anchoring the dogs, and Dick ran
ahead to conceal himself. May-may-gwan offered a suggestion.

"The dogs may bark too soon," said she.

Instantly Sam was at work binding fast their jaws with buckskin thongs.
The girl assisted him. When the task was finished he ran forward to join
Dick, hidden in the bushes.

Eight months of toil focussed in the moment. The faint creaking of the
shoes came ever louder down the wind. Once it paused. Dick caught his
breath. Had the traveller discovered anything suspicious? He glanced
behind him.

"Where's the girl?" he hissed between his teeth. "Damn her, she's warned
him!"

But almost with Sam's reply the creaking began again, and after an
instant of indetermination continued its course.

Then suddenly the woodsmen, with a simultaneous movement, raised their
rifles, and with equal unanimity lowered them, gasping with
astonishment. Dick's enemy, Ah-tek, the renegade Chippewa of Haukemah's
band on the Missinaibie, stepped from the concealment of the bushes.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Of the three the Indian was the first to recover.

"Bo' jou', bo' jou'," said he, calmly.

Sam collected himself to a reply. Dick said nothing, but fell behind,
with his rifle across his arm. All marched on in silence to where lay
the dog-sledge, guarded by May-may-gwan. The Chippewa's keen eyes took
in every detail of the scene, the overturning of the sledge, the
muzzling of the dogs, the general nature of the equipment. If he made
any deductions, he gave no sign, nor did he evince any further
astonishment at finding these men so far north at such a time of year.
Only, when he thought himself unobserved, he cast a glance of peculiar
intelligence at the girl, who, after a moment's hesitation, returned it.

The occasion was one of elaborate courtesy. Sam ordered tea boiled, and
offered his tobacco. Over the fire he ventured a more direct inquiry
than his customary policy would have advised.

"My brother is a long journey from the Missinaibie."

The Chippewa assented.

"Haukemah, then, hunts these districts."

The Chippewa replied no.

"My brother has left Haukemah."

Again the Chippewa denied, but after enjoying for a moment the baffling
of the old man's intentions, he volunteered information.

"The trapper of this district is my brother. I have visited him."

"It was a short visit for so long a journey. The trail is but three days
old."

Ah-tek assented gravely. Evidently he cared very little whether or not
his explanation was accepted.

"How many days to Winnipeg?" asked Sam.

"I have never been there," replied the Indian.

"We have summered in the region of the Missinaibie," proffered Sam. "Now
we go to Winnipeg."

The Indian's inscrutable countenance gave no indication as to whether or
not he believed this. After a moment he knocked the ashes from his pipe
and arose, casting another sharp glance at May-may-gwan. She had been
busy at the sledge. Now she approached, carrying simply her own blankets
and clothing.

"This man," said she to the two, "is of my people. He returns to them. I
go with him."

The Chippewa twisted his feet into his snow-shoes, nodded to the white
men, and swung away on the back trail in the direction whence our
travellers had come. The girl, without more leave-taking, followed close
at his back. For an instant the crunch of shoes splintered the frosty
air. Then they rounded a bend. Silence fell swift as a hawk.

"Well, I'll be damned!" ejaculated Dick at last. "Do you think he was
really up here visiting?"

"No, of course not," replied Sam. "Don't you see--"

"Then he came after the girl?"

"Good God, _no!_" answered Sam. "He--"

"Then he was after me," interrupted Dick again with growing excitement.
"Why didn't you let me shoot him, Sam--"

"Will you shut up and listen to me?" demanded the old man, impatiently.
"If he'd wanted you, he'd have got you when you were hurt last summer;
and if he'd wanted the girl, he'd have got her then, too. It's all clear
to me. He _has_ been visiting a friend,--perhaps his brother, as he
said,--and he did spend less than three days in the visit. What did he
come for? Let me tell you! That friend, or brother, is Jingoss, and he
came up here to warn him that we're after him. The Chippewa suspected us
a little on the Missinaibie, but he wasn't sure. Probably he's had his
eye on us ever since."

"But why didn't he warn this Jingoss long ago, then?" objected Dick.

"Because we fooled him, just as we fooled all the Injuns. We _might_ be
looking for winter posts, just as we said. And then if he came up here
and told Jingoss we were after him, when really we didn't know beans
about Jingoss and his steals, and then this Jingoss should skip the
country and leave an almighty good fur district all for nothing, that
would be a nice healthy favour to do for a man, wouldn't it! No, he had
to be _sure_ before he made any moves. And he didn't get to be sure
until he heard somehow from some one who saw our trails that three
people were travelling in the winter up through this country. Then he
piked out to warn Jingoss."

"I believe you're right!" cried Dick.

"Of course I'm right. And another thing; if that's the case we're pretty
close there. How many more trappers are there in this district? Just
one! And since this Chippewa is going back on his back trail within
three days after he made it, he couldn't have gone farther than that one
man. And that one man must be--"

"Jingoss himself!" finished Dick.

"Within a day and a half of us, anyway; probably much closer,"
supplemented Sam. "It's as plain as a sledge-trail."

"He's been warned," Dick reminded him.

But Sam, afire with the inspiration of inductive reasoning, could see no
objection there.

"This Chippewa knew we were in the country," he argued, "but he hadn't
any idea we were so close. If he had, he wouldn't have been so foolish
as to follow his own back track when he was going out. I don't know what
his ideas were, of course, but he was almighty surprised to see us here.
He's warned this Jingoss, not more than a day or so ago. But he didn't
tell him to skedaddle at once. He said, 'Those fellows are after you,
and they're moseying around down south of here, and probably they'll get
up here in the course of the winter. You'd probably better slide out
'till they get done.' Then he stayed a day and smoked a lot, and started
back. Now, if Jingoss just thinks we're coming _some time_, and not
to-morrow, he ain't going to pull up stakes in such a hell of a hurry.
He'll pack what furs he's got, and he'll pick up what traps he's got
out. That would take him several days, anyway. My son, we're in the nick
of time!"

"Sam, you're a wonder," said Dick, admiringly. "I never could have
thought all that out."

"If that idea's correct," went on Sam, "and the Chippewa's just come
from Jingoss, why we've got the Chippewa's trail to follow back, haven't
we?"

"Sure!" agreed Dick, "all packed and broken."

They righted the sledge and unbound the dogs' jaws.

"Well, we got rid of the girl," said Dick, casually. "Damn little fool.
I didn't think she'd leave us that easy. She'd been with us quite a
while."

"Neither did I," admitted Sam; "but it's natural, Dick. We ain't her
people, and we haven't treated her very well, and I don't wonder she was
sick of it and took the first chance back. We've got our work cut out
for us now, and we're just as well off without her."

"The Chippewa's a sort of public benefactor all round," said Dick.

The dogs yawned prodigiously, stretching their jaws after the severe
muzzling. Sam began reflectively to undo the flaps of the sledge.

"Guess we'd better camp here," said he. "It's getting pretty late and
we're due for one hell of a tramp to-morrow."

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Some time during the night May-may-gwan rejoined them. Sam was awakened
by the demonstration of the dogs, at first hostile, then friendly with
recognition. He leaped to his feet, startled at the apparition of a
human figure. Dick sat up alert at once. The fire had almost died, but
between the glow of its embers and the light of the aurora sifted
through the trees they made her out.

"Oh, for God's _sake!_" snarled Dick, and lay back again in his
blankets, but in a moment resumed his sitting position. "She made her
choice," he proffered vehemently, "make her stick to it! Make her stick
to it. She can't change her mind every other second like this, and we
don't _need_ her!"

But Sam, piling dry wood on the fire, looked in her face.

"Shut up, Dick," he commanded sharply. "Something in this."

The young man stared at his companion an enigmatical instant, hesitating
as to his reply.

"Oh, all right," he replied at last with ostentatious indifference. "I
don't give a damn. Don't sit up too late with the young lady. Good
night!" He disappeared beneath his coverings, plainly disgruntled, as,
for a greater or less period of time, he always was when even the least
of his plans or points of view required readjustment.

Sam boiled tea, roasted a caribou steak, knelt and removed the girl's
damp foot-gear and replaced it with fresh. Then he held the cup to her
lips, cut the tough meat for her with his hunting-knife, even fed her as
though she were a child. He piled more wood on the fire, he wrapped
about her shoulders one of the blankets with the hare-skin lining.
Finally, when nothing more remained to be done, he lit his pipe and
squatted on his heels close to her, lending her mood the sympathy of
human silence.

She drank the tea, swallowed the food, permitted the change of her
foot-gear, bent her shoulders to the blanket, all without the appearance
of consciousness. The corners of her lips were bent firmly downward.
Her eyes, fixed and exalted, gazed beyond the fire, beyond the dancing
shadows, beyond the world. After a long interval she began to speak,
low-voiced, in short disconnected sentences.

"My brothers seek the Ojibway, Jingoss. They will take him to Conjuror's
House. But Jingoss knows that my brothers come. He has been told by
Ah-tek. He leaves the next sun. He is to travel to the west, to Peace
River. Now his camp is five hours to the north. I know where it is.
Jingoss has three dogs. He has much meat. He has no gun but the
trade-gun. I have learned this. I come to tell it to my brothers."

"Why, May-may-gwan?" inquired Sam, gently.

She turned on him a look of pride.

"Have you thought I had left you for him?" she asked. "I have learned
these things."

Sam uttered an exclamation of dismay.

"What?" she queried with a slow surprise.

"But he, the Chippewa," Sam pointed out, "now he knows of our presence.
He will aid Jingoss; he will warn him afresh to-night!"

May-may-gwan was again rapt in sad but ex alted contemplation of
something beyond. She answered merely by a contemptuous gesture.

"But--" insisted Sam.

"I know," she replied, with conviction.

Sam, troubled he knew not why, leaned forward to arrange the fire.

"How do you know, Little Sister?" he inquired, after some hesitation.

She answered by another weary gesture. Again Sam hesitated.

"Little Sister," said he, at last, "I am an old man. I have seen many
years pass. They have left me some wisdom. They have made my heart good
to those who are in trouble. If it was not to return to your own people,
then why did you go with Ah-tek this morning?"

"That I might know what my brothers wished to know."

"And you think he told you all these things truly?" doubted Sam.

She looked directly at him.

"Little Father," said she slowly, "long has this man wanted me to live
in his wigwam. For that he joined Haukemah's band;--because I was
there. I have been good in his eyes. Never have I given him favour. My
favour always would unlock his heart."

"But are you sure he spoke truth," objected Sam. "You have never looked
kindly on him. You left Haukemah's band to go with us. How could he
trust you?"

She looked at him bravely.

"Little Father," she replied, "there is a moment when man and woman
trust utterly, and when they say truly what lies in their hearts."

"Good God!" cried Sam, in English.

"It was the only way," she answered the spirit of his interjection. "I
had known before only his forked tongue."

"Why did you do this, girl? You had no right, no reason. You should have
consulted us."

"Little Father," said she, "the people of your race are a strange
people. I do not understand them. An evil is done them, and they pass it
by; a good is done them, and they do not remember. With us it is
different. Always in our hearts dwell the good and the evil."

"What good have we done to you?" asked Sam.

"Jibiwanisi has looked into my heart," she replied, lapsing into the
Indian rhetoric of deep emotion. "He has looked into my heart, and in
the doorway he blots out the world. At the first I wanted to die when he
would not look on me with favour. Then I wanted to die when I thought I
should never possess him. Now it is enough that I am near him, that I
lay his fire, and cook his tea and caribou, that I follow his trail,
that I am ready when he needs me, that I can raise my eyes and see him
breaking the trail. For when I look up at him the sun breaks out, and
the snow shines, and there is a light under the trees. And when I think
of raising my eyes, and he not there, nor anywhere near, then my heart
freezes, Little Father, freezes with loneliness."

Abruptly she arose, casting aside the blanket and stretching her arms
rigid above her head. Then with equal abruptness she stooped, caught up
her bedding, spread it out, and lay down stolidly to rest, turning her
back to both the white men.

But Sam remained crouched by the fire until the morning hour of waking,
staring with troubled eyes.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

Later in the morning Dick attempted some remark on the subject of the
girl's presence. At once Sam whirled on him with a gust of passion
utterly unlike his ordinary deliberate and even habit.

"Shut your damned mouth!" he fairly shouted.

Dick whistled in what he thought was a new enlightenment, and followed
literally the other's vigorous advice. Not a syllable did he utter for
an hour, by which time the sun had risen. Then he stopped and pointed to
a fresh trail converging into that they were following.

The prints of two pairs of snow-shoes joined; those of one returned.

Sam gasped. Dick looked ironical. The interpretation was plain without
the need of words. The Chippewa and the girl, although they had started
to the southeast, had made a long detour in order again to reach
Jingoss. These two pairs of snow-shoe tracks marked where they had
considered it safe again to strike into the old trail made by the
Chippewa in going and coming. The one track showed where Ah-tek had
pushed on to rejoin his friend; the other was that of the girl returning
for some reason the night before, perhaps to throw them off the scent.

"Looks as if they'd fooled you, and fooled you good," said Dick,
cheerfully.

For a single instant doubt drowned Sam's faith in his own insight and in
human nature.

"Dick," said he, quietly, "raise your eyes."

Not five rods farther on the trail the two had camped for the night.
Evidently Ah-tek had discovered his detour to have lasted out the day,
and, having satisfied himself that his and his friend's enemies were not
ahead of him, he had called a halt. The snow had been scraped away, the
little fire built, the ground strewn with boughs. So far the indications
were plain and to be read at a glance. But upright in the snow were two
snow-shoes, and tumbled on the ground was bedding.

Instantly the two men leaped forward. May-may-gwan, her face stolid and
expressionless, but her eyes glowing, stood straight and motionless by
the dogs. Together they laid hold of the smoothly spread top blanket
and swept it aside. Beneath was a jumble of warmer bedding. In it, his
fists clenched, his eyes half open in the horrific surprise of a sudden
calling, lay the Chippewa stabbed to the heart.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

The silence of the grave lay over the white world. Deep in the forest a
tree detonated with the frost. There by the cold last night's camp the
four human figures posed, motionless as a wind that has died. Only the
dogs, lolling, stretching, sending the warm steam of their breathing
into the dead air, seemed to stand for the world of life, and the world
of sentient creatures. And yet their very presence, unobtrusive in the
forest shadows, by contrast thrust farther these others into the land of
phantoms and of ghosts.

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