The Tales of the Wild North (39 Novels & Stories in One Volume). James Oliver Curwood
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John Cummins and Jan Thoreau solemnly set to work to thrash out the great problem that had suddenly entered into their existence. To these two there was no element of humor in what they were doing, for into their keeping had been given a thing for which God had not schemed them. The woman, had she been there, would have laughed at them, and in a dozen gentle breaths might have told them all that the world held in secret between mother and child; but, leaving them, she had passed on to them something that was life, like herself, and yet mystery.
Had fate given Maballa to Melisse for a mother there would have been no mystery. She would have developed as naturally as a wolf-whelp or a lynx-kitten, a savage breath of life in a savage world, waxing fat in snow-baths, arrow-straight in papoose-slings, a moving, natural thing in a desolation to which generations and centuries of forebears had given it birthright. But Melisse was like her mother. In the dreams of the two who were planning out her fate, she was to be a reincarnation of her mother. That dream left a ray of comfort in Cummins' breast when his wife died. It stirred happy visions within Jan. And it ended with a serious shock when Maballa brought into their mental perspective of things the possibilities of environment.
So far as Cummins knew, there was not a white woman nearer than Fort Churchill, two hundred miles away. In all that region he knew of only two full-white men, and they were Williams and himself. The baby Melisse was hopelessly lost in a world of savagery; honest, loyal, big-souled savagery—but savagery for all that, and the thought of it brought the shadows of fear and foreboding to the two into whose lives the problem had just come.
Long into the night they talked seriously of the matter, while Melisse slept; and the longer they talked, the greater loomed the problem before them. Cummins fancied that he already began to see signs of the transformation in Melisse. She was passionately fond of the gaudy things Maballa gave her, which was a sign of savagery. She was charmed by confinement in the papoose-sling, which was another sign of it; and she had not died in the snow-wallows—which was still another.
So far back as he could remember, Cummins had never come into fingertouch of a white baby. Jan was as blissfully ignorant; so they determined upon immediate and strenuous action. Maballa would be ceaselessly watched and checked at every turn. The Indian children would not be allowed to come near Melisse. They two—John Cummins and Jan Thoreau—would make her like the woman who slept under the sentinel spruce.
"She ees ceevilize," said Jan with finality, "an' we mus' keep her ceevilize!"
Cummins counted back gravely upon his fingers. The little Melisse was four months and eighteen days old!
"To-morrow we will make her one of those things with wheels—like the baby-wagons they have in the South," he said. "She must not go in the papoose-slings!"
"An' I will teach her ze museek," whispered Jan, his eyes glowing.
"That ees ceevilize!"
Suddenly an eager light came into Cummins' face, and he pointed to a calico-covered box standing upon end in a corner of the room.
"There are the books—HER books, Jan," he said softly, the trembling thrill of inspiration in his voice. He limped across the room, dropped upon his knees before the box, and drew back the curtain. Jan knelt beside him. "They were HER books," he repeated. There was a sobbing catch in his throat, and his head fell a little upon his breast. "Now —we will give them—to Melisse."
He drew the books out, one by one, his fingers trembling and his breath coming quickly as he touched them—a dozen worn, dusty things, holding within them more than John Cummins would ever know of the woman he had lost. These volumes of dead voices had come with her into the wilderness from that other world she had known. They breathed the pathos of her love from out of their ragged pages, mended in a hundred places to keep them from falling into utter ruin. Slowly the man gathered them against his breast, and held them there silently, as he might have held the woman, fighting hard to keep back his grief.
Jan thrust a hand deeper into the box, and brought forth something else—a few magazines and papers, as ragged and worn as the books. In these other treasures there were pictures—pictures of the things in civilization, which Jan had never seen, and which were too wonderful for him to comprehend at first. His eyes burned excitedly as he held up a gaudily covered fashion paper to John Cummins.
"Theese are picture for Melisse!" he whispered tensely. "We teach her —we show her—we mak her know about ceevilize people!"
Cummins replaced the books, one at a time, and each he held tenderly for a moment, wiping and blowing away the dust gathered upon it. At the last one of all, which was more ragged and worn than the others, he gazed for a long time. It was a little Bible, his wife's Bible, finger-worn, patched, pathetic in its poverty. The man gulped hard.
"She loved this, Jan," he said huskily. "She loved this worn, old book more than anything else, and little Melisse must love it also. Melisse must be a Christian."
"Ah, yes, ze leetle Melisse mus' love ze great God!" said Jan softly.
Cummins rose to his feet and stood for a moment looking at the sleeping baby.
"A missionary is coming over from Fort Churchill to talk to our trappers when they come in. She shall be baptized!"
Like a cat Jan was on his feet, his eyes flashing, his long, thin fingers clenched, his body quivering with a terrible excitement.
"No—no—not baptize by missioner!" he cried. "She shall be good, an' love ze great God, but not baptize by missioner! No—no—no!"
Cummins turned upon him in astonishment. Before him Jan Thoreau stood for a minute like one gone mad, his whole being consumed in a passion terrible to look upon. Lithe giant of muscle and, fearlessness that he was, Cummins involuntarily drew back a step, and the mainspring of instinct within him prompted him to lift a hand, as if to ward off a leaping thing from his breast.
Jan noted the backward step, the guarded uplift of hand, and with an agonized cry he buried his face in his hands. In another instant he had turned, and, before Cummins' startled voice found words, had opened the door and run out into the night. The man saw him darting swiftly toward the forest, and called to him, but there was no response.
There was a hot fire burning in Jan's brain, a blazing, writhing contortion of things that brought a low moaning from his lips. He ran tirelessly and swiftly until he sank down upon the snow in a silent place far from where he had left John Cummins. His eyes still blazed with their strange fire upon the desolation about him, his fingers clenched and unclenched themselves, digging their nails into his flesh, and he spoke softly to himself, over and over again, the name of the little Melisse.
Painting itself each instant more plainly through the tumult of his emotions was what Jan had come to know as the picture in his brain.
Shadowy and indistinct at first, in pale, elusive lines of mental fabric, he saw the picture growing; and in its growth he saw first the soft, sweet outlines of a woman's face, and then great luring eyes, dark like his own—and before these eyes, which gazed upon him with overwhelming love, all else faded away from before Jan Thoreau. The fire went out of his eyes, his fingers relaxed, and after a little while he got up out of the snow, shivering, and went back to the cabin.
Cummins asked no questions. He looked at Jan from his cot, and watched the boy silently as he undressed and went to bed; and in the morning the whole incident passed from his mind. The intangible holds but little fascination for the simple folk who live under the Arctic Circle. Their struggle is with life, their joys are in its achievement, in their constant struggle to keep life running strong and red within them. Such an existence of solitude and of strife with nature leaves small room for curiosity. So the nature of John Cummins led him to forget what had happened, as he would have forgotten the senseless running away of a sledge-dog, and its subsequent return. He saw no tragedy, and no promise of tragedy, in the thing that had occurred.
There was no recurrence of the strange excitement in Jan. He gave no hint of it in word or action, and the thing seemed to be forgotten between the two.
The education of the little Melisse began at once, while the post was still deserted. It began, first of