Chapter XV

MOONLIGHT

The wind had died down, although the snow continued to fall thickly the following morning, as Brent and Snowdrift crept from the wikiup and struck out for the river. It was heavy going, even the broad webbed snowshoes sinking deeply into the fluffy white smother that covered the wind-packed fall of the night. Brent offered to break trail, but Snowdrift insisted upon taking her turn, and as he labored in her wake, the man marveled at the strength and the untiring endurance of the slender, lithe-bodied girl. He marveled also at the unfailing sureness of her sense of direction. Twice, when he was leading she corrected him and when after nearly four hours of continuous plodding, they stood upon the bank of the river, he realized that without her correction, his course would have carried him miles to the southward.

"Good bye," he smiled, extending his bared hand, when at length they came to the parting of the ways, "I don't want but one of the caribou I shot. Divide the other two between the families of the Indians that skipped out."

Slipping off her mitten, the girl took the proffered hand unhesitatingly and an ecstatic thrill shot through Brent's heart at the touch of the firm slender fingers that closed about his own—a thrill that half-consciously, half-unconsciously, caused him to press the hand that lay warm within his clasp.

"Yes," she answered, making no effort to release the hand, "They need the meat. With the rabbits they can snare, it will keep them all winter. I have not much fur yet—a few fox skins, and some loup cervier. I will bring them to you tomorrow."

"Bring them to me!" cried Brent, "What do you mean? Why should you bring them to me?"

"Why!" she exclaimed, regarding him curiously, "To pay for the meat, of course. A caribou is worth a cross fox, and——"

Brent felt the blood mounting to his face. Abruptly, almost roughly he released the girl's hand. "I did not offer to sell you the meat," he answered, a trifle stiffly. "They need it, and they're welcome to it."

Snowdrift, too, had been thrilled by that handclasp, and the thrill had repeated itself at the gentle pressure of the strong fingers, and she was quick to note the change in the man's manner, and stood uncertainly regarding her bared hand until a big snowflake settled upon it and melted into a drop of water. Then she thrust the hand into her big fur mitten, and as her glance met his, Brent saw that the dark eyes were deep with concern: "I—I do

Already Brent was cursing himself for his foolish flare of pride. Again his heart thrilled at the wonder of the girl's absolute unsophistication. Swiftly his hand sought hers, but this time she did not remove it from the mitten. "I am not angry with you, Snowdrift!" he exclaimed, quickly, "I was a fool! It was I who did not understand. But, I want you to understand that here is one white man who does give meat to Indians. And I wish I were a member of your tribe. Sometime, maybe——"

"Oh, no, no! You would not want to be one of us. We are very poor, and we are Indians. You are a white man. Why should you want to live with us?"

"Some day I will tell you why," answered the man, in a voice so low that the dark eyes searched his face wonderingly. "And, now, won't you give me your hand again? To show me that you are not angry with me."

The girl laughed happily: "Angry with you! Oh, I would never be angry with you! You are good. You are the only good white man I have known

"May I come and see you, soon?" he asked.

"Why, yes, of course! Why did you ask me that?" she inquired, wonderingly, "You know the way to our camp, and you know that now I know you are not a hooch trader."

"Why," smiled Brent, "I asked because—why, just because it seemed the thing to do—a sort of formality, I reckon."

The girl's smile met his own: "I do not understand, I guess. Formality—what is that? A custom of the land of the white man? But I have not read of that in books. Here in the North if anybody wants to go a place, he goes, unless he has been warned to stay away for some reason, and then if he goes he will get shot. I will shoot the hooch traders if they come to the camp. The first time I will tell them to go—and if they come back I will kill them."

"You wouldn't kill them—really?" smiled Brent,

"It is wrong to kill in anger, or for revenge for a wrong, or so that you may steal a man's goods. But it is not wrong to kill one who is working harm in the world. You, too, know that this is true, because in the books I have read of many such killings, and in some books it was openly approved, and other books were so written that the approval was made plain."

"But, there is the law," ventured Brent.

"Yes, there is the law. But the law is no good up here. By the time the policemen would get here the hooch trader would be many miles away. And even if they should catch him, the Indians would not say that he traded them hooch. They would be afraid. No, it is much better to kill them. They take all the fur in trade for hooch, and then the women have nothing to eat, and the little babies die."

Brent nodded, thoughtfully; "I reckon you're right," he agreed, "But, I wish you would promise me that if any hooch runners show up, you will let me deal with them."

"Oh, will you?" cried the girl, her eyes shining, "Will you help me? Oh, with a white man to helpyou—" she paused, and as Brent's glance met hers, the dark eyes drooped once more, and the man saw that the cheeks were flushed through their tan.

"Of course I'll help you!" he smiled reassuringly, "I would love to, and between us we'll make the Coppermine country a mighty unhealthy place for the hooch runners."

"You will come to see me," reminded the girl, "And I will come to see you, and we will hunt together, and you will show me how to find gold."

"Yes," promised Brent, "We will see each other often—very often. And we will hunt together, and I will show you all I know about finding gold. Good bye, and if you need any help getting the meat into camp, let me know and Joe Pete and I will come down with the dogs."

"We won't need any help with the meat. There are plenty of us to haul it in. That is squaw's work, Good bye."

The girl stood motionless and watched Brent until his form was hidden by a bend of the river. Then, slowly, she turned and struck off up stream. And as she plodded through the ever deepening snow her thoughts were all of the man who had come so abruptly—so vitally into her life, and as she pondered she was conscious of a strange unrest within her, an awakening longing that she did not understand. Subconsciously she drew off her heavy mitten and looked at the hand that had lain in his.

In the cabin, she answered the questions of old Wananebish in monosyllables, and after a hearty meal, she left the cabin abruptly and entered another, where she lifted a very tiny red baby from its bed of blankets and skins, and to the astonishment of the mite's mother, seated herself beside the little stove, and crooned to it, and cuddled it, until the short winter day came to a close.

Early the following day Snowdrift piloted a dozen squaws with their sleds and dog teams to the place of the kill. One of Brent's three caribou was gone, and the girl's eyes lighted with approval as she saw that his trail was partially covered with new-fallen snow. "He came back yesterday—he and his Indian, and they got the meat. He is strong," she breathed to herself, "Stronger than I, for I was tired from walking in the loose snow, and I did not come back."

Leaving the squaws to bring in the meat, the girl shouldered her rifle and struck into the timber, her footsteps carrying her unerringly toward the patch of scrub in which she and Brent had sought shelter from the storm. She halted beside the little wikiup, snow-buried, now—even the hole through which they had crawled was sealed with the new-fallen snow. For a long time she stood looking down at the little white mound. As she turned to go, her glance fell upon a trough-like depression, only half

"It is his trail," she whispered, to a Canada jay that chattered and jabbered at her from the limb of a dead spruce. "He came here, as I came, to look at our little wikiup. And he went away and left it just as it was." Above her head the jay flitted nervously from limb to limb with his incessant scolding. "Why did he come?" she breathed, "And why did I come?" And, as she had done upon the river, she drew her hand from her mitten and passed it slowly across her cheek. Then she turned, and striking into the half-buried trail, followed it till it merged into another trail, the trail of a man with a dog-sled, and then she followed the broader trail to the northwestward.

At nine o'clock that same morning Brent threw the last shovelful of the eight-inch thawing of gravel from the shallow shaft, and leaving Joe Pete to build and tend the new fire, he picked up his rifle, and under pretense of another hunt, struck off up the river in the direction of the Indian camp.

Joe Pete watched with a puzzled frown until he had disappeared. Then he carried his wood and lighted the fire in the bottom of the shaft.

An hour and a half later Brent knocked at the door of the cabin from which Snowdrift had stepped, rifle in hand, upon the occasion of their first meeting. The door was opened by a wrinkled squaw, who looked straight into his eyes as she waited for

"No," the squaw answered, and as an after-thought, "She has gone with the women to bring in the meat."

The man was surprised that the woman spoke perfect English. The Indians who had come to trade, had known only the word "hooch." His smile broadened, though he noticed that the glare of hostility had not faded from the eyes: "She told you about our hunt, then? It was great sport. She is a wonder with a rifle."

"No, she did not tell me." The words came in a cold, impersonal monotone.

"Can't I come in?" Brent asked the question suddenly. "I must get back to camp soon. I just came down to see—to see if I could be of any help in bringing in the meat."

"The women bring in the meat," answered the woman, and Brent felt as though he had been caught lying. But, she stepped aside and motioned him to a rude bench beside the stove. Brent removed his cap and glanced about him, surprised at the extreme cleanliness of the interior, until he suddenly remembered that this was the home of the girl with the wondrous dark eyes. Covertly he searched the face of the old squaw, trying to discover one single feature that would proclaim her to be the mother of

She had seated herself upon the edge of the bunk beyond the little stove.

"Can't we be friends?" he asked abruptly.

The laugh that greeted his question sounded in his ears like the snarl of a wolf: "Yes, if you will let me kill you now—we can be friends."

"Oh, come," laughed Brent, "That's carrying friendship a bit too far, don't you think?"

"I had rather you had traded hooch to the men," answered the woman, sullenly, "For then she would even now hate you—as someday she will learn to hate you!"

"Learn to hate me! What do you mean?"

"You know what I mean!" cried the squaw, her voice quivering with anger, "You white men are devils! You come, and you stay a while, and then you go your way, and you stop again, and your trail is a trail of misery—of misery, and of father-less half-breed babies! I wish she had killed you that day you stood out there in the snow! Maybe the harm has been already done——"

"What do you mean?" roared Brent, overturning the bench and towering above the little stove in his rage. "You can't talk to me like that! Out with it! What do you mean?"

The squaw, also, was upon her feet, cowering at the side of the bunk, as she hurled her words into

Two steps and Brent was before her, his face thrust to within a foot of her own: "We were together," he answered in a voice that cut cold as steel, "In a wikiup that we built in the blinding snow and the darkness to protect us from the storm. Half of the night, while she slept upon her robe, I sat and tended the fire, and then, because she insisted upon it, she tended the fire while I slept." As the man spoke never for a moment did the glittering eyes of the squaw leave his close-thrust, blazing eyes, and when he finished, she sank to the bunk with an inarticulate cry. For in the righteous wrath of the blazing eyes she had read the truth—and in his words was the ring of truth.

"Can it be?" she faltered, "Can it be that there is such a white man?"

The anger melted from Brent's heart as quickly as it had come. He saw huddled upon the bunk not a poison-tongued, snake-eyed virago, but a woman whose heart was torn with solicitude for the welfare of her child. But, was Snowdrift her child? Swiftly the thought flitted into Brent's brain, and as swiftly flashed another. Her child, or another's—what matter? One might well question her parentage—but never her love.

Gently his hand went out and came to rest upon the angular shoulder. And when he spoke the tone of his voice, even more than his words, reas

Wananebish leaned against a stanchion of the bunk. Instinctively, her savage heart knew that the white man standing before had spoken the truth. Her eyes closed, and for a moment, in the withered breast raged a conflict. Then her eyes opened, her lips moved, and she saw that the man was straining eagerly toward her to catch the words: "Snowdrift is my daughter," she said.

Brent hesitated. He had been quick to catch the flash of the eye that had accompanied the words, a flash more of defiance than of anger. It was upon his tongue to ask who was Murdo MacFarlane, but instead he bowed: "I must go now. I shall be coming here often. I hope I shall not be unwelcome."

The look of passive tolerance was once more in her eyes, and she shrugged so noncommittally that

As the man plodded down the river, his thoughts were all of the girl. The stern implacability of her as she stood in the doorway of the cabin and ordered him from the encampment. The swift assurance with which she assumed leadership as the storm roared down upon them. The ingenuous announcement that they must spend the night—possibly several nights in the barrens. And the childlike naïvete of the words that unveiled her innermost thoughts. The compelling charm of her, her beauty of face and form, and the lithe, untiring play of her muscles as she tramped through the new-fallen snow. Her unerring sense of direction. Her simple code of morals regarding the killing of men. Her every look, and word and movement was projected with vivid distinctness upon his brain. And then his thoughts turned to the little cabin that was her home, and to the leathern skinned old woman who told him she was the girl's mother.

"The squaw lied!" he uttered fiercely. "Never in God's world is Snowdrift her daughter! But—who is she?"

He rounded the last bend of the river and brought up shortly. Joe Pete was stoking the fire with wood, and upon the gravel dump, sat the girl apparently very much interested in the operation.

Almost at the same instant she saw him, and Brent's heart leaped within him at the glad little cry

Brent's fingers closed almost caressingly over the slender brown hand that was thrust into his and he smiled into the upraised eyes: "I, too, went to hunt. I went to your cabin, and your—mother," despite himself, the man's tongue hesitated upon the word, "told me that you had gone with the women to bring in the meat."

"Oh, you have seen Wananebish!" cried the girl, "And she was glad to see you?"

"Well," smiled Brent, "Perhaps not so awfully glad—right at first. But Wananebish and I are good friends, now."

"I am glad. I love Wananebish. She is good to me. She has deprived herself of many things—sometimes I think, even of food, that I might stay in school at the mission. And now it is too late to hunt today, and I am hungry. Let us go in the cabin and eat."

"Fine!" cried Brent, "Hey, Joe Pete, cut some caribou steaks, and I'll build up the fire!" He turned again to the girl, "Come on," he laughed, "I could eat a raw dog!"

"But, there is plenty of meat!" cried the girl, "And you'll need the dogs! Only when men are starving will they eat their dogs—and not raw!"

Brent laughed heartily into the dismayed face: "You need not be afraid, we will save the dogs till we need them. That was only a figure of speech. I meant that I am very hungry, and that, if I could find nothing else to eat I should relish even raw dog meat."

Snowdrift was laughing, now: "I see!" she cried, "In books are many such sayings. It is a metaphor—no, not a metaphor—a—oh, I don't remember, but anyway I am glad you said that because I thought such things were used only in the language of books—and maybe I can say one like that myself, someday."

At the door of the cabin they removed their snowshoes, and a few moments later a wood fire was roaring in the little stove. Joe Pete came in with the frozen steaks, set them down upon the table, and moved toward the door, but Brent called him back. "You're in on this feed! Get busy and fry up those steaks while I set the table."

The Indian hesitated, glanced shrewdly at Brent as if to ascertain the sincerity of the invitation, and throwing off his parka, busied himself at the stove, while Brent and Snowdrift, laughing and chattering like children, placed the porcelain lined plates and cups and the steel knives and forks upon the uneven pole table.

The early darkness was gathering when they again left the cabin. Snowdrift paused to watch Joe Pete throw wood into the flames that leaped

"Why, to thaw the gravel so we can throw it out onto the dump. Then in the spring, we'll sluice out the dump and see what we've got."

"Do you mean for gold?" asked the girl in surprise, "We only hunt for gold in the summer in the sand of the creeks and the rivers."

"This way is better," explained Brent. "In the summer you can only muck around in the surface stuff. You can't sink a shaft because the water would run in and fill it up. In most places the deeper you go the richer the gravel. The very best of it is right down against bed-rock. In the winter we keep a fire going until the gravel is thawed for six or eight inches down, then we rake out the ashes and wait for the hole to cool down so there will be air instead of gas in it, and then we throw out the loose stuff and build up the fire again."

"And you won't know till spring whether you have any gold or not? Why, maybe you would put in a whole winter's work and get nothing!"

"Oh, we kind of keep cases on it with the pan. Every day or so I scoop up a panful and carry it into the cabin and melt some ice and pan it out."

"And is there gold here? Have you found it?"

"Not yet. That is, not in paying quantities. The gravel shows just enough color to keep us at it. I

"What do you mean by fair wages?" smiled the girl. "You see, I am learning all I can about finding gold."

"I expect we're throwing out maybe a couple of ounces a day—an ounce apiece. If it don't show something pretty quick I'm going to try some other place. There's a likely looking creek runs in above here."

"But an ounce of gold is worth sixteen dollars!" exclaimed the girl, "And sixteen dollars every day for each of you is lots of money."

Brent laughed: "It's good wages, and that's about all. But I'm not here just to make wages. I've got to make a strike."

"How much is a strike?"

"Oh, anywhere from a half a million up."

"A half a million dollars!" cried the girl, "Why, what could you do with it all?"

Brent laughed: "Oh I could manage to find use for it, I reckon. In the first place I owe a man some money over on the Yukon—two men. They've got to be paid. And after that—" His voice trailed off into silence.

"And what would you do after that?" persisted the girl.

"Well," answered the man, as he watched the shower of sparks fly upward, "That depends—But, come, it's getting dark. I'll walk home with you."

"Are you going because you think I am afraid?" she laughed.

"I am going because I want to go," he answered, and led off up the river.

As the darkness settled the snow-covered surface of the river showed as a narrow white lane that terminated abruptly at each bend in a wall of intense blackness. Overhead a million stars glittered so brightly in the keen air that they seemed suspended just above the serried skyline of the bordering spruces. At the end of an hour it grew lighter. Through the openings between the flanking spruce thickets long naked ridges with their overhanging wind-carved snow-cornices were visible far back from the river. As they came in sight of the encampment the girl, who was traveling ahead, paused abruptly and with an exclamation of delight, pointed toward a distant ridge upon the clean-cut skyline of which the rim of the full moon showed in an ever widening segment of red. Brent stood close by her side, and together, in wrapt silence they watched the glowing orb rise clear of the ridge, watched its color pale until it hung cold and clean-cut in the night sky like a disk of burnished brass.

"Isn't it beautiful?" she breathed, and by the gentle pressure that accompanied the words, Brent suddenly knew that her bared hand was in his own, and that two mittens lay upon the snow at their feet.

"Wonderful," he whispered, as his eyes swept the unending panorama of lifeless barrens. "It is

"Oh, I wish—I wish we were!" cried the girl, impulsively. And then: "No that is wrong! Other people—thousands and thousands of them—men, and women, and little babies—they all love to live."

"It is wonderful to live," breathed the man, "And to be standing here—with you—in the moonlight."

"Ah, the moonlight—is it the moonlight that makes me feel so strange—in here?" she raised her mittened hand and pressed it against her breast, "So strange and restless. I want to go—I do not know where—but, I want to do something big—to go some place—any place, but to go, and go, and go!" Her voice dropped suddenly, and Brent saw that her eyes were resting broodingly upon the straggling group of tepees and cabins. A dull square of light glowed sullenly from her own cabin window, and her voice sounded heavy and dull: "But, there is no place to go, and nothing to do, but hunt, and trap, and look for gold. Sometimes I wish I were dead. No I do not mean that—but, I wish I had never lived."

"Nonsense, girl! You love to live! Beautiful, strong, young—why, life is only just starting for—you." Brent had almost said "us."

"But, of what use is it all? Why should one love to live? I am an Indian—yet I hate the Indians—except Wananebish. We fight the hooch traders, yet the men get the hooch. It is no use. I learned

Brent's arms were about her, her yielding body close against his, and she was sobbing against the breast of his parka. The man's brain was a chaos. In vain he strove to control the trembling of his muscles as he crushed her to him. In an unsteady voice he was murmuring words: "There, there, dear. I am never going away from you—never." Two arms stole about his neck, and Brent's heart pounded wildly as he felt them tighten in a convulsive embrace. He bent down and their lips met in a long, lingering kiss, "Darling," he whispered, with his lips close to her ear, "You are mine—mine! And I am yours. And we will live—live! Tell me Snowdrift—sweetheart—do you love me?"

"I love you!" her lips faltered the simple words, and Brent saw that the dark eyes that looked up into his own glowed in the moonlight like black pools. "Now—I know—it was—not the moonlight—in here—it was love!"

"Yes, darling, it was love. I have loved you since the first moment I saw you."

"And I have loved you—always!"