OF THE 
 SILENCES 
 
 MARYE. WALLER
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 

 
 OUT OF THE SILENCES
 
 BOOKS BY 
 MARY E. WALLER 
 
 THE WOOD-CARVER OF 'LYMPUS 
 
 A DAUGHTER OF THE RICH 
 
 THE LITTLE CITIZEN 
 
 SANNA OF THE ISLAND TOWN 
 
 A YEAR OUT OF LIFE 
 
 FLAMSTED QUARRIES 
 
 A CRY IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 OUT OF THE SILENCES 
 
 FROM AN ISLAND OUTPOST 
 
 MY RAGPICKER 
 
 THROUGH THE GATES OF THE 
 
 NETHERLANDS 
 OUR BENNY
 
 OUT OF 
 THE SILENCES 
 
 BY 
 
 MARY E. WALLER 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 
 1918
 
 Copyright, 1918, 
 BY MARY E. WALLER. 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
 Norfonotj ^irtaa 
 Set up and electrotyped by J. S. Gushing Co., Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
 
 PS 
 
 3/3? 
 \A| i5"o 
 
 " Go through, go through the gates ; 
 prepare ye the way of the people ; 
 cast up, cast up the highway; gather out the stones ; 
 lift up a standard for the people." 
 
 1521438
 
 CONTENTS 
 PART ONE 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I THE LAND 3 
 
 II THE BOY 7 
 
 III A FOREST INTEBLUDE 103 
 
 IV THE PATH OF LIFE '133 
 
 PART TWO 
 
 I REVISITED 181 
 
 II AT THE NEW MISSION 217 
 
 in THE MAN 241 
 
 IV IN THE HILLS OF FRANCE ... . . .335
 
 OUT OF THE SILENCES 
 
 PART ONE
 
 I 
 
 THE LAND
 
 THE LAND 
 
 WINTER silence is on plain and plateau, on moun- 
 tain slope, pass and summit, on every butte, in every 
 gulch and gully, on all the river benches below the 
 bluffs. 
 
 This all-pervading silence is hushed into deeper 
 stillness by thickly falling snow ; and even the deeper 
 stillness, which makes the eardrums of those who hear 
 it ache, is intensified when at intervals it is broken by 
 the howl of the gray wolf, hunger haunted. 
 
 There is audible no cry of the human; neverthe- 
 less the cry is here, only lost in the vast of a cold- 
 benumbed and snow-smothered land. 
 2 
 
 The course of a Canadian river, the Souris, is laid 
 from its source in Saskatchewan southeast with ample 
 curve far into the Dakota country ; thence, doubling 
 on itself in an immense loop, it flows northwest into 
 Manitoba. 
 
 Northeast of the huge, longitudinal pocket of land 
 thus formed, and contiguous to it, are the fastnesses 
 of the Turtle Mountains. The Souris is a frozen moat 
 at the western base of this natural fortress of the 
 prairies and the plains. 
 
 5
 
 6 Out of the Silences 
 
 Southwest from the bottom of this pocket, a hun- 
 dred miles away across its great wind-swept plateau, 
 the Missouri duplicates, but on a smaller scale, the 
 Canadian river's curve and half cinctures a lone 
 Indian reservation. 
 
 East from this reservation a hundred miles, west 
 a hundred, northeast a hundred and fifty to Turtle 
 Mountain, this land of the Dakotas lies buried under 
 an accumulation of snows : an area of wintry deso- 
 lation, approximately thirty thousand square miles, 
 with a population of whites, half-breeds, Indians, a 
 few thousand souls all told almost the God- 
 forgotten.
 
 n 
 
 THE BOY
 
 II 
 
 THE BOY 
 
 IN THE DUGOUT 
 
 i 
 
 IT lies under the snows on an upper bench of the 
 river; and within it are two men and a boy. One, 
 the uncle of the child, while crossing the plains lost 
 his sheep hi the opening blizzard of the season. The 
 other, a saddle-maker from the" Turtle Mountain 
 region just north of the Canadian border, having sold 
 his wares among the widely scattered settlers, was 
 on his return trip to the mountains when the same 
 blizzard compelled him to seek shelter in a second- 
 hand dugout. He was the means of saving the boy 
 and the man. Since that day, early in December, 
 the three had bunked in together. 
 
 The early setting-in of the winter and its continued 
 severity were phenomenal. The plainsmen, the men 
 and soldiers at the fort, the Indians on the reservation, 
 the hillmen, the few white settlers on their farms, all 
 shared in the suffering consequent on the rigors of 
 this never to be forgotten winter in the eighties 
 when the cattle on the plains, the sheep in the moun- 
 tains, the horses on the range perished by the hun- 
 dreds. 
 
 The two men and the boy have been already seven 
 9
 
 io Out of the Silences 
 
 weeks in the dugout. Once at the risk of life the 
 saddle-maker took his pony and attempted to make 
 his way to the reservation thirty miles distant. The 
 attempt proved abortive and he returned exhausted 
 to his companions. 
 
 The prospect of captivity seemed indefinite. 
 There was no more fodder; their provisions were 
 exhausted ; the fuel for the open fire reduced to a 
 pile the size of a bushel basket. 
 
 The men, lying flat on their blankets but support- 
 ing themselves on their elbows, are playing cards. 
 The boy in like position, but close to the small fire, 
 is reading in an undertone from a soiled coverless book 
 open on his blanket. Now and then he spells a word 
 as if feeling his way. 
 
 The men play in silence with a mechanical monotony 
 that lacks both interest and energy. Their handling 
 of the cards is expressive of mere grim listless dogged- 
 ness a trifle short of desperation. It might have 
 easily been that they were playing for time as against 
 eternity. The saddle-maker is forty-five, his com- 
 panion not more than twenty-eight, but both faces 
 look prematurely aged, winter-worn, gaunt from in- 
 sufficient food, strangely pinched about the nostrils. 
 
 Suddenly the younger threw down the cards and 
 spoke in a low tone : 
 
 "It's no go, Bunkie. Let's throw for luck to- 
 morrow and we'll settle which of us goes to the 
 fort." 
 
 The saddle-maker nodded. He felt in his pocket 
 for the dice. "Three runnin' throws o' the deuce." 
 
 "Done," said the younger man grimly. 
 
 They shook the dice in their hands : the saddle- 
 maker with slow deliberate motion, his junior with
 
 The Boy II 
 
 short quick jerks of his fist. Before they threw, the 
 boy began suddenly to spell in a loud monotone : 
 
 "A-s-s, ass; w-a-g, wag; e-d, ed. What's that, 
 Bunkie-nunc?" 
 
 The rattling of the dice ceased. His uncle looked 
 puzzled. 
 
 "Try it again, Bob." 
 
 "A-s, as; s-w-a-g, swag; e-d, ed. What's it 
 mean?" 
 
 "Well, I'll be blistered," the saddle-maker broke 
 in, amazement audible in his exclamation; "wot ye 
 givin' us, Son?" 
 
 "The big flood." 
 
 " Flood, eh ? Ye're gettin' forrard o' yer time ; the 
 Missouri can't get out o' this straight- jacket 'fore 
 May. Wot flood?" 
 
 "Noah's Ark's flood." 
 
 "I heard tell o' that." The saddle-maker looked 
 for a moment as if the dark walls of the dugout had 
 opened suddenly and shown him a vision. 
 
 "Read what comes before it, Bob." His uncle 
 slipped the dice into his pocket. 
 
 "'And God remembered Noah and every living 
 thing, and the cattle that was with him in the ark ' " 
 
 The saddle-maker interrupted him ; the tone was 
 bitter: "He'd sure be doin' us some favor if He'd 
 remember us-all an' the little beast." 
 
 The boy, unheeding, read on: "'And God made a 
 wind to pass over the earth and the waters a-s-s, 
 ass ; w-a-g, wag ; e-d, ed ? '" He looked inquiringly 
 at his uncle who answered the question in the boy's 
 voice and eyes. 
 
 "It means the waters stopped rising any higher 
 asswaged." He repeated it for the child's benefit.
 
 12 Out of the Silences 
 
 "They used to spell it with a u when I was a 
 kid-" 
 
 A pleased smile furrowed still deeper the saddle- 
 maker's cheeks. "Blame me, if I don't begin to 
 remember somp'in 7 Hbout the animiles in that ark o r 
 yourn. Son. Give me some more." He dropped the 
 dice into the pocket of his shirt. 
 
 "No ; I'll sing 7 em to you," said the boy. slapping 
 to the book and springing to his feet. "I make be- 
 lieve this is our ark, an' you an' me, an 7 the pony. 
 Spud is an elephant, an' Bunkie-nunc are the 
 3.nfma.Is. My mother used to sing it to me," he 
 said proudly. "Now, listen," 
 
 He sang in a clear child's falsetto, at first with much 
 gusto, miming from time to time the various animals, 
 and imitating their calls and cries to his own joy and 
 the delight of his audience. 
 
 "The animals entered two by two 
 The elephant and the kangaroo. 
 
 " Weasels and badgers and blacktafl deer 
 And mountain steep with horns so queer. 
 
 u Too-whit, too-whoo ! And a terrible growl 
 The cinnamon bear and the big brown owL 
 
 " Coyotes and wolves and prairie dogs, 
 And coons and loons and great fat hogs " 
 
 His efforts to grunt and snort at the same time were 
 so ludicrous that the two men actually laughed 
 aloud. The boy broke into a gleeful cackle that was 
 quickly checked. A strangely tired look came into 
 his face. He swallowed hard once or twice ; then, as 
 if ashamed to make such confession of weakness, he
 
 The Bey 13 
 
 said in a low voice: "I guess I won't sing the rest o* 
 it not to-night. It's too long an' an' Fm so 
 awful hungry I feel queer here/' He laid Ins 
 
 The men's faces went gray white. 
 
 "Come here, Bob," said his uncle. 
 
 The boy staggered slightly. His nude took him 
 in the hollow of his arm and drew an end of the blanket 
 closely about him. The man cleared his throat before 
 he spoke again : "ThisTl warm yon up, Bob. Well 
 have supper now." He looked significantly at the 
 saddle-maker who rose painfully, as if cramped, and 
 opening the rude plank door went out. 
 
 The man, stffl holding the slight form of the child 
 closely against him, took two sticks of Missouri drift 
 and laid them on the dying fire. The wood caught. 
 The boy watched it listlessly. In a few minutes the 
 saddle-maker came in. He handed two small and 
 narrow strips of hung meat to the younger man who, 
 drawing a knife from his pocket, began to cut them 
 into small pieces. 
 
 The saddle-maker took up a frying-pan from the 
 corner. Carefully putting the two sticks on one 
 side of the fire he raked together the embers, and 
 dropping a handful of brown rice into the pan began 
 to parch it. 
 
 "Is that all?" Bob spoke dolefully. 
 
 "AD, Son?" The saddle-maker forced a laugfc. 
 "Why, ain't this 'Hough for ymtf IH bet ye the 
 animiles in that ark o' yourn would say this "ere was 
 a might)* good feed barrin' a hog." 
 
 The boy smiled faintly. "But it's for us-aU," he 
 said "animfles," He smiled again as he spoke the 
 last word.
 
 14 Out of the Silences 
 
 "My eye! Ye thought that, did ye? That only 
 goes to show how a little cuss like you can make a 
 big mistake." He shook the pan back and forth 
 with an easy, loose-handling of it that betokened 
 practice. The kernels rattled. 
 
 Bob sniffed. "That smells bully." 
 
 "Ye bet it does, an' it's goin' to taste better'n it 
 smells. Ye see yer uncle an' me don't want no 
 supper not now. We'll have it later. Leastwise 
 I'll speak for myself : I couldn't eat a ripe cherry if 
 'n accommodatin' wind just flung one right off the 
 tree into my mouth; no sir-ee. Speakin' o' winds, 
 we're goin' to set up to-night to watch out for one 
 ourselves, ain't we, pard?" 
 
 His companion nodded. 
 
 "What kind of a wind, Bunkie-mmc?" Bob 
 roused up for he scented a mystery. 
 
 "We want the kind of a wind you was readin' 'bout 
 in the Good Book, I reckon." 
 
 The saddle-maker put a stop to further question- 
 ing. 
 
 "There now, Son, eat away, but slow an' sure does 
 it. Count 'em all, every grain, an' only ten to 
 once." 
 
 The child needed no urging. Little by little he 
 was fed, the men seeing to it that he chewed both rice 
 and meat thoroughly. When he had finished he 
 heaved a sigh of satisfaction. 
 
 "I can sing you the rest 'bout the animals now." 
 
 "No, Bob, you keep that for another night. We 
 want you to bunk in early for Bill and me must set 
 up for that wind. Guess we'll be lookin' to see if 
 it's comin' now, Bunkie." His uncle spoke to the 
 saddle-maker; then, to the boy: "You set right
 
 The Boy 15 
 
 here 'longside of the fire while we go on a still hunt for 
 that wind The boy interrupted him. 
 
 "No, no, take me too ; let me see the wind comin.' 
 I'm warm," his voice grew shrill in his eagerness to 
 gain permission to be one of the exploring party, 
 "an' I've never hunted a wind before, never in all 
 my life. Oh, please, please, Bunkie-nunc, let me 
 go." 
 
 The two men looked at each other. The saddle- 
 maker nodded. The younger man answered the boy : 
 
 "You can go this once," Bob gave vent to a 
 prolonged joyous squeal and squirmed out of the 
 arm that still held him so closely, "but you'll have 
 to whistle for the wind that's goin' to bring us luck." 
 
 The boy was already wrapping himself in his hooded 
 blanket. The men said nothing, but put on theirs. 
 The saddle-maker raked together some ashes over 
 the embers and the two charred sticks. The three 
 went out into the night, or rather the dawn of night. 
 The full moon was just rising. They could not see it 
 for the bluff behind the dugout was too high; but 
 they were at once aware of its presence. 
 
 The blue black of the winter sky, closing above them 
 like a vast lid, was flooded gradually with a crystalline 
 light. The heavens seemed to expand and dome the 
 white world about them. An upper stratum of air 
 was charged with the finest dust of wind-whirled 
 snow, too fine, too light, too dry, like high-blown 
 volcanic dust, to settle readily. 
 
 Of a sudden some powerful suction of the wind, 
 which they could hear grumming on over the vast 
 plateau, caught up a mass of uncrusted snow from 
 under and along the edge of the bluff some hundred 
 yards from where they were standing, and whirled it
 
 16 Out of the Silences 
 
 aloft in a magnificent spiral all sparkle and glitter. 
 Higher and higher it rose till the level rays of the 
 moon transfixed it, suffusing the mass with faint 
 rose, violet, and purple. Slowly a pulsating arc of 
 delicate color outlined itself distinctly far, far above 
 their heads, but only for a moment ; it vanished with 
 the dispersion of the snow-spout. 
 
 The saddle-maker broke the silence. 
 
 "Wasn't there somp'in' 'bout a bow in that ark 
 story o' yourn, Son? I heard a circuit rider preach 
 'bout it good many years ago." 
 
 "Yep." The boy seemed lost in wonderment. 
 He roused himself. "But that was a rainbow, and 
 this was a snowbow, wasn't it, Bunkie-nunc?" 
 
 "Right you are, Bob, an' you won't be likely to 
 see another soon." 
 
 "What lifted the snow up so high and so quick, 
 all curly like?" 
 
 "The wind; and you won't have to whistle for it 
 either ; it's sure up there to-night. We'll go up an' 
 see how it's blowin'." 
 
 By daily work the men had trodden down the snow 
 on the ledge about the dugout, and against the bluff 
 where the snow had drifted deep, forming a sloping 
 talus as it were, they had stamped, and dug out, and 
 shaped a stairway. At the top of it, on the level of 
 the plateau just above the dugout, was a pole. It 
 was so placed to emphasize the position of this refuge 
 to some plainsman threatened with disaster. The 
 men climbed to the top with the boy between them. 
 
 Around the pole, also, the snow was trodden firm, 
 kept so by the two men. Day after day, week in, 
 week out, the saddle-maker and his companion took 
 turns on watch at this spot, looking, waiting for
 
 The Boy 17 
 
 some sign of life. Round and round the pole each 
 man paced on his shift, or leaped or ran according to 
 the cold and the power of the wind, so widening the 
 circle of trodden snow from time to time. But not 
 once had the uniform whiteness shown any object on it. 
 Not once had the awful silence been broken by 
 howl of wolf or cry of any living thing. Everywhere 
 silence, muted snow-silence: soft, fine, dry snow 
 filling the air, falling day after day, silently, relent- 
 lessly, smothering at times in its density; at times 
 scudding before a biting wind that attained a velocity 
 of seventy miles an hour. 
 
 In all these weeks there had been no melting of 
 these snows, consequently no possible chance for the 
 formation of a crust, the road of safety for the northern 
 plainsman. 
 
 The younger man knew that there was but one 
 chance for their lives ; the atmospheric conditions 
 must be just right. On this day these conditions 
 had been in part fulfilled : the sun had shone with 
 real warmth; a thin, surface snow responded, and 
 melted little by little. It remained for the night to 
 create conditions that should enable the three to 
 live a little longer a life that, despite all hardship, 
 was dear to them. 
 
 On reaching the plateau the younger man drew a 
 deep breath. " We're in luck," he said. 
 
 "You bet," was the saddle-maker's reply. 
 
 The child was wild with joy. The crust was 
 already firm enough to bear his slight weight. He 
 slid, shrieking in his delight, back and forth, round 
 and round, first on one foot then on both. Finally 
 he lay down flat on his stomach and propelled himself 
 belly bump rapidly over the shining surface.
 
 1 8 Out of the Silences 
 
 " Come on, Bunkie-mmc ! Come on and slide ! I 
 say it's rippin' bully ! " 
 
 "Not strong enough for me, Bob, not yet Hi, 
 there!" he exclaimed as the boy in his exuberant 
 fun sat down suddenly, the impact breaking the 
 crust. He floundered helpless, half smothered in the 
 soft snow till his uncle's rescuing hand pulled him 
 forth and set him on his feet. 
 
 "That'll learn you caution, numskull," he said 
 gently; "and you sure need it." 
 
 Bob began his antics again, but this time with an 
 eye open for untoward events. The two men spoke 
 together in low tones. 
 
 "By three it will be hard enough; it's dropping 
 steady now. It will go below twenty, an' no chance 
 of thawin' till sun-up." 
 
 "And the wind just right for the fort. It's a piece 
 of damned good luck for us-all." The saddle-maker 
 was emphatic. 
 
 "What was it Bob read ? 'And God made a wind 
 to pass over the earth'?" 
 
 The saddle-maker answered solemnly: "He done 
 just that; but," he added with stern emphasis, "/ 
 go ; ye mind that." 
 
 The younger man smiled. "We'll toss for it " 
 
 "No, ye don't! I know ye: loaded dice ain't in 
 it when ye get yer mind set on stakin' yer life for 
 -as-all." 
 
 "I've got to go, Bunkie; I want to go. You 
 ain't fit. You 'bout laid yourself out stiff tryin' to 
 make the reservation more'n a month ago. You've 
 got to stay d'you hear? an' look out for the 
 boy ; for I'm goin' sure as there's a God above. No 
 don't you say one word. It'll make me mad
 
 The Boy 19 
 
 clear through, an' when I'm mad like that I ain't 
 responsible for what I do, an' you know it." 
 
 "That's so." The saddle-maker assented without 
 any apparent irritation. "Ye mean ye'd rather I'd 
 stay on an' look out for the boy rather?" 
 
 "I mean just that." The words rang out sharply. 
 They were heard by Bob careering over the snow crust 
 some twenty feet from the pole. 
 
 "Did you call me, Nunkie?" he cried in a voice 
 shrill with excitement. 
 
 "Nope ; but come on time to bunk in." 
 
 "Look, look, I'm flying!" he shrieked, fearing the 
 men might not notice him. He had opened a flap 
 of his blanket and found that the strong wind catch- 
 ing and filling it was carrying him on without any 
 effort of his own. He sailed straight into his uncle's 
 legs. 
 
 "He's caught on mighty quick, the little cuss; ye 
 can't get ahead o' him. He'll know a thing or two, 
 an' learn you an' me, 'fore he's ten." 
 2 
 
 The three made their way down to the dugout, 
 Bob plying his uncle with questions at the rate of 
 forty a minute as to the how, whence, wherefore of his 
 newly acquired power of flying with a blanket. 
 
 His uncle made only a feeble attempt to satisfy 
 his insatiate curiosity ; he knew it would be an all- 
 night job. The boy hied him to his bunk in the 
 corner and wrapping himself closely in the blankets 
 drew a corner over his head. But for a time his un- 
 wonted excitement prevented him from sleeping. 
 After he had turned restlessly a few times, his uncle 
 spoke : 
 
 "What's the matter, Bob ? "
 
 2O Out of the Silences 
 
 "I don't know ; I'm seeing things " 
 
 "What things?" 
 
 "Oh, just things sparkles an' the snow whirlin' 
 an' the moon big big " He turned again, a 
 little sleepy at last. "Sing me something, Bunkie- 
 nunc, please." This was always his request when he 
 was overtired. 
 
 "What do you want, Bob?" 
 
 "You know, " the voice dragged a little, "the 
 Texan Rang-er " The voice dropped away into 
 half-sleep. 
 
 "He's most gone," said the saddle-maker. "Sing, 
 Bunkie." 
 
 And the man sang one of the dozen verses of an 
 old improvised song that he and others far, far in the 
 south under desert skies had made to while away time. 
 
 " I have saw the fruits 'er gamblin', its hardships I know 
 
 well. 
 I have rode the Rocky Mountains wild, I've rode the 
 
 streets of Hell. 
 I have been down in the Great Staked Plains where the 
 
 wild Apache roams." 
 
 His voice, a full fine baritone, filled the dugout 
 with its resonance, but as he went on it sank to a 
 gentle minor, almost an undertone, soothing al- 
 though tinged with melancholy : 
 
 " Perhaps you have a sister, boy, likewise a sweetheart 
 
 true; 
 
 Maybe you have a mother who at home would grieve 
 o'er you." 
 
 The four lines that followed were almost a whispered 
 recitative :
 
 The Boy 21 
 
 "So if you have any in-c/i-nation to rove or roam from 
 
 home 
 
 Take this advice from a Texan Ranger, Son: You'd 
 better stay at home." 
 
 Bob was asleep, and soundly. The men proceeded 
 with their preparations which they had been un- 
 willing for him to see. They spoke but little. Once 
 the younger man left the dugout and climbed to the 
 level of the plateau to feel the wind and test the 
 crust. When he came in he reported all going well. 
 At twelve the saddle-maker insisted that he lie 
 down and sleep. 
 
 "Ye can't set round till three or thereabouts an' 
 make them thirty miles to the fort in good time 
 it's beyond bein' human. Turn in, an' I'll wake 
 ye in time." 
 
 The man, wrapping himself in his blanket, turned 
 in and slept as soundly as the boy. 
 
 3 
 
 The saddle-maker waited a while, then, taking his 
 hunting knife from his outfit bag, he went out closing 
 the door softly behind him. There were certain 
 things that just for to-night he wished to do in silence 
 and alone. 
 
 x He entered a small dugout beside theirs and felt 
 in the dark for the pony. There had been two of 
 them when the men first sought refuge in this hole 
 in the earth the boy's and his own ; the third had 
 been lost with the sheep. Like the Indians on the 
 reservation they had been obliged that winter to 
 kill one for their sustenance. It was Spud's turn 
 now. The saddle-maker made short work. He 
 determined the boy should never know. There
 
 22 Out of the Silences 
 
 would be no getting a morsel into his mouth if he 
 realized his pony had been sacrificed. 
 
 Before he reentered the dugout he, also, climbed 
 to the top of the bank to look about, ascertain the 
 time of night by the moon, test the crust, and feel the 
 wind. He was satisfied with conditions when he 
 returned to the dugout. Later on he opened the 
 door and looked out: the moon, full and clear, was 
 riding high overhead. He calculated it must be 
 about half-past two. 
 
 He roused the sleeping man who took off his 
 shirt and wrapped a long piece of flannel about 
 twenty inches wide round and round his body, 
 swathing it against the piercing cold and wind. 
 Then he dressed himself for his trip of thirty 
 miles to the fort where rations and help must 
 be obtained. As a last preparation he slit two 
 arm holes in his blanket. 
 
 The saddle-maker took a pair of skis he had 
 manufactured out of what the dugout and the pony 
 yielded, two snowshoes, which he had with him when 
 he was overtaken by the storm, also a small hatchet, 
 and went out. 
 
 The other, left alone, bent over the child, then 
 straightened himself suddenly, turned away and 
 taking from under his empty outfit bag a contrivance 
 of canvas followed the saddle-maker. 
 
 4 
 
 Above, the men found that the wind was in- 
 creasing in strength but still blowing steadily in 
 the right direction. The crust was firm. The cold 
 intense. 
 
 The younger adjusted his skis and slung the snow- 
 shoes on his back. The saddle-maker hacked off a
 
 The Boy 23 
 
 portion, some two feet, from the pole ; he tied it on 
 the snowshoes. Then he thrust a small package 
 wrapped in canvas into the other's hand. 
 
 The young man spoke sharply: "No! You don't 
 come anything like that over me. You'd starve 
 yourself." 
 
 "Take it," said the saddle-maker sternly; "we've 
 got the other meat " 
 
 "You've kiUed Spud?" 
 
 "Yep; an' don't ye fret yerself 'bout us-all. We 
 can hang on a good many days " 
 
 "For God's sake don't tell Bob 'bout the pony," 
 said the other in a low voice. 
 
 "Ye can bet yer life I ain't takin' no chances 
 thataway." 
 
 "I'll be back inside two days if this weather 
 holds." 
 
 "Sure thing," said the saddle-maker with fine 
 assurance. Each knew, however, that neither could 
 deceive the other. 
 
 The man rose to his feet. The saddle-maker 
 handed him the rag of canvas; he slipped his arm 
 through the arm-piece of wood. 
 
 "So long, Bill," he said lightly. 
 
 "So long, Bunkie." 
 
 That was all. 
 
 The younger man turned at an angle to the wind. 
 The triangle of canvas on the piece of wood suddenly 
 flapped with a report that sounded flat in the frost- 
 filled air; the small three-cornered sail bellied; the 
 man was off, skimming the crust at the rate of a 
 mile in three minutes.
 
 24 Out of the Silences 
 
 5 
 
 The saddle-maker stood on the same spot watching 
 the dark object and its foreshortened shadow speed- 
 ing over the silvered crust. He knew that once the 
 first swell should be passed he could no longer see 
 it. He knew that for those thirty miles that lay 
 between the man and the fort there would be one 
 swell after the other, billowing white with the regu- 
 larity of ocean waves over the great plateau of the 
 Missouri. 
 
 He watched the diminishing blot on the white. 
 Once some quick half turn, or tack, and the canvas 
 caught the moonlight much as the breast of a gull, 
 turning at an angle, catches the sunlight, so sending 
 a signal-gleam to the watcher. 
 
 He strained his eyes to see the almost indistin- 
 guishable speck; another gleam, a mere point of 
 accentuated light. When he looked again he could 
 see nothing. 
 
 6 
 
 Owing to the depth of snow continually augmented 
 by almost daily blizzards, high winds, and the inten- 
 sity of cold, no mail had gone out from the fort or 
 come into it for two weeks. 
 
 One morning four Indians from the reservation 
 made their way to the post. They were nearly ex- 
 hausted. They said that most of their dogs and 
 ponies were being killed for food, and begged that 
 rations be sent to relieve the distress of their people. 
 They likewise reported that not far outside the con- 
 fines of the post they had found the body of a man 
 which they managed between them to bring in; 
 they had left it in one of the empty scout-huts. . . . 
 
 The quartermaster identified the body ; a foreman
 
 The Boy 25 
 
 on a sheep ranch some seventy miles to the west. 
 A slip of paper inside his shirt gave briefly the location 
 of the dugout and the desperate condition facing the 
 boy and man. It was an appeal, solemn in its ur- 
 gency, to rescue them. 
 
 The Colonel called for volunteers. The mail 
 sergeant and six men at once responded. Forty- 
 eight hours after the departure of the rescue squad 
 in the mail sledge they returned bringing both man 
 and boy with them. The frost was already in the 
 saddle-maker's brain. The child was in delirium. 
 
 Weeks afterward, when the surgeon pronounced 
 the boy's recovery permanent, the nine-year-old Bob 
 Collamore had made, but all unconsciously, the first 
 turn along that strangely deviating earthly pathway 
 we name "life" : he had both experienced and endured. 
 
 ON THE ROAD TO PARADISE 
 i 
 
 The saddle-maker was a much married man. His 
 first venture was made in his extreme youth. He had 
 little comfort from it, and with mutual relief the two 
 agreed to the annulment of their youthful vows. All 
 this happened far away in the lake and forest region 
 of northern Minnesota where among the scattered 
 whites and the many Chippewa he learned his trade. 
 
 After ten years' enjoyment of his freedom, he took 
 unto himself a widow of a half-breed, Scotch on the pa- 
 ternal side, Cree on the maternal, who had peddled his 
 wares along the border. She was a sturdy woman 
 who proved for the next eight years to be his help- 
 mate in the full sense of that word. She had one 
 small son, Colin McGillie, whom the saddle-maker in 
 the kindness of his heart looked upon as his own.
 
 26 Out of the Silences 
 
 Mrs. McGillie herself, duly wedded as Mrs. William 
 Plunket, immediately began to mother the man as 
 she mothered her boy ; this she did on the strength 
 of being her husband's senior by ten years. 
 
 A year after her death, now four years gone, he 
 comforted himself with a fine young squaw who 
 possessed a lively disposition and an exceedingly un- 
 certain temper. She was a Minnesota Chippewa 
 who with her father, Long John, had come for a 
 summer's visit with her relatives among the Crees 
 across the border. She had borne him two children. 
 
 To this squaw he had left in trust the children, 
 his stepson, the roomy hut, his roomier shed, his 
 horse, one mule, and varied collection of livestock, 
 until he should have returned from his annual trading 
 trip. Generally he was absent three months. But 
 this time he left the Turtle Mountain region early in 
 September, and it was now the first of June. He had 
 been repairing saddles at the fort for the last two 
 months in return for the care given to him and the 
 boy during their long sickness. He was given a 
 broken cavalry mount to carry them home across 
 the plains. 
 
 He was pondering seriously, and in considerable 
 confusion of mind, this matter of his long absence 
 when, having left the Souris on its northward course, 
 he entered the country of the Turtle Mountains. 
 
 He knew Jane so he called her was a good 
 squaw to him; no doubt about that. He had a 
 degree of affection for her and was proud of her as 
 the mother of his children. She pulled hard on the 
 bits at times, but he had never let her feel them 
 not he. It was so much easier, so much more con- 
 ducive to his comfort and peace of mind just to take
 
 The Boy 27 
 
 the outside of the hut for a while for an hour, a 
 day, a week, or month; to sleep in the shed on the 
 sweet-smelling hay with his horse for companion ; to 
 go fishing up north on the lakes with Colin Me Gillie, 
 or amble off alone on his one mule to a distant trading 
 post, and return laden with some durable saddle 
 leather and gifts acceptable to Jane : a woolen petti- 
 coat of naming scarlet, a necklace of cairngorm beads, 
 a feather, to match the petticoat, on a straw hat of the 
 latest fashion so easy all this, and so comfortable. 
 
 But nine months of absence ? He was approaching 
 his home with some doubts as to his reception. 
 2 
 
 It was an abrupt entrance into Paradise that the 
 small boy, Bob Collamore, made when the tired 
 horse that bore him began to climb the foothills of 
 the Turtle Mountain country. He never forgot it. 
 
 All his life long with the coming of the days of a 
 new June, he returned in memory to that wonder- 
 journey through this stretch of green rolling slopes, 
 clear lakes, little streams, meadows, and broad- 
 leaved forests a charmed country that beginning 
 in North Dakota extends across the border into- 
 Canada. Its width from the Souris, or Mouse, is 
 about eighty miles. The whole region rises from 
 out the Dakota plains like a natural citadel. 
 
 He never forgot that June sky or its deep intense 
 blue which domed his Paradise and was reflected in 
 the crystal clear lake waters. After twenty years he 
 could recount accurately the specimens of shy wild 
 life in the forest he had encountered on that journey 
 in June which brought him, at last, into his heritage. 
 
 The saddle-maker was a good guide and the boy's 
 enthusiasm pleased him. His many questions di-
 
 28 Out of the Silences 
 
 verted him from too prolonged and anxious thought 
 of the morrow and his squaw. It was the last 
 day of their long trip northward over the Dakota 
 plains and through this high region. It was their 
 last night in the open. Sitting before their small 
 campfire the boy began to chatter. The saddle- 
 maker encouraged him, for he had proved himself 
 good company during the last two weeks they had 
 passed together on the one horse's back. 
 
 "An' you promised, honest Injun, you'd let me 
 earn a pony too, didn't you ?" He hesitated as to 
 what he should call the saddle-maker; thus far he 
 had avoided any name. 
 
 "Honest Injun, I did. S'posin' ye call me Plunket, 
 just plain Plunket, Son? That's as good a name as 
 any, an' it's mine." 
 
 "Then your whole name's Bill Plunket?" 
 
 "The same." 
 
 "I like Plunket. How did you say I was goin' to 
 earn my pony?" 
 
 "Didn't say; 't ain't safe sayin' wot I'll do or 
 wot I ain't goin' to do not just at present." He 
 spoke solemnly, for his thoughts reverted at once to 
 Jane. How would she take it? What would she 
 say to another addition to the family, and he the 
 son of a white man ? 
 
 "When can I begin?" 
 
 "I dunno, Son, I dunno; I've got to think it out. 
 But ye'll sure have the beast mind that." 
 
 "An' a dog?" 
 
 "In course a dog. Ye wouldn't be more'n half 
 a boy 'thout a dog." 
 
 "What kind?" 
 
 "Can't tell ye that now. Wait till ye see my
 
 The Boy 29 
 
 kennel." He smiled to himself at the vision called 
 up by that word. Each of his half-Indian babies 
 possessed two puppies. McGillie, as he called his 
 stepson, was the proud owner of three collies. He, 
 himself, had two fox terriers and two powerful 
 mongrels. 
 
 "P'r'aps McGillie will give me one of his ; collies 
 you said." Bob was already intimate with the 
 saddle-maker's stepson and his two babies, Tom 
 and Jerry. 
 
 " Mebbe ; I ain't sure. He sets a sight by 'em st ! " 
 It was a note of warning. 
 
 Bob's short hair rose at the roots. There was 
 audible above the gentle stirring of the great crowns 
 of maple and sycamore a soft pad, pad, on the forest 
 floor. The saddle-maker reached for his rifle. 
 
 "Lay low," he commanded the boy. Bob lay 
 flat on the ground. The soft double tread came 
 nearer. It ceased. Then, without warning, the 
 forest silence was broken by wild yelps and quick 
 sharp barkings. Two powerful dogs, half timber 
 wolf, in their devouring eagerness to be near their 
 long absent master sprang upon the saddle-maker 
 with such force as partly to overpower him. He 
 toppled half over. 
 
 "Ye damned beasts," he said gently, stroking them 
 and quieting them with the words. "Ye found me 
 out, hey? Stay put, Son," he warned the boy; 
 "the beasts have found ye out too. Let 'em snuff ye 
 all over, smell ye, nose ye, turn ye clean over if they 
 want to. It's their way o' satisfyin' theirselves ye 
 ain't no stranger to me. 
 
 "Easy there, easy," he cautioned the dogs who 
 were a trifle too rough in their investigations. "Ye
 
 30 Out of the Silences 
 
 can set up now, Son, an' take notice, only don't 
 touch 'em ; just look 'em straight in the eye an' tell 
 'em to get out." 
 
 Bob sat up, with a weakened backbone however. 
 He did as he was told : looked the huge beasts tower- 
 ing above him directly in the eyes and spoke in a 
 low, quavering voice : 
 
 "G-get out." 
 
 The dogs stood irresolute. One of them flaired all 
 over the boy's head; the other sat down on her 
 haunches so near that her hot breath made Bob 
 feel cold. In neither of them was there any evidence 
 of obedience. This spirit of insubordination put 
 Bob on his mettle. 
 
 "Get out." He spoke loudly, firmly. 
 
 The dog ceased snuffing; he, too, sat down on his 
 haunches. The two stared impudently at the 
 intruder. Bob felt the challenge; it made him 
 furious. He sprang to his feet and shaking his fist 
 under their very noses shouted with shrill vehemence : 
 
 "You damned beasts, get out!" 
 
 It was his final effort and his first half -oath; but 
 he was only quoting the saddle-maker. 
 
 To the child's amazement the two dogs turned 
 themselves about and meekly took their place on 
 the other side of their master. Bob sensed a victory 
 over brute creation. It was his first. 
 
 Bill Plunket grinned broadly and slapped his thighs. 
 "That's the talk that does it, Son. Ye'll do, ye'll do. 
 Master 'em first an' pet 'em afterwards. Ye won't 
 have no more trouble with them. Come now, it's 
 time to turn in. We've got a big day ahead of us 
 to-morrow." He handed a blanket to the child. 
 
 "Will we be home to-morrow?"
 
 The Boy 31 
 
 "Yep." The answer was too laconic to invite 
 further questioning. 
 
 Bob took his blanket and looked about for a 
 special bedding-place on the forest floor. A few 
 yards from the campfire, between two large white 
 birches and a poplar, was a little "bush" of ever- 
 greens, rare in this locality. Within the clump was 
 an open spot bedded deep with leaves and curiously 
 hollowed as if it had been the lair of some wild animal. 
 Bob announced his intention of sleeping there. He 
 crept in under the low-spreading branches, dragging 
 his blanket after him and, wrapping himself in it, 
 settled into the hollow that was as if made for 
 him. 
 
 "I've got a bully bed," he announced, rolling over 
 on his back to observe what might be going on in the 
 sky that could be seen between the birch crowns 
 above the opening of the "bush." It looked to be a 
 little space, not wider than the stretch of his arm ; 
 but ail the same it was wonderful. 
 
 The saddle-maker made his own preparations to 
 turn in. Soon he, too, rolled himself in his blanket 
 and was ready for sleep. But sleep did not come so 
 readily. He thought of Jane and the various domestic 
 complications awaiting him. They were so near now, 
 only eighteen hours distant, that they loomed large 
 and forbidding before his night vision. 
 
 He was stretched out between the fire and the 
 clump of evergreens. The dogs lay at his feet. 
 Soon a small voice made itself heard from the "bush" : 
 
 "I can see two big stars in the sky-hole right over 
 my head." 
 
 "Mgh." 
 
 Another five minutes of forest quiet ; then :
 
 32 Out of the Silences 
 
 "Oo ee, oo ee, I say, Plunket, a big owl went 
 across the sky-hole just this minute hear him?" 
 
 The saddle-maker listened. Sure enough, he heard 
 the flitting of the owl. He must not encourage too 
 much conversation. 
 
 "Mgh." 
 
 The wind continued to move gently through the 
 tree tops. A strong fresh woodsy scent mingled with 
 the smoke from some charred sticks at the edge of 
 the fire. Somewhere in the forest a thrush awoke and 
 fluted brokenly a dream note. 
 
 " What's that ? " This from Bob. 
 
 "A thrush. Now go to sleep, Son; it's time." 
 
 "I will in a minute." 
 
 The saddle-maker waited for further developments. 
 He knew something of this little human animal after 
 six months' close companionship. At last : 
 
 "Plunket " 
 
 "Mgh." 
 
 "Where's my Bunkie-nunc ? " 
 
 The saddle-maker could not answer at once. For 
 four months he had been dreading to hear this 
 question from the boy. During that week in the 
 dugout after his uncle's departure for the fort, Bob 
 had asked the question almost hourly, although 
 accepting the fact as stated by the saddle-maker 
 that he had gone to the fort to get a team "to haul 
 us out o' this 'ere hole ", as he expressed it. After 
 that week there were no more questions except those 
 uttered in the delirium of fever. Since the boy's 
 recovery he had asked nothing in regard to his uncle, 
 had not once mentioned his name. 
 
 The saddle-maker concluded that the fever had 
 burnt out that memory, destroyed the power of
 
 The Boy 33 
 
 remembrance of what had happened. He was glad 
 if it were so; it was merciful; a child should not 
 remember such things. He felt far from sure however. 
 Now he must face the situation. It sickened him. 
 
 "Please tell me." 
 
 "Yer uncle's gone on a long trip, Son." 
 
 "Where?" 
 
 "I dunno." Bill Plunket swallowed hard ; cleared 
 his throat; fought with his conscience till he was 
 weak. Then he spoke in a thickened voice : 
 
 "Son, I can't lie to ye, an', by God, I ain't goin' to 
 try. Yer uncle can't get back from that trip 
 never " 
 
 "Never " The small voice from beneath the 
 evergreens was lost in a hard-caught breath. The 
 saddle-maker heard it. He winced at the sound. 
 
 "No, he can't. Ye see he " 
 
 "Why why not?" The voice was scarcely 
 audible. The saddle-maker took his plunge. 
 
 "Ye see he took the road us-all's got to take 
 sometime, Son. He's he's dead." 
 
 There was silence in the " bush." There was silence 
 in the forest. The wind ceased for a moment to 
 move the leafy crowns. Then came the sound of a 
 strangled sob. It cut the saddle-maker to the heart 
 but he knew what was before him : his duty to 
 the boy. 
 
 "Son " ; he spoke softly. There was no answer, 
 but again he heard the queer half-strangled sound 
 at which one of the dogs raised her head. 
 
 "Son, yer uncle did the biggest thing a man, a 
 reel man, can do he saved us-all by givin' up his 
 own life 't wasn't easy for him 't wasn't easy 
 for me to keep livin' on when I knowed I owed my
 
 34 Out of the Silences 
 
 just livin' to him. Don't ye never ferget, Son, he 
 gave up his life for us-all " 
 
 He listened for the sound that had roused the dog. 
 He heard nothing for a moment ; then the convulsive, 
 choking, sobbing breaths came again to his ear, 
 smothered this time as if the boy had hidden his head 
 in his blanket to dull the sound. 
 
 The dog stirred uneasily, sat up on her haunches, 
 listened intently in the direction of the sound ; then 
 crept towards the "bush." 
 
 The saddle-maker bit his lip to keep himself from 
 crying. But he knew his duty. 
 
 "Son, the dog's comin' in to see ye (she'll comfort 
 him," he muttered). "You know what yer uncle 
 used to tell ye. 'Keep stiff upper lip, Bob, stiff 
 upper lip.'" He waited a full minute. 
 
 "Yep " The sound was still muffled. 
 
 "An' yer uncle was a man, Son, ye know that 
 now " 
 
 "Yep." 
 
 The dog crawled on her belly into the "bush." 
 
 "An' he was brave, I never knowed a braver; an' 
 ye know it now " 
 
 "Yep hmf." 
 
 The saddle-maker heard the sniff and knew that 
 the boy had taken his head from out the blanket. He 
 heard the dog settling herself. He sighed relief as 
 he waited. 
 
 From time to time a muffled sob came from the 
 evergreens, followed by an uneasy movement of the 
 dog. After a time the sounds grew less frequent. 
 The wind was moving again softly through the tree 
 tops. Finally his strained ears caught a slight noise 
 as of the boy's turning ; then came the voice :
 
 The Boy 35 
 
 "I'm goin' to to keep stiff upper lip, Plunket." 
 
 "Oh, you little cuss, you little cuss," said the saddle- 
 maker, so gently, so lovingly that the boy was both 
 comforted and encouraged. 
 . "An' I'm goin' to be be like him." 
 
 "Yer beginnin' just right, Son, just right keep 
 right on keep right on " 
 
 There was a sound of some rearrangement of bodies 
 within the "bush." Then silence. 
 
 The saddle-maker watched throughout that night 
 and his night thoughts were not of Jane. 
 
 At break of day he stepped softly to the bushes, 
 knelt down and looked in. The dog was to all 
 appearance asleep. Within her half encircling 
 paws lay Bob curled against her body. The saddle- 
 maker scarcely breathed ; but the dog opened one 
 eye, looked at him intelligently, closed it again and 
 apparently fell asleep. 
 
 The saddle-maker crept back intending to snatch 
 forty winks till sun-up. 
 
 "AT HOME" 
 i 
 
 Both man and boy were so worn out with the 
 unwonted emotions of the night that they slept on 
 till aroused by the dogs. They began the last lap 
 of their journey three hours late. It was after sunset 
 when they drew near the saddle-maker's home; but 
 it was not dark for in the higher latitudes the after- 
 light lingers so long. 
 
 The air was still. All sounds carried far. They 
 approached the hut along a well worn trail through 
 thick woods. The harsh cry of a night hawk sounded 
 above them in the open. The dogs ran ahead and
 
 36 Out of the Silences 
 
 out of sight many times, only to return, assure them- 
 selves that man, boy, and horse were still on the move, 
 and be off again. Soon their strong bark was heard 
 in the distance. 
 
 "Most home, Son." The saddle-maker spoke 
 cheerfully, but at that moment the tone belied his 
 feelings. 
 
 "Do you s'pose McGillie an' the collies will hear 
 us?" 
 
 "Mebbe. He'll hear our dogs certain. Hear 
 that?" 
 
 There was little need to ask, for above the roar 
 of the big dogs could be heard the rapid fire of the 
 terriers snapping and the yap-yap of the others. In a 
 few minutes the huge mongrels came bounding back, 
 raced by the rest. Behind them came running, half 
 breathless, Colin McGillie. 
 
 The saddle-maker greeted him with a slap on the 
 shoulder and a glad "How, Sonny!" 
 
 "P-pa I th-thought I " 
 
 "Come, get yer wind first, McGillie." 
 
 "I thought sure ye'd gone for good an' all, Pa." 
 There was a suspicious tremor in his voice. Colin 
 was nearly fourteen. 
 
 " Thought that, did ye ? I hadn't no idee o' playin' 
 such a low-down trick as that. Glad to see the old 
 man, hey?" 
 
 "Glad, Pa " 
 
 The saddle-maker interrupted him. He felt he 
 must save the situation. It would never do for Bob 
 to think McGillie was a sissy: 
 
 "Here, Colin, these dogs are all mixed up with my 
 legs. Get 'em out." 
 
 Colin yanked first one then another of the dogs out
 
 The Boy 37 
 
 of the saddle-maker's way until he had them well in 
 hand ; it was a vent for his emotions. 
 
 They walked on together, the dogs heeling well 
 after their discipline. The saddle-maker brought 
 about no introductions between the two boys ; he 
 wanted to restrain Colin's abnormal curiosity and to 
 give Bob time to sense things. Finally he broke 
 silence. 
 
 "How's things goin' to home, Colin?" It was a 
 feeble question feebly put. 
 
 "Ain't goin'." Colin answered doggedly. 
 
 "Wot'sup?" 
 
 " Jane's gone " 
 
 " Jane ? Where's she gone to ? " 
 
 "Dunno." 
 
 "When did she make her start?" 
 
 "Last month; she'd a went sooner if it hadn't 
 been for the snow." % 
 
 "Hard winter, hey?" 
 
 "Tumble, Pa." 
 
 "How's Tom an' Jerry stood it?" 
 
 "All right. She took 'em 'long with her too." 
 
 "Took Tom an' Jerry, did she? Well, ye can't 
 blame a mother for wantin' her babies 'long with her, 
 can ye? Kinder lonesome 'thout 'em, hey?" 
 
 "You bet took the puppies too." 
 
 "Puppies is as plenty as blackberries round in the 
 mountains. How'd she carry 'em all ? " 
 
 "She took the horse " 
 
 "Took my horse, did she? Well, this is gettin' 
 mighty int'restin'." 
 
 " An' she took the best saddle, the one you an' 
 her used to ride on." 
 
 "Best saddle mm." The saddle-maker was
 
 38 Out of the Silences 
 
 ruminating and spoke with exceeding mildness. 
 Colin confided weeks afterwards to Bob that it riled 
 him. 
 
 "Yup." 
 
 "How did Tom an' Jerry ride?" 
 
 "In them two saddle-bags o' yourn one in each. 
 I had saw her take 'em when I was layin' in the shed." 
 
 "Layin' in the shed? How's that?" For the first 
 time the saddle-maker's voice had an edge to it. 
 
 "I slep' there all winter, an' I tell ye, Pa, I jumped 
 on her when I had saw that. I swore at her awful, 
 but she didn't care a darn. She fetched me a clip 
 'cross the jaw with a bridle strap Gee ! I thought 
 't was broke. I got a bunch there now; feel " 
 
 The saddle-maker felt. His own feelings were of 
 anger, relief, and disgust. 
 
 "Mgh." This monosyllable always acted with 
 the promptness and restraint of an electric air- 
 brake on McGillie's conversation. Bob had taken in 
 all of this strange colloquy according to the capacity 
 of his ears and years. 
 
 The procession moved on in silence the dogs 
 still heeling. After leaving the woods they crossed a 
 little clearing, all waving grassland and sweet with 
 grassy smells. They drew up before an unlighted 
 hut. It was already dusk. 
 
 "I'll bed the horse first. He's played out for he's 
 carried double most o' the time. This 'ere is Bob 
 Collamore, McGillie; he's come to live with us-all. 
 He's come clear from the Missouri. He'll need some 
 showin' round to-morrow." 
 
 The two boys felt there was no use in trying to 
 size each other up ; that must wait for daylight and 
 the morrow.
 
 The Boy 39 
 
 "You've got some bully puppies, McGillie. 
 Phmket said mebbe only mebbe, you know 
 you'd give me one." The tone was wistful, but it 
 was not an auspicious opening for the new acquaint- 
 ance. McGillie loved his dogs as only a boy who has 
 brought them up from birth through puppyhood can 
 love them. Without replying to the unpleasant in- 
 sinuation of the forthcoming gift, he accepted the 
 compliment implied in the term "bully." 
 
 "I'm goin' to have some more bimeby. Mebbe, 
 I dunno, I'll let ye bring one up." 
 
 This offer was generous, and Bob answered accord- 
 ingly : 
 
 "I'd love to bring up a puppy." 
 
 "I sell 'em, ye know." 
 
 Bob did not know, but he had to say something. 
 
 "Oh, you do?" There was a note of keen dis- 
 appointment in the boy's voice; but he was game. 
 "Anyway, Plunket said I could earn a pony of 
 my own too ; an' I guess if I can earn a pony I can 
 earn a puppy." 
 
 There was fine contempt in the tone with which he 
 spoke the last word. Hearing it Colin McGillie 
 suddenly weakened ; he felt, at that moment, that 
 the unborn puppies when six months old wouldn't 
 bring ten cents apiece. 
 
 "Oh, we can make a trade all right. What'd 
 Pa say" 
 
 The saddle-maker coming from the shed interrupted 
 him. 
 
 "Where's the fodder?" He spoke peremptorily. 
 
 "Ain't any. She took all there was left." 
 
 "An' I s'pose she took Hannah too? I don't see 
 her." Hannah was his mule.
 
 40 Out of the Silences 
 
 "Yup, an' she took all the pullets, an' the last 
 bag o' grain " 
 
 "Anything left?" There was now sarcasm in the 
 questions. 
 
 "Not much. She took the two big blankets, 
 an' the red an' yaller quilts, an' all her own fixin's, 
 an' some pots an' kettles the big brass one 
 too." 
 
 "Reg'lar weddin' outfit Oh, Lord, Lord!" 
 
 The saddle-maker sat down suddenly among the 
 waving grass and began to laugh ; he laughed so long 
 and so heartily that finally he rolled over exhausted 
 on his back. After a long-drawn hah of relief, he 
 sat up and spoke to the boys who being unable to 
 see any joke could not join in the laugh, and had to 
 content themselves with wondering at such antics in 
 a man of his years. 
 
 "Boys, hear wot the old man says: better not 
 get married; but if ye do, let me tell ye just one 
 thing : a woman'll say ' wot's his is mine, an' wot's 
 mine's my own', every time; an' don't ye forget it. 
 Now let's have a fire and get some feed to start 
 in housekeepin' on. Son an' me has some left 
 over." 
 
 He opened the door of the hut and striking a match 
 touched it to a long strip of birch bark he had brought 
 in from the shed ; he dropped it into the box stove. 
 Me Gillie came in with some wood. In a few minutes 
 the hut was thoroughly warm, the bacon sizzling in 
 the pan, the compliments of a few ancient hens, 
 some fresh eggs that Me Gillie had saved, frying 
 in the fat, the kettle boiling, and the tin teapot 
 doing its full duty. A kerosene lamp gave them light. 
 McGillie assured his stepfather with considerable
 
 The Boy 41 
 
 complacency that Jane had not taken the oil can ; in 
 fact she couldn't, he said, because he had hidden it 
 in the hollow of the big poplar. 
 
 When they had eaten to their satisfaction, the 
 blankets were spread on the floor and the saddle- 
 maker smoked in silence with McGillie on one side, 
 Bob on the other close to his arm. The dogs, all 
 seven of them, were in various attitudes around the 
 stove. The warmth was grateful to man and beast, 
 for the early June nights on the mountain are apt to 
 be unpleasantly chill. 
 
 Presently the saddle-maker, who was lost in 
 thought, felt the lunge of a small body against his 
 arm ; it was Bob tired out with the excitement of the 
 new, and now overcome suddenly with sleep. He 
 put his arm around the little lad, and lifting the boy's 
 inert sleep-filled body in his arms laid the child 
 carefully on a buffalo robe in one corner and covered 
 him with the blanket. The big bitch, remembering 
 her charge of the night before, followed him to watch 
 proceedings. 
 
 While he was tucking the blanket behind the child's 
 back, Bob roused up sufficiently to murmur, "Where's 
 the dog?" 
 
 "Right here, Son." 
 
 Bob half opened his eyes. Sure enough the dog 
 was there. He put out his hand; the great beast 
 licked it, then settled noiselessly on the robe at the 
 boy's feet. 
 
 "An' she's yourn, Son, for this world an' the next," 
 the saddle-maker said solemnly. 
 
 Bob smiled sleepily ; he could not take in the fact 
 of the gift ; he was too far gone. 
 
 "Good-night, Plunket."
 
 42 Out of the Silences 
 
 2 
 
 Bill Plunket and his stepson sat up for another 
 half hour. McGillie was curious about the new boy, 
 and the saddle-maker realized this. He felt it was 
 wise to tell him just as things had been in the past 
 six months that he might not be induced, through 
 sheer curiosity, to question Bob and by so doing 
 unwittingly open up wounds that otherwise might 
 have healed. He wanted to spare the child ; he 
 wanted him to forget the past. 
 
 "I want ye to help him to forget, Colin. He's 
 been through as much as some men o' forty. He's 
 got grit, an' he's good comp'ny. I want ye to stand 
 by him through thick an' thin." 
 
 McGillie winked hard. He was taking it all in, 
 but his part Scotch inheritance made him unready 
 to cry halves with anybody at the first go. The 
 saddle-maker knew his ways and did not press for 
 promises or even assurance on his part. He proceeded 
 to do some questioning along his line of special thought. 
 
 "McGillie, Jane ain't gone to the mountain In- 
 juns, has she? They ain't said no thin' 'bout her, 
 have they?" 
 
 "Nope. I have saw 'em two-three times since 
 she went. They come by the other day with a whole 
 string o' ponies, but they never said nothin' 'cept 
 Kinni-kinnik's pa. He asked me if I had 'nough to 
 eat." 
 
 "Did ye?" 
 
 "Yep. I done some trappin' this winter, and that 
 kep' us-all in meat. But there warn't no shootin', 
 the snow was so deep. An' I had a little meal and 
 rice, an' a peck o' dried berries Jane fixed last fall 
 an.' some maple sugar."
 
 The Boy 43 
 
 "Ye done well, Sonny, ye done well; an' we-all 
 will be gettin' to housekeepin' reg'lar soon. We can 
 get along for a spell 'thout Jane." 
 
 Colin McGillie nodded emphatically although, like 
 Bob, he was overcome with sleep. Seeing which, 
 Bill Plunket emptied his pipe and trod out the 
 fire. 
 
 "Time to turn in, McGillie. Ye needn't have 
 nothin' special on yer mind now I'm back ; just 
 sleep it out." 
 
 McGillie needed no urging, but he asked one more 
 question before he went to sleep : 
 
 "Pa did ye mean what ye said 'bout givin' that 
 boy yer dog?" 
 
 "I sure did. Don't I gen'rally mean what I say?" 
 
 "Yup but " 
 
 "But wot? Out with it. Ye don't want to 
 sleep on it, McGillie ; mebbe 't wouldn't set well on 
 yer stomach." 
 
 "But she's yourn; ye think a sight o' her, an' " 
 
 "An' wot?" 
 
 "An' ye see, Pa, seein' ye set so by her, if ye don't 
 redly want ter give her up, I'll give him one o' my 
 collies." It was out at last. 
 
 "Shut up, Colin McGillie; go to sleep an' keep 
 yer dog." 
 
 But how gentle his voice ! So gentle, that Colin 
 McGillie looking up at him gratefully, for the 
 contemplated sacrifice of his dog on the altar of his 
 love for his stepfather had cost him a fearsome 
 struggle, as he bent over his bed of skins and drew 
 the blanket over his shoulder, blurted his heart out 
 then and there: 
 
 "Gosh, it's mighty good to get ye back, Pa, after
 
 44 
 
 Out of the Silences 
 
 all Jane's jawin'. I hung on, Pa, I hung on for dear 
 life." 
 
 "I bet ye did, an' I'm mighty glad to be back, my 
 son." He thought it not wise to add " 'thout Jane's 
 jawin'." 
 
 McGillie appreciated to the full that "my son." 
 " McGillie " and " Colin " were his daily food, " Sonny " 
 whenever the saddle-maker returned from his annual 
 trips; but "my son" his stepfather had called 
 him that but once before, on the night after his 
 mother died. He felt rewarded for all the trials of 
 the past winter. He worshipped the saddle-maker, 
 but the Indian strain in him would give that worship 
 no verbal expression. 
 
 When both boys and all the dogs had been sleeping 
 soundly for an hour the saddle-maker opened the door 
 of the hut and stepped out, closing it behind him. He 
 wanted to be alone with the night and think out the 
 new proposition life had laid so unexpectedly before 
 hun. 
 
 THE BEGINNING OF FRIENDSHIPS 
 i 
 
 During the first year in the new environment, it 
 seemed as if Bob's senses of sight, hearing, touch 
 became from day to day almost abnormally keen. It 
 was apparent to the saddle-maker, at the end of 
 those twelve months, that the boy had acquired what 
 may best be denned as a sixth sense. This extra 
 sense of acquisitiveness was developed by his constant 
 association with their Indian neighbors. 
 
 There were not so many of them a mere remnant 
 of the Crees that had remained in this wilderness of 
 the Turtle Mountain. But from time to time they
 
 The Boy 45 
 
 were visited by some of the more northern Crees, 
 famous Hudson's Bay Company hunters and trappers 
 from the Great Lakes country south of the Saskat- 
 chewan delta. 
 
 Now and then a few Chippewa, their next of kin, 
 and like them "timber Indians", from far away 
 Bemidji and all that region of hills, lakes, and pine 
 forests in Minnesota, made pilgrimage to their 
 old altars in these mountain fastnesses, or visited for 
 a month or season with their friends and relatives 
 among the Crees. 
 
 Once, once only, it was given to Bob Collamore to 
 see Crees and Chippewa, their priests and sun-lodges, 
 a mere remnant of older days, gathering from 
 all the land between Hudson's Bay and Sault Ste. 
 Marie, in order to hold the famous Sun Ceremony in 
 this, their temple in the wilderness. 
 
 Once, only once, he was privileged to see" the swing- 
 ing lope of the great war bands, the gleam of lance 
 and eagle-plume flutter ", filing down its slopes ; and 
 once to hear their far-off chants only once. But 
 the wonders of that day, the sound of those chants 
 he could relive and hear them whenever he closed 
 his eyes to dream back to the tune when the fading 
 glory of the old Indians' days and ways, like the 
 autumn leafage of their own north country, shone 
 with a new splendor or ever their final vanishing 
 before the killing frost of modernity. 
 
 2 
 
 Just how or when Bob's intimacy with their red 
 neighbors had come about the saddle-maker failed 
 to comprehend. Looking back over the first few 
 months of the boy's life with him in the mountains, 
 he could not place his finger on any special event, on
 
 46 Out of the Silences 
 
 any one date that afforded him any explanation of 
 the extraordinarily friendly relations which were so 
 soon established between the Indians and the boy. 
 
 For two weeks after Plunket's return to his squaw- 
 less hut, they avoided being seen in its vicinity. 
 Knowing them, their ways, and outlook on the daily 
 happenings of life, he understood their attitude of 
 mind towards him in his peculiar marital circum- 
 stances, and their consequent avoidance of him a 
 white man whose squaw had ignominiously left him. 
 Had he sought and found her, compelled her by 
 threats and force and a good drubbing to return to 
 him, they would have respected him, come to chat 
 and gossip with him as was their wont. Although 
 they did not allow themselves to be seen or heard, 
 the saddle-maker knew they were aware of his every 
 move, that they had also seen the coming of the boy. 
 And, knowing that they knew he sat alone, working 
 as usual, passive in the face of the fact that his good 
 horse and mule had been taken from him, patient 
 under such severe petticoat discipline, he also knew 
 that in their Indian hearts they despised him whom 
 they called friend. 
 
 He knew all this ; but that first night of his home- 
 coming he laid out his present and future line of 
 action so far as Jane was concerned ; thought it out 
 carefully in detail, and decided to hold it for so long 
 as he might see fit. Of course he knew that by this 
 time every Indian in the Turtle Mountains was 
 aware of the trick Jane had played on him, their 
 masterful system of communication, that approaches 
 wireless telegraphy, was well known to him, that 
 they knew whither she had gone and where she was ; 
 but he purposed asking no questions. He was, in a
 
 The Boy 47 
 
 manner, Indian bred : he could wait, he had a talent 
 for that; he could also match them at their own 
 game. 
 
 But the boys could have told him tales ! Tales 
 that would have enlightened him on the subject of 
 Bob's friendliness with their Indian neighbors. Oh, 
 yes, they could have told ; only, being boys, they did 
 not choose to give themselves and their secrets away 
 to anyone. 
 
 3 
 
 The boy's curiosity to see some real Indians was 
 boundless; up to this time he had seen only the 
 scouts, much like other men, at the fort. But the 
 saddle-maker had forbidden both boys to go to the 
 villages or camps. He was biding his time, and the 
 boys might bring his plans through heedlessness to 
 naught. 
 
 "Don't ye have no truck with 'em, boys. Keep 
 to yerselves an' they'll keep their own trail." 
 
 The saddle-maker as he spoke was adjusting a small 
 yoke, exactly like a sap-bucket yoke, to Bob's thin 
 shoulders. He made it in order that the boy accord- 
 ing to his strength might help McGillie fetch water 
 from the spring. Formerly the mule performed this 
 service. Now that he was muleless and the cavalry 
 horse from the fort incapacitated for the steep trails, 
 the boys were to be water-carriers, at least, for a 
 time. 
 
 "But, Pa, what'll we do if we sight 'em? They 
 won't know what us-all means not speakin' to 'em; 
 they'll be madder'n hornets." 
 
 "Ye do wot I tell ye : lay low an' let 'em alone. Ye 
 hear?" 
 
 "Yup, but"
 
 48 Out of the Silences 
 
 "None o' yer 'huts', Colin; 't ain't no use to but 
 in with yer 'huts' when the old man says the word 
 is it now?" 
 "Nope, but Pa " 
 
 "Get on with ye," said the saddle-maker gently 
 but very firmly. 
 
 McGillie put on his yoke. "'T ain't no use," he 
 muttered as he strode away, pails swinging and 
 rattling, "if Pa once gets set, he's set; pitch pine on 
 yer leggins ain't in it with him." He flung along 
 rapidly, still muttering. Bob trotted on behind 
 jingling his two small pails in imitation of McGillie. 
 The dogs were not allowed to go with them because 
 they were liable to rile the water. 
 
 After sprinting half a mile in this mood, McGillie 
 felt better, also the need of companionship. He 
 looked around for Bob who was some distance behind 
 and nearly winded. He halted. 
 
 "Got yer wind, Bob?" 
 
 " I've hah I've got it hah " 
 
 McGillie smiled in a superior way at such softness. 
 
 "This ain't nothin' ; wait till ye have to go fifteen 
 miles winters lookin' after yer traps." 
 
 "How far is it to the spring now?" 
 
 "'Bout half a mile." 
 
 " It'll be dark 'fore we get back, won't it ? " It was 
 Bob's first trip to the spring. 
 
 "Scairt?" McGillie's tone was not acceptable to 
 Bob. 
 
 "Scairt o' wot?" His tone was loud and defiant. 
 The boy was falling into the speech of his two 
 friends. 
 
 "Oh, things" 
 
 "What things?"
 
 The Boy 49 
 
 "Injuns, mebbe; mebbe wild cats. I have saw a 
 bear close to the spring once." 
 
 A twig snapped; Bob jumped. Fortunately 
 McGillie's head was turned away at that moment. 
 
 The long light of the summer solstice evening 
 permeated the darkening woods that were filled with 
 song of thrush, and vireo, of oriole and robin. The 
 boys had started late because the heat of the day had 
 been so great. Now and then a breath of air, that 
 had lingered in some draughtless forest pocket, 
 purled out upon them, bringing with it the pungent 
 aroma of the woods. 
 
 "When does the trail to the spring begin?" was 
 Bob's next query. 
 
 "Piece ahead; it's steep, but I'll trail ye." 
 
 "I'll trail myself," muttered Bob. 
 
 In a few minutes McGillie turned to the left and 
 into the spring trail. It followed the steep slope of 
 the hillside ; it was narrow but well worn. On each 
 side was a dense coppice of scrub oaks. 
 
 "It ain't so awful steep," said Bob, slipping at 
 that moment on a loose piece of rock. 
 
 "Kick that out to one side ; that's the way men do 
 on the trail." McGillie spoke carelessly. 
 
 Bob stopped to kick, and kicked so mightily that 
 his moccasinned toes felt bruised and unjointed, espe- 
 cially his big one. He bit his lip, jack-knifed his body, 
 and with both hands nursed his toes over his left knee. 
 
 McGillie snickered. "That'll learn ye not to kick 
 rocks with moccasins, Softy." 
 
 It was too much. Suddenly Bob punched him 
 one in the back. McGillie turned on him. At that 
 moment both boys caught the muffled sound of hoofs 
 above them on the main trail.
 
 50 Out of the Silences 
 
 "Injuns !" whispered McGillie in a sepulchral tone, 
 simulating terror. 
 
 Bob could think of nothing to say but "By gosh !" 
 At least, it sounded brave and might deceive McGillie. 
 
 "Get into the bush, an' don't ye make a noise with 
 them pails on yer life," was McGillie's next order 
 carried out promptly and effectively by Bob, except 
 for the pails. He forgot to remove his yoke as he 
 dashed into the bush. McGillie would not caution 
 him about it for he felt he owed "Softy" one for 
 that punch in his back. He meant to scare him blue 
 with the Indians, and then play the rescuer in a 
 grand manner. After noiselessly disentangling the 
 yoke and pails, he crawled in after him. 
 
 "Where are they?" whispered Bob. 
 
 "Up above on the big trail." 
 
 "Will they come down here?" 
 
 "'Course, Greeny; to water their ponies; there's 
 dozens o' 'em." 
 
 "Dozens? Are, are they I mean the Indians 
 awful fierce?" 
 
 McGillie suppressed a laugh. "Most o' 'em 
 but these ain't. I'd go out and talk to 'em, only I 
 daren't aicer what Pa said." 
 
 "Can you talk English with 'em?" 
 
 "Wot yer givin' me? They talk Injun." 
 
 So McGillie could talk "Injun." This fact im- 
 pressed Bob ; he determined to learn that language. 
 He was not to be outdone by Colin McGillie ! 
 
 For the moment all was quiet above them ; only 
 the birds were singing as if mad with the midsummer 
 joy. For a moment Bob forgot the Indians; he 
 was plotting revenge. He owed McGillie "another" 
 for calling him "Greeny." He made up his mind if
 
 The Boy 51 
 
 all went well to give McGillie a scare he wouldn't 
 get over before winter. His own gocseflesh was 
 gradually subsiding. 
 
 "I guess you can't fool with them much, can you?" 
 Bob's whisper was very low. McGillie took the bait 
 at once. 
 
 "Wot d'ye know 'bout 'em! They're chock full 
 o' kinks an' fun like us-all. Injuns have jokes like 
 we-all do. I've heard 'em laughin' their heads off 
 most Shut up," he whispered suddenly, forgetting 
 he was spokesman, "an' watch out." 
 
 It was dusk among the bushes but twilight on the 
 trail. They heard the ponies entering it. 
 
 It was one of the big events as it was also the 
 keenest disappointment in Bob's short life that 
 first sight of "real" Indians. He had pictured 
 them, like all children of vivid imagination, as 
 braves in war paint, and war bonnets, with, possibly, 
 a scalp or two for belt and ornament. The more 
 suggestively awful to the child-mind is always the 
 more fascinating and alluring. 
 
 "Here they come; lay low," whispered McGillie. 
 
 Shambling down the steep trail came the ponies, 
 eight or more. The Indians sat them carelessly, 
 limbs, shoulders, heads relaxed, scenting no lurking 
 danger, at peace with themselves and the world in 
 the refreshing cool of the evening. They lopped up 
 and down as if they were a corporate part of their 
 ponies' anatomy a set of ill-clad, unkempt, inno- 
 cent, dirty men. Riding so hi silence, taking their 
 ease, they looked to be half asleep. 
 
 Suddenly into their twilight meditations, into the 
 midst of their ponies' legs, shot one after the other, 
 with banging clang and clatter, Bob's two tin pails.
 
 52 Out of the Silences 
 
 There followed rearing and bucking, frantic side- 
 stepping into the coppice, a crowding of terrified 
 bodies, bewilderment for a second on the part of the 
 Indians, confusion of man and beast in the indefinite 
 twilight, yells, imprecations, spurts of tin-pail 
 resonance as the successive hoofs madly spurned the 
 rolling unseen pails ; then terrified snorts, shouts, a 
 wild switching of tails the stampede ! The whole 
 cavalcade bolted and tore madly down the hill. On 
 they ran, galloped, leaped, trying to pass one another 
 by twos and threes on the narrow trail stumbling, 
 clattering. 
 
 The troop disappeared. From a distance came a 
 faint outcry. The Indians had been routed by what 
 they knew not. 
 
 Me Gillie, emerging from his covert, picked up a 
 few yards down the trail a battered tin pail. Bob 
 crawled out to look about him. 
 
 "Wot in thunder did ye do that for?" McGillie 
 appeared to be dumfounded. 
 
 "I wanted to see if they could take a joke," said 
 Bob innocently. 
 
 They picked up their yokes and cautiously made 
 their way down to the spring where they found the 
 other pail intact. No Indians in sight. McGillie 
 filled the three pails and put stones in the battered 
 one in order to balance Bob. In silence they climbed 
 the hill. 
 
 It was not until they had made three fourths of their 
 way home, still in silence, that McGillie saw through 
 the joke. Suddenly he set down his pails; he had 
 seen through it at last and what he saw proved too 
 much for him. He rolled over and over on the ground, 
 laughing till his jaws and stomach ached. Bob
 
 The Boy 53 
 
 smiled in the dark and kicked his heels in perfect 
 enjoyment of his success. 
 
 Me Gillie arrived at the hut in a weakened condition 
 but carried in the water. Bob hid the battered pail 
 beneath the underpinning of the shed. 
 
 That evening when the saddle-maker had gone out 
 for his bedtime smoke, McGillie whispered to Bob : 
 
 "Say, Bob" 
 
 "What?" 
 
 "I won't never call you Softy again, honest Injun." 
 
 "You'd better not. How's your back feel, Mc- 
 Gillie?" 
 
 "All right." Then: "Better not let Pa know 
 anything 'bout this scrape " 
 
 "Never," said Bob firmly. 
 
 4^ 
 
 A few weeks afterwards it was known among the 
 Indians of the village to the south, and the more 
 distant one to the north, that Kinni-kinnik's father 
 and his chums had been put to rout by the white man's 
 child. Often of an evening, about that time, in the 
 various tepees, or among the groups around smoulder- 
 ing campfires, might have been heard the sound of 
 hearty laughter, loud guffaws, the cackle of children, 
 the merry chatter of squaws the story of Kinni- 
 kinnik's father and the Little Owl, as the men had 
 already christened Bob because of his having been, un- 
 seen but seeing, at twilight in the bush, was being told 
 with great gusto by one or another of the routed ones. 
 
 It followed naturally enough that those who heard 
 of this exploit wanted to see the originator. Hence 
 the Indians' visits to the saddle-maker's were resumed, 
 Little Owl's friends multiplied rapidly, and the 
 embargo on the boys' return visits was removed.
 
 54 Out of the Silences 
 
 KlNNI-KINNIK 
 
 I 
 
 It was love at sight, Bob's first meeting with 
 Kinni-kinnik. She was called that because once, 
 when she was a mere baby and just trying her un- 
 steady feet, her grandfather, the medicine-man, to 
 his great delight had found her in his tepee sucking 
 away at his ceremonial pipe. And finding her so 
 engaged, he nicknamed her then and there after the 
 delicate inner cortex of the red willow which of old 
 he and his tribe used to smoke before tobacco was 
 abundant. Her real name, however, was Osa- 
 mequon, betokening something of the grace of a 
 little feather. 
 
 It was McGillie who was responsible for the 
 acquaintance. 
 
 Bob had been thinking hard for a month as to ways 
 and means by which he might earn an old rifle that 
 McGillie had discarded when his stepfather gave 
 him a new one, just before setting out on his disastrous 
 trading-trip. In many of his characteristics McGillie 
 was more Scotch than Indian. To what was his he 
 held on like grim death, and nothing short of a trade 
 could induce him to part with a possession. The 
 old rifle was his, and he had no idea of giving it to Bob. 
 
 The boy so longed for its possession that he tor- 
 mented McGillie by plying him with questions about 
 the weapon, and so persistently day after day, that in 
 desperation McGillie set his slow-moving wits at 
 work to formulate some scheme by which he might 
 part with the gun on the basis of a good trade. When 
 he failed to solve the problem satisfactorily he con- 
 sulted the saddle-maker. 
 
 "Ye see, Pa, it ain't as if he could do things. He's
 
 The Boy 55 
 
 soft don't know enough to take up a skunk by the 
 tail. But he pesters me tumble, Pa; kinder bores 
 in under yer skin like a sheep-tick. If I have to stand 
 it much longer I'll sure be plumb loco. Now if he 
 could do somp'in', mebbe I could trade make him 
 earn it, ye know. But wot can he do?" 
 
 "He can talk, Colin." 
 
 "Ye bet he can." McGillie's assent was so solemn 
 that a broad smile deepened the crows' feet about 
 Plunket's eyes. "But I ain't goin' to let him talk 
 me into givin' him my rifle, not by a long shot." 
 
 "An' he can read " 
 
 "Bet he can," McGillie nodded emphatically. 
 "He can read the Book. Say, Pa, it's mighty 
 int'restin' hearin' 'bout them tribes an' their wars, an* 
 their settin' up altars an' killin' beasts for sacrifices, 
 an' runnin' a he-goat out o' their camps thinkin' 
 he's carryin' their sins off with him. They fit awful 
 too worse'n the Injuns any day." 
 
 "It's just as ye say, Colin: mighty int'restin' 
 readin'. Ye see, the Book is wise, an' the boy that 
 reads it ain't a fool." 
 
 "Not on yer life!" McGillie spoke almost with 
 enthusiasm. 
 
 "An' he can write too; makes his J's straight as a 
 gun barrel an' crosses 'em like a crossbar, dots his 
 i's clear an' round like a bull's eye on a target, an' 
 twists his g's with a reg'lar round-up loop. Just 
 let him get hold of a rifle an' a pony, an' he'll go the 
 whole figger an' some more." 
 
 "Gee, I wish I could write like he does; then I 
 could make up the letters for the Injuns they send to 
 the traders and agents ; they pay good for 'em." 
 
 "I wish ye could, Colin. I ain't no learnin' that-
 
 56 Out of the Silences 
 
 away, so I ain't been able to help ye to wot folks 
 call eddication; but he could." 
 
 The saddle-maker knew naught of the modern 
 science of "suggestion", but he had practical working 
 knowledge with men and animals of what a thought 
 can accomplish if expressed suggestively, either in 
 word or action, at the fit moment to man or beast. 
 Knowing this, he waited for his words to get beneath 
 the surface. 
 
 Shortly an illuminating thought showed in Mc- 
 Gillie's pale blue eyes. He spoke eagerly : 
 
 "I say, Pa, I've got it." 
 
 " Got wot?" 
 
 "How I can trade with Bob for that rifle. Ye 
 s-s-see, I-I c-can't " 
 
 "Take it easy, Colin," said the saddle-maker kindly, 
 for the unwonted excitation of McGillie's brain- 
 matter had caused his childhood's weakness to re- 
 appear in full form. "Ye've trapped an idea, and 
 it ain't goin' to get away from ye. Try again." 
 
 Me Gillie obediently drew a long breath, following 
 a method the saddle-maker with much patience had 
 taught him in order that he might overcome the 
 physical handicap in speech, and began again, but 
 very slowly, carrying all he wished to say in the one 
 exhalation : 
 
 "I can't write, an' I can't read only little words; 
 an' if he'll learn me how to write an' read in that 
 Book, it's got a heap o' words 'bout lots o' things, 
 I can write for the Injuns an' get pay for it." 
 
 "That's wot I was thinkin' myself, Colin" 
 
 "Why didn't ye tell me then?" 
 
 Bill Plunket smiled indulgently at his stepson's 
 indignant protest. He knew, as he had said once
 
 The Boy 57 
 
 to the boy's mother, that McGillie would never set 
 the river afire ; but for all that he was a fine lad. 
 For years his stepfather had used his own unlearned 
 method in developing the slow-moving mind, so 
 inducing it to depend on itself. As a result there 
 was, of his age, no keener eye, no better trapper, no 
 surer shot, among all Plunket's acquaintance in the 
 mountains and on the plains. He answered the boy 
 accordingly. 
 
 "Thought ye'd work it out for yerself, McGillie, 
 if I let ye chew on it long enough." 
 
 "How long d' ye s'pose it'll be 'fore I can write 
 letters for the Injuns?" 
 
 "I dunno; a year, mebbe " 
 
 "A year!" There was both disgust and dis- 
 appointment in McGillie's voice. "He won't wait no 
 year for that rifle, Pa." 
 
 "That's wot I was thinkin'. Mebbe ye can trade 
 with him on wot they call the instalment plan." 
 
 "Wot's that?" 
 
 "Hand over the rifle to him now this very day 
 an' ye'll be rid of the pesterin'. Let him use it. 
 Learn him to shoot, an' shoot straight. Let the 
 boy have the good of it while he wants it so bad. 
 An' make a bargain with him that he'll give ye writin' 
 lessons twice a week, an' teach ye readin' every day 
 ye're to home. How's that ? I'll witness the trade." 
 
 "That's all right. I'll go an' clean it for him." 
 
 The plan worked, better even than McGillie 
 anticipated better, that is, for Bob. 
 2 
 
 For the next few days Bob was not parted in the 
 flesh from his rifle. It was his second possession. 
 As for his first, the big bitch, she was always with him.
 
 58 Out of the Silences 
 
 McGillie's stolid nerves became at last slightly af- 
 fected by Bob's complete absorption in his weapon 
 to the consequent ignoring of himself, as well as by 
 the aimless and endless shooting and banging at an 
 improvised target behind the hut. In consequence he 
 proposed to the saddle-maker that if he would lend him 
 the horse, he could take the boy with him along the 
 north trail to the Indian village, eight miles distant, 
 and, on the way, let him try out his gun on something 
 real if only a stump. The saddle-maker promptly gave 
 permission. He knew the embargo on visiting the 
 Indians was irksome to Me Gillie for they were 
 friends 'and breeding an inordinate curiosity in 
 Bob. 
 
 "I'd trust him with you, McGillie, anywhere in the 
 mountains; but," he added with a knowing twinkle 
 in his eye, "I dunno as I can trust ye with him. Hear 
 to me: let him do the trailing, McGillie, that 
 rifle is liable of a sudden to point most all ways. 
 Ye hear wot I say?" 
 
 McGillie promised extreme caution. As a matter 
 of fact he went so far in this direction that, all un- 
 known to Bob, he emptied the rifle of its contents 
 before starting out. . . . 
 
 "I wish I could speak Injun like you," said Bob 
 discontentedly. They were nearing the few tepees 
 and huts dignified by the name of village. 
 
 "Ye'll learn it hearin' 'em." 
 
 "What do I say when I see 'em?" 
 
 "Say 'How.'" 
 
 "How," said Bob, trying to imitate the unnatural 
 guttural ; "how how h " He stopped short 
 to stare speechless. 
 
 The trail led unexpectedly into a clearing. In
 
 The Boy. 59 
 
 front of him, against a background of poplar and 
 birch, was a tepee : and in front of the tepee, with 
 the opening for a background, stood three pappooses. 
 
 One, a girl of seven, was holding a baby boy of 
 two by the hand. Close beside her stood another 
 boy of three or four. Both little ones were in gala 
 dress, having borrowed some of the family finery in 
 the matter of their father's feather war bonnets to 
 play "grown-up", even as do their little white 
 brothers. Their small round faces were partly hidden 
 by this brilliant headgear. The little maid wore a 
 long skirt and blouse. Her dark brown hair was 
 banded fillet-like about her head. Rich red showed 
 beneath the light copper of her cheeks. The slight, 
 yet rounded form, was exceedingly graceful in line. 
 The dark eyes, shy but earnest, were fixed on Bob. 
 
 "That's Kinni-kinnik and her brothers," said 
 Me Gillie. He hailed them in their own language, 
 and springing forward to meet them left Bob to shift 
 for himself a procedure wholly foreign to the boy's 
 sociable code. He continued to stare at Kinni- 
 kinnik. 
 
 She was without exception the prettiest thing in 
 animate nature, whether human or otherwise, he 
 had ever seen. And how glad she was to see McGillie ! 
 How fast they were chattering together! Suddenly 
 Bob felt he was left out in the cold, a miserable 
 enough feeling peculiar to childhood. Its intensity 
 is measured by the degree of susceptibility in the 
 child nature, and this special child's nature was of a 
 susceptibility so intense, so spasmodic, as well as 
 sporadic, that, at times, it amounted almost to weak- 
 ness. 
 
 After a few minutes the boy became so wretched
 
 60 Out of the Silences 
 
 that he got mad through and through; and what 
 with his rage at McGillie for playing him what he 
 called a low-down trick, and his momentary sense of 
 spiritual isolation from the rest of childhood, for he 
 realized he could neither understand them nor make 
 himself understood, he presented to the little hostess 
 of the wigwam a pity-awakening figure. She turned 
 from McGillie and disappeared in the tepee. With 
 her vanishing it was as if the sun had set at midday 
 for Bob. 
 
 It was a small boy's first love, many a man looks 
 back upon his own with a tenderness unlike any 
 called forth by later experience, and it was destined 
 to feed certain springs of life which by reason of a 
 hard-conditioned childhood had almost failed the boy 
 when his mother died and, seemingly, gone wholly 
 dry since the death of his uncle. It being a requisite 
 of normal child-life that it find sustenance in the 
 affections and full development by means of them, 
 this matter of a boy's first little love is never to be 
 treated lightly. 
 
 When Kinni-kinnik reappeared she was carrying a 
 diminutive cradle-board. On it, strapped on a tiny 
 cushion and covered with a small gayly colored 
 Indian blanket, lay a sleepy two-months'-old puppy, 
 blinking idiotically. A bright beaded band of red 
 flannel about his tan-colored head heightened the 
 effect of complete lunacy. McGillie laughed loud at 
 the sight. 
 
 "You'll laugh t' other side o' your face 'fore I get 
 through with you." 
 
 This sudden growl from Bob sobered McGillie. It 
 dawned upon him that he had gone a little too far 
 in ignoring the boy. But he excused himself for
 
 The Boy 61 
 
 this: who could think of any one else when Kinni- 
 kinnik, his pet from her babyhood, was in evidence ? 
 He determined to make amends. 
 
 "Say, Bob, Kinni-kinnik wants to show ye her 
 puppy she plays doll with." He interpreted to 
 Kmni-kinnik. 
 
 The little maid walked up to Bob and gravely 
 presented him with the cradle-board. The boy held 
 out his hands. She laid the board on his opened 
 palms. 
 
 There were tears in the boy's eyes, but he set his 
 jaw to keep them from spilling over. How the 
 little Indian girl interpreted those tears Bob never 
 knew. He heard McGillie speaking : 
 
 "She wants ye to set down." 
 
 Bob dropped in the grass, Kinni-kinnik settling in 
 front of him with the lightness of an eider duck's 
 feather. The small brothers squatted on their heels 
 near their sister, although the baby lost his equilibrium 
 several tunes during the process and was restored to 
 it by Kinni-kinnik. Then Kinni-kinnik began to 
 question Bob, McGillie acting as interpreter. 
 
 "She wants to know if ye've got a father?" 
 
 Bob hated to be dependent for his speech on 
 McGillie, especially in the circumstances ; he wanted 
 to do the answering himself. He felt choked, but he 
 spoke sharply: 
 
 "You make me the Injun sign for 'dead.'" 
 McGillie obeyed. 
 
 Bob laid the cradle-board and puppy on the grass. 
 With the peculiarly graceful waving movement of 
 the one hand under and over the other, then upward 
 and skyward, he answered her: 
 
 "Dead."
 
 62 Out of the Silences 
 
 "Got a mother?" Me Gillie continued to translate. 
 
 Again that expressive motion of the boy's hands. 
 Kinni-kinnik's eyes widened in pity as she continued 
 to gaze steadily at the white boy facing her. 
 
 "Any brothers and sisters?" 
 
 For the third time the boy's hand went through 
 the same motions. 
 
 "A grandfather?" 
 
 Bob shook his head. 
 
 "Cousins, aunts, uncles?" 
 
 Another vigorous shake in the negative. Kinni- 
 kinnik failed to grasp the significance of these facts : 
 a white boy without these relations which make the 
 normal life and environment for an Indian child ! 
 And failing to comprehend this, she proceeded to 
 action along lines she thoroughly understood. 
 Stretching out her legs on the grass, she took up the 
 cradle-board and balancing it on her toes and knees, 
 as she had seen her mother do so many times, began 
 to croon a lullaby, moving her feet in such wise 
 that the balanced board swayed slightly, swinging 
 rhythmically with her song : 
 
 we we we we we we we we we we we we we we 
 
 Over and over she sang it, so softly, so tenderly, 
 like the little red mother she was, that the blinking 
 puppy ceased to blink, and the small brothers fell 
 asleep the baby tumbling over in the grass half 
 lost in his father's war bonnet, the other lying with 
 his head against his sister's arm.
 
 The Boy 63 
 
 And Bob? Unknown to himself, unknown to 
 Kinni-kinnik, undreamed of by McGillie, Bob was 
 being comforted for the loss of family affection, 
 keenly felt by him without his being conscious of 
 the meaning of that loss. They did not talk. It 
 was a new experience for the boy to enjoy companion- 
 ship without speech. He learned that day something 
 of the "Indian silence". . . 
 
 When, at last, the trees began to cast long shadows 
 on the grass, the bitch rose up suddenly from Bob's 
 side, listening, alert. At the same moment Kinni- 
 kinnik and the boys were aware of a distant subdued 
 tumult in the woods. The bitch let loose a prolonged 
 roar ; it was answered by the discordant yelping of a 
 dozen or more Indian curs, the advance couriers of 
 the family home-coming. 
 
 "They're comin', the whole kit! Ye'll see 'em 
 all now all them relations ye ain't got," said 
 McGillie, his voice betraying an undercurrent of 
 excitement. 
 
 Without ceremony Kinni-kinnik kicked off the 
 cradle-board and puppy, shook the two babies broad 
 awake, clapped the big war bonnets over their heads, 
 and dragging each by a hand attempted to run towards 
 the woods. 
 
 "Gosh, ye can't get ahead o' her." McGillie 
 spoke with admiration. Bob was silent. "Ye'll see 
 some Injuns, I can tell ye." 
 
 The boy listened, looked, and waited, tense with 
 the prospect of a new excitement. 
 
 3 
 
 It was, in truth, a family party that dribbled out of 
 the woods into the open ponies, squaws, dogs, 
 men, a boy or two, one after the other, to the accom-
 
 64 Out of the Silences 
 
 paniment of old sleigh bells, yelping of curs, clatter 
 of pails, chatter and laughter. 
 
 A squaw slipped from her pony and caught up her 
 baby, kissing him all over his face. It was Kinni- 
 kinnik's mother, Jane's sister. Kinni-kinnik said 
 something to her. The woman looked in Bob's 
 direction, but askance at him. The little girl caught 
 at her mother's hand as if urging her to come and 
 make the white boy's acquaintance. But the squaw 
 balked and answered shortly. McGillie nudged Bob. 
 
 "We'd better be gettin' out o' here. Injuns don't 
 want no white boy, that's a stranger to 'em, round 
 when they're goin' to have a reg'lar big feed. Look 
 at them rabbits, they've got dozens, I'll bet, 
 and see them maskinonge ! " 
 
 Bob needed no word of encouragement from 
 McGillie to look at anything, for he was taking note 
 of everything in sight. 
 
 "Who's the old squaw gettin' off her pony, the 
 one with the bunch o' rabbit skins?" 
 
 "That's Kinni-kinnik's grandfather's aunt, old 
 Flyin' Loon. She's most a hundred. She don't 
 make friends with no whites, let me tell ye; she's a 
 reg'lar wildcat with whites." This was a stretch of 
 imagination on McGillie's part; but it impressed 
 Bob, as he intended it should. 
 
 "Who's that behind her?" 
 
 "He's Carmastic, the medicine-man, an' Flyin' 
 Loon is his aunt he's Kinni-kinnik's grandfather, 
 an' the boy behind him is one o' Kmni-kinnik's 
 cousins. He feels mighty big 'count o' his bein' 
 a big chief's great-grandson. The big chief was 
 Flyin' Loon's brother and the medicine-man's father." 
 He twitched Bob's shirt sleeve. "See there the
 
 The Boy 65 
 
 man just comin' out o' the woods an' catchin' up the 
 little 'un on his pony? He's Kinni-kinnik's father 
 an' he's seen ye, Bob ; he's lookin' at ye." 
 
 They were fine looking men, these Crees of the 
 Border. They were lighter colored than their brothers 
 of other tribes, with noticeably regular features, keen, 
 intelligent eyes, the lines about the mouth firm, 
 clearly cut, bespeaking earnestness, straight firm 
 noses expressive of will ; and about mouth or nostrils 
 not a line indicative of cruelty or savagery. They 
 were faces to be trusted. They were friends on whom 
 a man, white or of their own race, might count when 
 once their friendship was given. The white boy 
 sensed something of this, and a boy's instinct for a 
 man's friendship is much like a dog's very generally 
 reliable. 
 
 Kinni-kinnik was catching at her father's hand as 
 she had caught at her mother's, and talking earnestly 
 and eagerly to him and the old medicine-man. The 
 two men, Kinni-kinnik between them still holding 
 her father's hand and chatting freely, came over to 
 the boys. 
 
 The child's father spoke to McGillie, and then in 
 silence took a long, searching look at Bob. But the 
 medicine-man, drawing still nearer to the boy, held 
 out his hand, speaking his own language which 
 McGillie interpreted : 
 
 "My son, you are welcome among your red 
 brothers." 
 
 Bob, looking up into the keen undimmed eyes, 
 looking down again at the slender wrist, the thin 
 long-fingered hand, gave then and there to this 
 Indian his whole-hearted allegiance, his whole trust, 
 gave it at once and absolutely. Placing his hand in
 
 . 66 Out of the Silences 
 
 the Indian's outstretched one, he said in the best 
 imitation of McGillie of which he was capable : 
 
 "How, Carmastic." 
 
 Kinni-kinnik's father grunted approval, and the 
 little maid, shy pleasure in her brown eyes, took the 
 hand she was still holding and catching up Bob's 
 left laid it within her father's. 
 
 So the bond was cemented through Kinni-kinnik. 
 
 4 
 
 They waited long enough to see the campnre 
 lighted, the big kettle of water put over it to boil, the 
 rabbits skinned and put in to stew ; then they went 
 homewards along the darkening north trail. 
 
 INFLUENCES 
 
 i 
 
 Chum, Carmastic, Flying Loon, Kinni-kinnik and 
 her brothers, these became his life friends; but it 
 was three years before he could speak easily with them 
 in their own tongue, and a year after McGillie had 
 gone into the far north, to the Great Lakes region of 
 Manitoba to trap for one of the Hudson's Bay Com- 
 pany's posts in that region. 
 
 With the medicine-man's grandson, whom he called 
 Chum because he was his Indian intimate, he hunted, 
 trapped, fished, and learned to ride, when at last he 
 possessed a pony, as Indians ride. He became like 
 an Indian boy in his method of wild-thing warfare. 
 But it was through the children he was initiated into 
 the ways of Indian family life, given the freedom of the 
 tepee, permitted to play their games with their mother. 
 In time he acquired their language. He learned their 
 songs, their dances. He was much with them, for 
 Kinni-kinnik was the lodestone that drew him often
 
 The Boy 67 
 
 over the north trail with his old gun and the bitch for 
 protection. 
 
 The cavalry mount was slow but sure, provided the 
 impossible was not required of him too slow for 
 Bob on his way to Kinni-kinnik's tepee of a cold 
 afternoon in November. . . 
 
 It is warm in the wigwam, warm and cozy in the 
 glow of the central fire through the smoke. Often 
 he plays the game of " silence " with the children and 
 their mother ; there are presents for the one who keeps 
 it longest unbroken. When all is quiet in the tepee, 
 their mother sings about the fat pig hanging in a 
 tree a snicker "Who's that?" Dead silence on 
 the little ones' part. The mother continues her song 
 of a Frenchman, of the man-with-a-pack and, last, 
 of a rabbit jumping, leaping. "Who will win this 
 arrow?" She draws forth from its hiding-place a 
 vermilion-tipped arrow; she had it beneath the 
 blanket. 
 
 The children are still, like mice. It is so warm and 
 drowsy in the wigwam. The mother sings again, 
 ending her song suddenly with "Zipl" Pig, man- 
 with-a-pack, Frenchman, rabbit all have vanished 
 into dreamland through the gateway of song. 
 
 It is dark outside in the woods. The wind is 
 rising. Bob shivers at the sound ; but the two baby 
 brothers lie curled up with their puppies on the 
 blanket, and Kinni-kinnik's winks are long and far 
 between as she snuggles against her mother. . . 
 
 Out of the warmth and the hominess the boy goes 
 homeward glad of a breath of fresh air in his lungs 
 after the close, smelly atmosphere of the wigwam, 
 but with a strange hunger in his heart. It is lonely 
 in the woods on the north trail. The sun has set.
 
 68 Out of the Silences 
 
 The horse is too slow going either north or south for 
 Bob. All old Flying Loon's stories race through 
 his mind. 
 
 It grows dark on the trail. The gray bark of the 
 great sycamore, that stands at the meeting of the 
 three trails, shows ghastly in the twilight. In the 
 boy's greatening pupils, backed by his quickened 
 imagination, it assumes the form of an Indian Chief 
 the old squaw's brother who in this very region 
 wreaked fearful vengeance on the Sioux. A quivering 
 misshapen aspen embodies the old squaw's mother, 
 the great medicine-woman ; he hears her whispered 
 incantations in the rustle of its leaves. A burned and 
 blackened poplar stump lying beside the trail is the 
 crumpled body of a "black-robe" killed by the Sioux. 
 
 The swish somewhere of a lynx! He hears 
 it. It raises the gooseflesh all over his body. The 
 snapping of dried underbrush in the woodsy gloom 
 gives a bad jolt to his heart. . . 
 
 Each time he swore never to go over the trail 
 again after dark ; and time and time again forswore 
 himself, for the trail had for him always its own 
 peculiar lure, and just to see the mothering of her 
 babies by Jane's sister fed something of the boy's 
 heart-hunger which he felt but could not define. 
 
 2 
 
 It remained for Flying Loon and her old nephew, 
 the medicine-man, to complete his Indian education. 
 
 This ancient squaw her skin was like singed hide, 
 her body like a brown skeleton leaf in autumn was 
 a veritable treasure-house of Indian legendary lore and 
 tradition. Her mother had been a famous medicine- 
 woman in her day. Flying Loon, her century-old 
 daughter, familiar with every legend, a conjurer of
 
 The Boy 69 
 
 spirits of animals, believing honestly in "spooks", 
 peopling the wilderness with ghosts of old-time warrior 
 bands returning from the warpath, filled so full the 
 boy's receptive mind, so kindled his imagination, that 
 the wilderness became alive for him ; its trails spirit- 
 filled with bands of warring Sioux and Cree ; his ears 
 quick to hear the almost noiseless tread of its by- 
 gone generations. The remnants of its old altars 
 and their mysteries were almost sacred to him. 
 
 Many an hour Bob spent in company with Car- 
 mastic and the old squaw. The saddle-maker was 
 amused at this intimacy ; it also aroused his interest 
 and curiosity. 
 
 "Wot d'ye talk 'bout with 'em, Son?" he asked 
 him once when the boy's home-coming had been later 
 than usual. 
 
 "Oh, most anything." 
 
 " Injuns do most o' the talkin', or you ? " 
 
 He wanted to draw the boy out and knew the only 
 way was by the direct question. 
 
 "Kind o' half an' half." Bob smiled out of the 
 corners of his brown eyes. He knew how to increase 
 the saddle-maker's curiosity ; he practised his methods 
 on the Indians who are like children in this respect. 
 
 "Half an' half o' wot?" Plunket's patience was 
 practically endless when he was on the trail of an 
 interesting investigation. 
 
 "We swap yarns." 
 
 "Swap, do ye? Wot kind d' ye swap?" 
 
 "Injun and the Book yarns. Old Flyin' Loon 
 tells reg'lar spook ones 'bout dreams, an' spirits 
 walkin' down by the lakes. An' then I go her one 
 better you see, I have to, or she wouldn't respect 
 me."
 
 70 Out of the Silences 
 
 The saddle-maker smiled. He knew what "yarns" 
 the boy's vivid imagination could bring forth on 
 occasion. 
 
 "Yep. I tell her 'bout Saul's goin' to the Witch 
 of Endor, and how she drew a great circle with her 
 staff I put that in ; you see, the Injuns are great 
 on circles; it's their magic on the ground; an' 
 she called up Samuel who was dead and had been a 
 great medicine-man and Saul's best friend ; and how 
 the ghost of Samuel spoke to Saul an' said he would 
 lose all his lands and his warriors and his sons because 
 he hadn't done what the Great Spirit had ordered 
 him to do kill off another tribe. An' Saul was 
 so scared that he fell down. 
 
 "It says, you know, Plunket" (Plunket did not 
 know, but was an absorbed spectator of Bob's dra- 
 matic expression of Saul's condition), "that he fell 
 down all along the earth, an' I showed her how he did 
 it " He broke off suddenly with a ringing laugh. 
 Bill Plunket joined him ; it was a tonic to hear that 
 laugh. 
 
 " Gee, I got the old squaw scared bluer than Saul, 
 you bet. She began to shake and try to sing, but her 
 voice cracked so she had to give it up, and kept 
 muttering something 'bout that was why the Crees 
 had lost their lands, and warriors, and sons. 
 
 "An' I wouldn't get up off the ground, for I told 
 her the ghost of Samuel had taken all my strength 
 from me, just as he took Saul's, an' I'd have to eat 
 something to give me strength, just as Saul did when 
 he came to. 
 
 "You see, Plunket, I knew she'd got a lot of rasp- 
 berries somewhere 'round, for Kinni-kinnik told me 
 they'd been berrying all day."
 
 The Boy 71 
 
 ' "Did she give ye some?" 
 
 "A heap! More'n I could eat. They always get 
 something to eat when they come here ; an' I wasn't 
 goin' to tell my best stories out of the Book without 
 gettin' good pay hi feed." 
 
 The saddle-maker laughed. He knew what fun 
 the boy had at times with his red friends. "How did 
 Carmastic take it?" 
 
 "Oh, he he's different. You see, sometimes he 
 believes me an' then again he doesn't. Sometimes I 
 yarn awful make up a lot of stuff to fool him, but 
 the old medicine-man knows every time. He just 
 sits, an' smokes, an' says 'Huh huh ,' an' he 
 am.' Chum laugh fit to split. But when I say, 'That's 
 in the Book; I'll read it to you,' why, he always 
 believes me." 
 
 "He tells ye yarns too?" 
 
 "Lots : 'bout all the tribes up north where McGillie 
 is; an' way out west in the mountains; an' 'bout Indians 
 at the reservation on the Missouri near our fort, an' 
 all their wars, an' how they used to fight all over this 
 mountain. He tells me how some of the Injuns 
 trouble him ; for, he says, Plunket, they have forsaken 
 the ways of their fathers and taken up with the white 
 man's religion. It's queer but that's just what they 
 did in the Book, only they put it in different words." 
 
 "Wot does the Book say 'bout that, Son?" 
 
 "That the nations had forgotten God and forsaken 
 the ways of their fathers' God, and gone whoring with 
 strange idols. Gee whiz! Didn't they get paid up 
 for that, Plunket!" 
 
 "How, Son?" 
 
 "They got licked back into shape by God, Plunket. 
 He didn't let one of 'em get away with their idols an'
 
 72 Out of the Silences 
 
 strange ways. I'll read it to you to-night it's 
 awful ; an' old Flyin' Loon's ghost yarns, an' all her 
 massacres, an' scalpin's, ain't in it with what those 
 nations that forgot God had to stand. You know, 
 Plunket, sometimes I can't help thinkin' God kind o' 
 flicked 'em on the raw it was some punishin' He 
 did." 
 
 "I guess they needed it all right. So Carmastic 
 said his people had some of 'em forsaken the ways of 
 their fathers, did he? Well, he's 'bout right; but 
 then he ain't never had no truck with the missionary 
 men. Once in ten years or so they come through here, 
 but they don't make no headway not with the 
 Crees. These Injuns stick to their religion, an' I 
 respect 'em for it." 
 
 "That's just what Carmastic told me. He said: 
 'Son of the Silent Places,' you know he's called me 
 that ever since he found me in the big timber by the 
 lake with the three bays, over westward, away from 
 the trail. I found a buffalo skull there an' I told him 
 'bout it. An' he told me the buffalo skull used to 
 be on the altar when they had a ceremony, he said : 
 'Son of the Silent Places, all men, red and white, are 
 the children of the Great Spirit, the great Sky-father ; 
 but the red men worship the Sky-father in one way and 
 the white men in another way. We do not ask the 
 white men to worship our way, and we do not want 
 the white men to try to make us worship their way. 
 Red men and white men all have to eat to live, but 
 the red man is not nourished by the white man's food, 
 an' the Indian's food makes the white man turn 
 pale. I have seen this. So the red man's spirit needs 
 other food than the white man's spirit does.'" 
 
 "I guess he's 'bout right, Son."
 
 The Boy 73 
 
 "He sure is." Bob spoke as if his own knowledge 
 were of this world and the next. 
 
 "Well, hold on to what the Book tells ye. It's a 
 mighty old book an' I don't know much 'bout it 
 except wot ye tell me an' read to me, but it's worth 
 hearin' an' my mother used to read it." 
 
 "I don't believe all it says." 
 
 "How's that?" 
 
 "Why, you see, you just can't, Plunket. There's 
 that yarn 'bout Joshua standin' on a wall" (Bob 
 embellished at times) " an' tellin' the sun to stand still 
 an' it did, an' its shadow went backwards ! That's 
 all rot, an' Carmastic says so too." 
 
 "Mgh. You an' the old medicine-man gettin' 
 pretty intimate, ain't ye?" 
 
 "I like him ; he explains things to me." 
 
 "Wot things?" 
 
 "Oh, things: how the animals talk, an* their 
 spirits live always " 
 
 "I'll bet you couldn't go him one better than that, 
 Son. The old man was too much for you there " 
 
 "I could too. I told him 'bout Balaam's ass 
 talkin' to him on the road an' he believed that, he 
 did. But I don't." 
 
 "I don't know nothin' 'bout Balaam's ass, but my 
 mule could most talk when she'd a mind to. S'posin' 
 ye read me 'bout that talkin' ass an' the circumstances, 
 then I'll judge for myself." 
 
 "All right. I'll read you, too, 'bout Elisha an' the 
 bears that came out o' the woods an' ate up forty-two 
 children just 'cause they hollered after him : 'Bald- 
 pate, Baldpate ! ' I scared Kinni-kinnik an' the boys 
 so they didn't go out of the tepee till their father came 
 home, tellin' them that."
 
 74 Out of the Silences 
 
 "I wonder where that mule o' mine is," said the 
 saddle-maker without noticing, apparently, Bob's last 
 exploit in terrifying the three pappooses within their 
 little red skins. " Kinni-kinnik's pa ever said any- 
 thing 'bout seein' her?" 
 
 "Nope." 
 
 "Nor the horse nor Jane, has he?" 
 
 "Nope." 
 
 This answer puzzled Plunket. It was time to 
 learn something about Jane ; it was high time to find 
 out what she was doing and where she was. The 
 time limit he had set himself for letting her alone was 
 about to expire three years and a half now since 
 his home-coming to the squawless and childless hut. 
 He had waited in vain for the Indians to put him on 
 the trail. Of her whereabouts he had reasons for 
 believing he could make a good guess ; but no word or 
 hint had his red friends let fall concerning her. He 
 had hoped they would tell the boy something about 
 her; that Bob would repeat this to him. This 
 answer hi the negative disappointed him. He knew 
 the boy was truth itself when any serious matter 
 was at stake. 
 
 He decided to take affairs into his own hands. 
 Jane had been emancipated quite long enough and 
 his two boys were outgrowing babyhood and needing 
 a father their father. Bill Plunket knew his duty, 
 but anticipated little pleasure in doing it. He told 
 himself if Jane had taken unto herself another mate, 
 he would still be responsible for his boys and father 
 them to manhood. If, on the contrary, she had 
 remained his squaw well, there was but one thing 
 to do. Bob, noticing that his silence was not in the 
 usual order of story-telling, left him alone.
 
 The Boy 75 
 
 During the next fifteen minutes the saddle-maker 
 chewed the bitter cud common to all men who have 
 made a matrimonial mistake. 
 
 McGlLLIE 
 
 During his last year on the mountain, McGillie's 
 progress in writing was so painfully slow, and his 
 instructor so impatient, that the semi-weekly lesson 
 became a burden and discipline for both boys. Bob 
 persisted in it because it was a matter of honor to 
 earn his gun "straight", as he confided to the saddle- 
 maker who found plenty of amusement in watching 
 the two boys' manoeuvres to diminish the lesson- 
 strain. Moreover, he determined to keep on with 
 his instructions because it opened up a way for him 
 to earn a pony. 
 
 McGillie had let it be known through Kinni-kinnik 
 to the Indians, that in time he would be prepared to 
 write letters in English for them and mail them at 
 Boissevain for proper compensation. This prop- 
 osition met with favor from his red friends, for 
 often they were sorely put to it to make their wants 
 and complaints known to distant authorities. 
 
 In consequence of this somewhat premature as 
 well as rash statement, he was called upon before he 
 had been six months at the hateful task of making 
 what he called fish hooks and lariat loops, to write a 
 letter to a certain trader in the north. 
 
 McGillie was staggered, but there was no crying- 
 halves. He agreed to do it "with help." Then 
 much against his grain he consulted Bob, but only 
 because he was confronted by stern necessity in time 
 limits. 
 
 "Wot'll I do?" he queried anxiously. "I told
 
 y6 Out of the Silences 
 
 'em I'd write that letter for 'em, an' now I can't do 
 it more'n a chipmunk. Gosh, I'd better lose my 
 gun than go back on wot I've said to the Injuns ! Ye 
 see, if ye do it just once they get set against ye for 
 life. I thought ye'd help me, but ye don't know much 
 Injun." His pale blue eyes beneath scant reddish 
 eyebrows were full of real trouble. Bob made no 
 answer. He was thinking hard. 
 
 "Look here, McGillie " He spoke so abruptly 
 after a few minutes' silence that McGillie came 
 promptly to attention and bored his worried-looking 
 eyes into his attorney's ; " you can talk Injun, an' 
 I can't, not much yet ; an' you can understand all 
 they say, an' I can only understand a part." 
 
 "That's so." McGillie answered perfunctorily. 
 He made no attempt to follow a blind mental trial. 
 He could only wonder what Bob was driving at. 
 
 "An' I can write " 
 
 This forceful pronouncement was interrupted by a 
 superlatively whole-hearted confirmation from the 
 would-be scribe : 
 
 "Ye're the rip-snortin'est kind o' a writer, Bob." 
 
 "An' you can't." This self-evident fact lost no 
 weight from the tone in which it was uttered. Hear- 
 ing it, McGillie's hopes waned. 
 
 "Nope." There was both disgust and discourage- 
 ment audible in the monosyllable. Bob laughed. 
 
 "You old numskull, that's what my uncle 
 used to call me when I was thick, don't you see 
 now?" 
 
 Poor muddled McGillie could only parry feebly: 
 
 "See wot?" 
 
 "Gee, I'd like to punch a hole through your head 
 an' let in some daylight. Don't you see that if
 
 The Boy 77 
 
 you can talk Injun an' can't write it, an' I can write 
 English an' can't talk Injun much, that we can 
 make a go of it together?" 
 
 "How?" 
 
 Now Bob had collated and abstracted certain words 
 from the Book that were intended to express the very 
 essence of expletive when occasion demanded, as at 
 the present moment. Having once suffered from a 
 boil on the back of his neck, and his no great amount 
 of patience being tried to the utmost by the continuous 
 irritation and inconvenience caused by the eruption, 
 he had gathered a little comfort from the Book of 
 Job. He drew near in spirit, as also in the torture of 
 the flesh, to this patriarch, and found a real con- 
 solation in the fact that he was much less afflicted 
 than this Biblical subject. He never went so far as 
 as to follow Job and curse his Creator. His innate 
 reverence forbade that ; but he fashioned a semi- 
 curse, founded on his present affliction and the 
 ancient sufferer's, that, in moments of crisis like the 
 present, gave vent to his extreme irritation and im- 
 patience in three words. Hearing that last "How?" 
 of McGillie's, his impatience with the lad's stupidity 
 reached the explosive point. 
 
 "By Job's boils! Can't you see through a gun- 
 barrel when you're cleaning it?" 
 
 In despair of imparting to the slow-working mind 
 even a dim perception of what he was aiming at, 
 a good bargain as well as a way for McGillie to keep 
 his word to the Indians, he shook his fist dan- 
 gerously near the quarter-breed's nose. 
 
 "It's as plain as the nose on your face ain't 
 it ? that if I can write English an' you can talk 
 Injun, an' if the Injun tells you in Injun what he
 
 78 Out of the Silences 
 
 wants you to write in English, an' you've got a tongue 
 in your head to tell me in English what he says to you 
 in Injun, an' if you tell the Injun, in Injun, that you 
 tell me in English what he says to you in Injun, 
 why I can write English for the Injun, can't I ? 
 Now see?" 
 
 It took several minutes and twice repeating before 
 McGillie found his way through the intricacies of this 
 scheme. But when he did ! 
 
 DISILLUSIONED 
 
 i 
 
 So the pact was made, the half-and-half profits 
 agreed to, and in due time the pony earned. 
 
 McGillie, in the third year of Bob's life with the 
 saddle-maker, was in the far north earning his live- 
 lihood as trapper for one of the Hudson's Bay Com- 
 pany's posts in the region of the Great Lakes of 
 Manitoba. After he left the mountains, Bob ac- 
 cepted the full responsibilities of the position of 
 tribal scribe, and reaped all the benefits accruing to 
 his unique position of letter-writer for all the Indians 
 within a radius of many miles. 
 
 Naturally he was cheated in his first pony trade. 
 The Crees are notably honest when dealing in others' 
 property, honest and trustworthy; but, like their 
 white brothers, they display the greatest finesse in 
 trickery when selling and bartering what is their own. 
 Generally they get the better of the bargain. A 
 horse trade, especially, which among both red men 
 and white is proverbially an accepted game of shy- 
 stering, permits the full display of some of the meanest 
 characteristics of mankind at least, Bob found it so. 
 
 For over a year now he had been writing letters
 
 The Boy 79 
 
 to the best of his ability no small ability that, for 
 the boy had for his only and continual reading the one 
 Book : a portion of the Old Testament that was found 
 together with a pack of soiled cards by the three who 
 sought refuge in the Missouri dugout, and tossed 
 into the kit by the soldiers whose orders were to take 
 everything belonging to the rescued. He profited 
 by the reading in more ways than one. 
 
 This soiled, coverless torso of Scripture had been to 
 him a wellspring of pure English. It provided him 
 with a simple yet expressive vocabulary, and regu- 
 lated the flow of his ever-ready language, clarifying 
 the vernacular of his white environment. Together 
 with the fine simple expression of the Indian thought 
 and mind in the Cree language, not such a distant 
 thought from that of the Israelites in their tongue 
 of old, it gave to him the use of a dual language. 
 He changed at will from the vernacular of the hut 
 to the English of King James' version of the Book, 
 conscious only of the change in that he used it to suit 
 circumstances. His constant intercourse with the 
 Indians increased this gift of dual speech. 
 
 That the letters were satisfactorily written was 
 evidenced to the Indians by the replies they received 
 which were duly read to them by Bob. Indians 
 believe what they can see, and seeing the result of 
 their written communications they believed in the 
 boy and loved him. They failed, however, to under- 
 stand his white outlook; as a result, all friendships 
 came near suffering shipwreck on the pony trade. 
 
 2 
 
 On his day of triumph, Bob rode his own pony 
 over the north trail. As he neared the hut he let 
 forth a war whoop that roused the bitch to fury and
 
 8o Out of the Silences 
 
 spurted the pony, who never had known a warpath, 
 over the grass to the hut. Plunket and the dogs 
 came out to see. 
 
 "See my pony, my horse, Plunket!" he shouted. 
 "He's all mine I earned him. Look at my 
 blanket!" He flung himself from the pony to dis- 
 play its bright colors in warp and woof. "They 
 threw it in." The saddle-maker admired it. 
 
 ' ' They done well by ye, Son. Ye deserve it. Ye' ve 
 worked for it hard too. 'T was a tough job ye 
 tackled to learn McGillie letter-writin', an' a tougher 
 to keep at it. He can manage a couple o' words on a 
 post-card, but that's his limit. Let's look the beast 
 over." 
 
 He examined the pony's teeth, punched his chest, 
 felt his hocks, passed his hand down his cheek, which 
 the pony resented in a rather ugly manner by throw- 
 ing up his head viciously, and ran his palm along his 
 backbone. Bob, thinking he knew it all, had been 
 unwilling to ask advice, concerning this trade, of the 
 saddle-maker who was wise enough not to offer any, 
 thinking it best to let the boy have his experience 
 early ; but he strongly desired his approval of this 
 purchase. During the examination of the little 
 beast, he tried to read the saddle-maker's face, but 
 failed. 
 
 "He's a good looking pony, but looks can be 
 deceivin'. Don't ye get too hot under yer shirt 
 collar, Son," he said quietly, "'cause I'm goin' to 
 tell ye somp'in' no man nor boy wants to hear for " 
 
 "Wot's that?" Bob's voice was sharp. 
 
 "This beast is spavined in both legs, so he can't 
 limp see ? If he wanted to, he couldn't. An' he's 
 chest-foundered so he ain't safe on the down side o'
 
 The Boy 81 
 
 an ant hill. An' his sight ain't quite wot it ought to 
 be ; ye see he didn't know whether I was goin' to be 
 kind to him or wallop his cheek with a rope just now 
 kind o' blind in the off eye. But his will is good 
 to do just 'bout the right thing at the right time so 
 long as he ain't interfered with, just like some folks. 
 I'll say that much for him, and that's all the good 
 there is 'bout him. Ye might stick on him if he'd 
 let ye, but then again ye mightn't, just accordin'. 
 They've cheated ye." 
 
 The boy's raging passion at the fraud perpetrated 
 on him, the burning sense of injustice, the hate so 
 suddenly kindled by the undermining of his trust in 
 men and animals, overcame him so suddenly that his 
 cheeks showed white through the tan before a surge 
 of blood turned his face scarlet ; then his anger found 
 vent. 
 
 "I'll kill that Injun, I'll kill him kill him! " he 
 shrieked, yet choking over his words. He struck out 
 blindly with his fists. With a howl the bitch fled 
 precipitately. The pony caught a blow on his 
 weakened chest muscles, reared snorting, then raced 
 for the woods. The dogs turned tail and made 
 for the hut. The saddle-maker alone stood his 
 ground, although the bright blanket swished over 
 his head as the boy flung it as far from him as 
 he could. 
 
 "Just let me get my gun get at him," he panted, 
 making a dash for the hut and his rifle. But at that 
 moment the saddle-maker laid hands on him for the 
 first and only time since he had been with him. He 
 must not let things go too far with the boy or 
 the Indians. 
 
 "Come along with me," he said firmly; and with
 
 82 Out of the Silences 
 
 much balking and kicking, the boy was beside 
 himself, Bob was dragged into the shed, taken by 
 his belt, dropped on a pile of dried grass, and the door 
 bolted on him before he quite realized what had 
 happened. 
 
 3 
 
 For a month the boy was moody and mostly silent, 
 plotting revenge. No word of the saddle-maker's 
 appeased him ; no argument held any force of con- 
 viction for him. He had been cheated after giving 
 good work, defrauded in not receiving for it a square 
 compensation. In vain the saddle-maker told him 
 that white men did the same. He did not believe 
 him. He had his own ideals of the white man's 
 civilization. 
 
 " 'T was a crooked deal, Son, and nothing can 
 make it square," the saddle-maker admitted; "but 
 let me tell ye, ye'll run up against a good many like 
 it an' it don't help nothing nor square nothing to be 
 a sorehead through life." 
 
 " 'T isn't right." 
 
 "No more it aint: but their ideas ain't ours, 
 don't ye see? Ye've got to look at things the way 
 they do 'fore ye cut loose from 'em won't see 'em 
 when they come hangin' round here like children 
 waitin' to make up. Kinni-kinnik's pa tells me 
 that she's off her reg'lar feed ever since ye stopped 
 goin' there, most a month. When an Injun stops 
 eatin', ye can depend on it there's trouble." 
 
 All this was as water spilt on the ground ; it failed 
 to change the boy's attitude towards his friends. 
 
 "'T isn't right, 't isn't fair," was all the answer 
 forthcoming. The saddle-maker desisted and trusted 
 to time, the all-healer.
 
 The Boy 83 
 
 4 
 
 The very next day Carmastic, on his pony, drew up 
 at the door of the shed where the saddle-maker usually 
 sat at work. The two men had always been most 
 friendly and the Indian's welcome was a hearty one. 
 Carmastic dismounted and left the pony to graze. 
 
 "I have come to see Little Owl. He no longer 
 comes to see us. Our skies are always clouded now ; 
 we miss the sunshine. Where is Little Owl?" 
 
 The saddle-maker spoke Cree fairly under- 
 standingly. "He was here a minute ago. He left 
 when he saw you coming, Carmastic. You know why 
 the sun refuses to shine?" 
 
 "I know." 
 
 "I will find him." 
 
 When Bob saw who it was coming out of the woods 
 from the north trail, he beat a quick retreat into the 
 shed, scaled the ladder to the low loft and lay at this 
 moment under the eaves with his eye to a long crack 
 between the boards. He could hear every word, 
 and see enough to satisfy him that Carmastic was in 
 full dress: high, dark blue leggings, a beaded and 
 embroidered shirt fringed along the length of the 
 sleeves, a broad scarlet belt beaded in white, and 
 around his neck, over the shirt, something like a 
 breast-plate wrought skilfully in a solid design of 
 blue, white, and amber beads. It was a wonderful 
 thing, a thing of extreme beauty as the sun struck it 
 and sent a reflection up into Bob's right eye. 
 
 In his hand he held his ceremonial peace pipe at 
 which Bob had been permitted to look, but never to 
 touch although his fingers ached to handle the long 
 stem, the carved red bowl. He saw the Indian sit 
 down on his heels before the door. He rested the
 
 84 Out of the Silences 
 
 bowl of his pipe on the ground and held the stem in 
 his right hand ; it reached to the height of his fore- 
 head, and he was a long-backed man. 
 
 Bob knew enough of the red people's ways to 
 understand that this was a ceremonial visit and must 
 be treated as such. It meant business. He said to 
 himself that he trusted the medicine-man ; that it 
 wasn't Carmastic's or Chum's fault that he had been 
 cheated out of a good pony. He wanted one like 
 Carmastic's, and he knew he deserved it. 
 
 So for a moment his thoughts ran on, but no longer 
 turbidly obscuring what, at bottom, was of value in 
 the friendship of the Indians. Suddenly, hearing 
 Plunket's step on the ladder, he longed with a great 
 longing to mingle again with his friends. He told 
 Plunket about it afterwards, applying Scripture as 
 he often did when moved deeply: "My bowels 
 yearned towards Chum and Carmastic." Whereat 
 the saddle-maker smiled, for he knew the boy's 
 misery had root in his social isolation as well as the 
 wretchedness common to humankind when it kicks 
 too long and too vigorously, barking its own shins, 
 against the pricks of human meannesses. 
 
 "I'm comin' down, Plunket," he announced when 
 the saddle-maker's head appeared above the square 
 opening in the floor of the loft. 
 
 "All right, Son. I'm goin' to the hut to get some 
 feed an' 'baccy for Carmastic." 
 
 THE PIPE OF PEACE 
 
 i 
 
 "How, Little Owl." 
 "How, Carmastic." 
 A long silence followed. Bob was not at his ease,
 
 The Boy 85 
 
 for he knew not what to expect next, what to say or 
 do. But he had already learned certain ways of 
 wisdom from his Indian environment, among them 
 the way of silence : nothing to say, nothing to mend. 
 He sat down in the shed doorway at a respectful 
 distance from the medicine-man. 
 
 Slowly Carmastic passed his hand along the stem 
 of his pipe. At last he broke silence : 
 
 "We will smoke the peace pipe together, Little 
 Owl." 
 
 Bob was staggered at the statement. Never yet 
 had he put a pipe, or the weed in any form, between 
 his lips. He had given his promise to the saddle- 
 maker to wait until he was fourteen. But he knew 
 he could not refuse this invitation which in itself 
 was an honor. No white man would dare to refuse, 
 much less a white boy. Nor had he any desire to 
 cross the old Indian; on the contrary he cherished 
 an overweening ambition to smoke this special pipe, 
 noted, as he had been told, among the members of 
 the tribe far beyond the confines of the Turtle Moun- 
 tain. 
 
 "We will smoke it together," he replied, knowing 
 this to be the only safe answer. He saw the saddle- 
 maker coming from the hut, tobacco bag in hand. 
 
 "I'm goin' to smoke the peace pipe with the 
 medicine-man." There was an unmistakable note of 
 triumph in his voice. Plunket smiled. 
 
 "That's just as it should be, Son. Here's yer 
 'baccy." He handed it to Bob who gave it to Car- 
 mastic. 
 
 The medicine-man had three small sticks hi his 
 hand. Bob watched him with growing curiosity. 
 The Indian made a crotch of the sticks and placed a
 
 86 Out of the Silences 
 
 cross-stick in it. Against this stick he propped the 
 stem of his pipe; the bowl rested on the ground. 
 He knelt before it on one knee, speaking earnestly : 
 
 "Little Owl came among us, we did not go to him. 
 We welcomed him. We called him Little Friend. 
 Ponder what I say : 
 
 "His red friends have been tricked many times by 
 Little Owl's older brothers. The white men came to 
 us carrying two faces one when they sought a gift 
 from us : our land, the corn that grows on it, our 
 waters in which we fish, our forests in which we hunt ; 
 the other when they had been given what they covet 
 from us. Our lands, waters, forests all are now 
 the white man's. 
 
 "They speak friendship before the gift, they betray 
 friendship after the gift has been bestowed. 
 
 "Now they are fed. We go hungry. They dam 
 our waters, and we lack for fish. They cut down our 
 forests; they are warmed and clothed by what we 
 lack. Their iron horses carry them up and down our 
 lands ; they are free to go and to come. We may not 
 move of our own will, but only at the will of white 
 men. We are no longer free. But the children of 
 these white men are not hated by the Indians ; their 
 fathers' deeds are not theirs. Ponder what I say : 
 
 "There are two kinds of white men, good and bad. 
 There are two kinds of red men, good and bad. Little 
 Owl has been tricked once by a bad Indian; for 
 friendship he received fraud. Little Owl's red 
 brothers have been tricked times without number 
 by the bad white men for more than a hundred 
 years Flying Loon knows. I have said." 
 
 In the silence that followed Bob did some hard 
 thinking for a thirteen-year-old. The Indian took up
 
 The Boy 87 
 
 his pipe, filled it, lighted it and looked inquiringly at 
 the saddle-maker who shook his head with an em- 
 phatic gesture. 
 
 "We have always been good friends, Carmastic. 
 We have no need to smoke the peace pipe. This is 
 between you and the boy." 
 
 The Indian grunted approval. He lifted the pipe 
 from the crotch ; raised it straight up towards the 
 sun ; held it so a moment, then, lowering it, put it to 
 his lips and drew a few times till the weed was bright 
 in the bowl. He passed it to Bob, who had seated 
 himself on the other side of the crotch of sticks in 
 order to get a better view of the famous pipe. 
 
 Bob took the pipe with a gravity becoming the 
 occasion. He gave the saddle-maker one quick 
 glance as if asking his entire approval of this reaction- 
 ary proceeding. His friend nodded. The boy put 
 his lips to the stem. 
 
 It is one thing to watch a man smoke his pipe, taking 
 his ease and receiving comfort from the process, and 
 quite another to make a first attempt to smoke one, 
 especially when one is a boy, unused to both pipe and 
 tobacco, and confronted by some two and a half feet 
 of pipestem through which to draw up the smoke. 
 
 It was with difficulty Bill Plunket preserved his 
 gravity throughout the ceremony. The Indian's face 
 was impassive. 
 
 Bob's face muscles were working energetically; 
 he was giving his undivided attention to suction. 
 His cheeks were hollowed by the effort, his eyes 
 bulging, his face red with the exertion. For several 
 minutes there was no perceptible result. Suddenly 
 there was an irruption of smoke that would have done 
 credit to a small volcano. Bob had put forth his
 
 88 Out of the Silences 
 
 utmost wind-effort and drawn smoke into his entire 
 breathing apparatus lungs, throat, mouth, nose. 
 He choked, sputtered, gasped, opening his mouth wide 
 to discharge the surplus. His eyes were bitten by the 
 saddle-maker's strong tobacco till they stung and 
 watered. Through the running rainbow hues of their 
 watery rims he looked to see if his friends were laugh- 
 ing at him, but both Indian and white man were to all 
 appearances intent upon their own grave thoughts, 
 unmindful of any volcanic action in their midst. 
 
 Bob took courage, and having regained his breath 
 pulled away bravely, choking a little at times, but on 
 the whole managing to produce some smoke, and 
 more each time than he could well manage; but he 
 was game to the end. When he began to grow a 
 little pale about the mouth, Carmastic reached for 
 his pipe, saying : 
 
 "We have smoked the peace pipe together; now 
 we may make gifts." Wherewith he took something 
 from his shirt and held it up for Bob to see. 
 
 "Flying Loon sends it to Little Owl. Her mother 
 was a great medicine-woman my grandmother. 
 This is her sacred shell. As we know that the sweet- 
 grass is the breath of the Great Spirit, so we know 
 that this shell is the Great Spirit. Guard it well. 
 Ten ponies may not buy it." He laid it on the boy's 
 palm. 
 
 It was an object wrought from a shell. It lay on 
 Bob's hand like the round, shallow, cup-like corolla 
 of a full-blown flower. Its highly polished surface 
 on the upturned concave side was flawless ; its tints 
 a marvellous, one might dare say divine transfusion 
 of the pink prairie rose and the rich white of flowering 
 dogwood.
 
 The Boy 89 
 
 For the second time in his short life Bob found 
 nothing to say. He was awed. He could only raise 
 his eyes to Carmastic's and look his thanks. 
 2 
 
 The saddle-maker was ready with his hospitality 
 and provided the Indian with what he called "a 
 good feed." When they had eaten in peace, plenty, 
 and silence, and the inner man, whether beneath red 
 skin or white, was experiencing deep satisfaction, 
 Carmastic proceeded to business. 
 
 3 
 
 "I knew there was a tail to his kite an' a long 
 one," Plunket told Bob afterwards. "Let an Injun 
 alone for gettin' somp'in' out o' ye 'fore he leaves ye. 
 I know 'em." 
 
 Carmastic stated the case to his friends. 
 
 It seems the Indians had seen white men in the 
 mountain district along the border line between the 
 United States and Canada. They had met with them 
 also on the north trail that leads down among the 
 lakes and sloughs toward Boissevain and the western 
 slopes where, since the completion seven years before 
 of the great iron road of traffic from the Atlantic to 
 the Pacific, and the consequent rise of Boissevain to 
 a small business centre, here and there a white 
 settler had begun to farm the rich wheat lands of the 
 Souris. They found, also, that timber was being 
 taken out without asking leave. 
 
 The Indians were troubled. They read the signs of 
 the tunes. To them it was an invasion the begin- 
 ning of the end. 
 
 For centuries this mountain district had been to 
 them not only a habitation but a refuge. Like some 
 great Ark of the Covenant it rises from out the
 
 90 Out of the Silences 
 
 treeless plateau-plains of Dakota on the American 
 side, and out of the rolling prairies of the Souris on 
 the Canadian. For centuries they had claimed it 
 for their very own ; generations had lived in it, wor- 
 shipped in it, and fought to preserve their temple in 
 the wilderness. Now that Dread Thing, Progress, 
 was threatening to deprive the poor remnant of the 
 Crees inhabiting it of their last refuge, of their altars 
 and their homes. 
 
 No wonder the Indians were troubled in their souls. 
 
 Carmastic had come to ask his little white friend 
 to write to a man of power in far distant Ottawa about 
 this matter. Would he do it? 
 
 For a moment the boy hesitated. The pony 
 fraud loomed large before him. But he told himself 
 it was not Carmastic's fault; the medicine-man had 
 smoked the famed peace pipe with him, Bob Colla- 
 more, a white man's son, and there was but one thing 
 to do as he had established himself in the medicine- 
 man's good graces, he must continue to keep in them. 
 He felt the sacred shell within his shirt. For all 
 he knew it might really be something of the Great 
 Spirit. He did not wish to offend Him, but it should 
 not be "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth," as 
 in the Book not this time ! 
 
 "I will write all your words to the man at Ottawa 
 and send them through the trader in Boissevain." 
 
 The boy brought paper and pencil. The old 
 Indian dictated. It was short and to the point. 
 When the boy had finished, Carmastic rose to go. 
 
 "I will fetch the pony for you, Carmastic." 
 
 "I have no pony with me," he answered. "I 
 walk over the north trail." He started towards 
 the woods.
 
 The Boy 91 
 
 "I say, Plunket, is the medicine-man loony?" Bob 
 asked in utter amazement. 
 
 "No. He's got the levellest head from here to 
 Riding Mountain. Don't you see what he's at?" 
 
 No, Bob did not see. And not seeing, and Plunket 
 not enlightening him, he was enjoying the boy's 
 perplexity too much, Bob dashed after the Indian 
 who by this time was entering the woods. 
 
 "Carmastic, Carmastic, wait I'll bring your 
 pony over to-morrow. He has strayed only a little 
 way." He overtook the man whose long, rapid, 
 silent stride gave no hint of his seventy years. Then 
 Carmastic halted for a moment. He looked down 
 upon the eager face, and smiled. 
 
 "The pony is Little Owl's. It is Little Owl's pay 
 for the letter that shall deliver me and my people 
 from the curse of the white man's ways with our land." 
 
 He was off again at a tremendous pace. Bob stood 
 watching him till he disappeared along the trail 
 through the dense growth of aspen. 
 
 "Well, he did the square thing anyway," was all 
 his comment to the saddle-maker on the pony trans- 
 action, when the latter was caught and safe in the 
 shed. He recognized the shell as a gift, a peace 
 offering; but the pony he considered merely a just 
 payment for services rendered. 
 
 THE QUEST 
 
 i 
 
 For a day or two after this conversation the saddle- 
 maker noticed that the boy had something on his 
 mind. He had learned to recognize Bob's varied 
 moods. In this present one he was taciturn without 
 being sulky, unnecessarily irritable at times when
 
 -92 Out of the Silences 
 
 spoken to, and somewhat negligent of the usual daily 
 work which the saddle-maker for the boy's benefit 
 and training had exacted of him. Noting all this 
 Bill Plunket knew that he had only to bide the boy's 
 own time for freeing himself of some load that gave 
 evidence of burdening his conscience. 
 
 On the third day Bob spoke out. He was lying 
 on his back in the grass before the hut. His knees 
 were flexed ; his hands clasped beneath his head ; his 
 eyes fixed on the stars, brilliantly soft in their great 
 clustered Milky Way. 
 
 "Is a lie a straight lie if you don't tell the whole 
 truth 'bout things?" 
 
 Plunket worked his pipe like a blast furnace for a 
 full minute before he spoke. He was sitting in the 
 doorway of the hut. 
 
 "That depends, Son," he replied between puffs. 
 
 "Depends on what?" 
 
 "Whether the lie is a low-down crooked lie that's 
 goin' to do damage to somebody, by misleadin' 'em 
 on purpose so they'll get smashed up, or a lie that's 
 straight enough to tell with a clean conscience which 
 is the kind a feller tells when he wants to throw some- 
 body, that's nosin' 'round into what ain't none of his 
 business, off the scent." 
 
 Bob considered this definition for several minutes; 
 then he spoke abruptly, his voice unusually loud from 
 some intense inward excitement : 
 
 "You asked me t'other day, Plunket, if any of 
 the Injuns had said anything to me 'bout the mule 
 an' Jane. I said 'No.' " He waited for the saddle- 
 maker to speak some word of encouragement, but 
 this was not forthcoming. The boy perceived that 
 he must "go it alone" a lesson his friend had been
 
 The Boy 93 
 
 inculcating for the past three years. He spoke 
 again, but slowly, feeling his way : 
 
 "You see I didn't lie then. The Injuns never said 
 a word to me 'bout Jane or the mule, but" he hesi- 
 tated "I didn't tell you the truth just the same." 
 
 Plunket took his pipe from his mouth. "How's 
 that?" The tone was uncompromising, and Bob 
 prepared to plunge into the midst of things in partic- 
 ular; but first he took the precaution to make his 
 dive according to rules. 
 
 "You said Injuns, didn't you?" 
 
 "I said just that Injuns." 
 
 "An' you meant Kinni-kinnik's pa, an* ma, and the 
 whole kit of 'em over in the north village, didn't 
 you?" 
 
 "I sure did." 
 
 "An' you didn't count Kinni-kinnik as one of the 
 Injuns when you said it, did you?" 
 
 "Can't say as I thought o' her no, I didn't." 
 Plunket admitted this with a fairly good grace, for 
 he saw ahead to a turn in the three years' blind trail. 
 
 "Well, you see I thought you didn't mean her; so 
 when I said 'No', I didn't reelly lie, but" He 
 stopped short. 
 
 The saddle-maker put his pipe again between his 
 lips and began to puff vigorously, but in silence. 
 
 "Kinni-kinnik knows things the Injuns said, an* 
 she told me." 
 
 "Did she tell ye not to tell?" 
 
 "Nope; I can tell you all right, only I don't 
 want to." 
 
 "Wot's up? Bad news?" 
 
 "Not bad exactly. It's 'bout you, Plunket an* 
 me. 'T'isn't true, an' it's rotten an' I don't want
 
 94 Out of the Silences 
 
 to tell." With eagerness he blurted o'ut this bald 
 statement as if wanting to convince the saddle-maker 
 that it was best to let bad enough alone. 
 
 It was Plunket's turn to consider. What had the 
 boy got hold of through the little Indian girl that he 
 was loath to tell? He had been kind to Jane, too 
 kind ; she had taken unfair advantage of his kindness 
 and his absence. What could it be that was rotten ? 
 He was puzzled. Evidently Bob was willing to tell, 
 but ashamed to. In any case the boy needed en- 
 couragement. 
 
 "Ye'd better get it off your stomach, Son. Rotten 
 stuff don't set well if it's been kept there too long. 
 Out with it. Make a clean breast o' it. I can 
 stand it if ye can." 
 
 Without any more preliminaries Bob stated the 
 case. 
 
 " Kmni-kinnik heard her ma tellin' her pa that you 
 are my father and I am your son, Plunket. 7 know 
 better, an' told her so; an' what she said is a low- 
 down crooked lie, just as you said, isn't it?" 
 
 The saddle-maker's sense of injustice flamed 
 suddenly into the white heat of anger. His pipe fell 
 from his lips in his effort for control. When he 
 spoke his voice was husky, but quietly level. 
 
 "It's a black, tarnation lie, Son, that's wot that 
 is." He drew a deep breath and mechanically put 
 his foot on the spilled and blinking tobacco. "D'ye 
 know whether Kinni-kinnik's ma got that from 
 Jane?" 
 
 "No, she didn't. Kinni-kinnik told me her ma 
 said an Injun from a reservation on the Missouri, a 
 Sioux, came through here on his way up north, 'bout 
 two months 'fore you came back, an' he stopped at
 
 The Boy 95 
 
 the hut here an' told Jane a man of his tribe had been 
 to a fort in Dakota an' seen you an' a white boy, 
 that's me. An' that I was your son an' a white 
 squaw's you was livin' with there, he meant our 
 post-washerwoman who was so good to us an' took 
 care o' us when we was gettin' well ; an' Jane told 
 her sister." 
 
 "By gum!" This was all Plunket said. Any- 
 thing more was at that moment beyond his powers 
 of expression, for the flashlight of Bob's revelation 
 suddenly illuminated Jane's predicament, interpreted 
 her feelings towards him, and the whole meaning 
 of her precipitous flight with most of his personal 
 property. 
 
 "Bet ye Jane wouldn't stand for no such doin's." 
 Plunket was thinking aloud rather than speaking to 
 the boy. 
 
 "That's what Kinni-kinnik said her ma said. She 
 said she did just right to take Tom an' Jerry an' her 
 things, she wasn't goin' to leave anything for a 
 white squaw, she said, an' go back to her father in 
 Minnesota. You said you knew Long John." 
 
 "I guessed as much." The saddle-maker spoke 
 with a certain shrewd satisfaction ; then he muttered 
 as if to himself, "Tough on the old girl, no mistake." 
 
 Hearing this, Bob felt encouraged to tell all he 
 knew make a clean breast of it, as the saddle-maker 
 had suggested. 
 
 "There's something else, Plunket. Want to 
 know?" 
 
 "All favors thankfully received, Son." Plunket 
 smiled, wondering what more was to be revealed con- 
 cerning his squaw. 
 
 There was no further hesitancy in Bob's speech;
 
 96 Out of the Silences 
 
 on the contrary his natural eloquence, which had 
 suffered a decided check in his attempt to worm him- 
 self satisfactorily out of his "lie", flowed freely as he 
 warmed to his special pleading. 
 
 "You see, Plunket, Jane wasn't married to you " 
 
 "Wasn't, eh?" Plunket spoke sharply, but Bob 
 gave no heed to warning notes ; he had a certain 
 pleasurable duty to perform towards his well-loved 
 friend. 
 
 " Not redly; they all know it the Injuns. 
 You see, if you wasn't a white man, they wouldn't 
 think anything 'bout it. But they say white men 
 redly marry ; an' Jane said so Kinni-kinnik told me 
 her ma told her pa that she was as good as a 
 white woman, an' was goin' to be treated like a white 
 woman by a white man, or get out." 
 
 "Can't blame Jane for that, Son, seeing she's a 
 woman, can ye?" 
 
 "She said that, Plunket, 'cause her feelings was 
 hurt 'bout what that Sioux man said he heard 'bout 
 you an' me. If I was you, I'd reelly marry her; 
 then she'd feel all right, an' Tom an' Jerry would be 
 reelly 'Plunkets.' See?" 
 
 The saddle-maker nodded gravely. "Yes, Son, I 
 see ; an' mebbe, only mebbe, mind ye, I'll marry 
 her. Can't have Jane's feelings hurt much longer, 
 eh? An' I guess it's 'bout time Tom an' Jerry got 
 acquainted with their father." 
 
 Bob doubled himself with a spring and brought 
 himself to his feet. It was dark, or nearly so, and he 
 didn't mind patting Plunket on the shoulder, saying 
 joyfully such was his faith in this man : 
 
 "I knew you'd do it, Plunket. I told Kinni- 
 kinnik you would just as soon as you knew 'bout her
 
 The Boy 97 
 
 feelings. Gee, Kinni-kinnik's ma hadn't no use for 
 me for 'bout two years. I didn't know what ailed 
 her. But she's all right now. When will you get 
 married, Plunket?" 
 
 It was then that the night was made vocal with 
 laughter. Bill Plunket laughed till he could laugh no 
 longer. Bob had not heard him laugh like that since 
 the night when McGillie inventoried the "things" 
 Jane had taken with her when she left the saddle- 
 maker's empty bed and long unreplenished board. . . 
 2 
 
 Then they discussed ways and means, for the saddle- 
 maker's decision had been instant to seek out Jane 
 and bring her back to the mountain and his hut. 
 
 "I'll tell ye wot we'll do, Son; we'll travel like 
 white men go by train for a piece 'long down to 
 Bemidji after I sell off three or four saddles to the 
 settlers on the Dakota side. They're beginning to 
 come in fast now and take up farms there. I guess 
 Carmastic wasn't far off the trail when he said they'd 
 have all the Injun lands 'fore long." 
 
 "You mean ride on the cars?" The boy could 
 scarcely believe his ears to ride in the cars like 
 white men, to see white men, to be with white men ! 
 All this sounded unreal. The saddle-maker smiled 
 at the excitement visible in the boy's face, audible 
 in his voice. 
 
 "Yep, after we've sold the saddles. We'll take 
 the old horse an' the pony, an' the bitch, couldn't 
 leave her behind ; she wouldn't eat 'thout ye, an 
 trail 'long with our blankets rolled up behind us till 
 we hit the Red River at Grand Forks, an' then we'll 
 ride on the train from there to Fosston, Son, an' 
 ship the horse an' pony so we can get from there to
 
 98 Out of the Silences 
 
 Bemidji ; we'll sure need the animiles in Minnesota. 
 I tell ye it's a great State. Ye can drive an ox-team 
 most anywheres over it 'cept clear up north. It's a 
 good time to go too. Injuns visit a lot 'bout this 
 time. Kinni-kinnik and her ma and the boys must 
 be there by now. She told me she was goin' to visit 
 her father; they have mighty good times visitin' 
 together, Injuns, when they have enough to eat an' 
 it's good weather. They've been gone most three 
 weeks, ain't they?" 
 
 "Yep. Kinni-kinnik told me they was goin' to 
 stay till snow flies. She said they're goin' to gather a 
 lot o' wild rice to bring home for the winter. When 
 can we start?" 
 
 "Next week; but ye needn't lose any sleep 'cause 
 we can't get out to-morrow." 
 
 3 
 
 It may happen once or twice in a man's life that an 
 event, seemingly of the most commonplace order, 
 suddenly opens up such a vista of possibilities, hopes, 
 ambitions, so extends the horizon of his previous 
 straitened environment, as to revolutionize in a 
 manner his whole attitude towards life. Such an 
 event, in the fourteenth year of this boy's life, was 
 this change from the Turtle Mountain country to 
 that of northern Minnesota. 
 
 At the time, the two great trunk lines, the one 
 passing through southern Manitoba, the other 
 through northern Dakota, denned the limits of the 
 Turtle Mountain region on the north and south. 
 Already branch lines from these railroads were being 
 laid to open up the land for settlement and tap re- 
 sources on the rolling prairies of the Souris to the 
 north, and the Dakota plains to the south. To ride
 
 The Boy 99 
 
 down the northern mountain slopes through the lake 
 region to Boissevain ; to watch the snorting engine 
 bring the incoming train ; to see it pull out from the 
 station and race away over the prairies till it was lost 
 on the distant horizon these had been thus far 
 the great events in Bob's short life. But these were 
 mere excursions ; the mountain and the hut remained 
 to him all he knew of home. He had never been 
 beyond Boissevain since his entrance into his paradise. 
 During the first two years the saddle-maker made 
 two successive annual trading-trips; McGillie and 
 Bob were then left to look after what stock there was 
 and provide for themselves. 
 
 On the present trip, Plunket prepared to combine 
 pleasure, business, and the quest for Jane. 
 
 t 4 
 
 Both man and boy enjoyed their overland journey 
 to the Red River the man because, being about to 
 sell his white man's birthright in order to satisfy his 
 honor, he knew that once again in the matrimonial 
 yoke he might never enjoy another such ; the boy, 
 for the reason that the so-called quest for Jane resolved 
 itself for him into a great adventure into the white 
 man's world. 
 
 They took it leisurely during the last hot days in 
 August, journeying down the gently rolling south- 
 eastern slopes of the mountain country and through 
 the lake region that centres about Minne-waukan in 
 eastern Dakota. They experienced a few days of 
 scorching sun, and as many burning breathless nights. 
 Tempests, too, and dust storms obliged them at times 
 to flee to cover. But there were many compensations. 
 Here and there, as they drew near to the Valley of the 
 Red River, they found the fringing shade of trees
 
 ioo Out of the Silences 
 
 along the banks of streams ; here and there the boy 
 saw one of the great wheat farms of those days, twenty 
 thousand acres of ripened grain a pale golden 
 prairie sea undulating, beneath the pressure of the 
 wind, wave upon wave to the deep, deep blue of the 
 far horizon. The sound of it at night, when they 
 camped on its border, he never forgot. It was like 
 no other sound then or afterwards known to him. 
 
 Food in abundance they found at the scattered 
 farmhouses. The saddle-maker was known to some of 
 the men, and the saddles found ready purchasers. 
 The hard-working women of the family were ever 
 ready to welcome both man and boy, for they gave 
 no trouble, slept in the manger or, preferably, rolled 
 in their blankets of a cool night, in the lee of a giant 
 hayrick, horse and pony hobbled, the bitch on guard. 
 
 The night sounds of the prairie were not those of 
 the mountain ; they were not only unlike, but far more 
 mysterious to the boy because of the open vastness 
 around, beneath, and above him. The sun set in 
 unearthly skies of glorious color ; the stars greatened, 
 fairly palpitating luminous light in that marvellous 
 atmosphere of the prairies. All about him the soft 
 dark was sweet with the scent of dried herb or grass. 
 
 Once only they slept in a bed with sheets, a luxury 
 almost forgotten by the boy. The woman of the 
 house called him "Son." She begged him to remain 
 with her and her husband, promising him much 
 even to her little dead son's portion of the land and 
 its increase. 
 
 Thus it came about that, having absorbed the 
 various impressions of the new, having anticipated 
 for nearly three weeks the surprise of each new day 
 and revelled in the wonder nights of the great out-of-
 
 The Boy 101 
 
 doors, the boy mounted the steps of the train at 
 Grand Forks with never a thought of the mountain 
 that had been to him his home all that he knew of 
 one for the past three years. 
 
 But, after the crowning adventure of the railroad 
 journey and the detraining at the station of Bemidji, 
 there was left only a straight prosaic course to Long 
 John's hut and Jane. 
 
 The commonplace finding of the squaw, she was 
 boiling fish in a kettle over a fire outside the hut, and 
 neither Tom nor Jerry was in evidence, the recon- 
 ciliation that followed at some hour unknown to 
 Bob, her commonplace marriage with "bell, ring and 
 book ", proved to be for the boy an anti-climax to 
 those first adventurous three weeks. 
 
 It was all "so slow", as he wrote McGillie when 
 telling him of the marriage of Plunket and his squaw. 
 He further stated that if it had not been for the pony 
 and the bitch, and a little tepee all for himself with 
 a private campfire ; if he had not been left to roam 
 the forest at will and accompany Long John north- 
 wards to help him gather the wild rice in some of the 
 shallows among the headwaters of various streams 
 and harvest it from a canoe, he could not have 
 stood it. 
 
 Even Kinni-kinnik failed to entertain him. 
 
 The truth of the matter was that, having sat at the 
 white man's table, the well-known Indian environment 
 had no attraction for him in these autumn days. Con- 
 sequently he was off along the logging roads, exploring 
 logging camps that were being prepared for the winter, 
 taking the girth of trees and learning their age by 
 counting the rings in white pine, basswood, maple, 
 or oak. He was busy fashioning with Long John's help
 
 IO2 Out of the Silences 
 
 a small birch bark canoe for his very own; "nosin' 
 'bout", as Plunket called it acquiring something 
 new day by day, by reading a line or a page in Mother 
 Nature's text-book of the forests, or by fishing in 
 strange waters ; to sum up : rounding off, in the new 
 country of the North Star his boyhood's out-of-door 
 education, to the forgetting often of Kinni-kinnik, the 
 ignoring of her small brothers, who could speak but 
 a word or two of English, the neglecting of Tom and 
 Jerry, who were his little half-breed shadows when- 
 ever they could keep track of him. 
 
 The new had for the time supplanted the old, or, 
 rather, the boy was outgrowing the Indian environ- 
 ment and seeking for something that should supply 
 its place.
 
 Ill 
 
 A FOREST INTERLUDE
 
 Ill 
 
 A FOREST INTERLUDE 
 
 IT is the last of October, snow month of the northern 
 Indians. The sky, a dome of hard opaque gray, shuts 
 out even the nicker of a gleam from the afternoon sun. 
 Apparently there is no wind stirring, but from time 
 to tune a strange noise is audible: a sound as of 
 shrinking surface-roots, crackling moss, contracting 
 bark-fibres on millions of forest trees and, inter- 
 mingled, those curious faint subtones heard over 
 great areas of fresh surface-waters, in a country 
 that has never been drained, when those waters are 
 chilled almost to the freezing point. 
 
 In the north, in the south, hi east and west, lie 
 chains of lakes lustreless as smoke topaz under the 
 neutral tinted sky; and not only chains but loops 
 and whorls of them, encircling, interlacing the vast 
 swamps of cedar and tamarack from which and into 
 which many of them drain. A few, however, are 
 set in rocky basins ; these stretch away to the north- 
 east and the Canadian border, and all about them are 
 acres of massive boulders piled high on the burden- 
 bearing earth which is sterile save for the Jack pine, 
 the mule among forest trees, that finds sustenance 
 where other vegetation fails. 
 105
 
 106 Out of the Silences 
 
 In the northern central and northeastern counties 
 of this land of Minnesota, there are great areas 
 densely covered with black spruce, tamarack, balm 
 of Gilead, and Jack pine; but south of them the 
 country as a whole is forested with a comparatively 
 young growth, for at times mighty fires have raged 
 within it mighty fires and the devastating hand of 
 man. Here and there, however, are to be found large 
 tracts of the "old forest" where reign the giant white 
 and Norway pine. Their massed green denseness 
 lends to this land a look of eternal youth. 
 2 
 
 Upon a trail through one of these heavily timbered 
 belts a party of four are just entering. They have 
 crossed the two miles of fairly open country between 
 the lake, where the canoes have been left, and the 
 forest, and are intent on reaching their goal ahead of 
 the threatening snow. They enter the half twilight 
 of the big woods in single file: Antoine, the guide, 
 half Indian, half French-Canadian; behind him a 
 young girl, her father following ; and bringing up the 
 rear Long John, a Chippewa, assistant guide and 
 bearer of the outfit-pack that is to make for their 
 comfort in whatever rude camp they may find shelter 
 for the coming night. 
 
 "You are sure you saw smoke, Antoine?" The 
 man spoke insistently; his voice was jerky from 
 nervous tension. 
 
 "For sure," the half-breed replied without turning 
 his head or slackening his pace. "Mebbe Hinjuns; 
 I tink no. I tink camp. De logmans 'ave toP mah 
 las' time : dis time dey come w'en come de firs' snow. 
 Heem come," he added emphatically. 
 
 He halted suddenly, listening. The three halted
 
 A Forest Interlude 107 
 
 with him ; they, too, listened intently. Not a mov- 
 ment among the pinetops, yet there was audible a 
 soft hissing rustle that grew sharper and gained in 
 volume as the fine dry snow crystals permeated the 
 vast stretch of woods, sifted through the foliage, and 
 settled in the matting of dead needles, dry leaves, 
 and heavy underbrush. 
 
 "'Heem come', sure enough, Tony," said the girl. 
 
 Her voice was gay with the joy of youth and the 
 stimulation of adventure. She threw back her head, 
 turning her face squarely upward that it might catch 
 the fine mist of snow coming so suddenly from a 
 windless somewhere as to dim the country behind 
 them, and falling through the pines with something 
 of the sound and effect of gauze drop curtains. 
 
 Snow in the forest ! The girl was enjoying a new 
 experience and realizing that with it a new world 
 was all about her. Her father, on the contrary, 
 fidgetted as he listened. 
 
 "We mustn't get caught out in a blizzard in this 
 God-forsaken place," he said shortly; "let's get on." 
 
 "Mgh." The monosyllable expressed the half- 
 breed's amused pity for those he called his "city- 
 mans." He spoke reassuringly : 
 
 "Trail, he good ; I mak' heem so." He pulled his 
 cap down over his eyes to indicate he could make 
 it blindfolded; then took it off to blow from the 
 top the delicate white covering, fine as hoar frost. 
 "Pouf! He like dat, yo blissar' ; yassire! An' now 
 yo no mak' worree for not'ing, hein?" 
 
 They went forward again, walking for the most part 
 in silence. Once a grouse drummed in the distance. 
 The trail grew more difficult. Twice it crossed 
 clearings of many acres in which dead timber, stumps
 
 io8 Out of the Silences 
 
 and slash impeded them, at times blocking their 
 way. 
 
 At the edge of the forest, where the trail reentered 
 it, the girl stooped without stopping and from the 
 bare ground beneath a spruce caught up a gray goose- 
 quill. She stuck it into the band of her close-fitting 
 cap; it gave to her head the challenging jauntiness 
 of an Indian chief's Calumet-eagle feather. 
 
 "Look, Tony," she said, pointing to the quill, 
 "we are following the gray goose." 
 
 The half-breed, who had turned, smiled. The 
 feather was a good omen ; none knew it better than 
 he. 
 
 "Yas, she is nikh-ka, de gray goose. She mak' 
 wot you call hit ? look. Wan half -hour, an' we 
 fin' camp." He spoke encouragingly, for he heard 
 the heavy quickened breathing of his "city-man" and 
 knew his city wind would not last longer than that. 
 
 "And you think you can smell smoke, too, An- 
 toine?" His city-man panted rather than spoke, 
 attempting a bit of raillery to warm his own thoroughly 
 chilled ardor for prospecting. 
 
 "Why, Daddy dear, you're winded, no mistake," 
 said the girl turning and looking at him somewhat 
 anxiously. 
 
 Antoine's large inflated nostrils snuffed the air like 
 a red deer's when at morning he breaks from covert. 
 
 "Yas, I smell smoke; courage, monfrdre." 
 
 "Courage, Daddy; it's our last lap." The girl's 
 voice was still fresh and joyous; there was no hint 
 of fatigue in it, for was not this world of a forest 
 besnowed a new enchantment for her? Was not 
 adventure with its alluring uncertainties, its charm 
 of possibilities still before her in the unknown camp ?
 
 A Forest Interlude 109 
 
 For two hours already they had followed the trail 
 from the lake. It was still an hour to the sun's 
 setting; but in the forest gloom, with the steady 
 falling of the fine dry snow about them, it might 
 well have set for them an hour before. There was no 
 stopping here for rest or breathing spell. The half- 
 breed and the Chippewa knew their land and its ways : 
 the ways of its late and early snows, of which latter 
 the present was a good sample, quickly come and 
 more quickly gone; its summer rams and spring 
 floods, its frost and heat, its winds and calms. They 
 knew its portages, its trails, the intricate waterways 
 of its ten thousand lakes, and now with the first 
 sough of a rising wind through the forest the two 
 exchanged a few monosyllables of understanding 
 concerning the condition facing them ; then they set a 
 more rapid pace. They knew there was shelter of 
 some kind not far ahead and possibly rest, but none 
 on the trail. 
 
 The wind increasing momently in violence was 
 against them for the last half-hour. The gloom was 
 deepening. Suddenly the woods thinned, lightened, 
 and opened on a small clearing ; crossing it they found 
 themselves before a low shed-like building covered 
 with bark. It was protected on the north by what 
 looked to be unpenetrable forest. Warmth and 
 shelter were surely here. From the two windows 
 shone dim lamplight and the uncertain flashing of 
 wood flame. Antoine stepped to one and looked in. 
 A hound bayed suddenly. Without ceremony the 
 half-breed opened the door and entered, the others 
 following. 
 
 At one end of the room a lighted lantern, swung 
 from a chain hooked over a rafter, flared in the
 
 no Out of the Silences 
 
 sudden draught. Across the other end was stretched 
 a rope over which hung curtains of some bright 
 colored calico, with improvised valences in the form 
 of thick quilts and coarse blankets, gray and brown. 
 
 As she entered the girl saw all this in detail. She 
 saw as well three dark-skinned men who rose from 
 their makeshift seats on some packing boxes. She 
 saw the improvised wall-closet, likewise fashioned 
 from a box ; also in the corner nearest the door some 
 straw and on it a hound with her litter ; and did 
 she see aright ? in the farther corner among more 
 straw, a pony, small and wiry, nosing a bale of hay. 
 Her father sat down exhausted on a pile of burlap 
 near the door. The girl at once gave her whole 
 thought to him. 
 
 "Oh, Daddy, you poor dear, I'll have some hot tea 
 for you in less than ten winks ; help me, John." 
 
 The Chippewa understood her. He opened the 
 outfit bag. She thrust in her hand, took out a can 
 of tea, a pudgy capacious teapot of enamelled iron- 
 ware, a tin of bacon and a loaf of bread. 
 
 Antoine, meanwhile, was interrogating the three 
 men in all the languages known to him: Canuck- 
 French, half-breed French-English, Chippewa, 
 Swedish fragments he had learned from lumber- 
 men; he tried even the Indian sign language. 
 The men lifted their eyebrows, shrugged their 
 shoulders, and scratched their heads ; one, a youth, 
 grinned broadly. 
 
 "Tarn fool," muttered the half-breed in exaspera- 
 tion, "why dey no speak not'ing." 
 
 The girl laughed aloud at his perplexity. With 
 teapot in one hand, frying pan in the other, she turned 
 to him.
 
 A Forest Interlude in 
 
 "Now let me try, Tony ; these things speak louder 
 than words to any man, I don't care who he is." 
 
 She flourished pot and pan eloquently before the 
 six beady eyes that were fixed upon her, and indicated 
 by expressive pantomime that she would like to help 
 herself to boiling water from a big iron kettle on the 
 stove. As one man the three nodded assent, and 
 were rewarded with a smile, a smile that generally 
 obtained for her whatever she wanted from man, 
 woman, or child. It was an unconscious expression 
 of frank comradeship, of willingness to meet an in- 
 dividual a little more than half way just because he 
 was a human ; of a direct trust in men and animals 
 and the big world of which they are the factors. Tak- 
 ing note of this smile, the men gesticulated assurance 
 that they placed stove, water, duck-soup, which she 
 sniffed appreciatively as it bubbled appetizingly in 
 another kettle, tin dipper, boxes and entire room at 
 her disposal. 
 
 Antoine sighed audible relief at this happy turn 
 of affairs and busied himself with setting out the tin 
 camp service on one of the packing boxes. Long 
 John dried some of their snow-wet belongings behind 
 the stove. 
 
 The girl tossed her cap to her father and began 
 operations. In a few minutes the bacon was frizzling ; 
 together with the crisp aroma of toasting bread it 
 stung the nostrils pleasantly. Soon the nose of the 
 fat teapot was steaming delectably. Meanwhile the 
 ever increasing south wind went roaring through the 
 forest with the sounding rise and fall of heavy surf on a 
 beach of shingle, and changed the fine dry snow 
 crystals to wet clinging flakes that plastered the 
 windows white.
 
 112 Out of the Silences 
 
 The girl, having first heartened her father with a 
 big tin cup of tea, beckoned cheerily as summons to 
 the men to be seated on the boxes which were ranged 
 across the end of the room nearest the hound's 
 corner. She indicated to her hosts that they were 
 expected to place their kettle of soup on a box and 
 feast with them ; but they hesitated to accept the 
 invitation. The girl looked her surprise. 
 
 It was then that the youth giggled in a voice that 
 beginning in the bass ended in a cracked falsetto. 
 He glanced towards the curtains at the other end of 
 ihe room. The girl's eyes followed his, for she was 
 consumed with curiosity to know what might be 
 behind the scenes. She saw a face looking out 
 between them, a young girlish face, long and thin, 
 with deep-set brilliant eyes, a wide smiling mouth, 
 the reddest of red lips, and between them strong, 
 white, even teeth Just over it was visible the 
 dark, deeply lined face of a woman who was peering 
 out eagerly, intently, yet with a certain timidity as 
 if not sure of the meaning of these strangers' presence. 
 Seeing them, the girl exclaimed joyously : 
 
 "Oh, Daddy, if you'll believe me there's a real 
 live girl here ; just what I was wanting to make me 
 feel downright comfy in this wilderness." 
 
 With that she ran with outstretched hands towards 
 the two within the curtains, and drew them out into 
 the room, while showing her joy in their presence so 
 conclusively that they quite lost their shyness and 
 seemed to enter gladly into the gala spirit of the girl's 
 adventure. 
 
 The woman and girl brought wooden bowls and 
 spoons and a curiously shaped loaf of gray bread 
 from the improvised wall-closet beside the stove.
 
 A Forest Interlude 113 
 
 They set them forth on the box nearest the pony's 
 corner and placed the steaming kettle of soup in the 
 midst. Thereupon they all fell to.' 
 
 Between mouthfuls they watched the stranger girl 
 and her ways which were so unlike their own; for 
 not only did she serve her father, and Antoine, and 
 Long John, sitting on his heels near the hound, but 
 the worn-eyed hound as well that came at her invita- 
 tion to stand gravely beside her and devour tid-bits. 
 i Her spirits were infectious. She sampled the soup 
 at her hostess' invitation, pronouncing it perfect. 
 Her jest and laughter hypnotized apparently the 
 melancholy hound to the forgetting of her tiny 
 puppies that were nosing the straw blindly and in 
 vain. The pony whickered. The youth laughed 
 aloud. The young daughter of the house broke into 
 unintelligible but evidently impassioned speech which 
 her mother cut short by a cuff on the ear. 
 
 Antoine's face wreathed itself in smiles at the sight 
 of his city-man's condition of creature comfort. He 
 began to figure on a possible increase in his com- 
 mission. 
 
 After the meal was over he and the Indian made 
 ready the blankets for the night. The women cleaned 
 the bowls by dipping them in the kettle of boiling 
 water, rinsing them, and emptying the contents out- 
 side the door. Afterwards they brought out their 
 lace pillows, bobbins, and coarse linen, and by the 
 light of a pine knot set to work industriously. The 
 pony stood with drooping head, sleeping with one 
 eye asquint for unseen happenings. Then, at last, 
 Antoine passed round some good tobacco from his 
 city-man's ample store, and the girl, dropping down 
 beside her father, where he sat on a comfortable
 
 114 Out of the Silences 
 
 improvised couch of blankets, burlap, and straw, 
 leaned against him, speaking earnestly : 
 
 "Daddy, I've been just yearning for a real adven- 
 ture all my life, and this is a truly one, isn't it?" 
 
 To which her father, smiling indulgently at her 
 enthusiasm, made answer : "It looks as if it had been 
 made to order for you, little girl. We're mighty 
 lucky to strike just this place. Antoine says it's 
 the beginning of a loggers' camp. By the size of the 
 stove he thinks the woman is going to do the cooking 
 for the men; but he's not sure. These are kindly 
 enough souls, but generally they're a tough lot." 
 
 A heavy blast roared through the forest, shaking 
 the stout rafters. She raised her head from his 
 shoulder. 
 
 " Goodness, what a storm ! But it makes it all 
 the snugger here, doesn't it?" With a sigh of bliss 
 she hunched up against his shoulder again. 
 
 "Antoine has been telling me that it won't last 
 long. We're in luck again, for this wind will take the 
 snow with it before morning " 
 
 "Oh, dear!" The girl interrupted him dolefully. 
 "I was counting on the glory of it all, Daddy I 
 mean the forest with its branches loaded down with 
 snow, and perhaps sunshine on it. Antoine," she 
 spoke abruptly as if challenging him, "do you mean 
 to say we'll have no snow to-morrow on the trail 
 back to the lake?" 
 
 Antoine took his pipe from his mouth. 
 
 "Yas; de nort' win' he mak' in two, t'ree hour, 
 wan day like de winter. De sout' win', he come an' 
 mak' de nex' day like de sommer wot forgot to leaf : 
 sonshine, de sky bleu, bleu like de oiseau bleu yo 
 know heem ? De lak' bleu like de sky. An' de nort'
 
 A Forest Interlude 115 
 
 win' he sleep soun' w'ile hees brodder, de sout' win', 
 make much veesite on de nort' Ian', two-free week, 
 mebbe. He mak' sommer a la Saint Martin, sommer 
 Indien, hein? An' nikh-ka, de gray goose, she tink 
 she mak, for sure, wan gran' meestak'. She mos' 
 turn back on de sky trail she." 
 
 He took the girl's cap from a peg in the wall and 
 examined the feather carefully. 
 
 "Yas: de sout' win' he mak' dis yhear wan gran' 
 veesite." 
 
 He replaced the cap and began to puff moderately 
 with great contentment. Things were working out 
 to his satisfaction, especially the weather. If only 
 he could contrive to hire that pony over in the corner 
 for the return trip to the lake ! He was concerned 
 about his city-man. He considered him too soft, 
 his wind too short, to go over that trail again in the 
 morning with the prospect of three hours in the 
 canoes followed by a rough portage of a mile, a short 
 canoe trip on a second lake, and a tramp over a poor 
 corduroy logging road for two miles to a hamlet 
 where he knew horse and wagon were obtainable to 
 take them to the end of their trip with him : a rail- 
 road station nearest to Lake Bemidji. He smokes in 
 silence, busy with his thought. 
 
 His city man, also, is thinking thoughts, varied 
 and distracting to his peace of mind, on the subject 
 of future investments in this northern county. He, 
 too, smokes in silence, but without the repose of his 
 guide's manner. 
 
 The Chippewa, still sitting on his heels near the 
 door, is smoking stolidly, steadily ; he, too, is think- 
 ing what ? No man may know that Indian mind. 
 
 The other three men, aliens of unknown nationality,
 
 Ii6 Out of the Silences 
 
 sat on a blanket in the pony's corner, smoking and 
 whittling axe helves. 
 
 3 
 
 For a while the soft irregular click of the bobbins, 
 the snapping of the wood in the stove, the faint 
 crisp sputter of the pine knot, were the only sounds 
 within the room; without, the obligate accompani- 
 ment of the south wind, which since the last 
 furious onslaught had subsided noticeably, was 
 droning steadily through the tree tops with a 
 deep 'cello mellowness. 
 
 After a time the girl rose quickly, went over to the 
 hound's corner, rubbed her head and pulled her ears. 
 The dog slavered. She took up one by one the three 
 sleeping puppies and cuddled each between her hands. 
 She laid them back beside their mother; crossed to 
 the pony's corner and patted him a bit, whereupon he 
 roused himself sufficiently to nose her arm ; then his 
 head drooped again. 
 
 The girl was restless. The new wine of life was 
 working within her. The call of the wind stirred her 
 young blood to something more exciting than the 
 somnolent smokiness. She went to the door and 
 looked out, exclaiming at the sight: 
 
 "Oh, Daddy, if you'll believe it the sky is clearing : 
 there are clouds everywhere and the moon is fairly 
 wading through them." 
 
 She closed the door and sat down beside the girl 
 who was minding the movements of the stranger 
 better than her work. She watched the dexterous 
 fingers manipulate the clicking bobbins. 
 
 "They're singing a little tune, Daddy; if only we 
 could understand the words! We must find out 
 who these people are." She spoke impatiently. The
 
 A Forest Interlude 117 
 
 girl beside her looked at her, smiling ; she would so 
 gladly have chatted with this stranger. 
 
 " Antoine," the girl turned to him suddenly, 
 " play for us. Give us the chansons of the forest 
 and the voyageurs' old songs. You know how I love 
 them do play." 
 
 And Antoine, nothing loath to please the girl in 
 this manner as he had pleased her several times 
 before of an evening in camp, laid aside his pipe, pro- 
 duced various parts of his beloved clarionet, fitted 
 the mouthpiece, and gave them of his best. 
 
 At the first soft clear notes, the youth threw aside 
 his knife and leaned forward, listening, intent. The 
 others folded their arms and fixing their gleaming eyes 
 on the player swayed gently back and forth, their 
 movements rhythmic with the music. 
 
 As the last note of "The Adventurous Crow" died 
 away like a faint caw in forest depths, the girl spoke : 
 
 "Give us the Scotch ones, now, Tony; first, 'The 
 Bonnets of Bonnie Dundee.' " 
 
 Willingly the half-breed gave them the melodies 
 he had learned from the Scotch wives of the traders 
 on the Canada border ; gave them the rousing 
 "Bonnets", the merry lilt of "The Bluebells of Scot- 
 land", and last "Ye banks and braes o' bonnie 
 Boon." 
 
 It was then the girl sang in a sweet, clear, but not 
 over strong voice the words of that melody. The 
 youth's eyes filled. The alien girl's face flushed a 
 deep red. If only they could have spoken their 
 appreciation ! 
 
 When she finished the mother rose, beckoning to 
 the two girls. They followed her in behind the cur- 
 tains whence came in a moment small cries of delight,
 
 Ii8 Out of the Silences 
 
 soft purrs of satisfaction from the stranger girl, and 
 merry laughter from all three. The quilt and 
 blanket-valences disappeared with a jerk from the 
 rope. Antoine spoke to his city-man : 
 
 "De modder, she mak' nest for de birds. I tink 
 leettle Mees fin' now wot she seek all de time, two 
 week, on de trail, her aventure, an' she " 
 
 The girl rushed out from behind the curtains, a 
 violin in her hand. 
 
 "Look, Daddy, look! A violin, of all things. It 
 was in a huge chest that's full of the most fascinating 
 embroidered clothes. I'm sure this is the boy's. 
 Now we'll have some music that will tell us their 
 nationality, or I miss my guess." ^ . 
 
 She handed the instrument to the youth who 
 took it tenderly, caressingly. There was no need for 
 speech ; they knew by his manner that it was his. 
 
 "Play, play," she urged, accompanying her request 
 with gestures appropriate for violin playing. 
 
 He rose ; felt the bow with his thumb ; drew it 
 across the strings ; then, throwing back his head, his 
 eyes fixed on the rafters, he played with heart and 
 soul, as well as fingers, the Czardas. 
 
 "Oh, Daddy," she breathed rather than spoke, 
 "Hungarians the Czardas." She listened en- 
 raptured to the wild enticing dance music of the alien 
 fatherland. 
 
 "Hongrois mgh," muttered Antoine; "I know 
 w'y dey no speak not'ing." 
 
 Once the youth glanced towards the curtains and 
 smiled, but the girl was too absorbed to follow his look. 
 
 Suddenly the music changed from adagio another 
 rhythm, another dance. At the first note, that was 
 both a call and a challenge, the curtains were pushed
 
 A Forest Interlude 119 
 
 aside and the Hungarian girl sprang with impetuous 
 bound into the middle of the room, poised for a 
 moment on the tips of her toes as if ready for flight, 
 then threw herself with fiery but graceful abandon 
 into the dance. 
 
 She was beautiful. Dressed in Hungarian peas- 
 ant's fdte-day costume : full frieze skirt of dark 
 blue, full white linen blouse embroidered richly in 
 colors, heavily embroidered bodice, silver chains, 
 silver earrings, she seemed another personality. 
 
 The girl sat beside her father, her hand resting on 
 his knee. The wild passion of the music enraptured 
 her senses ; the rhythmic grace of the Hungarian en- 
 tranced her spirit. Absorbed, her breathing short, 
 the pupils of her eyes dilated, she watched every 
 movement of the little dancer. At last, as if spent 
 with the ecstasy of motion, the girl sank slowly, in 
 rhythm with a long-drawn diminuendo minor cadence, 
 upon one knee on the hard beaten earth, only to 
 leap to her feet at the sudden staccato crash of the 
 last chord drawn across the strings, whirl once, both 
 feet off the ground, and drop breathless and smiling 
 on the box beside her mother. 
 
 In the momentary silence that followed the hound 
 began to whimper. The Chippewa rose and, opening 
 the door softly, went out, closing it behind him. 
 
 "Bravo, bravo," Antoine murmured admiringly. 
 This was something unexpectedly new even for him. 
 
 His city-man rose and with old school courtesy 
 bowed low, first to the Hungarian girl then to her 
 mother. But his daughter, springing to her feet, 
 went straight to the young girl, took both her hands 
 in hers, and spoke from her heart, impulsively, and 
 so earnestly :
 
 I2O Out of the Silences 
 
 "Oh, I wish you could understand me! I wish 
 you could know how beautiful I think you and your 
 dancing are. I wish I could make you understand 
 what a treat you have given me just to see you 
 dance like that, and to^hear you play," she added 
 turning to the youth. "Can't you understand how 
 I feel about it?" She made her appeal to both. 
 
 For answer, the young Hungarian, still holding the 
 stranger's hands, rose and, first looking up into her 
 face, bent over and kissed them both. The youth 
 stepped quickly forward and repeated the process. 
 
 The stranger girl, embarrassed by such unexpected 
 demonstration drew away suddenly, withdrawing her 
 hands. Smiling, and reddening to her temples, she 
 turned to her father, protesting in one word : 
 
 "Father!" 
 
 "They have a way, these foreigners," he replied, 
 amused at her manner of accepting their adoration; 
 "we can learn many graces from the old world. 
 The girl is trying to get something over to you by the 
 looks." 
 
 The Hungarian was gesticulating with all her might. 
 The youth was evidently exhorting Antoine in, the 
 same dumb show. Finally he touched the clarionet. 
 
 "Ah-r-r-r!" Antoine responded with enthusiastic 
 satisfaction. "Yo wan' that leettle Mees dance, 
 hein?" 
 
 Finding themselves understood the girl's tongue 
 broke loose, and the youth's followed suit. A rush 
 of consonants filled the room ; they sputtered, hissed, 
 fizzed, zigzagged, chassed, changed partners, combin- 
 ing in a most bewildering fashion. In the end their 
 guest understood that she was expected to dance for 
 them and Antoine to play the accompaniment.
 
 A Forest Interlude 121 
 
 "But, Daddy, after that dancing how can I?" 
 
 "Do your best, daughter; you've had lessons 
 enough." 
 
 " Then I'll give them the Highland Fling. I'll show 
 them we Americans are not such slow coaches after 
 all." 
 
 She entered at once into the spirit of her entertain- 
 ment. She seized Antoine's woolen scarf, woven in 
 many colors, fringed at the ends, and setting her 
 cap with its gray goose feather firmly on her head, 
 she retired to the curtain end of the room for her first 
 charge. 
 
 "Ready, Tony." 
 
 The "Fling" was on. She spread her box-plaited 
 skirt of tweed to its fullest extent, and if her red and 
 black striped petticoat showed to advantage she did 
 not mind in the least ; she was dancing the Highland 
 Fling for them with all the charm of her personality. 
 Arms akimbo, she charged and retreated ; she swung 
 and twirled, the scarf whirling with her ; in and out 
 of it she seemed to pass as it turned with her, over 
 her head, around her shoulders, all to the accom- 
 paniment of the clarionet's gay notes. 
 4 
 
 Before she had finished, the Chippewa entered, 
 silently as he had gone out, and spoke a low word to 
 Antoine who nodded understandingly. 
 
 The half-breed had increased the already rapid 
 tempo, and the girl was responding still more gayly, 
 yet a little breathlessly, when suddenly the hound, 
 every hair bristling, rose up from the corner and 
 gave forth a prolonged, terrified cry. 
 
 It was answered by a low wail just outside the door. 
 Before Antoine and Long John could open it, a heavy
 
 122 Out of the Silences 
 
 body fell against it. Antoine spoke to the half 
 awed, half terrified faces about him : 
 
 "She no wolf she dog wot lost herself, so Long 
 Jean say, two, t'ree week. He tink she die soon. She 
 no mak' more trobble. She can no more." He 
 stepped to the door, the girl with him. 
 
 "Bring him in, Antoine, bring him in, the poor 
 thing. Don't let him die out there in the snow ; 
 we're not afraid of him. Let me see." She pressed 
 forward close behind him as he opened the door. 
 
 Before the threshold lay a dog, not so unlike a 
 timber wolf, long, gaunt from starvation, exhausted 
 by the loss of blood from a wound in the haunch 
 evidently given her by some wild animal stronger 
 than she. The Chippewa stooped to examine the poor 
 creature. He spoke a few words to Antoine. They 
 were about to remove the dog from the threshold, 
 but both father and daughter protested. 
 
 "Don't do that, Antoine," said his city-man; 
 "bring her in; even a dog has feelings. Perhaps 
 we can do something." 
 
 "Bring her in to me, Antoine." The girl spoke 
 sharply in a tone the half-breed had not heard be- 
 fore. 
 
 Antoine consulted with the Chippewa. The .youth 
 and the man barricaded the terrified hound in her 
 corner; the mother and daughter protected the 
 pony in his. 
 
 "Hit better we give de dog de wot you call it? 
 coup de grace: shoot her." 
 
 "No, no, you shall not shoot her. She isn't yours. 
 Bring her in, I say." 
 
 "You'd better bring her in, Antoine," said the city- 
 man.
 
 A Forest Interlude 123 
 
 The half-breed and the Indian spoke together 
 again. Then Antoine translated : 
 
 "Long Jean, he say Leettle Owl come sure for fin' 
 hees dog, an' it 'bout mak' for to die Leettle Owl 
 w'en he sees hees pauvre chienne so seek." 
 
 The girl did not heed them, perhaps she did not 
 even hear them. She was gathering up an armful of 
 straw from the pony's corner. She dropped it near 
 the stove; took her rubber coat from the open pack 
 and spread it on the ground by the straw. She spoke 
 to the men bringing in the dog. 
 
 "Put him there." 
 
 The men placed the animal on the straw. The girl 
 sat down on the coat, drew a corner across her lap 
 and laid the dog's head on it. She appealed to her 
 father who was standing over her, carefully feeling 
 the dog. 
 
 "Father, put a little spirits into some of that hot 
 water quick, there's no milk here." 
 
 He took out his flask and to humor her did as he 
 was told. 
 
 "Antoine, give me one of those chips, a large one," 
 she pointed to a pile the men had left from their 
 whittling, "and get me a wooden spoon from 
 that closet. " 
 
 Antoine obeyed promptly. She beckoned to the 
 Chippewa. 
 
 " Antcine, tell him to wedge her mouth." 
 
 Her bidding was done with alacrity. The aliens 
 in the corners were an interested audience, but at 
 this moment the girl was all unaware of them. 
 
 "Poor thing," she said pityingly, lifting the dog's 
 head on her hand. She dipped a spoonful of the 
 warm liquid from the tin cup her father held for her
 
 124 Out of the Silences 
 
 and poured it into the dog's throat. The creature 
 seemed past swallowing. Gently but firmly she 
 manipulated the muscles; the liquid went down. 
 She gave another dose in the same fashion. She 
 handed her handkerchief to Antoine to wet with the 
 hot water. She waved it back and forth to cool it a 
 little, then laid it on the blood-caked wound. 
 
 "Oh, Daddy," she said in a low voice, "just see 
 the poor mother." She pointed to the dark, hard, 
 swollen dugs. 
 
 "Where are her little puppies? Would it do any 
 good if we put the hound's babies to her?" Her 
 father shook his head. 
 
 The girl's eyes filled with tears. She stroked the 
 large fine head. A quiver ran through the dog's 
 body, followed by a quick low sigh. Antoine spoke : 
 
 "She mak' her feenish, la pauvre bete." 
 
 The hound was whimpering in the corner. 
 
 The Chippewa went to the door, opened it, and 
 stood there listening intently. He whispered to the 
 half-breed. 
 
 "What is it now, Antoine?" The city-man spoke 
 abruptly. The dog's death had gotten on his nerves, 
 for at home he had three fine ones of his own and 
 well he loved them. 
 
 "I tol' yo : Long Jean, he say Leettle Owl bin com- 
 ing for fin' hees dog. Heem come," he said grimly. 
 
 The next moment they were aware of the fact, for 
 they heard the rapid snow-deadened thud of hoofs in 
 the clearing. A moment more and a pony was 
 brought to so sudden a stop at the threshold that he 
 sat squarely on his haunches. The Chippewa stepped 
 out ; spoke a word or two, and thereupon a boy rushed 
 into the room, speaking to no one, noticing no one,
 
 A Forest Interlude 125 
 
 seeing nothing but his dog stretched out on the straw, 
 her head still on the girl's lap. "^i 
 
 He flung himself down beside her, laying his ear 
 over the sharp ribs. He lifted her head ; looked at 
 her eyes. A sudden shivering seized him ; his teeth 
 chattered. He rose to his feet. 
 
 The girl stroked the dog's head. 
 
 "Don't you touch her!" he said fiercely. "She's 
 mine." 
 
 The last word was almost a suppressed shriek. 
 The girl removed her hand. She could but respect 
 the boyish misery that showed, oh, so plainly, in the 
 thin, white, set face, the chattering teeth, the shiver- 
 ing little figure, lithe, straight as a pine sapling; 
 strong too, for without another word he lifted the 
 dog's body, laid it across his shoulders, holding it by 
 fore and hind paws as a shepherd carries a lamb, and 
 started for the door. Antoine confronted him. 
 
 "Where bin going, Leettle Owl?" He spoke very 
 kindly to the lad. 
 
 "Back." The boy answered in no uncertain tone 
 with a look at Antoine that convinced the half-breed 
 that here there could be no interference; but his 
 city-man protested. 
 
 "He mustn't go back till we have dried him off, 
 wanned Him up well such a little chap, and alone 
 too. He can't be more than eleven." 
 
 "He tough, Leettle Owl. He like de pine-tree root 
 wot hoi' on for sure to not'ing. And he see in de 
 dark like de brown owl he." He let the boy pass, 
 opened the door for him, and followed him out. 
 
 The girl rose and went to the window ; her father 
 joined her. Hollowing her hands to her temples to 
 shut off the light from the room, she looked out. The
 
 126 Out of the Silences 
 
 moon was partly obscured, but by its light she saw 
 the boy with Long John's help lay the body of the 
 dog across the pony's shoulders; saw him fling him- 
 self on, and the three start across the clearing, the 
 Ghippewa following closely. 
 
 "Now why the deuce is that Indian sneaking off 
 like that to-night ? " said her father irritably. " We're 
 tired and need to turn in early with what's before us 
 to-morrow." 
 
 "Antoine will tell us; he's coming in." 
 
 "What's all this for?" he demanded of the half- 
 breed as he entered. 
 
 "Long Jean, he go wit' Leettle Owl to Chippewa 
 village, mebbe eight mile sout' from hyear. He hire 
 pony for de matin ^nex' day; I hire de pony in 
 de corner me, an' yo an' leettle Mees mak' de bad 
 wet trail to de lak' so pony-pack, hein?" 
 
 His city-man smiled. His irritation vanished like 
 the night's snow before the south wind. He felt 
 again as he had felt already many times during the 
 month's trip how wise he had been to have engaged 
 two such guides even at ten dollars a day. It was 
 worth something to have one's anticipated discomfort 
 on the morrow discounted in this pleasant fashion. 
 
 "And I'm glad enough. Now let's turn in; I'm 
 dead tired." 
 
 "I believe I am too," said the girl ; then, with a sigh, 
 "Do you know, Daddy, I'm so sorry for that boy." 
 
 "So am I. It was tough on him, no mistake; but 
 don't you bother about it any more. Good-night 
 and sleep soundly." He kissed her twice. 
 
 "Good-night, Daddy dear." Taking up her blanket 
 absently, she followed the woman and girl in behind 
 the curtains.
 
 A Forest Interlude 127 
 
 5 
 
 All night the south wind droned softly through the 
 forest to the accompanying drip, drip, drip of melting 
 snow. When the morning broke Antoine's words 
 were fulfilled : the summer seemed to have forgotten 
 to leave. There were soft blue skies and sunshine ; 
 and every feathery pine branch, every brown leaf, 
 every twig among the underbrush, every cup of moss 
 was bejewelled with the snow-water dew sparkle, 
 glitter, prismatic colors everywhere as the strong, level 
 beams of the rising sun shone into the forest athwart 
 the trail. 
 
 The occupants of the camp were early astir and, 
 coffee and bread disposed of, busied themselves in 
 various ways all save the girl. She stood just 
 outside the door using her eyes to good advantage. 
 She was taking in all the details of the rude camp, bark 
 covered, that looked a part of the forest behind it. 
 There were no outbuilclings to offend the eye, not 
 yet. No trace of fire was to be seen, no blackened 
 stumps, no dead and down timber except the huge 
 pile of pine logs beside the camp. 
 
 All about the clearing was the forest. North, 
 south, east, and west the trees reared their great 
 crowns against the skyline, and beneath them the 
 green glooms were shot through and through with the 
 fresh glory of the morning light. 
 
 The girl's face kindled with some strange reflection 
 of the light. She looked to the south where the trail 
 from that direction emerged, and there, coming out 
 of the woods, crossing the clearing, came the Chip- 
 pewa on a pony. Before him sat a wee Indian maiden, 
 round-faced, soft-eyed, sweet-lipped, two dark brown 
 braids showing beneath a little crimson and white
 
 128 Out of the Silences 
 
 blanket shawl which enveloped her head hoodwise and 
 fell in soft folds to her small moccasinned feet that 
 dangled against the pony's withers. 
 
 "Oh, Antoine," the girl called to the half-breed, 
 "come out, do, and tell me who the little dear is that 
 Long John is bringing back with him ! " 
 
 Without waiting for an answer she reached up both 
 hands, as the pony drew up at the door, to lift the 
 child down. But the little maid drew back shyly 
 against the Chippewa, looking up inquiringly into 
 his face. The Indian spoke a few words to her. 
 Without more ado than a squirrel may make hi running 
 down a tree trunk, the child slid down the Indian's 
 leg to the ground and stood before the assembled 
 camp : aliens, strangers, Antoine, hound, and pony 
 a little red bird alight in the clearing among the 
 towering pines. 
 
 "Who is the darling? Antoine, do find out." The 
 girl spoke almost impatiently. 
 
 "She Kinni-kinnik Long Jean, hees gran'chile." 
 
 "And what is Long John going to do with her 
 here? Why does he bring her so far?" 
 
 "Long Jean, he ver' proud of hees Kinni-kinnik; 
 he like for mak' show wit her. He say Leettle Owl 
 bin coming on his pony, an' Kinni-kinnik an 
 Leettle Owl mak' veesite on de camp till dat de camp 
 garqon he come back from de lak' wit de ponies 
 four hour, mebbe. Den Leettle Owl tak' de ponies 
 and Kinni-kinnik back to Chippewa village." 
 
 "You've planned well, Antoine," said his city- 
 man; "and now let's be off." The Indian helped 
 him astride the pony. The girl stooped to kiss the 
 grave little face upturned to hers. The child drew 
 back.
 
 A Forest Interlude 129 
 
 "Give me a dollar for Kinni-kinnik too, Daddy," 
 she begged ; "you have been generous enough with 
 the others." 
 
 Her father with an indulgent word handed her a 
 silver dollar. She pressed it into the child's hand. 
 
 "I've crossed your palm with silver for luck, dear 
 little Kinni-kinnik. You can't forget me now, even 
 if you want to." 
 
 There was just a flicker of a smile on the demure 
 little face. The child's fingers closed tightly over 
 the silver. 
 
 The girl took her seat on the aliens' pony. She 
 leaned to grasp the toil-hardened hands held up to 
 her. 
 
 "Good-by, good-by till we meet again." She 
 spoke joyously, waving her hand to them as the little 
 procession crossed the clearing and entered upon the 
 sunbarred floor of the forest trail. Once again the 
 girl turned to wave her hand to the group about the 
 door, and looking behind her saw the boy on his 
 pony coming from the woods to the south. She waved 
 her hand to him too. 
 
 "Good-by, Little Owl, good-by," she called back 
 in her gay young voice. 
 
 There was no answering salute, no recognition that 
 he had seen or heard her. 
 
 "He's a queer chap." She spoke to her father 
 just ahead. "I believe he has been watching us all 
 the time from the trail across the clearing. Why 
 didn't he come and say good-by to us, I wonder?" 
 
 "Mgh." It was Antoine who replied. "He bin 
 dere de 'hole time, scouting. I see heem ; he tink 
 I no see not'ing. He wot yo call shy, like de red 
 deer, is Leettle Owl."
 
 130 Out of the Silences 
 
 "I don't see anything for him to be shy about," 
 said the girl, indifferently. In another moment she 
 was oh'ing and ah'ing at the radiant beauty of the 
 forest in the freshness of the Indian summer morning. 
 She let the others go on ahead of her. She told her 
 father she could be trusted to ride a bit alone without 
 a cavalcade in close attendance. He let her have 
 her way. 
 
 6 
 
 She rode on drawing deep breaths of the tonic air. 
 She threw back her head to look up through the trees 
 at the irregular patches of deepening blue showing 
 through their interstices. Somewhere, afar in the 
 forest, she heard a low bird-note ; then a crow cawed 
 loudly above her ; his call was answered by another 
 and still a third. A rabbit leaped across the trail 
 and vanished in the undergrowth. 
 
 After a time she was aware of soft almost noiseless 
 steps close behind her. She turned quickly and saw 
 Little Owl trotting silently by the pony's haunches. 
 She drew rein at once. The boy reached up and 
 thrust into her bridle hand a shell, or what she took 
 to be one at that moment. 
 
 "It's for you," he said in a low tense voice. 
 
 Before she could speak a word of thanks, her 
 surprise being genuine, he was gone. She looked 
 back he was running swiftly, silently. Even as 
 she looked he was out of sight; the forest closed 
 about him. 
 
 She started on the pony again, looking at the shell or 
 what seemed to be a part of one ; she did not stop to 
 examine. She smiled at her thought : this was such 
 a pretty ending to her adventure ! She would keep 
 this gift to herself. It was for no other. She was
 
 A Forest Interlude 131 
 
 sure the boy had given it to her for the unavailing 
 pity she had felt for his dog. It was clear that he 
 had chosen this time for his gift when both she and 
 he were unobserved. 
 
 " Poor laddie," she murmured. 
 
 She unbuttoned her jacket, thrust the shell into 
 her blouse, and rode on into the forest depths.
 
 IV 
 THE PATH OF LIFE
 
 IV 
 THE PATH OF LIFE 
 
 THE MAN-BOY 
 i 
 
 AFTER his return to the Mountain, the saddle- 
 maker was aware of an indefinable change in the boy. 
 Had he been learned he might have called the change 
 psychological, and accounted for it by Bob's recent 
 experience of another environment; but not being 
 versed in book-science of any kind, he accepted the 
 simple fact that Bob wasn't quite like himself and 
 that growing boys, much like the animals, are subject 
 to such change. Moreover, he knew the boy still 
 sorrowed for his dog to whose puppies he was devoting 
 himself, his time, and a nursing bottle, with good 
 results ; for the rest he was little in the hut during the 
 day, and during the nights of that wonderful autumn 
 aftermath of summer slept, rolled in his blanket, in 
 the woods over by the south trail. 
 
 The fact was Bob wanted to live on his own basis ; 
 that is to say he wanted to free himself from the 
 hut and Jane. The saddle-maker soon saw into his 
 manoeuvring. 
 
 "That life in the Minnesota big woods kind o' 
 
 spoiled ye for my housekeeping didn't it, Son?" He 
 
 asked rather suddenly one day when the lad he was 
 
 growing tall since his return had dropped some 
 
 135
 
 136 Out of the Silences 
 
 broad hints as to how he would like to provide for 
 himself like a man. 
 
 Bob looked up quickly, a little surprised that his 
 thought should be so easily read; then looked as 
 quickly away, fearful lest Plunket read all his 
 thoughts. 
 
 "Well, you see it's this way, Plunket: that tepee 
 just suited me clear down to the ground, as you say 
 when you like something awfully well. It was mine, 
 you know ; an' when I dropped that tent-flap at 
 night it was just like a little house of my own 
 cozy, you know." 
 
 "I don't blame ye." The saddle-maker spoke 
 thoughtfully. He knew that Jane did not regard 
 the boy with any particular favor ; he doubted 
 whether, being an Indian, she would ever lose her 
 special grudge against him. He knew that, so far 
 as possible, Bob had nothing to do with Jane. He 
 saw that he liked Tom and Jerry well enough al- 
 though their very evident worship of him, which 
 showed itself in following him about and discovering 
 his whereabouts if within the radius of a mile, both 
 bored and irritated him. 
 
 "I'll set up a tepee for myself, if you'll say the word, 
 Plunket. The hut is gettin' too full of us." 
 
 "I'll say the word all right, but it won't be 'bout 
 lettin' ye winter in a tepee, Son, not yet." He spoke 
 emphatically. 
 
 Bob kicked an old bucket-yoke, that happened to 
 lie conveniently near his foot, and sent it spinning 
 across a yard or two of grass. It helped him to hold 
 his tongue. At no time did the boy relish the least 
 restraint or bear it without irritation ; and least of 
 all was he willing to suffer bit or bridle when his
 
 The Path of Life 137 
 
 desires seemed to him wholly legitimate. His inner 
 comment on the saddle-maker's statement, that 
 sounded a note of finality, dooming all his hopes of a 
 life away from the squaw, was forcible ; but the 
 bucket-yoke proved a good scapegoat and he did not 
 want to hurt his friend. Bill Plunket read rebellion 
 in the boy's;* act; but he was wise, wise in dealing 
 with this specimen of the younger generation. Bob 
 remaining silent and glum, he spoke again : 
 
 "It's 'bout as ye say, I ain't denyin' it the hut's 
 gettin' too full for us-all, an' I don't blame ye for 
 wantin' a little place to hole up in. Ye can't use 
 the shed, for that's full, too, now we've got Hannah 
 an' my horse back, an' your pony, an' the cavalry 
 plug, an' the Minnesota heifer, an' the dogs, an' a 
 hen or two Jane is set on winterin' a few. An' 
 it's like to be fuller that heifer is right on her job. 
 So the shed won't work." For a few minutes he 
 was silent, lost, to all appearance, in deep thought. 
 Bob felt it unwise to interrupt him. 
 
 "I'll tell ye what, Son, we'll knock together a 
 little lean-to on the south end of the shed. Hannah 
 can do the haulin' with the stone-boat, an' I can 
 manage a good chimney for ye, plenty of stone an' 
 clay 'round in the mountains, an' we'll fix up a place 
 for ye where ye'll enjoy yerself, an' I can't say that 
 for any tepee in a hard winter. Ye can look out 
 for the stock, an' be handy if a horse gets stalled or 
 the heifer gives us a surprise party, a heifer'll do 
 that most any time, an' kind o' take the care off o' 
 me. The old man's got plenty to see to in the hut." 
 
 Bob looked at his friend admiringly and gratefully. 
 The lean-to was a fine way out of his difficulty, and 
 no feelings hurt.
 
 138 Out of the Silences 
 
 "I say, Plunket, that's rippin'-bully. I never 
 thought o' that. When can we begin?" 
 
 He was all eagerness to escape from the thraldom 
 of Jane and the hut. He realized that the lean-to 
 would give him only partial freedom, but when he 
 was older well, he knew what he would do when he 
 was McGillie's age. 
 
 "Right now, Son. We can't afford to lose one 
 hour o' this weather. We've got to think o' the 
 clay an' its good dryin'. I'll get the spade, an' hitch 
 up Hannah." 
 
 During the next ten days the man and boy enjoyed 
 themselves to the top of their bent. The two were 
 always most companionable, but in the intimacy of 
 their work in the woods, felling small trees and 
 getting out the logs, their appreciation of each other 
 deepened, their friendship ripened in the mellowing 
 atmosphere of those November days. . . 
 
 2 
 
 Just as winter set in, bringing almost at once the 
 bitter weather of those weeks in the dugout on the 
 far away Missouri, the log lean-to was finished ; its 
 chinks were filled, its floor laid with clay, its chimney 
 built on good principles it was tall enough to 
 assure a fine draught, and shallow enough to throw 
 all the heat into the small eight by ten interior. When 
 the clay floor was smoothed, a bunk knocked up across 
 the warm shed end, filled with sweet-smelling hay 
 gathered around the sloughs, and the buffalo robe 
 laid over it; when the kettle and a few pans, that 
 Plunket had provided out of his own store, having 
 purchased them long ago in Boissevain to replenish 
 those with which Jane had departed, hung on nails 
 driven into the logs ; when his gun rack was on the
 
 The Path of Life 139 
 
 wall, a fire bright on the clay hearth, and the puppies 
 were asleep on the gayly colored blanket, that was 
 the fruit of his first pony trade then it was that 
 Bob Collamore, now just turned fourteen, slipped 
 the long wooden bolt on the inside of his door; 
 made his own tea in his own black tin teapot ; fried 
 his bacon in his own frying pan ; stewed some dried 
 raspberries in a very sweet syrup of his own concoc- 
 tion; and, after feasting like a young god, lighted 
 his pipe. 
 
 There is no man on earth who might not have envied 
 him. His joy in his freedom was great ; his enjoyment 
 of his little home entire ; his satisfaction with all his 
 circumstances supreme ; his appetite that kept 
 him busy supplying himself. He was so happy in his 
 special housekeeping, apart from Jane and her 
 "jawin"' as McGillie put it! He didn't blame 
 McGillie for clearing out ; he would when he was older. 
 
 This conviction that to "clear out" was the only 
 thing remaining for him when he should have attained 
 McGillie's age sixteen when he went north grew 
 stronger as winter wore to spring, for he knew that 
 further complications in the hut were in order. He 
 knew, because of his intimate knowledge of animal 
 life, that this complicating event would fill the hut 
 to overflowing in the not distant future. . . 
 
 3 
 
 "Plunket " 
 
 The saddle-maker had come to know that something 
 was weighing on Bob's mind when he spoke abruptly 
 out of a silence of more than ten minutes. He waited 
 for further developments. 
 
 The boy was hammering away industriously at a 
 piece of brass a bit of an old-tune kettle which
 
 140 Out of the Silences 
 
 the saddle-maker obtained from an Indian for almost 
 its weight in tobacco. Bob liked this part of the 
 work ; it gave his fancy free rein. He made orna- 
 ments for the saddle, crude in their execution but 
 artistic in conception. The boy was hammering 
 something of bird life into the special bit on which he 
 was at work a loon on its heavy wing. The draw- 
 ing was his ; the hammered design showed creative 
 power all of which was lost on the saddle-maker, 
 but proved enticing to the whites and Indians. The 
 saddle-maker knew only that the " high-f alutin " 
 brass, as he called it, increased the value of his good 
 saddles. The difference in price obtained for the 
 brass ornamented saddles and the unornamented went 
 to Bob for wages. 
 
 As usual when working, they were seated in the wide 
 shed door that opened on the woods to the west. It 
 was cool there of a morning. After another five 
 minutes of silence and busy work Bob spoke again 
 in the same tone. 
 
 "Plunket " 
 
 "Wot's up, Son?" The saddle-maker resumed 
 the stitching of a leather strap. 
 
 "Chum said he wouldn't be round for the next 
 four or five days." 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 "Says he's going on a fast on purpose, four or 
 five days." 
 
 "Wot's he goin' hungry for? Never knew an 
 Indian to go hungry for the love of an empty 
 stomach." 
 
 "He says he's got to ; it's the custom of his people." 
 Bob easily fell into Indian ways of speech when 
 speaking of them.
 
 The Path of Life 141 
 
 "He's right; they have an awful sight o' what he 
 calls 'customs.'" 
 
 "What makes his people want to fast five days for ? " 
 
 "You've got me there. I've lived with 'em half 
 my life an' I can't keep run o' their customs they're 
 too much for me. Mebbe it's somp'in' to do with the 
 Sun Ceremony they're goin' to hold here; one is 
 'bout due." 
 
 "What's that?" 
 
 "I can't give ye no right idea 'bout it I ain't 
 never been near it ; but as near as I can make out it's 
 somp'in' like one of the old-fashioned Methody camp- 
 meetin's my mother used to go to when I was a kid." 
 
 "What's a camp-meetin' ? " 
 
 The saddle-maker chuckled. "Ye're more like a 
 woodchuck being smoked out o' his hole than any- 
 thing else livin.' " 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 Bill Plunket laughed out loud. "Ye was sure 
 born 'whyin', Son. Ye know when a woodchuck 
 gets into his hole an' ye try to smoke him out, ye 
 always have to stop up t'other entrance or 't ain't no 
 good. An' if ye pour a pail or two o' water down one 
 end, he's out at 't other if ye don't watch out. Don't 
 ask me no more 'bout camp-meetin'. I was only a 
 little chap, an' I was left to home." 
 
 "But, Plunket, I think he's got to do it all alone. 
 He says that fourteen summers and winters have 
 passed over his head and it's time for him to follow 
 the trail of his fathers fathers, mind you, not 
 father. He said his grandfather made his fast 
 when he was twelve, and after that he killed a white 
 man because some other white men had killed his 
 sister. An' he said Carmastic got his 'medicine'
 
 142 Out of the Silences 
 
 so he could kill that man in a dream. Now what 
 d'you make o' that? It sounds rotten." 
 
 "I dunno, Son, I dunno. An Injun can see signs, 
 an' dream dreams, an' follow dead trails, an' swim 
 bad coulees, an' see spirits walkin', an' have all the 
 animiles talkin' to him like friends, an' well, I 
 can't just exactly say it as I want to, to make ye 
 understand, but the whole o' 'em live two lives 
 where we live one. I don't understand it, an' I 
 ain't never tried to. All I know is they do see things 
 we don't ; ye can tell it by their goings-on. An' 
 let me tell ye right now an' here : keep away from 
 their ceremonies, an' their dances, an' all their 
 private gewgaws in the way of what ye might call 
 religion ; for I can tell ye it ain't healthy for a boy of 
 white blood to mix much with 'em at such times. 
 Stick to yer Bible." 
 
 "But the tribes in the Book did just the same 
 things, Plunket !" Bob protested vigorously. "They 
 did lots of things just like the Injuns, with their 
 fasts, an' feasts, an' sacrifices, an' an' " 
 
 "An' wot?" The saddle-maker was curious to 
 see how deeply the Indians' ways and traditions had 
 been dyed into the white man's skin, at least. 
 
 " 'An' their temple in the wilderness " He 
 hesitated, wondering if he should tell even Bill 
 Plunket. "I've seen their old altars all 'round in the 
 mountains." 
 
 "Ye have, have ye? Well, keep what ye've seen 
 to yerself an' me." 
 
 Bob, considering this caution, made up his mind 
 to heed the first part of the advice and reject the 
 second. There were some things even the saddle- 
 maker did not understand.
 
 The Path of Life 143 
 
 "Anyway, Chum said he was goin' to-night and 
 into the mountain, too." 
 
 "Mgh." 
 
 "An' he said: 'To-night I leave my grandfather's 
 tepee, and when I return I shall be a man.' Now 
 how can he be a man over night? That's what I 
 want to know. He looks just like a funny pap- 
 poose, an' he's only up to my shoulder." His tone 
 was resentful. Chum the round-faced, who had not 
 quite four feet six to his height-credit, Chum with 
 his shock of hair falling over his eyes ; Chum 
 whom he had led into all sorts of boyish mischief 
 Chum asserting that he would be a man when he 
 should have returned from a five days' fast and a 
 dream with medicine ! 
 
 Bob sneered. "He's crazy; clean plumb loco. I 
 don't hold with such stuff." 
 
 Bill Plunket was a man of wisdom although not of 
 learning. He knew that once such a trail of thought 
 had been found by the lad of fourteen beside him, 
 there would be no rest for Bob until he followed that 
 thought to its lair. Knowing this, he spoke out of 
 his wisdom. 
 
 "Son, if I was you, I'd go to headquarters to find 
 out what I can't tell ye ; go to old Carmastic. He 
 knows; an' what he has a mind to tell ye, ye can 
 depend on even if 't ain't much. He's been livin' on 
 this earth now for more'n seventy years, an' he knows 
 a thing or two 'bout it that we don't know. Only 
 ye mind this : he knows it in the Injun way, not in 
 our way, not the white man's and you're white, 
 never forget that." 
 
 Bob hammered away hard at the brass before 
 answering.
 
 144 Out of the Silences 
 
 "I'll go this afternoon," was all he said. 
 
 He worked until near midday. After that he was 
 missing. The saddle-maker smiled to himself, but 
 was silent when Jane asked where Little Owl had 
 gone. 
 
 4 
 
 That afternoon, Carmastic, having finished his 
 midday pipe, lay down beneath a full leaved maple 
 in the woods behind his tepee and went to sleep. 
 When he awoke a westering sunbeam lay hot across 
 his eyes, and something, either a crawling, creeping, 
 or flying thing, was tickling his nose. In half sleep 
 he brushed it aside, but what his hand struck was no 
 living thing, no intrusive insect. He started broad 
 awake; sat up alert. The thing was a piece of 
 bark of the paper birch suspended from a string tied 
 to a lower branch of the shadowing maple. 
 
 He studied the piece of white bark. There was 
 a picture of a tree on it. He knew that tree: the 
 great sycamore in the forest towards the lake. There 
 were three lines converging at the roots of the tree. 
 He read that easily : the three trails from west and 
 south and north that crossed at that point. At the 
 foot of the tree were a man and a boy. Beneath the 
 pictograph, in the syllabic Cree symbols, a sentence : 
 
 "The Son of the Silent Places wants speech with 
 Carmastic." 
 
 Then another pictograph of the sun in the west 
 and the sign for immediate action. The old medicine- 
 man smiled at the boy's cleverness. Not with all his 
 Indian inheritance would Chum ever have hit upon 
 such a device. 
 
 "He should have been of our race; his brain and 
 thoughts are red, although his skin is white," muttered
 
 The Path of Life 145 
 
 the old man. He rose from his sitting posture with 
 almost the spring of youth. Something in this boy 
 brought back to him the days of his young strength. 
 He would meet him at the sycamore; it was but 
 three miles distant. He was curious to know the 
 boy's need of him. 
 
 5 
 
 "Tell me all about it," the boy pleaded as the two 
 sat together beneath the tree. He had made the 
 old man aware of what Chum had said about his 
 fasting, and declared he could not understand what 
 he meant. "How do you do it?" 
 
 "You must fast till you dream." 
 
 "But what if I don't dream? I shall starve." 
 
 The old man smiled. "No, you will not starve, for 
 the dreams always come with the fasting, after three, 
 four, five days none can say." 
 
 "I can fast five days, no more." Bob spoke 
 decidedly. He knew what it was to be hungry, to 
 keep an enforced fast. The memory of those weeks 
 in the dugout was burned in as with acid. 
 
 "That is your test, your trial." 
 
 "And if I stand it, what then?" 
 
 "You must fast till you dream; and that dream, 
 my son, is your ' medicine ' your part of that Life 
 that never was born, because it always was, is, and 
 will be. We Indians name it with a name : Manedo. 
 I speak a mystery ; you cannot know of it. You 
 shall know of it only when life shall have taught you 
 its meaning." 
 
 "But I don't understand." 
 
 "It is not given to such as you to understand 
 not for years. Wait, my son ; wait, watch, listen. 
 Listen to the loon calling over the lake; watch her
 
 146 Out of the Silences 
 
 ways in the sky. Listen to the beaver gnawing 
 through a tree trunk; learn her ways. Watch the 
 lights in the Great North that run to and fro and no 
 man knows whence they come or whither they go ; 
 you shall see signs. Watch the stars in their courses ; 
 trace the pathway of the spirits along that great 
 white way that you may see in the heated nights of 
 summer; learn to know the clouds." 
 
 "I saw the dancing fires in the North just before we 
 heard the crows last spring. I know the way of the 
 wind by the clouds passing, and I have seen spirits 
 walking " 
 
 The seer interrupted him. He knew only too well 
 the stories conjured by the boy's imagination and 
 he did not wish to indulge him, not just now. He 
 continued speaking slowly and solemnly : 
 
 "Look daily upon the earth-mother that is heavy 
 with what is about to be born grass, corn, wheat, 
 rice : things by which men live this life. Hearken 
 to the soft goings of the forest creatures ; learn all 
 their ways; find out their nests and holes and 
 lairs." 
 
 "I do that now." 
 
 "True, and by that token you may know you are 
 on the right trail to acquire knowledge." 
 
 "But when does a boy have to begin to fast?" 
 
 "When he is about to become a man. Listen, 
 Little Owl: you are old for your years, old and in 
 many ways already wise. You know how the bird 
 breaks forth from the egg; how the cub comes forth 
 from its mother. After your fast you will know what 
 it is to be a man, for then you will have set your feet 
 firmly in the path of life, and your medicine will 
 always be with you a part of you."
 
 The Path of Life 147 
 
 "But what will the medicine be? How can I take 
 it with me? I can not taste it, see it, handle it. 
 You say it is a dream. Dreams are not real." 
 
 "My son, it is provided that at times men must do, 
 without understanding what they do. At times words 
 are dumb and only deeds have tongues." 
 
 "But Chum says I can't tell the dream to any one." 
 
 "True, you may not. Keep it to yourself. It is 
 a part of you. Guard it in your heart. It is yours 
 till you shall have gone forth on the warpath and 
 fought as a man fights to victory. Then you may 
 sing it for all to hear, for you have won the right to 
 sing it." 
 
 " Mgh ! " The tone was sceptical. "But what can 
 I do about it if I don't go to war ? Wars have to be 
 made ; I have read that in my Book." 
 
 "Yes, you have read of wars and the mighty hosts 
 of the tribes going forth to victory. I have respect 
 for that Book ; it tells, and tells truly, how men war. 
 And you have read me a song, sung after war victory 
 a war song. I forget the woman's name, but she 
 sang it even as the women of my father's time sang ; 
 as my mother, the medicine-woman, sang after my 
 father's victory over the Sioux " 
 
 "Oh, I know; you mean Deborah." 
 
 "You have said a woman like unto my mother. 
 If the white men would read and ponder your Book 
 they could better understand their red brothers, for 
 their fathers did even as our fathers have done. 
 You have told me much, and what you have told 
 me is true ; I know it stands written in the Book." 
 
 "So if I can go to war, and win, you say I 
 can sing a song about my dream ? " 
 
 "You have said."
 
 148 Out of the Silences 
 
 "But what do the men do that don't get the chance 
 to go to war? Don't they ever tell their dream?" 
 
 "Not aloud, Little Owl, not aloud for man, or 
 bird, or beast to hear ; the medicine would leave 
 them ; they would lose a part of their life. Have 
 you ever seen a little banner, not a war banner, 
 on a pole in front of hut or tepee ? With a picture on 
 it it might be an animal, a bird, a fish?" 
 
 Bob nodded gravely. "I have seen such in the 
 north, this side of Boissevain, the first time the 
 saddle-maker took McGillie and me to see the train, 
 and the engine that snorts like a horse." 
 
 "Tell me about it." Carmastic spoke guilelessly. 
 He must know whether this were fiction or truth 
 before giving more explanations. 
 
 "It was a pole just outside a little hut an old 
 piece of canvas in a frame ; and on it was painted 
 some kind of a bird. It could be most anything ; I 
 couldn't see head or tail to it. But it was a bird," 
 he said emphatically. 
 
 "How do you know it was a bird?" 
 
 Bob smiled. "Because it had wings, plain enough 
 to see. McGillie saw them too, and the saddle- 
 maker said it was somebody's 'medicine.'" 
 
 "It is well; you have seen. The man who drew 
 that picture of the bird had never followed the war- 
 path; he could never sing his song that all might 
 hear. But he made a picture of his dream, and he 
 calls it the ' song-that-was-never-sung ' ; it is our 
 custom. A man may not keep his dream, his medicine, 
 forever hidden ; it works him ill. It is for his health 
 that he show the dream to those who pass on the 
 trail; but it remains unsung unless he follow the 
 warpath."
 
 The Path of Life 149 
 
 Bob sat on his heels before the old medicine-man 
 pondering this matter of unsong songs, and dreams 
 that were "medicine." Carmastic studied the boy's 
 expressive face. He took his long pipe, filled it and 
 smoked tranquilly. The boy paid no attention to 
 him. Nor did he lift his eyes when a partridge, 
 that was brooding her late chicks, so brown and 
 speckled that they were scarcely to be discerned 
 among the dried brown leaves of her make-shift nest 
 in the underbrush just behind Bob, started up in 
 sudden whir of terror at the smoke, and flopped 
 away, as if broken- winged, in order to decoy the 
 humans from her young. 
 
 So the minutes passed. It was a hot day. Across 
 the lake the heated atmosphere quivered like smoke. 
 The Indian and boy sat in the deep shade of the great 
 sycamore. There was no breath of air, and the myriad 
 insect life of midsummer was droning and shrilling its 
 loudest. At last Bob spoke. 
 
 "Medicine-man, when are the Indians coming for 
 their great Sun Ceremony?" 
 
 "Next month. Why, Little Owl?" 
 
 "Because I want to be free to see all I can. I will 
 make my fast before that ; then I am free to eat, and 
 I shall not have to think : Now you must go hungry 
 while the Indians are feasting." 
 
 "It is well, Little Owl. I will go now. Will you 
 come?" 
 
 "No, I want to see the old hen come back to her 
 nest; the chicks can't be a day old yet, or they 
 would run away. They're nimble like mice on the 
 second day." He took one of the tiny brown bird 
 morsels in his hand and brooded it. 
 
 Carmastic smiled benevolently. "You are a son
 
 150 Out of the Silences 
 
 of the earth, Little Owl. The Earth-mother knows 
 her own." He turned into the woods. 
 6 
 
 Bob watched him out of sight. Then he pretended 
 to play with the chicks, handling them very gently 
 and not disturbing the queer nest that was a mere 
 collection of leaves and grass. It looked to be a part 
 of the ground. He wondered if the medicine-man 
 were watching him ; but he did not raise his head to 
 see. 
 
 After a while he removed into the underbrush a few 
 yards from the nest, and waited for the hen to return. 
 But he waited in vain. The sun was lowering to the 
 west behind the forest; the heated atmosphere 
 cooled gradually and settled heavily upon the lake 
 waters in violet mist. The red of the sun through the 
 heat-haze glowed like hard maple coals seen through 
 campfire ashes. Bob listened. There was no sound 
 but the mad last-of-the-day humming, chirping, 
 whirring of bee, cricket, grasshopper, and the fine 
 buzzsawing of gnat and summer fly. 
 
 He looked at the sycamore. The coast was at last 
 clear. He shinned up the trunk to the first fork 
 and rested there for his next climb. Up and up he 
 worked along among the boughs, choosing his way 
 cautiously through this leafy upward trail. Carefully 
 placing a foot here and there, as opportunity and a 
 forking limb offered, he made his way towards the 
 top sixty feet, seventy feet; he was in the leafy 
 crown. Then he sat down lightly and warily on the 
 stout branch of a half bare limb, and looked about him. 
 
 The sycamore's crown was irregular. Evidently 
 some forest tree had grown against it a hundred 
 years ago and been levelled long, long after the giant
 
 The Path of Life 151 
 
 sycamore had attained its growth. The crowding 
 pressure of this tree had left the leafy crown far from 
 symmetrical, for branches had atrophied, or broken 
 off, so leaving an open space free from much foliage. 
 Through this clearing in the leafy forest of his treetop, 
 Bob could look far away across the lake to the bluffs 
 beyond mere misty outlines now because of the 
 heat-haze. Beneath him he could see spread out the 
 grassy bluff and on two sides of it the forest. Out 
 over the top of that forest he could look in two 
 directions ; each leaf therein was quiet, unmoved by 
 any breeze. He wondered what it might be like up 
 there in a high wind and chuckled gleefully, anticipat- 
 ing the sport of it when he should have made his nest. 
 
 7 
 
 Little Owl's Sittings were many during the next 
 three days. The saddle-maker was dimly aware of 
 them all, but he played, through policy, the un- 
 observant. One took place at high noon ; two during 
 the long twilight of the second day's migrations ; the 
 last one at night under a full moon. The dogs 
 were shut up in the shed during these flights. 
 The pony was requisitioned. Two broad boards 
 weather-beaten to gray, a fifty foot coil of rope like- 
 wise weathered dark to partial invisibility these 
 things disappeared one by one from the shed. 
 
 Once Bill Plunket saw by the light of the full 
 moon the unshodden pony, distorted into a pannier- 
 carrying donkey by a bundle of hay across his 
 back, loping over the grass ; saw Little Owl throw 
 his blanket across the hay, mount his pony with the 
 evident intention of holding down the bundle, and 
 disappear along the trail that led to the north. 
 
 That evening he was sitting as usual in the shed
 
 152 Out of the Silences 
 
 door, smoking his before bedtime pipe, when the 
 pony came trotting back, his proportions again 
 normal. The -boy was lying out along his back, 
 head to tail. Bob put up the horse; then he sat 
 down beside Plunket. 
 
 "Will you lend me your water-bottle, Plunket? 
 McGillie took his away with him. I mean the one 
 with the strap on it." 
 
 "Sure, Son. Goin' to the spring to-night?" 
 
 "Not to-night." He went to the big water-butt 
 sunk in the ground just within the shed and filled 
 the canteen. 
 
 The saddle-maker made no remark. He read the 
 signs : the boy was making ready to begin his fast. 
 
 The dogs, loving the night-light in the full of the 
 moon, had been nosing about in the woods to stir up 
 what should chance to be there, and now by twos and 
 threes came pacing leisurely homewards. At a low 
 whistle from Bob they raced to him within the shed. 
 He closed the door on them and jpolted it. Thereupon 
 followed sudden howls of protest; then quiet 
 at that moment every nose being glued to the crack 
 along the threshold. 
 
 "Plunket, I'm going to make my fast now an' get 
 through with it, and don't you give me away to 'em." 
 
 "Not goin' across the lake, hey?" The saddle- 
 maker put that question in a tone that made Bob 
 glad he had chosen another and more neighborly 
 locality. 
 
 "No, not there not near so far as that." 
 
 He slipped the water-bottle strap over his head ; 
 kicked off his moccasins and took them in his hand. 
 
 "Good-night, Plunket. Keep the dogs in for the 
 night, an' don't tell Jane."
 
 The Path of Life 153 
 
 "Just as you say, Son. Anything the old man can 
 do, let him know." 
 
 "Sure I will." The tone was so hearty that the 
 saddle-maker wondered if the boy were already re- 
 gretting his decision not to be outdone by Chum ; 
 for he knew that emulation of the Indian boy was at 
 the root of this venture. 
 
 Barefooted, the boy shuffled through the grass 
 already wet with a heavy dew. Stepping into an 
 old watering-trough he walked the length of it; 
 then jumped out, doubled on his steps, and broke 
 into a noiseless trot as he entered the north trail. 
 
 After the splash of the water under the boy's feet, 
 the saddle-maker heard no further sound. He 
 chuckled. 
 
 "He's put 'em off the scent; beats an Injun all 
 holler, an' only five year at it." 
 8 
 
 It was a wonderful experience for the growing 
 boy those three nights that followed. 
 
 For the first half of that night he slept only fitfully. 
 The environment was so unreal. The leaves also 
 slept. There was no wind ; but the forest was full 
 of strange undaytime comings and goings, soft 
 nestlings and flutterings. Very near the latter 
 seemed to Bob, lying in his improvised nest so high 
 above the ground. They were not earth noises 
 either. 
 
 Once something brushed the top of his head. He 
 threw up his hand quickly and struck a fluff of 
 feathers ; a few seconds and the weird, trembling, 
 crescendo circumflex note of the screech owl pierced 
 his very eardrums. The unexpectedness, the near- 
 ness of the sound, humped the gooseflesh over his
 
 154 Out f the Silences 
 
 whole body. He could feel his scalp rise. Then he 
 pooh-poohed his own unnecessary fright and shook 
 back into a feeling of comparative safety. 
 
 It was after midnight when he fell asleep, only to 
 be wakened by the supreme effort of a timber wolf 
 to serenade the moon. A perpendicular of seventy 
 feet was decidedly reassuring to Bob during the hour 
 in which the minstrel raised his voice. He couldn't 
 help it he began to consider the animals that 
 climb trees, easily. . . 
 
 Nor bird, nor sun, nor drop of moisture dripping 
 from the drinking leaves roused him before the sun 
 was three hours high. 
 
 He made a careful descent then, but midway of 
 his tree-trail, so he called it, stopped to reconnoitre 
 his base. Peering down through the lower limbs he 
 spied two Indians sprawled beneath the tree stupid, 
 dead to the world, overcome with liquor. He 
 crawled upwards again to wait until they recovered. 
 
 How he longed to hook their blankets ! How his 
 ringers twitched in his desire to despoil them of the 
 tawdry furbelows some trader had palmed off on them 
 with the liquor. How he ached to stampede their 
 ponies grazing so peaceably. He dared not not 
 now ! In the afternoon, he saw them lurch across 
 the grass to catch their ponies; watched them 
 staggering towards the north trail. 
 
 During the day, which seemed to this boy of active 
 limbs forty-eight hours long, a few squirrels, inquisitive 
 as usual, watched him from neighboring branches. 
 Their chatter amused him. He answered them in 
 sounds that were not to be distinguished from their 
 own tongue so perfectly imitated in truth, that 
 they drew nearer and nearer, captivated by the big
 
 The Path of Life 155 
 
 chattering presence of one not their own. But at 
 the end of the first twenty-four hours Bob was dis- 
 tinctly bored; he was also hungry and he had 
 dreamed no dreams during the night. 
 
 The second night he slept the sleep of the blessed, 
 although wearied with doing nothing and faint from 
 fasting ; but no dream visited him. 
 
 And that second day was like unto the first, only 
 more so. Once he ventured down into the woods, 
 drawn by the gnawing at the pit of his stomach. He 
 knew where there was a fine black birch. He was 
 mad to chew some of the bark from the tender twigs. 
 Halfway he stopped short, clenched his hands, then, 
 turning like a flash, ran for the sycamore, ran from 
 temptation. He dared not break his fast. He was 
 not going to be outdone by Chum ; and Chum 
 would keep his, for he was an Indian ; the fast was his 
 honor. He would show him that a white boy could 
 do all an Indian could, and this was his honor. 
 
 He began to envy Chum, for by this time either he 
 was through with his fasting, or he was dead. But if 
 Chum had held out, and he believed he had (there 
 was good stuff in Chum and he wasn't the son of a 
 headman and grandson of a medicine-man for noth- 
 ing), he vowed he would. This was the tenor of all 
 his thoughts this and the thought of his emptiness 
 during all that day. 
 
 With set teeth and trembling stomach he laid him- 
 self carefully in his nest and prayed with all the fervor 
 of the old prophets much of this prayer vocabulary 
 was borrowed from them for a dream and daylight, 
 that he might be free again. But he could not sleep ; 
 try as he might his eyes would not stay shut. 
 
 Heavy clouds coming up over the lake at sunset
 
 156 Out of the Silences 
 
 obscured the moon. The close, hot atmosphere 
 seemed to stifle him. Now and then a lightning flash 
 gleamed on the lake waters. Low thunder broke 
 afar in the mountains. Soon followed a sound that 
 deafened Bob to all noises exterior to the periphery of 
 his outer ear : the sudden patter of rain on the myriads 
 of forest leaves then the deluge. 
 
 He pulled his blanket about him, hid his head, 
 and wondered why he was born to this! 
 
 The deluge ceased, the gentle patter of rain was 
 renewed ; little by little even that died away, and 
 only the drip, drip of the moisture-laden foliage 
 could be heard. The air was absolutely without 
 motion. The boy was drenched to his skin. 
 
 Suddenly, without warning of any kind, he heard 
 the oncoming roar of a mighty wind. Straight from 
 the north it came, from Rupert's Land and the Arctic 
 Circle. When it struck the forest the branches 
 tossed and writhed furiously ; the great limbs bowed 
 and moaned beneath it ; the trunks strained, squeak- 
 ing, and boughs were wrenched from them; top- 
 heavy old trees were uprooted. It was pitch black in 
 this howling chaos of sound. 
 
 The boy clung in desperation to the two boards 
 and the rope he kept knotted around a stout branch 
 "in case." During the first lull in the passing of that 
 mighty hurricane wind, which lasted less than half a 
 minute, he tied the free end of the rope around him 
 under his arms. It took time and manoeuvring. 
 This accomplished, he felt better. Then the wind 
 arose again, but not in its might, and blew steadily, 
 almost icily cold, until the boy was chilled through 
 and through in the rain-soaked blanket, shirt, and 
 leggings.
 
 The Path of Life 157 
 
 Now it was that Bob, in the best Scriptural text 
 known to him, and in a vocabulary that admitted of 
 no criticism in the way of forcefulness, cursed all 
 Indians cursed them by name, severally and 
 tribally. Carmastic did not escape, neither Chum, 
 nor all their relations to the third degree Cree, 
 Chippewa, Sioux, Blackfoot, Assiniboine, all came 
 in for their share; for to him they were even as the 
 tribes of Israel : they had forgotten God, and brought 
 about this horrible state of affairs with their Baal- 
 worship. He cursed all their tomfoolery, their fasts, 
 their feasts, their customs, their fool 'medicine.' 
 In the end he cursed himself for being fooled by them. 
 He was wretchedly cold, miserably faint with fasting, 
 and damnably mad. This last condition together with 
 the energy of his language saved the night for him. 
 
 The moon came out. Scudding clouds filled the 
 sky ; so fast they sailed the motion made him dizzy. 
 The stars began to shine out clear and sharp in the 
 east. The shivering faster, with a last out-of-the- 
 depths "Damn it all", hunched down into his blanket 
 and, through sheer exhaustion, fell asleep. 
 
 9 
 
 It was a marvellous sunrise to which he awoke. 
 There was still a strong breeze with almost a touch 
 of frost in it. The lake waters were ruffled and 
 heaving dark gray under the cold morning skies. 
 The bluffs on the opposite shore of the lake were 
 outlined sharply and black against the pure saffron 
 red in the east. The sun, golden, yet without nimbus, 
 climbed over them. 
 
 Bob watched it with greatening eyes. He noticed, 
 at last, a tiny brown bird with white-tipped wings 
 clinging to the rope. He did not know it. The great
 
 158 Out of the Silences 
 
 wind must have brought it from its far home in the 
 north. It was all ruffed and fluffed in its misery. 
 The boy put out his hand and took the poor numb 
 bit of forest flotsam on his palm, and opening his wet 
 shirt warmed the bird against his heart. 
 
 He told of this once only, long years afterwards. 
 
 When warmed, chirping, and struggling, he let it go. 
 Then he gathered up his own stiffened legs and setting 
 them carefully on the boards rubbed them down. He 
 lowered the boards through the branches. Then 
 he spat on his hands, worked his way downwards, 
 and, dropping to the ground, made his way home 
 as best he could in the circumstances. 
 
 The saddle-maker watching from the woods along 
 the south trail saw him start ; saw that the strength 
 had gone out of the boy and, seeing that, he, too, made 
 for home by a crosscut through wet underbrush. 
 
 When Bob reached the shed he tumbled on the 
 threshold. Bill Plunket, coming from the house, 
 brought him only a bowl of steaming tea to break 
 his fast, for caution was needed. 
 
 He was about to put a question to the boy after he 
 had gulped this refreshment, but suddenly Bob lifted 
 his head, looking at him gratefully. That one look 
 into the lad's face restrained Bill Plunket for all time 
 from asking any questions concerning his experi- 
 ence. What he saw there was a strangely mystical 
 light that half veiled the boy's usually alert and 
 animated features. 
 
 The saddle-maker knew that the boy had dreamed 
 his dream ; had found his " medicine." For a moment 
 he felt awed in the presence of something it was not 
 given him to understand. 
 
 From that day he treated him as a man.
 
 The Path of Life 159 
 
 STRAINING AT THE LEASH 
 i 
 
 That the supreme change from adolescence to 
 manhood was indeed taking place, if only in the boy's 
 spirit, the saddle-maker knew within the next month. 
 It sometimes happens that a quickly maturing 
 mentality is the scout, not the vanguard, of the physi- 
 cal change. It was so in Bob's case. 
 
 The great Sun Ceremony was a thing of the past. 
 What there was to see and hear the gathering of a 
 hundred or two Indians from the four points of the 
 compass, the chants, the songs, the dances Bob 
 had observed from a lowly position, lying prone on 
 his stomach and covered with dead leaves and green 
 branches. He lay in the woods as near as possible 
 to the tepees in order to hear and absorb what might 
 be worth hearing and absorbing. 
 
 From his outlook in the sycamore he took a general 
 survey of the whole situation the horseshoe circle 
 of tepees opening to the east and the lake ; the tem- 
 porary sacred tepee of the priests also open to the 
 east ; the building of the great lodge, the comings and 
 goings of Indians in their beaded magnificence of 
 sash, headband, or breastplate, in ornamented 
 buckskin or gayly colored blankets. It satisfied his 
 curiosity in part, but the performance was dis- 
 appointing because he was of the white race and 
 uninitiated. 
 
 He was talking about it with the saddle-maker 
 after it was over. The Indians had already gone their 
 several ways. The great lodge was left as usual for 
 wind and weather to demolish. The grassy bluff had 
 suffered a change : the grass was dried, worn and 
 shiny. Here and there it was dug up by ponies'
 
 160 Out of the Silences 
 
 impatient hoofs. Huge charred spots, where for 
 eight days campfires had burned, disfigured it. Bob 
 viewed the spoliation of the charms of his beloved 
 woods with strong disapproval. 
 
 " You know, Plunket, I can stand everything but 
 their messin' up." 
 
 The saddle-maker nodded sympathetic assent. He 
 had not struggled for four years against Jane's special- 
 ity without gaining sad experience in that commodity. 
 
 "An' I wish sometimes " He did not finish that 
 sentence. Although the saddle-maker was sure he 
 knew what the ending would have been, he did not 
 wish to anticipate it. 
 
 "Wish wot?" 
 
 Bob's thoughts for a moment were painful. 
 
 "Plunket, you told me once never to forget I was 
 white a white man. I' I can't forget it, if I 
 wanted to, and I don't not with them." 
 
 "No more ye can't, Son; I know." 
 
 Something in the tone made Bob lift has eyes to 
 the saddle-maker's. What he saw there assured 
 him that he would be understood without much need 
 of further explanation. 
 
 "You see, I can ride, an' swim, an' shoot, an' trap, 
 an' scout most as well as the Injun boys; an'," 
 with a chuckle, "I can beat 'em singin' an' dancin' 
 every time, all except that shake in their throats 
 they keep up some of 'em for hours when they sing. 
 It trembles just like the beginning of the screech 
 owl's yell. But, you see, I can't be like 'em other 
 ways." 
 
 "No more ye can't." 
 
 "And I don't want to be." There was no uncer- 
 tainty in this statement.
 
 The Path of Life 161 
 
 "In course ye don't; *t ain't human nature." 
 
 " I want to be like my own white." 
 
 "No man can blame ye for wantin' to be that, 
 Son." 
 
 "Even McGillie isn't all white, is he?" 
 
 "Nope; only three-quarters my two kids are 
 half an' half," he added as a matter of fact. 
 
 "You see, I like 'em all McGillie, an' Chum, an' 
 Tom an' Jerry, an' Kinni-kinnik's brothers, an' 
 an' the medicine-man, an' all of 'em, Kinni-kinnik 
 too." 
 
 The saddle-maker interrupted him. He wanted to 
 feel the way of the wind that had set so strongly in the 
 little pappoose's direction ever since Bob first saw 
 her. 
 
 "Yep, ye set a sight by that little girl. I don't 
 blame ye, she's a charmer; growin' up mighty fast 
 too. An' she ain't had no eyes for any boy but 
 Bob Collamore since ye give her that doll ye bought 
 with yer first earnin's." 
 
 Bob smiled knowingly. "That's what McGillie 
 got so mad with me 'bout. We fought for her." 
 He chuckled ; he was evidently enjoying the remem- 
 brance of his challenge to single combat. 
 
 "Ye fought for her! Well, that's news to me; 
 but I know there was somp'in' between ye one while 
 the way ye kept glowerin' at one 'nother." 
 
 "Yep; we made a kind of a treaty we wouldn't 
 tell. It was to last two years. Time's up now." 
 
 "What was yer treaty, as ye call it? Any Injun 
 doin's?" 
 
 "Kind o' that; we made ourselves blood- 
 brothers" 
 
 "Did, hey?"
 
 162 Out of the Silences 
 
 "Yep. An' now I'd die for McGillie, an' he'd die 
 for me." 
 
 The saddle-maker grunted disapproval. " It's 'bout 
 time ye went to yer own people where ye won't 
 be opening yer veins an' drawin' blood an' swappin* 
 it for treaties. How did ye fight ?" 
 
 "Fists. I challenged him." (The saddle-maker's 
 eyes wrinkled prodigiously at the corners.) " That's 
 the way they did it in the Book, you know. Two 
 men from two tribes used to go outside the camp an' 
 fight it out ; an' the one who come out on top, his 
 tribe was the best feller." 
 
 "Where did ye fight it out?" 
 
 "Off in the woods back of the north trail you 
 wasn't to home." 
 
 "Mgh. How did ye come out?" 
 
 Bob snickered at the vision conjured up by that 
 question. 
 
 "T was a draw." 
 
 "How's that?" 
 
 " Each of us knocked the other out, at the same time 
 too. McGillie punched me one in my stomach, an' 
 took the wind out of me, just as I landed him one on 
 his nose Gosh, but it bled ! He got kind o' faint 
 like, an' keeled over; an' we both lay out there 
 an' couldn't get up not for a little while." He burst 
 out laughing. 
 
 "We both went over backwards an' we couldn't 
 get up, an' the dogs " 
 
 He laughed peal on peal at the remembrance. 
 
 "An' the dogs, his dogs an' my dogs, thinkin' we 
 was dead an' had killed each other, set on to one 
 'nother with teeth and claws. They bit an' clawed an' 
 chewed ears, an' noses, an' throats, an' buttocks
 
 The Path of Life 163 
 
 it didn't matter what, so's they could get a hold. You 
 could hear 'em two miles! We thought the Injuns 
 would hear 'em. An' pretty soon we sat up an' 
 began to laugh at the dogs an' st-boy 'em till McGillie 
 said there wouldn't be a whole ear or tail left in the 
 crowd. That's how the bitch lost the top of her left 
 ear an' McGillie's black collie got his eye half dug 
 out." He paused for breath, and to relive the scene. 
 
 "Then McGillie said we had got enough of it, 
 an' he got up, reelin' round like a drunk Injun. I 
 had to crawl, for I couldn't feel any bottom to my 
 stomach only queer in my backbone. We pulled 
 together an' hauled the dogs off. An' then I offered 
 to shake, an' we shook. The next day we made 
 ourselves blood-brothers, an' an' then I told 
 McGillie he might have Kinni-kinnik for all I cared. 
 You see, McGillie loved her, Plunket." 
 
 The seriousness of this statement nearly upset the 
 saddle-maker's gravity, but it behooved him, too, 
 to treat this matter seriously. 
 
 "So that's the way of it? I thought it was 
 t'other way to." 
 
 "Well, you see, 't was different with me. I did 
 love her, but it wasn't for keeps, Plunket. Of course 
 I loved her, or I wouldn't spent that money on her 
 doll. I wanted to marry her too. / reelly did. I used 
 to think it would be kind o' nice to be married, you 
 know, an' I " He hesitated. The saddle- 
 maker wondered what revelations of a boy's mind and 
 heart might be forthcoming, but he said nothing. 
 
 " You see, I didn't have anybody; I mean 
 well, you see when Kinni-kinnik's pa gets back home 
 from trappin', her ma's so awful glad to see him. An' 
 I thought 't would be kind o' nice to have Kinni-
 
 164 Out of the Silences 
 
 kinnik glad to see me. An' that's why I wanted to 
 marry her." 
 
 "Mm Did you tell her so, Son?" 
 
 "No, not 'bout marryin'; besides, I got over 
 wan tin' to." 
 
 "Oh, ye did, did ye?" 
 
 "Yep." Bob's tongue sought his left cheek. He 
 appeared to meditate on his statement. 
 
 "What made ye change yer mind so kind o' 
 sudden?" The saddle-maker really wanted to get 
 at the root of the incipient romance. 
 
 "Oh, things " 
 
 "Wot things?" 
 
 "Oh, just things " He bored his moccasinned 
 toe into the dirt. 
 
 Bill Plunket knew the boy too well to press him 
 further. He knew his way. He would chat freely 
 by the hour about any matter that did not touch 
 him deeply, but no Indian could guard with greater 
 reserve the deeper feelings. It was baffling to the 
 man, for he acknowledged to himself that for the 
 five years the boy had been with him his plummet had 
 failed to sound the depths in this young human's 
 experience. And he but loved him the more for it. 
 
 "Well, Son, when you do make up yer mind to 
 marry, mate with yer own kind an' remember 
 wot the old man tells ye." 
 
 "I'll remember an', Plunket?" 
 
 "Wot now, Son?" 
 
 "I'm goin' away from here." 
 
 The saddle-maker knew now to what all this 
 apparently desultory talk had been leading up. He 
 said nothing in reply because, at that moment, he 
 was not sure what he ought to say.
 
 The Path of Life 165 
 
 Bob looked up at him out of the corner of his eye. 
 In his boy's way he dearly loved this man, but of the 
 wrench he was giving him by this sudden announce- 
 ment of his intention he could have no conception. 
 No response to his proposition being forthcoming, 
 the boy went on : 
 
 "I want to be with white men an' live like a 
 white man." 
 
 "I don't blame ye, Son. It's yer right; ye was 
 born to it. Where ye goin'?" He turned the tables 
 so suddenly on the boy that he caught him at a dis- 
 advantage. 
 
 "I don't know not reelly." 
 
 "Trappin'?" 
 
 "Not for me." 
 
 "Loggia'?" 
 
 "Nope." He put Bill Plunket off the scent again 
 by saying: "I wish you'd tell me all you know 
 'bout my folks. I want to know everything." 
 
 The saddle-maker had never been asked this 
 question by the boy. He realized now that Bob had 
 been biding his time to ask it. However, he was 
 prepared to make known the little information he 
 had gathered from Bob's uncle when the men were 
 together in the dugout. It was with intention he had 
 waited all these years for Bob to ask him what he 
 knew. 
 
 "The 'everything' ain't much ; I wish 't was more. 
 Can ye remember yer mother ? " 
 
 Bob shook his head. " No, I can't ; but I remember 
 her singing me that song 'bout the animals an' the 
 ark, an' I think I ain't sure though I can feel 
 her takin' me on her lap to tell me stories. I 
 remember one story."
 
 i66 Out of the Silences 
 
 "Yer uncle told me she died when ye was six years 
 old, three years 'fore we got caught in the dugout. 
 He said yer father died just a year after ye was born, 
 an' that he had taken up a claim in Dakota. He 
 had bad luck grasshoppers for three years, an' a 
 prairie fire afterwards ; lost everything, an' died in 
 the fire. Yer mother crossed the plains, and went 
 to keepin' house for yer uncle ; he was foreman on a 
 sheep ranch." 
 
 "I remember 'bout the sheep, an' helpin' herd 
 'em." 
 
 What the boy did not say was that, since then, 
 whenever he had heard the flat trembling baa-a-a of a 
 sheep or lamb, there had come over him a great wave 
 of sickness. The sound recalled the herding, the 
 continual blatting, monotonous, weird, incessant, of 
 the hundreds and hundreds of range sheep. He hated 
 the noise then. He loathed it now in remembrance. 
 
 "That's all he told me, an' that's all I know 'cept he 
 said you an' he was the last of the fam'ly." 
 
 "Then I haven't got any folks?" 
 
 "Looks that way not reel folks; but you've got 
 me, Son, an' " 
 
 The saddle-maker wanted to say something more ; 
 but he couldn't. The boy was dear to him, dearer, 
 if he would but have acknowledged it to himself, 
 than his own little half-breeds; dearer than Colin 
 McGillie. He knew why : the boy was white, of his 
 own race, his ways, his ambitions, his tastes, his 
 dislikes his own. The first thought of losing him 
 out of his daily life was a heavy one ; the second an 
 immediate recognition that in the circumstances it 
 was the only thing for the boy to do. 
 
 Bill Plunket longed at that moment, as he had
 
 The Path of Life 167 
 
 longed many a time since his marriage to the Indian 
 woman, to be free to go and come, to slip the noose, 
 when and where he might choose, of the permanent 
 relationship into which he had entered through a 
 white man's sense of honor. His next words, not 
 completing his unfinished sentence, almost startled 
 the boy in their intensity. He had never heard his 
 friend speak so before. 
 
 "I thank God ye're goin', Son, 'fore it's too late." 
 
 This was the only expression the saddle-maker 
 ever gave to his unhappiness, unsuspected by any 
 one on account of his serene temper, his philosophic 
 acceptance of what was, his kindliness of heart and 
 his strict integrity unguessed even by the boy 
 beside him. 
 
 But, from that moment, Bob sensed something of 
 his friend's unrevealed state of mind, and loved him 
 the more for his misfortune. 
 
 "Where ye goin'? I know ye've got some kind 
 o' notion which way yer trail leads. " 
 
 Bob laughed. "South, Plunket, straight over the 
 border." 
 
 "Might 'a' known it. I'd most forgot ye're an 
 American, seein' I'm a loyal subject o' the Queen. 
 That means Dakota, don't it?" 
 
 "I shall hit Da>ota aU right sometime." Bob 
 hated to be pinned down to any definite trailing. 
 "But I don't know what I'm goin' to do an' 
 that's the bully part of the fun." 
 
 "Fun!" The saddle-maker's sense of humor was 
 keen, but he could see no "fun" in the boy's sallying 
 forth alone with no chart or compass save his boy 'swill. 
 
 "How ye goin' to live?" It was a sharp question, 
 sharply put.
 
 1 68 Out of the Silences 
 
 "Live? You mean feed?" 
 
 "I mean just that." 
 
 "Why, earn it, or pick it up as I go along." 
 
 This answer embodied the supreme assurance of 
 youth. The saddle-maker bowed before the un- 
 wisdom of it ; it was all-conquering. He could but 
 think, however, of the experience ahead for this 
 undisciplined stripling; by means of it life would 
 modify all his expectations. 
 
 Then Bob began to quote Scripture, as he always 
 did when the spirit moved to torment Plunket and 
 put him in a tight place. Scripture was Bill's weak 
 point. 
 
 "Mebbe, only mebbe, you know," the imp went 
 on with a lift of his left eyebrow, " I'll be fed like 
 Elijah by the ravens 
 
 "Mgh." 
 
 " Or like the tribes in the wilderness with manna, 
 Plunket, sweet as honey dew, thoop, yum-yum." He 
 tasted already the sweets of adventure. 
 
 "Humph! Ye won't find much 'manna', as ye 
 call it, on the plains. Ye'll be in luck if ye find plenty 
 o' dry bones, an' some buffalo chips if ye go far enough 
 west. Ye layin' to go soon?" 
 
 "Yep next week the moon fulls ; it's a good time 
 to start." 
 
 "Got any money by ye?" 
 
 "Yes, I've got some 'bout ten dollars I have 
 saved up. My boots cost me four, ye know. I have 
 earned my pony, an' m.de my own saddle. I've 
 got these;" he spread his arms wide, "an' 
 these." He sparred in so lively a way with his 
 straight legs, that Bill Plunket laughed at the show. 
 "An' I've got a little in my pate, not as much as I'm
 
 The Path of Life 169 
 
 goin' to have, but it'll do at a pinch. An', you know, 
 Plunket, I can live like a bird, a squirrel, or a bear " 
 
 "Ye're all right, Son." 
 
 "A nest in a tree, a hollow in the trunk, a hole hi the 
 ground. I've learned the ways of foxes, an' beavers 
 an' wild bees. Oh, you'll see, I can get my livin' all 
 right!" 
 
 2 
 
 The saddle-maker rose. He placed both hands on 
 the thin square shoulders. "Ye'll do it, Son, ye'll do 
 it only don't forget the old man. Let me hear 
 from ye hi foreign parts." 
 
 Bob Collamore looked into the saddle-maker's eyes ; 
 long and true the young dark eyes bored into the 
 faded blue ones. He spoke in a low voice : 
 
 "'If I forget thee, O my Jerusalem, let my right 
 hand forget her cunning.' " 
 
 Bill Plunket was satisfied, but he never knew that 
 Bob had interpolated that "my." 
 
 CARMASTIC 
 i 
 
 Two days before Bob set out to see the world hi 
 his own way, the saddle-maker sprang a surprise on 
 him. 
 
 They were sitting in the shed door in the cool of 
 the evening. Jane, taking with her the children and 
 the horse, had gone to visit with her sister for a day. 
 She was given to migratory "spells" in which, accord- 
 ing to Plunket, she was neither " to have nor to hold." 
 He usually gave her free rein and enjoyed her absence 
 for a change. 
 
 "Jane an' me has made a trade, Son. I'm goin' 
 to leave the mountains."
 
 170 Out of the Silences 
 
 Bob looked at him with a dozen questions in his 
 eyes, but he asked none. It was not his way when 
 other people's business was concerned. 
 
 The saddle-maker nodded. "Yep; I'm goin' to 
 pull up stakes and trek over into Minnesota." 
 
 "You mean leave the hut and the mountains for 
 good?" 
 
 "For good and all. I'm only a squatter an' don't 
 have to pay no ground rent to the Government, an' 
 I ain't goin' to mix up with no settlers' rights an' 
 titles. I'm goin' to get out o' 'ere 'fore the Govern- 
 ment steps in; an' they're comin'. They've got 
 their eye on the mountain for timber an' stock range. 
 I used to keep a little myself ; the shelter's good here 
 on account o' the poplar and aspen bein' so thick 
 an' there's good hay round the sloughs. The Govern- 
 ment knows a good thing when it sees it. Carmastic 
 knows it all : the Injuns'll have to get out 'fore long 
 'move on', same's they always have to, home or 
 no home." 
 
 Bob was silent. The thought of such a change in 
 the mountains was for a moment overwhelming. 
 
 "Ye see, it's this way." Plunket crossed his legs 
 and hugged his knees. "Jane's got notions into her 
 head, white notions too ; got 'em while she was away, 
 over in the North Star State. An' she's been at me 
 ever since we come back to clear out o' 'ere an' set 
 up like white folks across the Red River. She ain't 
 give me much peace an', Son, there's times when 
 a certain kind of peace is worth buyin', even if it 
 ain't cheap." 
 
 "What are you goin' to do over there?" 
 
 " I'm goin' to take up some land I see when you an' 
 me was out there, forty acres at three dollars per.
 
 The Path of Life 171 
 
 There's some good pine on it an' plenty o' maple and 
 basswood. I can keep a little stock, an' I've got my 
 trade. Ye see, Jane says she wants the kids brought 
 up like white men an' eddicated. She said that, 
 Jane did." Bill rolled an eye appreciative of Jane's 
 choice ambitions on the amazed youth beside him. 
 Bob actually forgot to pull at his pipe in his astonish- 
 ment at Jane's audacity. 
 
 "An' so we traded. I said she could have a house 
 like a white woman, if she'd keep it like a white woman 
 an' not like a squaw. She said she'd try think o' 
 that ! an' what more'n that can any of us-all do?" 
 
 Bob's- experience in life provided no ground for 
 discussion of this point. He kept silence. 
 
 "Ye can't blame her now, can ye, Son, for wantin' 
 her boys to have a chance 'long with the whites?" 
 He spoke wistfully as if craving approval. 
 
 Bob ran his fingers through his mat of fair hair, 
 tanned and weathered now into a fine calico brown 
 and yellow. He failed to grasp the fact that Tom 
 and Jerry and the expected baby were to be educated. 
 
 "How's she goin' to do it?" he demanded 
 brusquely. 
 
 "There's a school near there an' they can learn 
 farmin'. An' now ye're goin', I kinder thought it 
 would be a good time to break up an' get out before 
 winter." 
 
 Bob said nothing. The saddle-maker left him "to 
 chew on it" as he said to himself, and went into the 
 hut. 
 
 For the first time since his decision the boy had a 
 sharp pang of what might be called homesickness at 
 the thought of the empty hut and no friend to wel- 
 come him when he should return ; for he meant to
 
 172 Out of the Silences - 
 
 come back to the mountains, sometime in the dim 
 future, at least to visit. What would the mountains 
 be like without Plunket? No dogs, no ponies, no 
 Indians, not even Jane and the boys? He failed to 
 conceive of such a vacant spot in his young life. And 
 Colin McGillie? Was he never to see his blood- 
 brother again? 
 
 His pipe was cold. He went into the horse shed, 
 threw the blanket over his pony, led him out, started 
 him on the run and, running beside him, flung him- 
 self on, calling back to Plunket who appeared at the 
 door of the hut in time to shout after him : " Where 
 ye goin'?" 
 
 "Goin' to see the Injuns. I shan't be back to- 
 night." He dashed into the north trail. 
 
 "That shot o' mine hit the bull's-eye," said the 
 saddle-maker with complacency ; "knows now how it 
 feels to be left all of a sudden like he's leavin' me. 
 It'll learn him a lesson. He was full up; he can't 
 fool me." 
 
 2 
 
 The pony's pace seemed to set the boy's blood 
 aboil. He felt fevered, as if he were trying to flee 
 from something of which he was afraid. Had he but 
 known it, this was the turmoil of his emotions long 
 suppressed, the heartsickness at leaving familiar 
 things. In the cooling air and the mellowing light 
 of the northern twilight he sped past the familiar 
 stumps, the lightning-scarred poplars, the ghostly 
 white of the birches. He knew them all intimately 
 now, and their harmlessness. 
 
 He passed the Indian who carried his head under 
 his blanket, the shaking squaw, the hooded priest, 
 the ghosts of the warriors all old friends, these
 
 The Path of Life 173 
 
 distorted tree-shapes of the forest before which he had 
 trembled like a leaf five years ago. There was no 
 more raising of gooseflesh now, no more heart-jolts. 
 
 Deep in the woods an owl was crying too-whit, too- 
 whoo. The pony shied at a skunk loping across the 
 trail. A coyote barked in the distance. It was all so 
 dear to him, all the sights and forest sounds now that 
 he was to leave them. He wanted desperately to 
 cry. The bitch's son, Bully, that he had brought up 
 through orphanhood, was following hard behind him. 
 He whistled ; the dog leaped beside him. The moon 
 rose and shone brightly into the openings of the 
 woods. Its light touched trunk and branch and leaf 
 to a new beauty, for their summer freshness was 
 fading. 
 
 He came out on the clearing, glorified now in the 
 flood of white radiance. A path of fairy silver 
 stretched away across the lake waters to a dim region 
 of solid darkness. He knew it for the bluffs ; above 
 them rode the full moon. 
 
 Into the woods again, but more slowly, for the trail 
 turned and twisted and the light was dim. Out 
 again, and down into the little valley where his 
 shadow, sharply defined, kept abreast of him. Up 
 the hill at a walk, and over the top to the high plateau 
 and the big maples beneath which a dull glow, as of 
 embers seen through smoke, indicated the medicine- 
 man's roomy wigwam. 
 
 The boy drew in his pony, and listened. From some 
 tepees in the near distance came the sound of the 
 drum accompanied by the monotonous rise and fall 
 of chanting voices. A hound bayed at the moon. 
 
 Bob found himself shivering ; his heart was full to 
 overflowing.
 
 174 Out of the Silences 
 
 He flung himself off his pony, and, leaving him to 
 graze, with the dog to keep him from straying, entered 
 the tepee with his usual salutation. 
 
 3 
 
 Carmastic was alone. Chum had gone with his 
 father to the lakes, some miles northward, for maski- 
 nonge. Old Flying Loon was gossiping in a tepee 
 half a mile distant. 
 
 The medicine-man was always glad to see the boy. 
 He offered him his pipe and lighted another for him- 
 self. Bob, sitting on his heels, smoked in silence. 
 Half an hour passed in visiting in this manner ; then 
 he told his old friend that he was leaving the moun- 
 tains after the morrow. He told him of his wanting 
 to see the world and what it held of interest; told 
 him of many things, but never once did he mention 
 that it was as a white man he would see, and hear, 
 and learn white ways from seeing and hearing. 
 
 When he finished, the old Indian smoked in silence 
 for another half -hour. He rose then and drew from 
 beneath a pile of rabbit skins an ancient arrow with 
 an old-time head of flint. His moccasinned feet 
 shuffled a clear space on the hard clay floor that was 
 packed with dirt. He sat down before it. Bob 
 wondered what next. As yet the Indian had spoken 
 no word. 
 
 He began to draw with the incising point of the 
 flint arrowhead, making a clear-cut line in the hard 
 dirt above the clay. He drew carefully, as if calculat- 
 ing every smallest angle, every tangent, every curve 
 in the curious design. Bob had never seen its like 
 before. He watched the drawing grow beneath the 
 steady hand guiding the flint. The process fascinated 
 him, . .
 
 The Path of Life 175 
 
 When it was finished, it looked like nothing the lad 
 had ever seen. It appeared to be a combination 
 skeleton of some strange, reptile-beast. He dared not 
 question the medicine-man; he knew too well the 
 Indian way ; but he used his eyes to good advantage, 
 gazing so intently at the design, noting every angle, 
 tangent, curve, that the figure was etched into his 
 memory. 
 
 What did it signify? 
 
 4 
 
 The old man laid aside the arrow, but he did not 
 resume his pipe. Presently he spoke. 
 
 "Son of the Silent Places, you and I have talked 
 together not so long ago of dreams and their medicine. 
 Since then you have fasted and dreamed, so you have 
 told me. This is as it should be. Now you go forth 
 to see this world, but not alone you have your 
 medicine with you ; it is a part of you. 
 
 "I told you when we spoke together under the 
 sycamore that, although you could not see it, taste it, 
 handle it, it was a part of you. I spoke of it then 
 as a mystery. It is not given to any man to speak 
 otherwise of it. The breath of the spirit that is a 
 man's medicine : your medicine, my medicine, or any 
 other man's medicine. It makes itself known and 
 felt under various forms. All that I told you then 
 sounded unreal in your young ears. You said as 
 much. Now I show you what you call a reality."
 
 176 Out of the Silences 
 
 He took up the arrow and began to trace the 
 design, beginning at the left. 
 
 "This, my son, is the Path of Life, the path that 
 every man born into this world must tread whether 
 he will or does not will. He wills not to enter upon 
 it ; he wills not to leave it. He must both enter and 
 leave it without his will. Here," he pointed to 
 the small circle at the left, '"he has his earth- 
 beginning in his mother's womb. Here," pointing 
 to the circle at the right, "he enters the great 
 womb of the Earth-mother. Between these two 
 wombs lies for all men the Path of Life. 
 
 "Look you it is not straight. It rises, falls, 
 curves, but it leads always from your human mother 
 to your Earth-mother. 
 
 "It has its deflections you see them in every 
 age; now here, now there. Here it is in youth. 
 Here in the full power of manhood where the curve 
 of the path reaches its highest. Here again in middle 
 age. And once more in old age a hard effort ; 
 you may see it here where the life-line runs low, 
 curving down to the Earth-mother's womb. 
 
 "These lines of deflection are a man's trials of 
 endurance: endurance of life's hardships the freezing 
 cold, the hunger that starves, the scorching heat that 
 parches with thirst ; endurance of the ills of life 
 sickness, crippled limbs, the scolding squaw who lets 
 no man live in peace ; endurance of the temptations of 
 life the wiles of women, the lure of fire-water, the 
 greedy hand that clutches at dishonest gain. My 
 son, you must tread this path of life. You must 
 endure. I say to you twice, endure." 
 
 He laid down the arrow. 
 
 "Son of the Silent Places, I have shown you a
 
 The Path of Life 177 
 
 reality. Experience of life will prove to you that I 
 have spoken truth." 
 
 He rose. The moccasinned feet shuffled back and 
 forth again over the hard clay floor caked with dirt. 
 Their slow even motion erased all trace of the Path 
 of Life. 
 
 " So it is with our Path of Life. We leave no trace 
 on the trail. It is only our medicine that lives on." 
 
 He lighted his pipe and smoked tranquilly, watching 
 the youth's face. 
 
 For something had laid powerful hold on the spirit 
 of that youth. To have saved his life Bob could 
 not have said what it was. Like a spell the old man's 
 words had first bound his spirit, then unloosed it. 
 Dimly, while the medicine-man was speaking, he 
 began to grasp something of the meaning of his own 
 " medicine " that was an undying part of him, from 
 which he could never separate himself. He felt 
 suddenly comforted. He had his "medicine"; he 
 was not going forth from the mountains alone. 
 
 He looked up into the old Indian's face and smiled. 
 And upon the youth's face the medicine-man saw, as 
 once before the saddle-maker had seen, a radiant 
 mystical light that half veiled the smile. 
 
 It was the Indian's turn to gaze hi wonderment, 
 fascinated by that light. . . . 
 
 5 
 
 He was the first to break silence. 
 
 "It may be, as you fare forth into the world, you 
 will camp on the trail of many of those I know Cree, 
 Chippewa, Assiniboine, Blackfoot, Stony Sioux. 
 Greet them for me. Say to them I have smoked the 
 peace pipe with them hi spirit. Many of my brothers 
 are on reservations, not free to come and go when
 
 178 Out of the Silences 
 
 they will. Say to them from me, that if ever the 
 time should come when men shall take the warpath 
 once again to free their brothers or themselves, 
 whether red, or black, or white, there will our children's 
 children be found fighting side by side. I have said." 
 
 "It shall be as you say, Medicine-man." Bob rose 
 and stood with bowed head before him. "I will 
 take your greetings to all whom I may see on the 
 world-trails." He offered his hand. Carmastic 
 grasped it closely. 
 
 "It is the white man's custom ; in time it may be 
 ours." 
 
 Bob turned abruptly and left the tepee. The old 
 Indian followed him to the doorway and stood looking 
 after him as he rode slowly across the plateau. 
 
 The drum in a neighboring wigwam, perhaps a 
 quarter of a mile distant, was throbbing steadily now 
 with short strokes, so quick, so hard that the sound- 
 waves struck the ear as quivering smoke-waves strike 
 the eye. It was the war beat. The Indian's whole 
 being responded. Suddenly on the night air there 
 rang forth from the medicine-man's tepee the wild, 
 exultant scalp-song of victory. The old man was 
 renewing his strength by means of this resonant ex- 
 pression ; reliving his turbulent youth, his conquests 
 over the Sioux. 
 
 On the brow of the hill Robert Collamore stopped 
 to listen. The old Indian no longer saw him. He 
 was forgotten he and his white race.
 
 PART TWO
 
 REVISITED 
 
 "WHAT air!" 
 
 The woman, for she was that although with all 
 the characteristics of late girlhood : the figure slight, 
 but graceful and rounded, straight as an arrow, 
 color fresh, skin fair, stepped from the train to 
 the platform of the station at Bemidji in northern 
 Minnesota. She drew a deep full breath. 
 
 "Air or no air, Alison, it's a wild goose chase you're 
 on, and you will rind I am right. Do change your 
 mind this very minute before the train starts and go 
 on with us, do." There was a note of vexation hi 
 Evelyn Carrolly's voice as she stood on the lower 
 step of the car, her hand on the guard rail. 
 
 "Better heed Evelyn this time, Alie; she's apt to 
 be right nine times out of ten. If there were any 
 money in it, I would say 'try it', but you know well 
 enough that account is a closed one. Come on with 
 us." 
 
 The signal for starting was given. The man 
 swung himself on, his wife removing to an upper 
 step. 
 
 "Not this time, Phil; but let me know when you 
 decide to go north and I will join you. Count on 
 me." 
 
 183
 
 184 Out of the Silences 
 
 "See that you do it," he shouted back to her, for 
 the express was already moving rapidly. His wife, 
 leaning over his shoulder, tossed her a hand-kiss ; 
 her husband waved his cap. 
 
 "I hate to have her leave us," she said. 
 
 They entered the car and, again seated, Mrs. 
 Carrolly broke forth in a new spot. 
 
 "What do you suppose she is really up to? You 
 needn't tell me, Phil, it is that land she is going to 
 look up ; there is something more to it, and in time 
 you will see that I am right." 
 
 "As usual, my dear." 
 
 Philip Carrolly smiled. This wife of his was ac- 
 customed to vent her dissatisfaction with others, when 
 they acted contrary to her desires, by assuming that 
 her husband, simply because he was her husband, 
 must inwardly controvert her statements. She paid 
 no heed to his cordial assent ; she was used to Phil. 
 
 "You needn't tell me there isn't a man in the case ; 
 I know better. You know perfectly well, Phil, how 
 I have tried for years and years to make a match for 
 her ; but I don't believe wild horses could drag her 
 into one. She has said as much. She is queer ; for one 
 thing she has never known how to accept the admira- 
 tion and adoration of men. I'd like to shake her." 
 
 "Well, that could never be said of you, Evelyn." 
 Her husband took solid satisfaction in paying back- 
 handed compliments to his wife, for Evelyn Carrolly 
 never knew there was an edge to any of them ; and 
 he loved to see her beam on him. 
 
 She laughed ; drew out a stocking from a capacious 
 bag, and began to work. Her husband knew that 
 the knitting would soon restore her equanimity, and 
 left her for the smoking car.
 
 Revisited 185 
 
 So this was Bemidji? 
 
 "Not the Bemidji I used to know," Alison Doane 
 said to herself, as after leaving the station she walked 
 down one of the business streets of the town, having 
 been told that it led to the docks and boathouses. 
 It was more than two decades since she had seen 
 it, and Progress had marked the place for its own. 
 In a few minutes she stood on the dock, looking 
 out over the water. She would not have recognized 
 the locality had she not been told it was Lake Bemidji. 
 
 Some men were loafing about the boats in the warm 
 sun of late September. She interviewed several of 
 them. 
 
 Could they tell her anything of Antoine Guilmette, 
 a half-breed guide of twenty years ago ? 
 
 Yes, one of them had heard of him ; he was dead 
 these three years. 
 
 "And Long John, a Chippewa, another guide?" 
 
 " Oh, yes ; Long John was in Bemidji not a month 
 ago on his way north; his daughter, Jane Plunket, 
 was with him. Do you know her?" 
 
 "No, only Long John. Is he still guide?" 
 
 "If he can get a job. Injuns don't have much 
 show with us nowadays. Can't I fill the bill?" 
 
 He was a young fellow, about twenty, lean, tanned, 
 muscular, and the engaging smile with which the 
 question was put displayed strong white teeth. Alison 
 Doane, liking youth and being young in heart herself, 
 then and there engaged him to take her, if possible 
 by water, to a certain tract of land, she gave him 
 the details : section, range, township, distant some 
 forty miles from Bemidji. 
 
 "I know it; I was through there last spring."
 
 1 86 Out of the Silences 
 
 "And does Long John live anywhere near there 
 now? He used to." 
 
 "'Bout five miles north." 
 
 "And are there good places that you can recommend 
 where I can stop at night?" 
 
 "Lord, yes; you can't go five miles 'round here 
 without finding places you can put up at." 
 
 "I want to start to-morrow, if pleasant." 
 
 The young man showed a certain degree of hesitancy 
 about agreeing to this. 
 
 "Well, Ma'am, the railroad has been run near a 
 corner of that section now, an' I ain't going to close 
 this deal without telling you so. You can take a 
 train to within five miles of there, and a good team '11 
 carry you the rest of the way. You'll see all you 
 want to, an' it will cost you less." 
 
 Alison Doane smiled. The youth's evident desire 
 to do the right thing prepossessed her the more in 
 his favor. 
 
 "I don't want to see a railroad or hear one, if I 
 can help it, for the next month; so you must get 
 me there as best you can without." 
 
 "All right, Ma'am, here's my shingle." He handed 
 her a card with his name, and license number. She 
 directed him to call for her few belongings at a certain 
 hotel she had noted on her way to the dock, and tell- 
 ing him she would be at the boathouse promptly at 
 eight she went back to the station. 
 
 3 
 
 From its fixed seat in the heavens the North Star 
 looked down upon a giant river of the western world. 
 Its right arm lay outstretched along the plains. Its 
 forearm smote and cleft the Great Plateau. Its 
 ringers clutched the bare ribs of the Great Divide.
 
 Revisited 187 
 
 Its left arm reached into the North, and within 
 the vast curve of its elbow it held more than a thousand 
 lakes. Its fingers sought the myriad rootlets of the 
 Big Woods and nourished them for the salvation of 
 generations. 
 
 4 
 
 For two hundred, three hundred, yes, four hundred 
 years, the elements of earth, air, water, and sunshine 
 were undergoing in Mother Nature's vast alembic 
 various chemical changes to produce the Big Woods 
 of the North Star State. 
 
 How slowly, how patiently she wrought that 
 Great Mother! With what age-long thrift she 
 deepened and enriched the soil for seedling pine and 
 oak, for birch and balsam, spruce and ash. Nothing 
 was too small for her to utilize: a drop of freezing 
 water, a tiny lichen, earthworm, fallen leaf, bone of 
 bird, of beast, of man nothing so insignificant she 
 might disregard its instrumentality. 
 
 With what cunning she stored her still waters in 
 swamp and shallow, pond and lake. With what 
 artisanship she grooved the channels for her running 
 waters thread and trickle and streamlet, rill, 
 rivulet, and river. 
 
 How her centuries of sunshine drew the stem of 
 the seedling-pine ever upward, the while its roots 
 bored ever deeper, seeking the provident under- 
 surface water ! 
 
 The Great Mother patiently bided her time. 
 Thirty years ; the seedling's stem is six inches through. 
 
 Fifty years ; the young tree measures three feet hi 
 circumference. A man, loving it, may encircle it 
 with his arms. 
 
 One hundred years. The stately shaft reaches
 
 1 88 Out of the Silences 
 
 eighty feet into the blue, and is two feet in diameter 
 at the height of a man's breast. It has seen the 
 passing of three generations of mankind. 
 
 Four hundred years. The noble bole is six feet 
 through at the butt. Its magnificent crown tops the 
 northern forests. 
 
 Four hundred years in the making ! How patiently 
 the Great Mother has bided her time. In a day the 
 hand of man lays low the glory of her workmanship. 
 
 5 
 
 Some such thoughts were Alison Doane's when, 
 after two days of canoe and portage, she stood on 
 what was once land owned in her father's name. 
 By right it should have been hers at this moment. 
 
 She looked about her, recalling the density of the 
 woods in this region twenty years ago. The land 
 was denuded of its forest trees : its valuable white 
 pine, its oak and maple, even its basswood. Some 
 rotting stumpage was left ; cattle were grazing among 
 it. At no great distance the strands of a wire fence 
 glistened in the low sunshine. 
 
 She crossed the shallow bed of a stream, gone dry 
 since the protecting forest had been levelled. Far 
 away across the stretch of three hundred and twenty 
 acres, some men were at work with a large traction 
 plough, breaking the good soil in the autumn weather. 
 A road ran the length of the southern boundary, and 
 in the distance, against a background of trees, stood 
 a settler's small frame house. 
 
 The woman, eye witness to this march of progress, 
 experienced a sudden homesickness for those great 
 pine woods with which she once made acquaintance 
 in her girlhood, for the green glooms of their trails 
 white-flecked by sunshine falling through the branches,
 
 Revisited 189 
 
 for the love and protection of her father during those 
 care-free days on lake and portage with him and 
 Antoine and Long John. She turned suddenly to 
 her guide. 
 
 "You say Long John lives only five miles from 
 here?" 
 
 "Yes, to the north." 
 
 "And who lives there?" She pointed to the end 
 of the newly made road. 
 
 "That's Bill Plunket's." 
 
 "Who is he?" 
 
 "He married Long John's youngest girl. Jane, 
 they call her, Jane Plunket." 
 
 " She is the one you said had gone with her father ? " 
 
 "Yes, she goes off two or three times a year visiting 
 up Red Lake way. She's got a lot of relations on 
 the reservation there. Plunket's is a good place to 
 put up at, for one night anyway ; everybody likes the 
 old man. .I'd planned to stop there." 
 
 "But his wife isn't at home, you say." 
 
 The young fellow grinned. "Jane don't run the 
 house much it's her girl does it. You see, Jane's 
 a squaw, and won't never be anything but Injun ; 
 but her girl is as white as you, Ma'am, and a right 
 smart one I can tell you." 
 
 "What's her name?" 
 
 "Stella Stella Plunket." 
 
 "And her father is an old man?" 
 
 "Yes, 'bout seventy." 
 
 "And Stella, how old is she?" 
 
 "Stella, let me see," Alison Doane noted how 
 his voice lingered slightly on the musical name and 
 made a few private thoughts to her own satisfaction, 
 for like a true woman she loved a romance however
 
 190 Out of the Silences 
 
 humble, " Stella must be 'bout twenty now. She's 
 book-learned, Stella is." His tone was one of intense 
 admiration. 
 
 Alison Doane felt suddenly less lonely, younger ; 
 she forgot for the time the pine forests in her desire 
 for human companionship. 
 
 "Let's go there, then; it's getting late. We'll 
 take the road." 
 
 It was rough walking and farther than it looked 
 to be. The house was not inviting, seen from with- 
 out. The low weathered barn looked the more com- 
 fortable of the two. The woman, recalling that night 
 in the bark-covered hut among the pines, her first 
 real adventure, smiled at the contrast this little frame 
 house, high-shouldered, unfinished, dreary looking, its 
 painted clapboards scaling, its Windless windows un- 
 curtained, presented to that other with its alien 
 occupants. She had never forgotten the youth's 
 music and the girl's dancing. 
 
 As she neared the house she heard the sound of a 
 phonograph. Her guide directed her to ring the 
 doorbell. He said he saw Stella at the barn and 
 would bring her in. 
 
 The bell knob, one of those brown crockery affairs 
 that disgrace any door, hung loosely from its wire. 
 To the stranger it looked like an abortive attempt at 
 civilization. The bell jangled harshly as she pulled 
 at it. The music stopped abruptly. She heard slow 
 steps on a bare floor ; then the door was flung open 
 and Bill Plunket stood before her, bent of shoulder, 
 crippled with rheumatism, white-haired; but in his 
 faded blue eyes there shone a welcome that was in 
 itself both a balm and a benediction. 
 
 " Come right in. I didn't happen to see ye comin'
 
 Revisited 191 
 
 along the road, but I see Alec goin' to the barn. I 
 s'pose ye've come for the night most strangers do 
 that Alec brings through these parts." 
 
 She answered half on impulse, half from intuition : 
 
 "If you can accommodate me, Mr. Plunket, I may 
 want to stay more than one night." She put out 
 her hand. 
 
 Bill Plunket took it, slender, white, shapely; he 
 looked at it, then at its owner. 
 
 "Ye can stay just as long as ye want to, Miss " 
 
 "Doane ; my name is Alison Doane." 
 
 " Miss Doane, for I take it ye're 'Miss', seein' 
 ye ain't no weddin' ring on t'other hand." 
 
 It was then Alison Doane laughed a merry, 
 heartening laugh that filled the small bare hall. 
 Hearing it, the saddle-maker, still holding her hand, 
 drew her into the room beyond, saying : 
 
 " It does me good to hear that laugh o' yourn ; it's 
 like Son's. You set down, an' I'll call my girl." 
 
 He moved with some difficulty to the back door and 
 throwing it open was confronted by Stella and Alec. 
 
 "Stella, this here is Miss Doane. She's goin' to 
 put up with us for to-night, mebbe longer. Glad 
 to see ye, Alec. Ye'll have to sleep in the barn, 
 but we can feed ye all right." 
 
 The girl welcomed her guest with gentle grace and 
 in excellent English. She at once led the way to the 
 guest room. 
 
 6 
 
 It was an unfinished attic, a window in each gable 
 end. One looked to the east across the rough cleared 
 land, that should have been Alison Doane's, and still 
 farther over the tilled and untilled acres. Here and 
 there a farmhouse or two, with outbuildings, could be
 
 192 Out of the Silences 
 
 seen indistinctly beneath over-topping shade trees. 
 The shadowing darkness of small patches of wood- 
 land and, far away, the lowing of cattle, emphasized 
 the quiet of approaching twilight. 
 
 From the west window, the woman, looking through 
 the few pines at the back of the house, caught the 
 gleam of a lake and heard the lap of its waters among 
 the long grass or sedge. 
 
 "I think I shall want to stay here a whole month, 
 if I may; will you let me?" she said, turning to the 
 girl and smiling almost joyously, for she was ex- 
 periencing a sensation of deliverance from the tram- 
 mels of her ordinary life. She was realizing the fact 
 that she was at last free to live her own life as she 
 might choose, where she might choose. And just 
 now she chose to live a month of it here, with these 
 two interesting human beings, Bill Plunket and his 
 half-breed daughter, in the strangely prosaic sur- 
 roundings of glebe, newly turned furrow, and rough, 
 timberless clearings. 
 
 The girl answered with a smile: "As long as you 
 want to, but," she added almost with sadness, "you 
 will get tired of it : they all do before that time." 
 
 Noting that smile, Alison Doane thought it light- 
 ened one of the most pathetic faces she had ever seen. 
 It was an irregular oval, rather thin, the skin white 
 as her own except for a coat of tan. The eyes were 
 large, dreamy, blue-gray, with remarkably full under- 
 lids ; the nose straight, the nostrils full and well- 
 formed. But the high cheek bones and the lower 
 part of the mouth were all Indian. She wore a coarse 
 white blouse and a blue denim skirt. Beautifully 
 formed, she was graceful as a fawn, with something 
 of the swiftness and unexpectedness of its movements.
 
 Revisited 193 
 
 Such was Stella, the saddle-maker's half-breed 
 daughter who was at home for the first time in five 
 years during which she had been at a distant Gov- 
 ernment school. To the white woman, admiring 
 her, she seemed to typify the tragedy with the 
 passing of the great forests of the North Star State 
 of that red race that once dominated this land and 
 was the girl's by a half-inheritance. 
 
 As Alison leaned to have another look from the 
 east window, she heard the almost noiseless steps of 
 the girl on the stairs; then the scent of the freshly 
 turned earth rose into her nostrils mingled with the 
 fragrance of the pines. The earth was breathing a 
 few times before the falling of the autumn dews. 
 
 7 
 
 For the first time in his long life Bill Plunket was 
 brought into daily contact with a woman of "gentle- 
 people" breeding; for the first time into daily inter- 
 course with the simple manners of what we call, for 
 want of a better name, a lady at heart. He watched 
 her deft ways with his hugger-mugger belongings; 
 noted the order she brought out of chaos. He ad- 
 mired her thoroughly practical outlook on the do- 
 mestic side of life. He loved to talk with her, hear 
 her laugh, and above all to question her as to her 
 reasons for being in just that locality ; but she baffled 
 his curiosity for a few days and purposely kept him 
 wondering aimlessly. This in turn amused her. 
 
 The 'October nights were cool with heavy frosts, 
 and the big stove in the kitchen was in full blast 
 after supper. The atmosphere was conducive to 
 chat and good talk. One evening Bill Plunket spoke 
 between puffs : 
 
 "I see ye prospectin' over by Ole Olafson's this
 
 194 Out of the Silences 
 
 afternoon; find anything worth investin* in to-day?" 
 This was a daily question. 
 
 "Not to-day, Mr. Plunket." She bent to the 
 sweater she was knitting. "I just wanted to take a 
 look at the farm over there." 
 
 "Did ye see Olafson?" 
 
 "No, there wasn't any one at home so far as I 
 could see. Who owns the farm, the little one just 
 beyond his?" 
 
 "That's his brother's, a bacheldore." He chuckled 
 to himself. 
 
 "What is it? Tell me, do," she said, ready to 
 enjoy one of his local jokes. 
 
 "His brother's name is Hendrik. Ye see, there's 
 been a lot o' trouble for the last ten years 'bout this 
 piece o' land ye been looking over, though it begun 
 a good while 'fore that with the land sharks." 
 
 Miss Doane looked up inquiringly. Plunket nodded 
 emphatically. 
 
 "That's wot we call 'em. Ye see, if I've got the 
 rights o' it an' I've heard it told enough times to 
 know all them three hundred and twenty acres, 
 was Government gift to two brothers in the Florida 
 war; an' a man come along through here a good 
 many years ago an* bought up their claims. Then 
 another man bought him out. Seems he died, an' 
 then the trouble begun. 
 
 "The timber-wolves don't let much timber stand 
 long when there's nobody 'round to look after it, 
 an' just after I moved in here from Turtle Moun- 
 tain, they begun to cut the tirnber best o' white 
 pine, heavy and full grown. By the time I'd been 
 in here ten years they was cuttin' off the oak; an' 
 the maples was dying off, for their roots couldn't
 
 Revisited 195 
 
 reach to the under-surface water that had been 
 lowered. It was a clear case o' wot they call 'tres- 
 passin' an' wot / call stealin'. They hadn't no right 
 to a dog-goned stick o' that timber ; but I didn't know 
 it then or I'd have used my gun on 'em. Stealin' 
 from a woman is a durned low-down trick, an' that's 
 wot they was doin*. 
 
 "Next, they took all the bass wood. One night 
 'bout eight years ago, Ole come over to read me a 
 letter from a woman somewhere in Virginia. He 
 wouldn't tell me her name for he said he wasn't 
 goin' into no witness box on tax titles an' trespassin'. 
 She said her father owned the land; that he was 
 dead, and she wanted to get at the value now that 
 the timber had been cut off unbeknownst to her. 
 She asked Ole if he'd kind o' look out for her int'rest 
 in the half section as she couldn't come out here 
 herself. He showed me a five-dollar bill she sent to 
 close the bargain." 
 
 He broke into a hearty laugh, so hearty that Alison 
 Doane joined him and Stella's face wore a smile. 
 
 "Ye see Hendrik was lookin' round for a wife 
 ain't got one yet. They wouldn't look at him with- 
 out some land ; no woman will, 'round in these parts. 
 You've got to show yer deed to 'em, an' no tax title 
 will work now ; it's got to be the genuine article 
 here in the North Star State. So when Ole read the 
 letter to his brother, Hendrik begun to take notice ; 
 an' he an' Ole between 'em laid their plans to get 
 hold of the land by marriage contract between Hen- 
 drik an' the woman. He said he didn't care whether 
 she was young or old, so long's she owned that land. 
 So Ole wrote to her an' told her just how matters 
 stood : that all the timber had been cut off, but that
 
 196 Out of the Silences 
 
 it was mighty good farm land an' worth forty dollars 
 an acre, for the railroad had been run so close to it 
 there was no haulin' to speak of." He chuckled 
 again. 
 
 "He told her he had a brother who was a bacheldore 
 an' lookin' for some good land to kind o' develop an' 
 a wife into the bargain ; an' if she felt any incfe'nation, 
 she might write to him what her mind was on that 
 pertic'ler point, an' he'd meet her more'n half way." 
 
 Alison began to laugh. 
 
 "What did she say?" 
 
 "Well, I never rightly knowed. Ole wasn't wot 
 ye might call extra tongue-loose on that point ; but 
 I guess she settled the matter for good an' all. Any- 
 way, she didn't lay up nothin' against Ole ; he heard 
 from her till 'bout three years ago, p'raps more, then 
 the real rumpus begun. 
 
 "Ye see, the woman couldn't fight a monop'ly, 
 an' that's wot she was up against, an' two thousand 
 miles away. There was a reg'lar school o' land 
 sharks to begin with. Then there was the folks that 
 had done the stealin' some o' 'em dead, an' their 
 children not to blame for the sins o' their fathers. 
 Then there was the monop'ly ; that meant some o' 
 the biggest an' richest men in the country ; an' 
 there was the lawyers who was workin' for the 
 monop'ly. 
 
 "Now I want to know wot chance a woman's got 
 to fight that combination? Tell me that. Ye can 
 trap some animiles, an' shoot others, an' decoy some, 
 an' corral the rest. But no man that handles a trap, 
 or a gun, or a lariat, is goin' to use all three to once 
 on a creature that can't put up. a fight, not much ! 
 But Chat's, accordin' to my notion, just wot they've
 
 Revisited 197 
 
 done to that woman. That monop'ly got a grip on 
 that half-section, an* no power on earth can make 
 'em let go. From all I hear they threatened her 
 with law suits, an' badgered her with letters, an* 
 baited her with quit-claim deeds, an' raised the 
 deuce gen'rally. 
 
 " There wasn't no show for her. They say they 
 own it now ; an' have put up a wire fence 'round it 
 an' been keepin' stock in there this last season. 
 I'd give one o' Stella's cookies if I could find out 
 what she got for it. I know she was cheated." 
 
 "I can tell you," Alison Doane spoke quietly. 
 Plunket looked over at her inquiringly without show- 
 ing surprise. 
 
 "How do you know?" was his rather abrupt 
 question. 
 
 "Because I am the woman. And you are right 
 I could not fight such a combination ; but the land 
 was mine. I got eight hundred dollars for it; and 
 I'm taking this my first trip into the heart of my 
 country, on the strength of that money." 
 
 "By gum!" was all Plunket said for a moment; 
 evidently he was calculating; "an' ye'd ought to 
 had most thirteen thousand dollars without countin' 
 the trespass. So ye're the woman I might have 
 known it. Ye wouldn't stayed 'round here for 
 more'n a day if ye hadn't had some sort o' int'rest 
 in the place." 
 
 "You're on the wrong trail, Mr. Plunket. I stay 
 here because I like to stay with you and Stella for a 
 few weeks." 
 
 "I'd like to ask ye just one question an' no offense 
 meant : did not havin' wot was yer dues from yer 
 father make any kind o' difference in yer livin' ? "
 
 198 Out of the Silences 
 
 "All the difference between a life of leisure and a 
 life of work. I've earned my livelihood ever since 
 my father died." 
 
 "An' those rats did that, did they?" Plunket's 
 wrath was rising. "Ye mean ye've worked for yer 
 livin', for yer daily bread same's other folks?" 
 
 "Just the same," Alison Doane answered with a 
 smile. "I'm no better than others when it comes 
 to that, and work doesn't hurt any woman provided 
 she isn't overworked." 
 
 "Ye must have been under age when yer father 
 died?" 
 
 "Yes, but I was over seventeen." 
 
 "And now I judge ye're 'bout twenty-seven " 
 Miss Doane interrupted him with the merry laugh 
 that to hear Bill Plunket declared did his "rheu- 
 matics " good. 
 
 "Your arithmetic is all wrong, Mr. Plunket. Guess 
 again." 
 
 "Ye can't be the shady side o' thirty?" Bill 
 Plunket began to look troubled. 
 
 "I am thirty-seven." 
 
 "Don't tell it, Miss; nobody'd believe ye." Bill 
 Plunket spoke so earnestly that his guest laughed 
 again. 
 
 "I'm mad enough to use my gun on the whole kit, 
 mad as Son was when the Injun cheated him on his 
 pony; mad enough to kill somebody, just like him. 
 If there was anything used to get Son wild it was for 
 somebody to try to do him. An' you, poor girl, 
 have been done by the toughest crowd that ever 
 tackled a man ; an' yet ye can laugh laugh just like 
 Son." 
 
 "That's what you said when I entered the house,
 
 Revisited 199 
 
 Mr. Plunket. How many sons have you? Stella 
 speaks of Tom and Jerry, and you of McGillie and 
 Son. Straighten it out for me, please." 
 
 Plunket, who in his earnestness had hitched himself 
 out of his chair, sat down again with a laugh. 
 
 "I don't blame ye for wan tin' to know how we 
 stand. Ye see, Tom an' Jerry are my sons, 'reel 
 Plunkets' as Son calls 'em. Tom is section hand 
 on the railroad. Jerry's off fishin' up Red Lake 
 way. McGillie is my stepson ; I was married to a 
 widow 'fore I married Jane. And Son well, now 
 wot shall I say? He's just Son. He ain't no blood 
 relation, but he's nearer to me than a good many o' 
 that kind would be if I had 'em. His name is Robert 
 Collamore, an' he was here 'bout two weeks ago on 
 his way north. He's been here off an' on for more'n 
 twenty years. We both left the Turtle Mountains 
 for good and all 'bout that time. He's been here 
 three or four times an' he can't come too often an* 
 he can't stay too long. He had a tough life, Bob 
 did, up to six years ago ; but he's coming out on top 
 thai is if he don't get into this war business ; he's 
 made for it. He's on his way now to see the Injuns ; 
 he an' them was great friends. He lived with me 
 five years in the Turtle Mountains." 
 
 "Now where are those? I am densely ignorant of 
 my own country in spots. Tell me about it, " she 
 put the sweater into her bag, "and little Bob 
 Collamore ; he sounds interesting." 
 
 This opportunity of sounding the praises of his 
 well-beloved " Son ", Plunket seized, so to speak, by 
 the hair of its head. For three mortal hours he worked 
 that opportunity for all it was worth. 
 
 Alison Doane listened in silence, only now and then
 
 2OO Out of the Silences 
 
 asking a question. Stella also listened, intent, ab- 
 sorbed. At the end of that time, when the kitchen 
 clock struck eleven, Alison Doane felt she knew 
 something worth knowing about Robert Collamore, 
 the saddle-maker's "Son." 
 
 "He's made something of himself, I can tell ye 
 great feller for books ; an' he's been to a big 
 school for trainin' timber experts worked his way 
 through and is comin' out on top ; an' is in a fair way 
 o' makin' his pile and he sure needs all the luck 
 comin' to him," he added as he bade his guest good- 
 night. 
 
 8 
 
 Little by little, during her stay of a month in 
 Minnesota, Alison Doane lived into the spirit of 
 her new environment ; and that spirit was the benign 
 atmosphere of the saddle-maker's severely disciplined 
 soul. Her interest in Stella and her anomalous posi- 
 tion as a half-breed increased daily. She saw, at 
 times, strong evidence of her red racial inheritance; 
 at others, certain tendencies and an outlook on life 
 that were her father's. 
 
 They discussed Stella one day as they were driving 
 over the rough road that led to the station five miles 
 distant. They were seated on the board seat of a 
 low farm wagon, the body of which had been con- 
 verted into a transient travelling stall for stock 
 some sheep and a hog Plunket was shipping to market. 
 
 " I ain't like Jane. She's all for eddication. Now, 
 ye see, I never did think books could give ye eddica- 
 tion. They can give ye learnin' o' course ; but I've 
 knocked 'round enough to see that learnin' ain't 
 eddication, an' never will be." 
 
 He was so emphatic that he slapped the reins
 
 Revisited 201 
 
 vigorously on the colt's back, which procedure the 
 animal resented, with the result that there were 
 cavortings and side-trackings which made things 
 lively for man, woman, and beasts on the rough 
 roadway. Plunket's objurgations in homespun ver- 
 nacular were continued, forcible, and expressive. 
 Alison Doane laughed till the tears stood in her 
 eyes, for the hog and terrified sheep resented the 
 performance quite as much as Plunket on his side 
 and the colt on his, and in their own peculiar fashion. 
 The medley of snortings, squealings, and blattings 
 was irresistibly funny. 
 
 When things had quieted down both within and 
 without the cart to a degree that the two could 
 continue the conversation without running the risk 
 of biting their tongues, owing to the high jolting of 
 the springless cart over the little-used road rem- 
 nant of an old logging road the saddle-maker, 
 smiling genially, turned to his guest and explained 
 in gentle tones : 
 
 "This damned beast needs eddicatin' animiles 
 do, ye know ; an' humans bein' animiles, an' somp'in* 
 else, need it a little more'n they do ; an' neither one 
 nor t'other gets it from books, now do they?" 
 
 "Indeed, we don't, Mr. Plunket ; we get it through 
 what you're flourishing a little too near the colt's 
 left ear for my comfort," she replied, referring to 
 the whiplash Plunket was plying in fancy aerial 
 curves just over the head of the sensitive young 
 horse. 
 
 Plunket laughed aloud. "Ye mean get whipped 
 into shape by wot ye call experience, eh?" 
 
 "Yes, I've found it so." 
 
 Bill Plunket grew serious at once. "Well, I s'pose,
 
 202 Out of the Silences 
 
 bein' human, ye've had to take yer medicine same as 
 the rest o' us ; but I'll be blistered if I see any reason 
 why a woman should have it thrust down her throat 
 by them damned land sharks. I ain't got over it 
 yet, ye see," he added in apology for the forcibleness 
 of his condemnation, delivered this time in no gentle 
 tone. 
 
 "Oh, that isn't the way to look at it." 
 
 "Isn't, eh?" 
 
 "No, for if it hadn't been for those" she turned 
 to him with a charming smile curving her still red 
 lips, and a glint of daring mischief in her dark blue 
 eyes " 'damned land sharks' of your North Star 
 State, I shouldn't be having the second 'time' of my 
 life right here with you and Stella. Honestly, I 
 mean it." 
 
 Bill Plunket looked at her in amazement. 
 
 "Ye mean that?" He spoke abruptly; he had 
 thought hitherto that people of gentle blood were 
 accustomed to good times during the greater part of 
 their lives. 
 
 "Of course I do; and the queer part of it is that 
 I had my first glorious 'time' within twenty miles of 
 here." 
 
 "Ye mean ye've been here before?" 
 
 "Yes, years ago before you settled here." 
 
 "How's that?" 
 
 "I came out here with my father, he was looking 
 for investments, and I slept in a hut in the really 
 *big woods' for one night. I never enjoyed any- 
 thing so much in my life, and I've been longing for 
 another night just like it ever since. Alec took me 
 through that tract on the way here. There's nothing 
 left of that great pine forest, only farms and waste
 
 Revisited 203 
 
 stumpage land. Do you happen to know of any 
 foreigners, a family of Hungarians, that used to live 
 over there? We stayed with them that night." 
 
 " No ; that must have been before my time. Those 
 foreigners are here one day and gone the next if they 
 don't take up land. I'm beginnin' to understand 
 why ye come out here now." 
 
 "And Long John was one of our guides " 
 
 "Long John ? " Plunket interrupted her ; he looked 
 bewildered. "Long John is Jane's father." 
 
 "I know." She nodded assurance. "And I wanted 
 to see him too." 
 
 "Ye did?" After those two words, which Plunket 
 adjudged safe in the amazing circumstances, he was 
 silent. This woman's statements were becoming 
 incomprehensible ; he would await developments. 
 
 "I had such a good time with my father, that I've 
 always felt if ever I could get out here again I might 
 have the chance for another." She spoke wistfully ; 
 then, with a merry laugh: "And I've 'sure' found 
 it." 
 
 It captivated Plunket to hear her quote his own 
 expressions; they were so incongruous his words 
 and the clear-ringing but gentle voice in which they 
 were uttered. 
 
 When he spoke his own voice was slightly husky : 
 
 "Well, if bein' here with me an' Stella is wot ye 
 call havin' a 'good time', I ain't quite so sure as I 
 was that ye've had all ye'd ought to in this life." 
 
 Alison Boane made no answer. She looked away 
 across the fields, some lying fallow, some plowed. 
 Here and there huge hayricks stood out boldly against 
 the dull horizon of overcast skies. The air was chill 
 with a hint of snow in it. Here and there the rem-
 
 204 Out of the Silences 
 
 nants of over-abundant crops lay ungathered, black- 
 ened by the recent heavy frosts. On the right an 
 acre or two of dried faded cornstalks rustled dismally 
 as they drove past ; on the left a herd of swine were 
 nosing for artichoke roots; farther on cattle were 
 grazing among stumpage. She shivered slightly. 
 Plunket noticed it. 
 
 "Ye cold? There's an extra robe under the seat." 
 
 "No oh, no ; it must be the air and the dull gray 
 sky. The two together make me think of two or 
 three hours on a trail through the forest just before 
 we reached that hut. It had begun to snow." 
 
 "Wot month was that?" 
 
 "October, the very last ; and Antoine " 
 
 "Was that Antoine Guilmette?" 
 
 " Yes ; did you know him ? " 
 
 "Better'n I know you." 
 
 "He was our guide; we had two, him and Long 
 John. He used to play on his clarionet for me 
 sometimes in camp. I hoped he might be living. 
 I wanted to find out about a boy that came to the 
 hut that night through all the wind and sleet. I've 
 never forgotten him a little chap. He was with 
 the Indians near a Chippewa village. Long John 
 didn't speak any English then. Does he now? 
 Perhaps he could tell me sometime." 
 
 Bill Plunket forgot to reply to her question. His 
 mind was beginning to work, make back tracks over 
 twenty-three years of his life's trail to the time of 
 his quest for Jane. It behooved him to be cautious. 
 
 "Wot did the boy come for? Anything to do 
 with them foreigners?" 
 
 "No; he had lost his dog. Antoine said she had 
 been lost for nearly three weeks."
 
 Revisited 205 
 
 Bill Plunket's faded blue eyes suddenly took on 
 the look of a hawk when it circles slowly above its 
 earth-victim ; he was about to pounce on his clue. 
 
 "Such a little lad. We felt so sorry for him. His 
 dog died just as he got there." 
 
 '"Bout how old was he?" 
 
 "I don't know; father thought he might be eleven 
 or twelve." 
 
 "Did you learn his name?" 
 
 "Only his Indian name. Antoine called him 
 'Little Owl.' I suppose he must have been a half- 
 breed, but he didn't look like one." 
 
 "He's no more of a half-breed than you an' me." 
 Plunket's tone was a shade testy. "I know that 
 boy. Yer speakin' 'bout the dog put me on the 
 scent." 
 
 She turned to him, looking eagerly into his face. 
 "You knew him? Can you tell me anything about 
 him?" 
 
 "I've told ye 'bout as much as there is to tell. 
 That boy is 'Son', Bob Collamore. The Injuns used 
 to call him Little Owl, or Bob-Little Owl." 
 
 "But I thought you said " 
 
 Plunket interrupted her : "I know I put ye on the 
 wrong trail by tellin' ye them foreigners was here 
 'fore my time. An' that's just as 't was ; but the year 
 before I come over here to settle, I come here with 
 Bob to fetch Jane back to the mountains. She'd 
 been visitin' her father a spell," he added in an off- 
 hand manner. 
 
 "Then perhaps you heard of me before Hendrik 
 Olafson tried to propose to me for the sake of the 
 land?" 
 
 "Well, now I think o' it, I had heard o' ye, an*
 
 206 Out of the Silences 
 
 that's the truth. Not from Bob. He's close- 
 mouthed, an' was so choked up over the bitch he 
 couldn't, or wouldn't talk 'bout wot happened that 
 night. All I knew was wot Jane said Long John 
 and Kinni-kinnik that's his grandchild told her." 
 
 " Kinni-kinnik too ! I'm beginning to find the trail 
 I've lost all these years. She was such a darling." 
 
 "Bet yer life she was, reg'lar charmer. She's 
 married to my stepson, McGillie, I was tellin' ye 
 'bout t'other day; he traps for the Fur Company. 
 She's got two children, an' both o' 'em havin' good 
 schoolin' up at Groundhouse they call it * The New 
 Mission ' ; 't ain't so far from Winnipegosis. Some 
 of our Injuns are on the reservation there." 
 
 "How strange." Alison Doane spoke more to 
 herself than to Plunket. "What more did Kinni- 
 kinnik tell Jane?" Somehow she could not call her 
 Mrs. Plunket. 
 
 "She had a good deal to say, so Jane said, an' .for 
 quite a while long after we'd all got back to the 
 mountains 'bout a white girl an' a hut in the 
 woods, an' how the white girl's father gave the girl a 
 silver dollar, and the white girl gave it to her, Kinni- 
 kinnik, ye know. She wears it round her neck to 
 this day, they say she ain't never took it off, 
 on a bead necklace McGillie sent her after he'd been 
 away from the mountain. I hadn't thought o' this 
 for twenty-two years till ye mentioned the boy an 1 
 the dog; then it come back to me. Son was hard 
 hit, losing his bitch that way. He loved that 
 dog, an' the boy was the bitch's god that's wot 
 he was." 
 
 Then he told her of their camping on the south 
 trail when they came home to the mountains from the
 
 Revisited 207 
 
 fort, and of that night incident in which both bitch 
 and boy figured largely. 
 
 When he finished the woman's cheeks were wet 
 with tears, and the surprised colt was receiving extra 
 and undeserved flicks of the lash on his flanks. These 
 he bore right bravely, for all along the rough road 
 Bill Plunket had been continuing his education of 
 the animal. The saddle-maker felt the need of re- 
 lieving the situation and, noticing this improvement 
 in his horse, turned to the woman beside him, saying : 
 
 "He's gettin' whipped into shape like the rest o' 
 us; bearin' it noble too. We're going to run close 
 to the track just round that piece o' woodland ye 
 see, an' if there's a train comin' he'll have to do 
 nobler ; he's got an awful grudge against 'em. Ye 
 set tight, if ye hear one, an' trust to yer old friend 
 an' the best harness I've made in the North Star 
 State, will ye?" 
 
 "I'd trust you anywhere, with anything." Alison 
 Doane spoke impulsively, smiling into his face. 
 
 She saw a faint color creep up Bill Plunket's cheek 
 to his temple. She could not know that in his old 
 age he was tasting something of the sweetness of 
 congenial companionship, a companionship that, born 
 under another star, his life might have offered him 
 in his youth or middle age. 
 
 The train did not pass; but the colt's education 
 continued until they drove into the barn where Stella 
 unharnessed him. 
 
 9 
 
 Before she left the saddle-maker's, two weeks 
 afterwards, Miss Doane learned much from her 
 host and his daughter of their Indian relatives and 
 their collateral friendships. During this time she
 
 208 Out of the Silences 
 
 received a letter from Evelyn Carrolly in Winnipeg 
 saying that she and her husband expected her to 
 meet them about the second week of November in 
 that city, and from there they would make their 
 journey northward to Groundhouse, the terminus of 
 a branch line of railroad. Any failure on her part 
 to meet them, Evelyn declared, would have for 
 penalty almost the breaking of friendship. She was 
 to expect a telegram now at any time, setting the 
 date on which they were to start. 
 
 On reading this, Alison Doane regretted for a 
 moment that she had given her promise to be with 
 them and go on with them. She had planned, 
 long before they ? made the journey north together, 
 to use the ei'ght hundred dollars, the sacrifice- 
 price for her lands, in seeing certain portions of her 
 own country and Canada which she had long hoped, 
 without any definite prospect of fulfilment, to visit. 
 Now that she was about to realize her ambition, she 
 wanted to be free to see these lands in her own way ; 
 and the thraldom of close attendance on Evelyn 
 Carrolly, while making the trip entirely by train, a 
 mode of travel not in her original plans, was something 
 she did not like to contemplate, much as she liked her 
 cousin. 
 
 What she wanted was something like what she was 
 about to leave, what she knew she ought to leave 
 before Jane arrived to complicate the household 
 relations. She had read deep into her saddle-maker's 
 heart she called him hers now all unbeknown to 
 him ; and she recognized, also, the conditions facing 
 his daughter. Stella had talked once with her as 
 woman to woman, only once. The girl was uncom- 
 municative without being at all taciturn. She told
 
 Revisited 209 
 
 the older woman of her trouble. She said she was 
 only a half-breed ; that she loved a white man whom 
 she would follow to the ends of the world if he would 
 permit her. 
 
 "But, Stella," she said, on that day when they 
 spoke together so intimately, "he may love you, my 
 dear ; and if he loves you the fact of being what you 
 call a half-breed would make no difference to him 
 and should not to you." Alec was in her mind as 
 she spoke. 
 
 "He does not love me; he never will love me," 
 was all Stella would say; "but he was so kind 
 to me, I would follow him everywhere if he would 
 let me." 
 
 Alison Doane perceived that the girl's point of 
 view was that of the young squaw and not of the 
 white woman, and said no more. But she charged 
 herself with a certain wardship of Stella, for the 
 girl's isolation among her mixed people was only too 
 plain to see and, in the white woman's eyes, had 
 already certain elements of the tragic. 
 10 
 
 Alison Doane herself was half Scotch, her mother 
 having been born in Montreal of Scotch parentage. 
 Her father was an American, a native of Maryland. 
 
 She was eleven years old when she lost her mother ; 
 but of what that mother had told her only child, 
 the greater part was registered clearly and indelibly 
 in the little girl's memory. All her life long she had 
 been hoping, planning, to make her favorite story 
 come true. It was told to her again and again by 
 her mother, as the two sat together in the winter 
 evenings by the bright wood fire in their home on 
 Chesapeake Bay. Mrs. Doane was the niece of a
 
 2io Out of the Silences 
 
 trader in the famous Hudson's Bay Company, and 
 once with her mother, Alison's grandmother, made the 
 journey from Montreal to one of the Company's posts 
 to visit him and his family. 
 
 Her mother's description of that far northland, 
 her long journey by water to Norway House, her 
 visit there and the sight of the famous "Indian 
 Hall"; her vivid relation of what she had seen and 
 enjoyed at another far away Old Lake Post at which 
 her great uncle was trader ; her account of the com- 
 ing of the canoe brigades bringing the French half- 
 breeds with the rich furs from the hinterland ; of the 
 songs of these voyageurs, she used to sing them to 
 her little daughter until the child could sing them, 
 their camps, their gay and perilous life in the 
 wilderness and over the waterways of the north, 
 fascinated the child, held her entranced. She pinned 
 her childish faith to her mother's promise to take her 
 into that wonderland, sometime when she should be 
 old enough. 
 
 Such seed as this, sown by the mother in the well- 
 prepared ground of a child's fresh imagination, brought 
 forth in after years a hundredfold. At the time of 
 her intense grief for her loss, the reliving in imagina- 
 tion of what that mother had told her helped her to 
 forget, for a little, her sorrow. In the nearly seven 
 care-free years with her father that followed, she was 
 able to realize in part, by means of her urgent plead- 
 ing to be taken with him on his trip into northern 
 Minnesota, something of her vision. Later, in her 
 womanhood and the years of monotonous work-a-day 
 living, this dream of realizing sometime in the dim 
 future that journey of her mother's into the heart 
 of the big wonderful land, which was such a revela-
 
 Revisited 21 1 
 
 tion to her, lightened her daily task ; refreshed her in 
 thought, and stimulated her efforts to save. 
 
 As she had not been able, lacking the money, to 
 fight for the denuded pine lands which were right- 
 fully hers, she determined to do the next best : take 
 what she could get for them and by means of that 
 satisfy her longing to revisit Minnesota, and the 
 Canadian land of her mother's birth. 
 
 Her cousin's husband, Philip Carrolly, was in- 
 terested in the future development of an extensive 
 pulp wood plant far north of the Old Lake Post and 
 the erection of two large mills in that region. In 
 correspondence with the trader there, having men- 
 tioned to him the fact of Alison's connection with a 
 former trader, he found that gentleman was the 
 grandson of an old acquaintance of Alison's great 
 uncle. Mr. Carrolly was at once urged to accept 
 the hospitality of the house whenever his business 
 interests should call him that far north, and Alison 
 Doane was included in this invitation, 
 ii 
 
 In the few remaining days of her stay with the 
 saddle-maker and his daughter, Alison knew how, 
 as only a woman of quick sympathies can know, to 
 secure the bonds of their unforeseen friendship. For 
 the time their interests were hers. She intended to 
 make them feel that they would always be hers. 
 
 "You say Kinni-kinnik lives at Groundhouse, so 
 I shall look her up of course, not on the reserva- 
 tion?" 
 
 It was their last evening together. The cold was 
 increasing. Ice rimmed the lake behind the house. 
 It was already the first of November. Alison had 
 been frying doughnuts, a delectable of which Bill
 
 212 Out of the Silences 
 
 Plunket was inordinately fond ; it was also in a way 
 an object lesson for Stella. He finished a big generous 
 mouthful of the delicately browned ring of sweetened 
 bread before he spoke : 
 
 "No, she ain't there. McGillie built a log house, so 
 he told me the last time he was here, a reg'lar settler's 
 cabin. It's big enough for the family, he says, an' 
 Kinni-kinnik 's a mighty good housekeeper got her 
 learnin' at school just like Stella. He's goin' to put 
 up a frame house, he says, when he can settle down 
 reg'larly to raisin' some crops. He just comes an' 
 goes now. He's done well, McGillie has; been 
 savin', too, an' his wife has helped him." 
 
 "I shall try to see her very soon after I get there. 
 I do wish I might see Colin McGillie too." 
 
 Bill Plunket smiled. "He ain't wot ye call hand- 
 some, McGillie ain't, but he's true blue." He burst 
 into a mighty laugh. "Get him to tell ye how he 
 an' Bob fought for Kinni-kinnik sometime it's 
 better fun than seein' a billy-goat butting a tender- 
 foot. But I can tell ye Kinni-kinnik's lucky to get 
 him; he's faithful as the sun. I don't know where 
 he is now, an' I guess Kinni-kinnik ain't any wiser. 
 I s'pose he is a hundred miles or so north of Ground- 
 house. Ever been on a reservation ?" 
 
 "Never; all this is before me. About what year 
 did your Indian neighbors leave the Turtle Moun- 
 tains?" 
 
 "They left two or three families at a time. Let 
 me see I got out in 1894 just 'bout when the 
 Government had begun to take notice o' the timber. 
 If I ain't makin' a mistake, I think it was the very 
 next year the Government bit out a slice, 'bout 
 seventy thousand acres, for a kind o' timber reserve,
 
 Revisited 213 
 
 an' 'long 'bout 1906 they made it a reg'lar forest 
 reserve. It wasn't no place for squatters an' Injuns, 
 an' little by little the Injuns moved on. 
 
 "Great place, though, them Turtle Mountains. 
 Bob told me when he was here last month he was 
 goin' through 'em again just for old time's sake. 
 He ain't been there since he left twenty-one years 
 ago. I'll bet he'll find a big change. It's a good 
 place to keep stock I kept some ; grass grows 
 knee-deep all 'round the sloughs; an' all over the 
 burnt places, brules we call 'em, there's the best 
 pasture goin'. An' the fishin' in them lakes, 
 Lord ! it makes me homesick just to think of it, 
 the maskinonge, big fat-bellied fellers, some o' 'em 
 weighing twenty pounds ; an' good wild-eatin', par- 
 tridge an' duck aplenty. 
 
 "Since the settlers begun to come in there there's 
 been fires on the mountain an' not much timber left. 
 I was nothin' but a squatter, but I never set fire 
 to so much as a raspberry patch in all the years I 
 lived there." 
 
 "And where is Bob Collamore now?" In Alison 
 Doane's consciousness the saddle-maker's "Son" 
 always presented himself as the boy she had seen 
 so long ago. In her imagination he had never grown 
 Up ; hence her free use of his name. 
 
 "I dunno where Bob is now. He's what I call a 
 roamer; he's never staid put anywheres except 
 when he was at that place for trainin' experts. He 
 told me he was goin' up to the mountain from here, 
 an' then, he said, he was goin' on some business to 
 Ottawa an' afterwards up north he didn't say wot, 
 an' he ain't the kind ye want to ask questions 'bout 
 wot ye might call his personal property. But I'll
 
 214 Out of the Silences 
 
 bet I ain't far wrong if I say it's somp'in' to do with 
 this war business. He ain't goin' to stay out o' this 
 fight if I know him, an' I know him better'n any 
 other man on earth does, seein' I brought him up. 
 But if ye see McGillie, he'll likely tell ye." 
 
 "I am beginning to fear I shan't even see McGillie. 
 I don't know how long my cousins are going to stay 
 in the north, till we get there ; indeed, I'm sure they 
 don't know themselves." 
 
 "Stella can send a postcard to McGillie to find out, 
 but it ain't likely to reach him. They don't have 
 no reg'lar mail this side o' the North Pole an' the 
 Saskatchewan, not yet." 
 
 "I feel as if I knew it already, just hearing about 
 all your friends there." 
 
 "Ye'll have to take plenty o' clothes with ye up 
 there, I can tell ye." 
 
 "I am going to look out for that in Winnipeg." 
 
 So their talk drifted on rather aimlessly. They 
 knew the cozy evening chats in the warm kitchen 
 were to be things of the past. They went early to 
 bed, for the start was to be directly after breakfast 
 on the morrow. 
 
 The three drove the five miles to the station in a 
 double-seated spring wagon. Jane had preempted 
 their only "buggy" for her excursion to Red Lake 
 Reservation. The air was crisping cold, clear, filled 
 with brilliant low sunshine. The heavy frost, with 
 all the effect of snow, lay sparklingly white on stump- 
 age land, furrow, glebe, pastures, and on the roofs 
 of the isolated farmhouses. Even the rails running 
 westwards to the horizon were white. 
 
 They said but little, the three, as they waited for 
 the train at the small bare station. The saddle-
 
 Revisited 215 
 
 maker leaned from the wagon he could not leave 
 it at the critical moment of the train's arrival, owing 
 to the colt's still undisciplined nerves to grasp 
 the hand held up to him. 
 
 "Ye'll come again, I take it." 
 
 "As surely as I live." So answered Alison Doane, 
 for she loved this old man whose influence must 
 continue to be felt by her so long as she should live. 
 
 "If ye see Colin an' Kinni-kinnik, an' any o' the 
 others up at the New Mission, ye tell 'em the old 
 man don't forget 'em, never, an' that if my rheu- 
 matics would let me I'd like to visit with 'em all 
 again, same's we used to in Turtle Mountains." 
 
 "I shan't forget, and I shall stop over here to see 
 you on my way back, if only for a day. Stella, you 
 have promised to write to me often." 
 
 The girl nodded and smiled. 
 
 "There's no knowin', ye might run across Bob on 
 yer trails north and south ; if ye do, ye tell him from 
 me to let me know 'bout that war business as soon 
 as he knows himself." 
 
 "I surely will if I ever see him, and I do so hope I 
 may. He was such a weepy boy the last time I saw 
 him, just crying his heart out inside, I mean. 
 My own heart ached for him." 
 
 The train came to a stop, and Bill Plunket found 
 his hands full in managing the surprised and terrified 
 colt. 
 
 Alison Doane had a glimpse of him as the wagon 
 gyrated out of sight behind the station, and a vision 
 of Stella attempting to climb in over the tailboard.
 
 II 
 
 AT THE NEW MISSION
 
 II 
 
 AT THE NEW MISSION 
 
 THE multiple roots of the Saskatchewan are fed 1 
 from the snows and glaciers of the Rockies. Its 
 two great branches, the North and South Saskatche- 
 wan, flow together at "the Forks", seven hundred 
 miles to the east of their snow-fed mountain sources. 
 
 It is a magnificent, natural, and almost equilateral 
 triangle so formed. Its base is the mountain- 
 bastioned wilderness of western Alberta. Its sides 
 are the two noble eastward-flowing rivers. Its 
 apex is the junction of the two in the province of 
 Saskatchewan. 
 
 The territory, hundreds of thousands of square 
 miles in extent, enclosed in this vast Canadian 
 triangle, has been the scenic setting for the thrilling 
 drama and final tragedy of the great Indian tribes 
 of the North. 
 
 2 
 
 ^From "the Forks" eastward two hundred miles, 
 the river skirts the dense evergreen forests of the sub- 
 arctic North ; but thence onwards to its far distant 
 mouth on the shore of Winnipeg, its characteristics 
 are completely changed. They are those of a vast 
 delta: marshes, thousands of lakes, a myriad of 
 intricate waterways highways for the old French. 
 219
 
 22O Out of the Silences 
 
 voyageurs, for the Indian hunters and trappers from 
 the hinterland. 
 
 Beyond the northern bank lies an immense network 
 of waterways extending into subarctic regions. For 
 a hundred miles along its southern bank stretch the 
 marshlands, silent save for the rustle of reeds, the 
 whistling wings of wild duck, the "wailing call" of 
 wild fowl on their southward flight. 
 
 Its entire delta course for hundreds of miles dupli- 
 cates in a curious fashion, but far more grandly, the 
 complex water system of the Lake of the Woods, 
 Rainy River, its lake-like expanses and shallows. 
 Southeast of these marvellous Saskatchewan water 
 courses, that make of that far northern region a 
 continental Venice with its myriads of connecting 
 water highways for intercourse, traffic, and explora- 
 tion, lie the Great Lakes of Manitoba the Great 
 Sea, the Little Sea, the Strait of God. These, again, 
 duplicate the Great Lakes system of the United States 
 southeast of the international water boundary of the 
 Rainy River system. 
 
 From west to east along the river's entire length, 
 are found the famous clearing houses of the great 
 Fur Company. From Jasper House of the old days, 
 in the Canadian Rockies, to far away Norway House 
 on Winnipeg, they have formed and form, as it were, 
 great trade ganglia for that north land. 
 
 North and south of the mighty river, from far be- 
 yond desolate Lac la Ronge to the upland forests of 
 the Turtle Mountains, there have been established 
 from time to time, during the centuries, the multiple 
 lesser trading posts of the Company. These serve as 
 smaller nerve centres, their traffic being fed by the 
 arterial circulation of the Canadian waters through
 
 At the New Mission 221 
 
 the swamps and woods of the hinterland, so rich in 
 that wild life which yields to trapper and hunter the 
 furs that find their way to the centres of civilization. 
 
 Many of these smaller posts no longer exist. With 
 their passing has passed the old Turtle Mountain 
 House. The tracking of a continent, and the com- 
 petition of constantly extending railroad systems 
 have changed in many ways the old order. The 
 railroads are extending their iron fingers northwards, 
 ever northwards tapping here, tapping there the 
 hitherto undreamed-of resources of the great sub- 
 arctic regions. The mysterious hinterland has, at 
 last, been brought into contact with the borderland. 
 
 Upon the tracking of this great land has followed 
 the segregation of the Indian tribes of the North; 
 and to-day many of the reservations, large and small, 
 may be found in juxtaposition to a trading post. 
 
 Prior, however, to the coming of the iron horses 
 whose race course is the breadth of a continent, long 
 before the Indians were placed on reservations, 
 missions, small and large, were established here and 
 there among the tribes of the northern wilderness. 
 Hence it is not unusual to find mission and reserva- 
 tion in part amalgamated. 
 
 Many a pioneer's cabin on the confines of a reserva- 
 tion has aspired to and attained, with the coming of 
 a branch line of a railroad, the dignity of a settlement. 
 Many an insignificant settlement has thriven, out of 
 all proportion to its size, by the extension of the 
 logging interests to the northwards its own little 
 railroad community serving for a more southern base. 
 
 Groundhouse, or the New Mission, is one of these. 
 Here the hinterland touches the little community 
 fast growing into something more important, and a
 
 222 Out of the Silences 
 
 traveller finds himself in a curiously apportioned land 
 where the whistle of an engine at the front door of the 
 settlement might possibly drown the moan of moose 
 at the back. 
 
 This was a part of the charm which, with each 
 new day, cast anew its spell on Alison Doane. Of 
 her acquaintance with Kinni-kinnik and her children, 
 with Carmastic, Chum's wife, and her little pappooses 
 on the reservation just out of the town, she had made 
 no mention to her cousins. These were the things of 
 her life that did not enter into their particular lives. 
 Alison did not consider it necessary to explain that 
 for which no explanation was asked or needed. 
 
 3 
 
 "I don't see what you can find so fascinating in 
 that reservation; one visit was enough for me." 
 Mrs. Carrolly had run out of the common topics of 
 conversation and begun to turn the heel of another 
 stocking. She counted aloud, and Alison did not 
 interrupt her until she had finished. 
 
 The Carrollys were waiting for the substantial 
 freezing of the waters of river, lake, and creek in 
 order to make their trip to the incipient pulp-mill 
 plant many miles to the north. Before their arrival, 
 the foreman and his wife, who were to accompany 
 them, took advantage of the fine October weather 
 and practically open waters to go northwards to 
 their station and settle before the severe weather 
 should set in. Mr. Carrolly was waiting at Ground- 
 house for some further instructions from the 
 company that was financing the lumber enterprise 
 of which he was chief promoter, as well as director, 
 and for Davies, the forestry expert, to go with them 
 to try out the situation in the north from an expert's
 
 At the New Mission 223 
 
 point of view. Mrs. Carrolly was growing impatient 
 at the delay. 
 
 Alison was sitting at the window of the one hotel 
 in town, watching the passing of a curious mixture 
 of humanity that drew her interest with the strength 
 of a magnet. She turned to Mrs. Carrolly. 
 
 "It's the whole thing that is fascinating the 
 people, the settlement, marshes, even the railroad 
 station away up here in this wilderness ; think of 
 it! And this wonderful coming of winter here 
 I've seen these waters freeze, heard them too." 
 
 Mrs. Carrolly dropped her ball of yarn into her 
 knitting bag. 
 
 "I haven't the remotest idea what you mean, 
 Alison; but if you can find this sort of thing fas- 
 cinating, you are welcome to it, and every detail 
 of it. I couldn't endure it a moment if it weren't 
 for you and Phil, and the return, sometime, to New 
 York and my special duties." She sighed audibly. 
 
 Alison repressed a smile. She was intimately 
 acquainted with what Mrs. Carrolly called her 
 "duties." 
 
 "Anyway, I intend to stick by Phil; he wouldn't 
 enjoy anything without me." She spoke with com- 
 fortable assurance. "And the trip to the plant will 
 be something new. Of course we shall have to rough 
 it." 
 
 "I shall love it all. It's just what I've been long- 
 ing for all my life." Alison spoke enthusiastically, 
 ignoring the fact, that of what appealed to her Evelyn 
 Carrolly had no conception. 
 
 Mrs. Carrolly looked up suddenly from her knitting ; 
 there was a curiously incredulous and tolerant lift to 
 her eyebrows.
 
 224 Out of the" Silences 
 
 "You're queer, Me." That was all she said, but 
 it expressed a full quarto volume of what she was 
 thinking. 
 
 Alison Doane laughed her merry laugh of which 
 her cousin was always envious. "I know I must 
 be, dear, if you and Phil say so. But I mean it : I 
 am having a royal good time ; the only drawback is 
 that it will not last long enough." 
 
 "There's Phil!" Mrs. Carrolly exclaimed, hearing 
 his step in the hall. She flew to the door and, open- 
 ing it wide, welcomed him as if he had just returned 
 from an Arctic expedition. It was her way, and 
 her husband liked it. She flung her arms about 
 his neck and gave him what Alison called a simul- 
 acrum of a kiss; it was landed anywhere on her 
 husband's devoted head from crown, to ear, or neck. 
 
 ' ' Any news, dear ? " 
 
 "I should say so." He held out a package of 
 letters and a telegram. "Look at that! All our 
 plans for a quick get-away from here upset." He 
 sat down with a discouraged flump in an up-to-date 
 Grand Rapids rocking chair, and Mrs. Carrolly, a 
 roly-poly little woman, perched herself on the arm. 
 
 "Let's hear all about it, Phil. If we have to stay 
 here, it will be all the better for Me." There was 
 a slight sarcasm in her tone. 
 
 "How's that?" Phil Carrolly looked at Alison 
 inquiringly. 
 
 "Never mind her, Phil; it's only Evelyn's non- 
 sense. Tell us the news." 
 
 "Davies can't come." 
 
 "Can't come?" Mrs. Carrolly echoed, distinct 
 disappointment in her tone. "What do you mean?" 
 
 "Mean what I say. He is laid up for the winter,
 
 At the New Mission 225 
 
 and they're trying to get in touch with another man, 
 don't say who, to take over the job and join us here ; 
 for this work must be done if I stay up here all 
 winter." 
 
 Mrs. Carrolly groaned. " Oh, Phil ! " 
 
 "I know that 'Oh, Phil.' I've heard it too many 
 times to mistake it, my dear." Her husband spoke 
 testily. "But please understand, that 'Oh, Phil' 
 or no ' Oh, Phil ', I'm going to see this thing through. 
 I haven't left my good hot-water-heated home to 
 come up here halfway to the North Pole, and go 
 back without trying out that new investment. An 
 expert is just now the keystone of my arch; if 
 I don't get him the whole thing will fall to pieces. 
 There doesn't happen to be a limited Pullman from 
 New York, in these parts. You see what he says." 
 He handed her the telegram ; she read aloud : 
 
 "'Advise you by wire within ten days, not before; 
 letter follows.'" 
 
 Mrs. Carrolly, seeing her husband's state of mind, 
 suddenly tacked, veering suddenly into other waters 
 well oiled by her wifely and really sound common sense. 
 
 "Ten days? Oh, that isn't so bad, Phil. I was 
 thinking of ten months when you first spoke. Alison 
 will be only too delighted to stay right on ; and, you 
 know, dear, I'm only too glad to help out even if we 
 end by camping on the Arctic Circle. I don't believe 
 I could feel farther north even there." She popped 
 a kiss, or something that sounded like one, on the 
 small bald spot on the top of her husband's much- 
 troubled head. Mr. Carrolly looked into her face 
 and smiled. 
 
 "You're a brick, Eve. I didn't know how you 
 would take it."
 
 226 Out of the Silences 
 
 "Didn't know! Why, Phil Carrolly," she pro- 
 tested, withdrawing in mock indignation from his 
 detaining hand; "you ought to be ashamed of 
 yourself to say such a thing, much less think it, 
 of the wife of your bosom." 
 
 She fluttered away to her travelling tea-basket 
 to make the tea, which they found so delectable be- 
 cause her making of it was an art, declaring hot drink, 
 in this climate, to be a continuous and necessary 
 "pick-me-up." 
 
 "I thought I had better come back here and talk 
 it over with you girls before wiring any answer," 
 her husband remarked, comfortably sipping his tea. 
 
 "You are a dear, Philip Carrolly; that's just like 
 you, always thinking first of me." She beamed on 
 him over her cup. 
 
 Carrolly looked at his wife with an indulgent 
 smile; then he turned a quizzical look in Alison's 
 direction. But she was apparently oblivious. 
 
 "As for me, Phil," she said, "I've just been telling 
 Evelyn I can't get enough of this life here ; so you 
 won't expect me to go into mourning because we're 
 kept here a few days longer." 
 
 "Glad you take it so, Alie. It isn't every man 
 can find such backers as you two women, bless you. 
 Being gratefully appreciative, I'll proceed to drop a 
 bomb into your camp. I know it's dead slow here 
 for you, Eve you need something new to brace 
 you up; and I don't believe half you say, Alie. 
 How does it strike you to go up the lake by sleigh 
 as far as the Old Lake Post and make your visit there 
 while I am killing time here, for ten days, waiting 
 to hear from headquarters and the new man?" 
 
 v "I won't stir one step without you, Phil Carrolly."
 
 At the New Mission 227 
 
 Mrs. Carrolly spoke emphatically. "Alison can do 
 just as she pleases, of course. I will wait to go on 
 with you " 
 
 "Then there will be no visit for you, my dear, for 
 when I once get started with the new man and all 
 our outfit I don't stop to visit on the way, except for 
 one night to take ad vantage of our host's hospitality." 
 
 "What do you say to that, Alison?" Mrs. Car- 
 rolly inquired rather eagerly. 
 
 "I'm torn in two. I want to visit at the Old 
 Post it's what I came for and I want to stay 
 here, there is so much to interest me." Mrs. Car- 
 rolly sent an expressive look in her husband's direction. 
 
 "Well, if you will take my advice you'll see the 
 Old Post first, and trust to luck for seeing more of 
 the New Mission another time. I do believe you 
 like it well enough to settle here." 
 
 "Almost," Alison admitted with a smile; "but I 
 am going to act on your advice, Evelyn, and get in 
 that visit at the post in case something should happen 
 to the new man to lay him up too, for then you and 
 Phil would be off at short notice ; and I do so want 
 to see it, not only for my own sake but for mother's." 
 
 "Of course you do, Alie dear; and it's the only 
 sensible thing for you to do in the circumstances. 
 Perhaps Phil and I all three of us, I mean can 
 stop on our way back from the plant." 
 
 " Well, that's settled," said her husband. "Another 
 cup of tea, Eve, and then I'll go and send a telegram 
 to the company that everything is O. K. and we will 
 wait here for the new man." 
 
 4 
 
 After Mr. Carrolly had left them, Alison spoke 
 suddenly :
 
 228 Out of the Silences 
 
 "How did you know, Evelyn?" 
 
 Mrs. Carrolly, surprised and puzzled, stopped 
 short in the wiping of the teacups that Alison had 
 washed in a tin basin purchased at the one shop, 
 a department affair in its way. 
 
 "Know what?" 
 
 "Know that you truly loved Phil." 
 
 "Know how I loved Phil?" Mrs. Carrolly was 
 reduced to a mere echo. 
 
 "Mn " 
 
 "I declare, Alison, you switch from one thing to 
 another so fast I can't follow you." In her amaze- 
 ment she put the wiped cup back into the basin, 
 an act that in the circumstances Alison let pass 
 without protest. "I was just planning everything 
 all out in my mind for your trip to the Old Post 
 and thinking you were doing the very same thing, 
 and here you ask me how I know I love my husband ! 
 My dear, you are preposterous at tunes. What do 
 you want to know for ? " 
 
 Alison laughed; she could not help it. Her 
 cousin's tone of indignation mingled with conde- 
 scension proved too much for her sense of humor; 
 however, she persisted. 
 
 "But tell me truly, how did you know you loved 
 Phil twenty years ago? I didn't ask you how you 
 know you love him now. Do tell me," she added 
 with a merry look in her blue eyes; "it will help 
 me" 
 
 "Help you?" Mrs. Carrolly repeated vacantly. 
 "Whatever has got into you to-day? You don't 
 mean Alison Doane ! " she exclaimed in crescendo 
 tones and excitement, "you don't mean you are 
 thinking of being married not really "
 
 At the New Mission 229 
 
 A peal of laughter interrupted her, and hearing it 
 Evelyn Carrolly laughed with her. It struck her 
 as so perfectly absurd that Alison at thirty-seven 
 should ask such a question. 
 
 "Oh, Evelyn, I do believe you think every trail 
 for a woman ends in a man " 
 
 "Why, of course I do; and didn't I tell Phil that 
 very thing after we left you on the station platform 
 at Bemidji? / knew well enough that you would 
 never go off alone, nosing around those old pine 
 lands, that were no longer yours, and no money in 
 them as Phil told you in my presence, unless there 
 were a man on your horizon. Now sit down here 
 with me and tell me all about it. I've just prayed, 
 yes, you may laugh, but I have, for this day and 
 sometime you will realize it." She seated herself 
 in the rocking chair, and Alison again at the window. 
 
 "Now tell me, there's a dear." 
 
 "Well, I will own up to you, Evelyn," Mrs. 
 Carrolly leaned forward on her chair, her hands 
 clasped, tense with anticipation, "and I don't 
 mind telling you. There was a man in the case " 
 
 "Didn't I know it! Didn't I tell Phil I felt it 
 in my very bones ! " Evelyn forgot that this was an 
 inspired invention of the moment, but she repeated it 
 to her husband afterwards as a very literal truth, 
 although he failed to recall her anatomical statement. 
 
 "You see, he proposed to me " 
 
 "No, not really!" In her excitement Evelyn was 
 totally unaware of her contradiction; she intended 
 her words only for an expression of amazement. 
 
 "Yes, about three years ago; he wrote to me 
 through his brother." 
 
 "Why didn't he write himself?" It was a prac-
 
 230 Out of the Silences 
 
 tical question. Alison recognized it as such and 
 answered accordingly. 
 
 "I think he lacked the courage. You see, I did 
 own that land at that time, and I think he felt I 
 might doubt his love for me and think him not quite 
 disinterested as to the land. He lived near there 
 the pine lands, I mean." 
 
 "Oh, he did? Well, that only confirms my intui- 
 tions. I said to Phil, let a woman alone for having 
 intuitions. Now come right to the point, Alison. 
 Tell me if you have any idea of marrying the man, 
 who he is, and what are his prospects. I can't 
 somehow fancy you caring for a man who is not city 
 bred. Did you see him, and what was he doing out 
 there? Looking for investments? Most men out 
 this way" Mrs. Carrolly took in all the country 
 between the forty-eighth and sixtieth parallel of 
 latitude in the expressive sweep of her hand "are 
 looking for investments or prospecting." 
 
 Alison thought it time to stem the flow of speech 
 and speculation. "No, I am not going to marry 
 him, and so it would be hardly fair to him to give 
 more details about such an affair. But I just thought 
 I would like to know how a woman knows she loves a 
 man " 
 
 Mrs. Carrolly pouted a little. "You are making 
 fun of me, Alison Doane, and treating the really 
 sacred things of life too lightly." 
 
 Hearing this pronouncement, Alison laughed again 
 without restraint. 
 
 "Oh, Evelyn, I'm thinking of the nights you 
 pinched me to keep me awake just for the sake of 
 talking about this very matter; and I was sixteen 
 and you were nineteen "
 
 At the New Mission 231 
 
 "Oh, well, if you're going back nearly a quarter 
 of a century, I may as well get my knitting and we'll 
 have a regular seance." 
 
 She made a feint of rising. Alison put out a hand 
 to detain her. She wanted an answer before her 
 cousin grew absorbed in turning the remainder of 
 that heel. 
 
 "No, truly, Evelyn, I'm in dead earnest " 
 
 "You act so," interpolated Mrs. Carrolly scorn- 
 fully, but biting her lips to keep from smiling. Alison 
 was really too absurd. She wondered if she had 
 thrown away another good match. 
 
 "Do tell me how you knew?" 
 
 "How I knew? Why well, I knew; that's all. 
 One can't define those things off-hand." 
 
 "But how did you know that Phil was the man 
 no other, I mean, in the whole world for you?" 
 
 "Good gracious, Alison," Mrs. Carrolly looked 
 slightly startled, "there you go again. Who ever 
 said I thought Phil was the only man in the whole 
 world ! I know Phil is Phil, and the dearest ever ; 
 but you have one thing to learn, Alison Doane," 
 she looked at her with a sharp challenge in her 
 rather keen blue eyes, "a woman can love her 
 husband devotedly and yet not be oblivious to the 
 fact that there are other men in the world. It 
 warps a woman to see but one man in her universe. 
 It warps her judgment and and appreciation of 
 others. That's where I find you so narrow." 
 
 Alison nodded understandingly. "I know. But 
 tell me about Phil." 
 
 "Why, there isn't much to tell. All the girls were 
 crazy to get him, and he devoted himself to me 
 you know how handsome he was then. And he
 
 232 Out of the Silences 
 
 loved me and asked me to marry him, if you will 
 have details, and that's how I knew I loved him. 
 Now I hope you're satisfied. I'm going to finish 
 this heel before he gets back. I shall devote every 
 minute to him now during this ' waiting 'round.' You 
 see, I know when Phil needs me ; and if there is one 
 thing he hates it is for me not to look at him when 
 he's talking, and how can I when I'm knitting stock- 
 ings?" 
 
 It was all so delightfully illogical that Alison 
 found nothing to say, although at thirty-seven she 
 would have given much if she could have been en- 
 lightened, by ever so small a beam, along the way in 
 the direction in which her question pointed. At 
 least, she had had a bit of fun at Evelyn's expense 
 in telling her about Farmer Hendrik's marriage 
 intentions. It would keep Evelyn guessing for a 
 while. 
 
 5 
 
 The next day Alison walked out to Kinni-kinnik's 
 house, a modest log hut, well built, with a second 
 story loft and a few windows a good type of 
 the practical settler's home. A board walk led from 
 the front door to the gate. In the background, 
 across the clearing, the pointed tips of a dense stand 
 of spruce accented the hard unflecked blue of the 
 November sky. 
 
 She had been a frequent visitor here since her 
 coming two weeks before. The children were at 
 school, and the two women sat down for a chat, 
 Kinni-kinnik speaking English in her own way. She 
 had learned a little from her small adorer, Bob 
 Collamore, during her childhood in the Turtle Moun- 
 tains; had learned much more in the school after
 
 At the New Mission 233 
 
 Indians removed to Groundhouse, and most from 
 her husband, Colin Me Gillie, during the twelve years 
 of their married life. 
 
 "I want to know, Mrs. McGillie, if you will go 
 over to the reservation with me to-morrow? I want 
 to see the old medicine-man once more before I go. 
 I expect to leave here any day now, but I am only 
 going as far as the Old Lake Post. My cousins will 
 meet me there." 
 
 "I will go, yes; but you, why must you leave?" 
 
 "I want to see the trading post, because my mother 
 visited there with her mother when she was a young 
 girl ; my grandmother was the trader's sister." 
 
 "Then you belong here; you must not leave us. 
 My children will miss you and the cakes," she 
 added, her gentle brown eyes fixed on her guest with 
 something like adoration. 
 
 "I expect we shall all be back again in a few weeks, 
 and then who knows but I may decide to stay 
 here for a while? I can do so if I choose. And I 
 like to be here with you and yours. I would like 
 to see your husband too." 
 
 "I want you to stay, but the winter is so cold 
 here not like the Turtle Mountains where we 
 lived; can you bear it?" 
 
 "Oh, any amount of cold weather in such a climate 
 as this." 
 
 "My little one, who is coming, I call him my snow- 
 bird, for he comes in the deep of winter ; my two 
 girls come in summer ; but a boy, you know, he can 
 bear cold like his father." 
 
 "You seem very sure of this little son of yours, 
 Mrs. McGillie." 
 
 "Yes, this time I am sure; I have a charm for a
 
 234 Out of the Silences 
 
 son." Alison looked at her inquiringly. Kinni- 
 kinnik nodded assurance. 
 
 "Yes; it belongs to a wise woman of my tribe; 
 she lives on the reservation; she is not from the 
 Turtle Mountains. She gives it to me. I cannot 
 tell you about it; then it would not work. But 
 I am sure this time." 
 
 "I shall want to stay to see him. What will you 
 call him Snowbird ? What is the Cree for that ? " 
 
 Kinni-kinnik smiled, showing both sets of her still 
 white and even teeth. 
 
 "No, that is my name for him before he comes. 
 When he is on earth he gets another. He will be 
 christened " 
 
 " Christened ? I thought you said something about 
 a charm." Alison failed to sound the Indian mind 
 at that moment. Kinni-kinnik enlightened her. 
 
 "Yes, he will be christened in the church. They 
 have a silver bowl, an' water will be put on his 
 head. They warm it an' it makes me laugh 
 that they think an Indian man-child should fear a 
 little cold water. An' I belong to that church; it 
 was my husband's wish. But the Indian heart does 
 not forget. I remember what I am, what my fathers 
 were ; an' when the white man's prayers, that they 
 have taught me, do not bring what I want most 
 a little son I go to follow the paths of my fathers 
 and pray Indian-way for a boy, pray with the charm 
 I wear on my left breast. It is here," she said, 
 laying her hand over her heart; "I dare not show 
 it to you. It comforts me; it will bring me my 
 son." 
 
 "And what will he be christened?" 
 
 "Robert Collamore McGillie; it is the name of
 
 At the New Mission 235 
 
 my husband's blood-brother. He was a white boy 
 in the Turtle Mountains ; we all knew him, my 
 mother an' father, an' the medicine-man, an' old 
 Flying Loon, his sister, an' my two brothers they 
 will team for the loggers this year all loved him." 
 
 It seemed to Alison Doane, on hearing this name 
 from the Indian woman's lips, as if the trail of the 
 boy she had never forgotten was over all this north 
 land. She was glad to be following it. It renewed 
 her youth, brought back the joyous days of her 
 girlhood. But it was no time to tell the Indian 
 woman of her slight connection with that boy; 
 this could well wait. 
 
 "I do not know; but we shall see him soon. My 
 husband sent me the card; read it." She handed 
 her a postcard that lay on the kitchen table. "It 
 come from Winnipegosis, see? It come yesterday." 
 
 Alison read it. "'Me and Bob leave next week for 
 home. Tell Carmastic, Chum, and the boys.'" 
 
 "Our medicine-man calls a council, Colin has told 
 me ; an' my husband, an' my people, an' Little Owl 
 will be there we called him that in the mountain. 
 Carmastic calls them. Colin sent the word to Little 
 Owl." 
 
 "What is it all about, do you know?" Alison 
 Doane's interest in these people of another race 
 was increasing with every word Kinni-kinnik spoke, 
 and she spoke directly to the point. 
 
 Kinni-kinnik shook her head. "No. Indian 
 women do not sit in council with their men. I 
 am told it is the white woman's custom ; my girls 
 tell me it is so they hear it in the school. Bob- 
 Little Owl was here once in all these many summers 
 and winters. His coming makes us glad."
 
 236 Out of the Silences 
 
 "He must have been a very bright and lovable 
 boy, Mrs. McGillie. Mr. Plunket told me about 
 that same boy and his friends; he said all of you 
 loved him." 
 
 The expression of Kinni-kinnik's face was thought- 
 ful. A look of gentle patience came into her brown 
 eyes. 
 
 "Yes, we loved him. I loved him. You see the 
 little burning cloud that falls down the sky at night? 
 One fell last night. It made a fire-path in the sky ; 
 they fall fast in this month. I see it how do 
 you call it? Colin told me; I forget." 
 
 " Shooting star meteor ? " 
 
 "That is it. He come like that in my life on the 
 mountain, an' like that he has went. I loved him ; 
 by the custom of my people I would have went with 
 him; he did not want me. I would have worked 
 for him, cooked for him, cared for him, as a good 
 squaw cares. He wanted nothing of me. I love 
 him always not as I love my husband ; I am now 
 your white way married to Colin. But my heart 
 tells me I was young when he was young. I would 
 have followed him into all the lands my girls tell me 
 about ; it is the custom of my people. If he had left 
 me for a white woman, like my Aunt Jane thought 
 the saddle-maker in the mountain left her, an' that 
 Little Owl was the white woman's son, I would do 
 what my aunt done by the saddle-maker : I would 
 took the children he give me, an' left him ; never 
 trobbled him no, never. Yes, my children I 
 would took with me, but my love for him I could 
 not take from him. It was not mine to take. It was 
 his." 
 
 Alison listened in amazement at this revelation
 
 At the New Mission 237 
 
 of a child-love persisting as a woman's in the mind 
 of this Indian wife and mother. 
 
 "How old were you, Mrs. McGillie, when " 
 
 Kinni-kinnik interrupted her. "Call me Kinni- 
 kinnik ; they all do call me that," she said with the 
 winning smile that once caught little Bob Colla- 
 more's lonely boy-heart with its charm. 
 
 "And what will you call me then, Kinni-kinnik? 
 I have always wanted to call you that, because you 
 have always been spoken of by that name to me." 
 
 Kinni-kinnik looked at her shyly, but hesitated 
 to speak. In her eyes this white woman was beau- 
 tiful, dark-haired, and so clear-skinned, so blue- 
 eyed, so gentle in her ways, so merry at times, 
 she laughed like Little Owl, she told herself, so 
 interested in her and hers. Dared she call her by 
 the name by which she was already known on the 
 reservation? The name Carmastic had given her 
 for her kind thought of him, and her kindlier deeds 
 to ease his aching old hips and shoulders? 
 
 "Carmastic calls you 'Manedo-wea.' I want to." 
 
 "What does it mean? Something nice like your 
 name?" 
 
 " It means ' spirit woman ', an' that means ' medicine- 
 woman' I do not know how to say it clear. I 
 could in my own tongue." 
 
 "I, 'medicine -woman'?" Alison spoke incredu- 
 lously. "Why, it's only because I bought some 
 salve at the shop ; it is so good for his aches and 
 pains, his rheumatism and sciatica. He suffers from 
 those. He won't let a doctor touch him, they say." 
 
 "No. He believes in the 'medicine' of his tribe. 
 It wasn't all that, the medicine you gave him, that 
 helped him. It was your shell. It is the sacred
 
 238 Out of the Silences 
 
 shell. Carmastic tells his grandson's wife, an' she 
 tells me. She said, he said that by that sign he 
 knows you. You can do anything for him. He says 
 you are his mother come back to help him." 
 
 "Do you mean the shell I wore the first time we 
 went over to the reservation, the big one I looped 
 both ends of the sash of my sweater through so?" 
 She went through the motion with her hands. 
 
 "That is it. It is the sacred shell of the medicine 
 woman. He said his mother had one like it. She 
 was great medicine-woman." 
 
 "Manedo-wea." Alison repeated it to herself, 
 her voice dwelling on the name. Hearing her, 
 Kinni-kinnik showed unmistakable delight. 
 
 "You will soon speak our tongue, Manedo-wea; 
 then you will be one of us, as Little Owl is." 
 
 "I am sure he is one of you from all you have 
 said, Kinni-kinnik. I am so glad we have had this 
 talk together. I shall take the memory of it with 
 me on my journey." 
 
 "If you see him you will know I speak truth. 
 Colin will tell you so. And Stella Plunket knows I 
 speak truth from my heart. She loved the white 
 man not the boy, she did not know him. He 
 is kind to her. She is what you call his 'care.' But 
 he does not love her. She is nothing to him. She 
 feels as I used to feel. We have spoken together. 
 I tell her when she is married an' her child tugs at 
 her breast, she will be whole as I am whole. But 
 she cannot forget." 
 
 Alison Doane rose. She had heard enough. She 
 was beginning to understand something of the tragedy 
 of a woman's life through love, whether white woman, 
 red, or half-breed. It was tune to go.
 
 At the New Mission 239 
 
 " Kinm-kinnik, you are such a rich woman, rich 
 in your children and your husband, and in all the 
 memories of true love I envy you." 
 
 It was the Indian woman's turn to look amazed. 
 
 "Sometime I will tell you my little story. It is 
 about a long, long trail, and how I found it here in 
 this north country Be sure to meet me at the 
 station to-morrow by ten, won't you? We will 
 spend the day with Carmastic, and his grandson's 
 wife and her darling little pappooses. Don't take 
 any food with you. I'm going to have a party of 
 my own, what we Americans call a 'surprise party', 
 in the old man's wigwam. Good-by." She turned 
 at the gate to wave her hand to Eanni-kinnik in the 
 door. 
 
 The Indian woman looked puzzled ; for the moment 
 it was as if she were back again in her childhood, hear- 
 ing that same clear-ringing voice calling : " Good-by." 
 
 In her sudden confusion of thought she gave no 
 answering "good-by"; but she murmured lovingly, 
 "Manedo-wea."
 
 Ill 
 
 THE MAN
 
 m 
 
 THE MAN 
 
 SUMMONED 
 i 
 
 BOB COLLAMORE, or Robert Collamore as he felt 
 privileged to sign himself after his full-fledged inde- 
 pendence, went forth from the mountains a man- 
 boy, indomitable of will, imbued with the symbolism 
 and nature worship of the Indians, eager for the new, 
 the strange, and, like most boys of his age, uncertain 
 of purpose. 
 
 He was old for his years, this man-boy; old in 
 mind although that mind had come in contact with 
 no book worth reading other than the Book. He 
 had suffered bitter hardship when he was very young. 
 He had lived with the saddle-maker; he had lived 
 in his lean-to and yet not lived because of the sordid 
 environment of the squaw's housekeeping. He was 
 courageous, sensitive, responsive to what was fine, 
 his uncle's deed always in his memory, and 
 to the good exemplified in the saddle-maker and 
 the Indians. His sympathies were both keen and 
 quick. He was ready to succor man or animal. He 
 was imitative, taking surface color from his sur- 
 roundings; enthusiastic, trustful, except in a pony 
 trade; but determined to yield to no one, to sweep 
 whatever balked him or his will out of his path, and 
 
 243
 
 244 Out of the Silences 
 
 set upon seeing the world as he might choose to see 
 it. Such was the man-boy at fifteen. 
 
 2 
 
 From fifteen to thirty every man's life has its 
 primitive needs and the essential potentialities to 
 meet them. How they are met during this period 
 depends on the particular make-up of the individual : 
 his temperament, to define it more accurately 
 something which is in part his inheritance, and 
 on his environment. 
 
 Intricately interwoven with this fact of the neces- 
 sary sustenance of the body, are the desires, the ambi- 
 tions, varying as to time and place. These in the 
 course of years may or may not become, according to 
 will and circumstances, a set purpose. 
 
 These shuttles of will and circumstance ply back 
 and forth, shifting at times, but always carrying the 
 threads in and out of the living warp. During this 
 process, it may be that for many years no hint of 
 the pattern can be gained. When, however, the 
 interwoven threads of will, circumstance, and 
 their resulting ambitions, purposes, deeds, begin to 
 show a design, then it is that a thinking man 
 becomes aware, although dimly and at inter- 
 vals, of a certain spiritual force controlling all 
 these workings and weavings towards prescribed 
 accomplishment. 
 
 Here he sees a thread of good fortune; there he 
 finds a thrum of mischance. At times he may note 
 the introduction of colors, some bright, others neutral ; 
 many, dark and sombre, the result of changing en- 
 vironment or of varying mental conditions. He 
 finds, on scrutiny, the use of coarse threads, fine 
 threads, smooth surfaces, rough surfaces, here and
 
 The Man 245 
 
 there, it may be, a knot or two all factors of the 
 design he glimpses throughout the warp. 
 
 As he approaches thirty he begins to realize that 
 somehow, in some way unknown to him, that to 
 which his spiritual nature responds, in other words 
 his ideal, is the force that controls his life lines. 
 Recognizing this, his life and all other lives assume 
 a different aspect in his eyec. His outlook broadens ; 
 his insight deepens. His recognition of life's mean- 
 ing becomes fuller. His duty to his kind defines 
 itself more sharply; it is more readily undertaken. 
 He advances with firmer tread, clearer vision, along 
 the path of life. 
 
 And what of the twistings and turnings, the blind 
 out-reachings, the stumblings? What of the failure 
 to read the trail signs, the pitfalls, the man traps? 
 What of the seeking and not finding? The losing of 
 the trail for a time, almost to the losing of life itself, 
 by following its deflections too far: its trials, its 
 hardships, its temptations? 
 
 It is best not to follow a man's way on the path of 
 life too closely. It is not wise to scrutinize his 
 course too minutely. Life is life, and its trail never 
 an easy one to follow. Men are but human, or they 
 would not be following this trail; and humankind, 
 in its strength as in its frailty, is what it was, is, and . 
 always will be. 
 
 3 
 
 When after twenty-one years of absence from the 
 mountains Robert Collamore revisited them, he re- 
 turned to the region a boy-man. 
 
 He was unbroken physically by the hardships he 
 endured during the establishment of himself on a 
 living basis. The great northern wheat fields at
 
 246 Out of the Silences 
 
 seed time and harvest, the dusty arid plains, the 
 high cattle range, the forests in the south and north, 
 desert sands, the ice and snow of the Yukon all 
 these places knew him and he knew them. 
 
 Hardened he was, on the surface at least, by 
 contact with thousands of men and women in diverse 
 walks of life; touched at times by the lure of the 
 cities ; cautiously untrustful rather than mistrustful ; 
 still wilful. His sympathies, however, were but the 
 more quickened with the years; his readiness to 
 succor, to relieve distress, the more spontaneous. 
 And still at heart, and in his love for the wide spaces 
 and lonely trails of the great Out-of-doors, he was a 
 true Son of the Silent Places. 
 
 4 
 
 He was thinking over the many changes in the 
 region and its people, as he rode over the rolling 
 country that, on the Dakota side, forms the approach 
 to the Turtle Mountains. 
 
 When he left this hill country that day in August, 
 twenty-one years before, looking back for a fare- 
 well wave of his hand to the hilltop where the Indians, 
 who had accompanied him a half day's journey, sat 
 motionless on their ponies, silhouetted black against 
 a deep red August sunset, he made his way east- 
 wards into Dakota. He stopped at the first solitary 
 farm with a big acreage of golden wheat ready for 
 the harvest, and asked for work. 
 
 His muscles ached again in sympathy at the 
 remembrance of the tough, back-breaking, unac- 
 customed labor for those weeks in which he "hired 
 out." He thrust his hand into his trousers pocket 
 to jingle some loose silver in its depths, and smiled at 
 the sound. He was recalling how good those first
 
 The Man 247 
 
 hard dollars, the wages for eight weeks' work from 
 sun-up to sun-down, sounded to him when, to test 
 their genuineness, he rang them one by one on a 
 whetstone. Eighty-six dollars, separate silver dollars 
 in good United States coin. He had asked to be 
 paid in that way ; and these were all his own ! 
 Never since had he felt such a suffocating joy 
 of possession. 
 
 He was thinking of what he had seen on the way 
 hither : farms here, farms there, houses, barns, 
 elevators, cattle, and horses. In the distance he 
 heard the faint shrill whistle of an engine heralding 
 an approaching train. 
 
 As he neared the rough wooded land, the scene 
 of his old-time haunts, he perceived this so-called 
 Turtle Mountain region to be what in reality it is : 
 an elevation of the plains, which themselves lie 
 fifteen hundred feet above sea level, the "mountain" 
 rising from two to six hundred feet above them. 
 
 He was on his way north into Manitoba ; and he 
 was going to reach it in these days of rapid travel in 
 his own indirect way. He knew what lay on that 
 northward stretch of partial wilderness into the region 
 of the great Fur Company's hunters and trappers 
 and, in the immediate future, of prospectors, and 
 homesteaders. He knew that a few years would in 
 all probability change the face of that northern 
 wilderness. He wanted to see it once again before 
 any of the familiar features should have undergone 
 a transformation, or been obliterated by blasting, 
 digging, or scarring through denudation of its great 
 pulp forests by fire or the hand of man. He wanted, 
 also, to see his Indians in that north land. They 
 had sent for him to hold council with them, about
 
 248 Out of the Silences 
 
 what he had no knowledge; but it was important, 
 so McGillie wrote. 
 
 He knew that country northwards. He could see it 
 in his mind's eye as he rode slowly over the old south 
 trail by which as a boy he had entered the mountains 
 for the first time. He saw this Turtle Mountain, 
 this stronghold of the old-time Crees, signalling 
 straight away to Riding Mountain; and Riding 
 Mountain passing on that signal to Duck, and Duck 
 to Porcupine, the intervening distance from each 
 mountain station to the next averaging sixty to a 
 hundred and twenty miles and all four wooded to 
 the summits these isolated mountain videttes for 
 the vast plains of Saskatchewan. 
 
 He intended to see them all and very soon only 
 from a distance, over the low shores of the great 
 Northern Lakes, Manitoba the Strait of God 
 and Winnipegosis, the Little Sea, in contradistinction 
 to Winnipeg, the Great Sea. But first, he must see 
 this land of his boyhood, of Chum, and Car-mastic, 
 Kinni-kinnik and her brothers. He wanted to take 
 news of it to all of them at the New Mission. 
 
 As he rode on farther into the mountain proper, 
 over which runs the boundary line dividing his own 
 land from the Canadian, he found his interest in 
 the surroundings diminishing. He was almost on 
 the point of wishing he had not revisited the place, 
 so changed it was from what he had known it to be. 
 Forest fires running wild over the mountain district 
 had wrought havoc among the fine big timber. A 
 dense young growth, mainly aspen, poplar, and 
 birch, stood in its place. He saw the brules covered 
 knee-deep with pea vines and vetches. He noted 
 the unwarrantable height of the tall stumps left
 
 The Man 249 
 
 standing to rot, an evidence in his experienced eyes 
 of the great waste of this precious timber in a bare 
 prairie country. 
 
 He drew rein as he was about to pass the old 
 "spring- trail." The oak coppice where he had 
 played his joke on McGillie and the Indians was 
 gone, in all probability taken for posts. He rode 
 on to the hut. 
 
 There was little left of what was around it. The 
 big timber at the entrance to the north trail was 
 gone; a dense stand of aspen had taken its place. 
 The roomy hut, for so many years the squatter's 
 home, now open to wind and weather, had evidently 
 been used for years by men on the trail. The ele- 
 ments had done their work : windowless, doorless, 
 the roof fallen in, crushed by twenty-one winters 
 of snows, the sills rotting it made him homesick, 
 this man who might in truth have said, "Whereso- 
 ever my horse roams, there is my home." 
 
 Of the roomier shed only the ridgepole, a few 
 rafters, and uprights remained. The boards had 
 long since been taken by any one who could use 
 them. 
 
 His own little lean-to of logs, the chimney de- 
 spoiled of much stone, its plank door unhinged, its 
 chinks open to rain and snow, still stood there as a 
 welcome. The boards on the shed next the lean-to 
 had been left untouched. He entered it. 
 
 Very evidently the chance passer on the trail had 
 used it all these years to bunk in, for his bunk was 
 still filled with a mass of blackened hay and mouldy 
 straw. Acting on impulse he began to toss the rotting 
 mass out of the doorway. No man coming over the 
 trail should find so uninviting a bed in his old lean-to !
 
 250 Out of the Silences 
 
 Beneath the hay and straw was a layer of canvas, 
 the flap of a tent which some earlier cave-man had 
 used to soften the boards or keep him warm; it, 
 likewise, was black and rotten. He took it out. A 
 sickening smell of must rose from the damp decay 
 of the boards beneath. He was about to fling it 
 out after the hay and straw, when he was aware of 
 some paper sticking to the bottom. He shook it 
 free of the canvas ; it fell in pieces. Then he threw 
 out the tent flap, and picking up the bits of paper 
 examined them carefully, black, sodden, the print 
 for the most part illegible ; only here and there he 
 could read a word. And so reading, the realization 
 came to him, through a flashlight of memory, that 
 this literary derelict, of nearly a quarter of a century, 
 was a fragment of his own fragmentary Book which 
 he had left without thought when he said good-by 
 to the mountains. 
 
 He sat down on the sill, which in those old days 
 had served for threshold of his door, and cautiously 
 separated some portions of the paper that were ad- 
 hering. Opening them he found two sentences of an 
 otherwise obliterated verse fairly legible : 
 
 "Go through . . . the gates . . . lift up a standard 
 for the people." 
 
 He never remembered to have heard or seen them. 
 There was no clue as to what book of his Book con- 
 tained them, for all headlines were wanting. 
 
 Over and over Robert Collamore read those few 
 words, and with each reading knew that, through 
 them, the clear call had, at last, come to him. His 
 answer was at once forthcoming ; he spoke aloud : 
 
 "I am ready." 
 
 Such was his consecration.
 
 The Man 251 
 
 For more than a year he had waited for the Land 
 he so loved to "come in", to take her place in the 
 ranks of those nations who were fighting for their 
 lives against a superior brute force, the weaker against 
 the stronger ; waited for the opportunity to join up 
 with his own people when they should declare for 
 justice and humanity, and back up their words with 
 deeds hot shot rather than blank cartridges ; 
 waited for her to put her strong young shoulders 
 under a breaking Old World apparently in extremis. 
 Thus far, he had waited in vain. 
 
 He undertook this journey through the mountains 
 and into Canada, with a half-defined purpose in 
 mind to join up with the Canadian forces at the 
 earliest moment compatible with keeping a certain 
 business promise, made to a man two years before; 
 that fulfilled, he would go. 
 
 He separated the few words from then- stained, 
 unreadable setting, and placed the bit of paper 
 carefully in his pocket book. Then he mounted his 
 horse and rode rapidly on over the north trail, where 
 the great sycamore's stump told its own tale ; along 
 the bluff, down into the little valley, up the hill, 
 across the clearing to the spot on which Carmastic 
 had shown him the Path of Life. He knew now 
 whither it led. . . 
 
 5 
 
 He rode on down by the lakes where he saw 
 the summer campers' sites, the newly made trails \ 
 he found even a stretch of motor service and 
 this in his wilderness of twenty-one years gone ! 
 Farther and farther he rode on, all adown the rolling 
 flanks of the mountain rich in homesteads and farms 
 watered from those same slopes ; and still onward to
 
 252 Out of the Silences 
 
 Deloraine where he and his tired horse put up for 
 the night. 
 
 THE COUNCIL 
 i 
 
 Colin Me Gillie and Robert Collamore met by 
 appointment in the wilderness of woods and waters 
 we name Lake Manitoba, Waterhen River, Lake 
 Winnipegosis, Mossy Portage, Cedar Lake, and their 
 shores, inlets, and islands. It was a good joy for 
 them both, this reliving together something of the 
 old Turtle Mountain life of their boyhood in this 
 northern and vaster extent of country where game 
 and fish abound, and they could live from day to 
 day dependent only on rod and rifle. 
 
 The weather was glorious : keen, frosty nights, 
 ice rimming the shores, followed by halcyon days, 
 the cold tonic air tempered with the warm sun of a 
 mellow October. At night the camp was pitched 
 on the shore of Manitoba, "Strait of God", a fringe 
 of birch and aspen to shelter it ; or on one of the 
 many islands on the broad expanse of the Little Sea, 
 Lake Winnipegosis, where a driftwood fire sent wild 
 shadows scouting among the dark spruce tops. 
 
 Robert Collamore's desire was fulfilled : above the 
 western shores of Manitoba and Winnipegosis, as 
 the canoe sped northward, he saw far away across 
 swamp and forest the "mountains" of the Saskatche- 
 wan plain and in succession Riding, Duck, Porcu- 
 pine. 
 
 During these days and nights with his friend, Colin 
 McGillie dropped twenty years of care from his 
 sturdy shoulders as the two talked of old times ; 
 laughed again over their fight for Kinni-kinnik ; 
 again cursed Jane's "jawin'" that still galled their
 
 The Man 253 
 
 saddle-maker in his matrimonial harness. They 
 spoke of his goodness to them, his love for them, 
 but, being undemonstrative men, said nothing of 
 their love for him which could not change. Then, 
 as earnest men putting aside childish things, they 
 talked of the war, and Collamore spoke of his 
 decision. ! 
 
 McGillie made no reply; he was taking it all in 
 slowly. Bob knew he would hear from him on the 
 subject sometime when his slow-working mind should 
 be geared to this fact. M 
 
 With a feeler out for the nightly lowering tempera- 
 ture and an eye to the rapidly making ice, which 
 the rays of the southward-racing sun failed to melt, 
 they made their way back to a station near Winnipe- 
 gosis. Here Colin took train for Groundhouse. He 
 carried with him a promise from Bob that he would 
 see him again within two weeks for the council at the 
 reservation there. 
 
 Collamore went on to Winnipeg where forwarded 
 mail was awaiting him. It was here he found the 
 letters and telegrams from the company whose 
 advice Mr. Carrolly was anticipating, in the hope 
 it might clear the muddled prospect for the set- 
 ting up of the new mills within the next six months. 
 2 
 
 It was a council of Crees, for the one white man, 
 Little Owl, had grown up among them, speaking 
 their language, learning their ways, sometimes think- 
 ing their thoughts, writing letters for them in their 
 efforts to retain their old home in the mountains, 
 efforts that were brought to naught because of the 
 inexorable march of progress. They counted him 
 as one of themselves. McGillie was, of course, part
 
 254 Out of the Silences 
 
 Cree. All invited to the council were friends and 
 brothers. 
 
 When Collamore and Me Gillie reached the reser- 
 vation, they found the Indians assembled and wait- 
 ing for them. It was a heartening welcome they 
 gave to Robert Collamore, whom they had not seen 
 for ten years, and a genuine one. 
 1 They went at once to their medicine-man's wigwam. 
 It was large, covered with skins to protect it from 
 the cold. Beside it stood Chum's house, a rambling 
 affair of logs, boards, shingles, and bark, which 
 Carmastic could not be induced to occupy. He 
 was of the "old order." A light snow covered the 
 ground. Smoke was ascending from the opening 
 at the top of the tepee, rising straight upwards in the 
 still air. A good fire was in progress as the men 
 entered. *>*, 
 
 They found Carmastic, in a new blanket, seated 
 before it, tending it with little sticks he had cut for 
 this special occasion. He was feeble, worn with 
 the years ; but he lifted his hand with a quick move- 
 ment towards Collamore as he entered. 
 
 "How, Little Owl." His voice was still resonant. 
 
 "How, Carmastic!" The two clasped hands. 
 
 The few words of greeting took Collamore back 
 over memory's long trail to their first meeting in 
 the clearing. Carmastic's second act brought a 
 smile to his face. He knew he must not laugh, for 
 the occasion was evidently too solemn although he 
 had no idea of its import; that was for Carmastic 
 to reveal. The old Indian handed him the famous 
 peace pipe which they had smoked together when 
 the reconciliation concerning the pony took place 
 more than twenty years ago.
 
 The Man 255 
 
 The Indians seated themselves around the fire; 
 some few, however, were standing, and all crowding 
 the wigwam to its capacity. Collamore sat between 
 Carmastic and Chum, his boyhood intimate; Mc- 
 Gillie opposite with Kinni-kinnik's brothers. 
 
 For a while they smoked in silence, the pipe passing 
 from one to the other. Then the famous pipe was 
 laid aside, and Carmastic, wrapping his new blanket 
 closely about him, folded his arms, hugging himself 
 as if cold, and spoke to them. His voice was still 
 strong, but his teeth were gone and the lack of them 
 interfered at times with his speech. Now and then 
 he hesitated as if to make sure of his words. 
 
 "My children, we have smoked the peace pipe; 
 but only as a memory of peace. I am told there is 
 no more peace on this earth. In my old age I have 
 had a vision. I have looked into the future years 
 as we raise the flap of the wigwam on a strange trail, 
 to peer in through smoke of fire with dim eyes. 
 What I saw I tell to you ; then we will hold council, 
 for the vision leads to the warpath." 
 
 The Indians stirred slightly. The old way of 
 their fathers and fathers' fathers was beginning to 
 lay its spell upon them through the old man's solem- 
 nity of speech. 
 
 "I saw, in the night, fire on Porcupine Mountain. 
 A spark from the fire, passing through the night, 
 caught on Duck. I saw the two fires on the two 
 mountains. The sparks from Duck carried a fire- 
 trail to the south, to Riding Mountain, to Turtle 
 Mountain; they flamed like dry pine trees burning 
 in the night. I saw the four fires on the four moun- 
 tains." 
 
 He was silent for a few minutes.
 
 256 Out of the Silences 
 
 "They were four torches that signalled west, east, 
 and south, to all the mountains of the tribes, 
 Assiniboine, Blackfoot, Arapaho, Sioux you know 
 them all, and their mountains. 
 
 "I saw the fire-trail of these sparks sweeping over 
 these mountains. All the land to the south was 
 reddened with the light, as the sky grows bright 
 with the dancing fires in the north. But no spark 
 caught on the mountains; with the passing of the 
 fire-trail that land to the south grew dark again. 
 
 "My children, the vision was a war vision. We 
 hold council to find its meaning." 
 
 He took the pipe, smoked in silence and passed it 
 to the others. When it had gone the rounds, Kinni- 
 kinnik's father, the tribal orator, spoke with eloquence : 
 
 "You say well, Carmastic, there is no peace on 
 earth. There is only war. The four fires on the 
 four mountains are the signs of the four English 
 peoples dwelling in their lands Canada, the Mother- 
 island across the great water, the Mother-island's 
 children-islands far distant in other waters. The 
 great English tribes are following the world war- 
 path that is reddened with the blood of many races 
 of earth children. 
 
 "From the four mountains, the spark-trails, that 
 sweep southward to the mountains of the tribes of 
 our former enemies, are the messages from the great 
 English tribes to their white brothers over the border 
 to come and help them against their enemies. But 
 the great land to the south lies in darkness. No 
 fire catches on her mountains, her plains, in her 
 huts, her tepees, her great council lodges ; nor along 
 the banks of the Father of Waters, nor on the shores 
 of her big waters east, west, south.
 
 The Man 257 
 
 "The great land is dark. Its peoples do not see 
 the spark-trails, and the English tribes fight in vain ; 
 their enemy is too strong; he is too many." He 
 turned suddenly to Robert Collamore. 
 
 "Why do not your people fight, Little Owl? Why 
 do they close their eyes that they may not see the 
 fire-trails flame in the sky? Why do your white 
 men let other white men fight for their brothers? 
 Why do your people sit in safety around their home 
 fires, eating, drinking, singing, instead of taking the 
 warpath to avenge the murder of their brothers' 
 women and children their squaws, their babes, 
 their old mothers who are starving in the harvest 
 time? Answer for your people, Little Owl. Tell 
 us why your land is dark, why no fire catches." 
 
 Robert Collamore's head was bowed in shame, in 
 humiliation. What could he say? How could he 
 bear this thing : the hearing of such truths from the 
 lips of red men ; from a race that for generations in 
 his own land had suffered, in part, what white men 
 were now suffering at the hands of enemies of their 
 own blood; a race that had struggled desperately, 
 fought as savages, savagely, to avenge itself on the 
 white race that had repeatedly wronged it? What 
 could he say? 
 
 He knew he must reply; custom demanded it. 
 He knew he must speak the truth as he saw it ; noth- 
 ing but the truth in the presence of these men of 
 another race his red brothers since his childhood. 
 
 He addressed Carmastic, looking him squarely in 
 the face. 
 
 "You speak truth, Carmastic; my land is dark. 
 It has no vision. It sees no fire-trails in the night. 
 Its people sit at home, warmed and fed, seeing only
 
 258 Out of the Silences 
 
 their own home fires while abroad in the earth stalks 
 the wide-mouthed hunger-wolf, and the beasts of 
 prey, murder, rapine and worse prowl among 
 the ruins of the white men's homes. Little children 
 lifting up their voices on the highway, crying for 
 bread, are perishing in their hunger ; the child- 
 bearing women are dying for want of care and 
 nourishment." He turned to the Indians. 
 
 "My red brothers, you know what I say is true, 
 for your fathers have gone through the same torment 
 that your white brothers are now enduring. 
 
 "And my own land is yet dark. It has no vision, 
 not yet. Your vision is a true vision, Carmastic ; 
 but your eyes are dimmed, looking through the smoke 
 of the white man's torment at the stake. You could 
 not trace each spark as the fire-trails swept onward 
 into the night. Your sight was too old to follow 
 them. But I know that sparks have fallen from 
 the fire-trail, a spark here, a spark there; and the 
 fire has caught a little fire as yet, a small running 
 underbrush fire that does not show on the mountain 
 for all to see. The sparks have caught in the hearts 
 of men, and set them aflame. These men will take 
 the warpath to avenge their white brothers of the 
 English and other tribes. You will live to see the 
 truth of my words." 
 
 "Name the other tribes to us, Little Owl. I 
 have heard, but I cannot remember," said the medi- 
 cine-man. 
 
 "Belgian, French, Russian, Italian, the black men 
 from the deserts, Indians from the south seas, and 
 wild fighters, neither black nor white, from the great 
 plains over the big water." 
 
 "Mgh."
 
 The Man 259 
 
 It was the first articulate sign of approval that 
 the Indians had given. Hearing it, the spirit moved 
 McGillie to slow deliberate speech. 
 
 "I and my blood-brother have been for three 
 weeks on the long trail. We spoke much together 
 of the great war. He told me that he was bringing 
 to Carmastic a message from Assiniboine, Blackfoot, 
 Sioux, Chippewa, Arapaho, and many others. They 
 said they were ready to fight for the white men across 
 the big water if the chiefs in the great council lodge 
 at Washington would let them go. He told me they 
 wanted to fight the great enemy across the big water 
 because he was doing by the white men as once the 
 white men did by their fathers and themselves. 
 They say they want to fight for the white men be- 
 cause another white man and his powerful tribe 
 are wasting the white men's lands and killing off 
 their tribes. They say they will fight because, if 
 that Great Enemy Chief and his tribes are too strong 
 for their white brothers, no Indian will ever gain 
 his freedom. They say they will fight to the death 
 to keep their children and children's children free 
 from the Great Enemy Chief's bondage fight for the 
 white men's freedom and by winning freedom for 
 them, they may help to win their own." He paused 
 a moment. 
 
 "I go to fight with them, shoulder to shoulder, 
 whether Assiniboine, Sioux, Blackfeet, your old 
 enemies, or with the men of the other white tribes 
 or with the Crees, my own people." 
 
 The Indians were stirred again by McGilhVs 
 words. They gave no sign but their syllable of 
 approval. It was, however, unanimous, unmis- 
 takable.
 
 260 Out of the Silences 
 
 "And my blood-brother, Bob-Little Owl, goes 
 with me. He has told me this." 
 
 There was another stir among the red men. The 
 situation was growing tense. Even old Carmastic's 
 sharp, wrinkled face took on the eagle look of his 
 youth. 
 
 Then out of his suppressed excitement Chum 
 spoke impetuously : 
 
 "I trap, I hunt, I fish, I shoot, I scout and leave 
 no mark on the trail that an enemy could find. I 
 can run with the big runners that run for money. 
 
 "Now I go to trap, hunt, bait, scout, shoot the 
 beasts of prey the men of that Big Enemy Chief's 
 tribe that murder little children, that starve child- 
 bearing women, that burn the huts and lay waste 
 the cornfields that the hunger- wolf may prowl through- 
 out the land. McGillie has told me. 
 
 "I will fight side by side with McGillie and Little 
 Owl, my 'brother-friend' who calls me 'Chum.' I 
 will take the warpath with white men. I go to fight 
 the white men's fight for the men who keep peace 
 here in our land ; who will not let my squaw and 
 pappooses starve; who will protect them from all 
 harm while I cross the big water to fight for the 
 tribes, that the enemy tribes may not be too strong 
 for them. I have said." 
 
 A deep murmur filled the wigwam, increasing to 
 a prolonged "Mgh" as Kinni-kinnik's two brothers, 
 one after the other, joined themselves to the Great 
 Cause and gave their reasons for so doing. After 
 them, one by one, the sparks caught in the hearts 
 of the younger men and set them aflame to follow 
 the warpath with the English and the other tribes. 
 
 Carmastic spoke the last word :
 
 The Man 261 
 
 "I was glad in the days of my youth because 
 I was strong. When an enemy had fallen I was 
 proud of the scalp at my belt. I was glad when I re- 
 turned from the warpath to my tepee, and my women, 
 seeing me afar off, sang songs of triumph at my com- 
 ing. Then I feasted. I sang the song of my medicine 
 that all might hear. I danced to the sound of the 
 drum. 
 
 " To-day, in my old age, when my eyes are dim 
 and my hand is like a quivering aspen leaf, when 
 my strength is the strength of a babe, when my food 
 is the food of babes, and the meat for strong men is 
 no longer for me because I can no longer chew it 
 to nourish me, I rejoice as I rejoiced in the days of 
 my youth. My strength is renewed in my children's 
 children, and the children's children of my tribe. 
 Through them my feet follow the warpath as of old. 
 Through their eyes I see again the day of triumph. 
 With them I shall sing the scalp song of victory. 
 Through them and their deeds I shall live and never 
 die only sleep ; for my medicine will live on in 
 them, as they fight side by side with white men. I 
 speak a great mystery. 
 
 "I saw no spark fall on Turtle Mountain, Little 
 Owl says truly : my eyes are too dim, but the 
 spark has fallen. The fire is kindled in the hearts 
 of our Son of the Silent Places and his red brothers. 
 
 "The meaning of the vision is clear. The four 
 fires on the four mountains are four torches burning 
 in the night of war darkness for all peoples of earth 
 to see. The sparks from their fire-trails shall be 
 carried by the great winds over all the earth, to 
 catch in the hearts of men of all the earth tribes 
 till they burn to follow the warpath to victory."
 
 262 Out of the Silences 
 
 He ceased, almost exhausted with the fervor of 
 his words. Bob Collamore stayed him with his 
 strong right arm. . . . 
 
 The Indians left to feast in Chum's hut where his 
 squaw had prepared for the occasion duck soup and 
 a sturgeon pot. 
 
 3 
 
 Me Gillie and Collamore remained with the old 
 Indian. They made a bowl of tea from a five-pound 
 package Bob had brought with him as a gift. They 
 soaked the hard biscuit in it and fed him. They 
 nourished him with a soft cake Kinni-kinnik had 
 made, of which he was inordinately fond. When 
 he was strengthened, they chatted together, all 
 three smoking and taking their ease. 
 
 It was then Bob brought forth from his duffle 
 bag his special presents for the old man : of tobacco 
 a winter's store; of sweets, gumdrops and marsh- 
 mallows, two pounds ; of a pair of warm woolen 
 leggings fringed along their entire length, of woolen 
 stockings, one of his own warm vests and sack 
 coats, and last a blanket of many colors, thick 
 and warm. 
 
 The old Indian was delighted and expressed his 
 delight in no uncertain terms. 
 
 "You see this new blanket?" he said, pointing 
 to the thick, gray, red-striped, woolen square. 
 
 "I noticed it the first thing. Somebody has been 
 ahead of me, eh?" 
 
 Carmastic nodded mysteriously. He stroked the 
 soft woolen fleece. 
 
 "Yes, the medicine-woman gave it to me." 
 
 "Didn't know as you had one here, Carmastic. 
 Who is she? Do you know, McGillie?"
 
 The Man 263 
 
 "Kinni-kinnik knows her; she has done nothing 
 but talk about her since I got back." 
 
 "She came to me one day before the snow fell; 
 came to the door of my tepee with a message from 
 your saddle-maker." 
 
 " What, Bill Plunket ! How could she know him ? " 
 
 "She knew him. She had visited with him. She 
 brought me the message. He does not forget me or 
 the Turtle Mountains. He sent me this skin pouch 
 to keep my tobacco in." He drew it forth from the 
 folds of his blanket and held it up for the two men 
 to admire. "You see this little yellow ornament 
 of gold " 
 
 " That's brass, Carmastic," said Bob, smiling. 
 
 " Brass or gold, it is all one to me ; the ornament 
 is what I treasure. Look well. There is a loon 
 wrought on it a flying loon." 
 
 Bob and McGillie examined it; it was even as 
 the old Indian said. 
 
 "He sent it to me because of my sister, and be- 
 cause of my Son of the Silent Places who marked the 
 way of the loon across the lake, hearing her call. 
 When he was a boy, and had not then made his fast 
 in the treetop, he hammered it out of an old piece 
 of kettle the saddle-maker bought from one of my 
 tribe. He sent me word it was the best piece of 
 work the boy had done. He treasured it ; even as 
 I treasure it for his sake, for the sake of Flying Loon, 
 my sister, for the sake of my little white friend of 
 the Turtle Mountains." He smiled serenely. 
 
 Hearing those words, seeing that bit of hammered 
 brass, Robert Collamore relived in one second the 
 experiences of that day when he and the saddle- 
 maker, and afterwards the old medicine-man, talked
 
 264 Out of the Silences 
 
 together of dreams, that came from fasting, and 
 their "medicine." 
 
 He made no reply to the old man, for he was 
 thinking hard. The trail had been a long one. He 
 had sought his "medicine" along all its length, all 
 its twists and turns, north, south, east, west. He 
 had never found it save in his dream in the treetop. 
 And now there was little chance to mid it in reality, 
 not since his recent decision. Well, the reality 
 outweighed all that other in a way. It would 
 in all likelihood remain an ideal. 
 
 Then the old man, in rambling speech, it was 
 as if the great effort at the council had exhausted 
 the vital spring, went back to his childhood, to 
 his mother, the medicine-woman, dwelling in a past 
 of which the two men knew nothing, into which 
 they could not enter even if they had cared to. 
 
 They took leave of him shortly after, Collamore 
 promising to see him again if possible on his return 
 from North Lake whither, he told him, he was going 
 on business. The two men walked back to the rail- 
 road station and separated there. 
 
 "Keep me posted, Bob. When you go, I go too; 
 and I know the Injuns will wait to go with us." 
 
 "I'll let you know as soon as I know myself. I've 
 got to help, up north, in the pulp wood belt they are 
 opening up. This war is taking experts in this line 
 pretty fast, and it's part of my duty to help out 
 here first. It may take me a few weeks, possibly 
 two months. Anyway, I intend to be in Val Carder 
 by the first of February; that will get me across in 
 early summer." 
 
 "The Indians will go to a man," said Me Gillie, 
 as they parted.
 
 The Man 265 
 
 "I'll bet that wigwam of Carmastic's is the first 
 recruiting booth in the ' bush ' ; what do you say, 
 McGillie?" 
 
 Me Gillie waited a minute to take in the full sense 
 of what Collamore was saying. Then he laughed. 
 
 " You're 'bout right, Bob. But it took our old 
 medicine-man to give 'em the stuff, didn't it?" 
 
 "He's bully," said Bob. 
 
 McGillie went his way, smiling to himself. 
 
 THE OLD LAKE POST 
 i 
 
 Alison Doane always spoke of the few days spent 
 as guest at the Fur Company's ancient trading post 
 as her ' ' apocalyptic ' ' week. The surroundings seemed 
 to her unreal, the old house itself an unsubstantial 
 vision of a vanished life. 
 
 It was a week of bright sunny days and deep blue 
 skies, of long nights of a strange beauty. The moon 
 was nearing the full. Its light flooded the frozen 
 surface of the lake and the snow-covered ground, until 
 the trees showed as black blotches on a field of white. 
 
 Of the life and movement, vocal and full of color, 
 that her mother had described to her, she saw noth- 
 ing. Of the brigades of canoes, the voyageurs in 
 gay capote and sash, and their campfires, there was 
 nothing in evidence. It needed the coming of spring 
 to open the frozen gates to the hinterland ; it needed 
 the setting back of time to the middle of the nine- 
 teenth century, in order to visualize even a small 
 part of the flood tide of that wilderness life, so full 
 of gayety and charm as well as of untold hard- 
 ship which used to flow back and forth along the 
 great water highways of the North.
 
 266 Out of the Silences 
 
 But, from the natural surroundings of the place 
 and its marked scenic setting, she could well imagine 
 what that life must have been in those days when her 
 mother, in her young girlhood, moved lightly about 
 in the old house, singing the " chansonnettes " of the 
 voyageurs songs which she herself could sing even 
 now after the lapse of years. She pictured her danc- 
 ing for the pleasure of her host and hostess, and a 
 chance guest or two from far away England or Scot- 
 land, the same Highland Fling that her daughter 
 danced, years afterwards, in a bark-covered hut 
 among the towering pines of a forest in northern 
 Minnesota. 
 
 2 
 
 It was the afternoon of the sixth day of her visit. 
 She was expecting the arrival of her cousins and 
 their outfit at any hour, for word was brought to 
 them the day before, by some teamsters on their 
 way up the lake, that the party was a day behind 
 them. 
 
 In honor of Evelyn's coming she dressed herself 
 in some of her "Winnipeg toggery", as Mr. Carrolly 
 called the two women's numerous purchases in that 
 city : a thick white serge dress skirt, a closely-fitting 
 white sweater, over which she put on a Canadian 
 blanket capote, all white, of which she had been 
 enamoured and lured into undue extravagance. She 
 drew the hood over her head, when her host said 
 the teams were sighted, and throwing around her 
 neck a long crimson muffler of knitted silk to re- 
 lieve the effect of dead whiteness, ran out to meet 
 them. 
 
 The long train of dog teams, the sound of sleigh 
 bells, and Phil Carrolly's college yell as he caught
 
 The Man 267 
 
 sight of her, brought to Alison Doane a sense of life, 
 of reality, that she had lost during her short visit at 
 the Old Post ; brought, also, a realization of her 
 own special day and place in this adventuresome 
 twentieth century. 
 
 With Evelyn's hug, not a simulacrum this time, 
 she was back in the world of her own generation, not 
 her mother's. 
 
 "I was never so glad to see any one in all my life, 
 Alison Doane, never ! It has been perfectly forlorn 
 without you ; even Phil was getting blue and, oh, 
 my dear, I've so much to tell you." 
 
 She turned to her hostess with effusive greeting, 
 delighted to be again with those she called "real 
 people", so she said. The two went into the house, 
 Evelyn declaring she was stiff from long sitting and 
 nearly frozen. 
 
 Alison stood in the doorway ready to welcome 
 Phil Carrolly who, after a few hearty words with 
 his host, came towards her swinging his cap. He 
 greeted her right cousinly with a hearty smack on 
 each cheek. 
 
 "I say, Alison, the sight of you after these twenty- 
 five miles of ice and snow would cure snow-blindness. 
 What's this?" he went on, standing her off, his 
 hand on her shoulder, at arm's length to admire 
 her novel costume. "Did you get this in Winnipeg? 
 You look as if you had been renewing your youth. 
 I remember you looked just as you do now when I 
 used to take you to the skating rink with Evelyn 
 and you only seventeen." 
 
 Before she could reply to his half-and-half flattery 
 he turned to a man who was just leaving his cariole. 
 
 "Mr. Collamore, this is our cousin, Miss Doane,
 
 268 Out of the Silences 
 
 of whom you have heard quite enough from my wife 
 these last few days. Evelyn will tell you all about 
 this gentleman, Alison," he added, mischief in his 
 voice, and turned again to his host. 
 
 For a moment the stranger and Alison were alone. 
 She extended her hand right cordially to him, for 
 she felt so out-going to every one at that moment 
 with all her little world about her after her few days 
 at the old trading post. 
 
 "Perhaps there is no need to welcome you to 
 the Old Lake Post ; you may know it, Mr. ," she 
 looked at him inquiringly, " I did not quite catch 
 your name, Phil was so indefinite." 
 
 Whether he ignored her outstretched hand, or 
 forgot to take it, or perhaps did not see it, Alison 
 at the moment she offered it so frankly could not 
 know. But she noticed a certain hesitation in his 
 manner and speech. 
 
 "Collamore Robert Collamore, at your service." 
 Then for the space of a second he held her hand in a 
 firm clasp. 
 
 Hearing this name, Alison Doane suddenly realized 
 that a fact stood in the flesh here before her ; and 
 realizing it she was glad, so glad. She knew she 
 was seeing again before her the "boy" she had been 
 seeking. This stranger could be none other than the 
 saddle-maker's "Son" and McGillie's friend for 
 Kinni-kinnik's words and the postcard assured her 
 of his identity whom she had never forgotten and 
 always remembered with pity. He was the boy 
 whom in thought she called her "little half-breed." 
 Knowing this, her face showed her gladness and 
 she did not care if it did. 
 
 To the man, looking steadily and unemotionally
 
 The Man 269 
 
 into that face, it showed a radiance born of a joy in 
 something of which he was in utter ignorance the 
 joy at the discovery of himself. 
 
 Nor was she surprised, as she would have been with 
 any other man, when, rather abruptly and with 
 some slight excuse, he turned again to her host and 
 then gave an order to the half-breed who was with 
 his dog team. It was one of the satisfying things 
 of life, this discovery. All else did not matter with 
 her. 
 
 "He's a queer chap," she said to herself as, throw- 
 ing off her capote, she went to find Evelyn; "and 
 that's the very thing I said to father twenty-two 
 years ago; persistence of type in this case, and no 
 mistake." 
 
 She was smiling when she entered the big gathering 
 room, and found Evelyn warming her knees and toast- 
 ing her feet before the huge stove while drinking the 
 hot tea her hostess had at once provided ; her young 
 daughter, at home from Montreal for the holiday 
 month, was serving it prettily. 
 
 It was no time or place for any exchange between 
 the two women of experiences during the last seven 
 days of their separation. The three men came in and 
 the conversation was, of course, general. They were 
 obliged to wait until they went to their rooms, two 
 hours before dinner, leaving Mr. Carrolly, their host, 
 and Collamore smoking and chatting together. 
 
 3 
 
 So soon as the door closed upon them, the flood 
 of Evelyn's information broke loose, but not before 
 Alison had asked her question : 
 
 "Do tell me, Evelyn, about this Mr. Collamore? 
 Who is he ? The expected expert ? "
 
 270 Out of the Silences 
 
 Evelyn divested herself of her manifold wraps, 
 talking meanwhile. She took out a warm kimono 
 from what she was pleased to call her "duffle bag", 
 put it on and threw herself on the bed. 
 
 "There, now, we can talk; I'm positively starved 
 for a chat with you. Yes, he's the new expert, and 
 Phil is as pleased as a boy with his first motorcycle. 
 It's been just one streak of luck for Phil this time, 
 and, of course, I am correspondingly happy. Don't 
 you think he's handsome?" 
 
 "Now, Evelyn, I won't gratify you till I've had a 
 good look at him. Tell me first who he is, and where 
 he comes from, and how long he is going to stay at 
 the North Lake and all there is to tell." 
 
 "Seems to me you are mightily interested all of a 
 sudden. It's not your way to enthuse over strangers, 
 my dear." 
 
 " Goodness, Evelyn, if you had been here nearly a 
 week and feeling as if you were out of the world, you'd 
 be the first one to show an interest in one I should 
 call an interesting man from his looks. He's so 
 different from others." 
 
 "You're quite right, Alie." Evelyn nodded ap- 
 proval, turning over to face her cousin, her cheek in 
 her palm. "He is interesting, and I don't blame you 
 for getting up a decided interest in him. It has taken 
 seven days of absolute isolation to make you get up a 
 genuine interest in the first stranger you come across. 
 I only wish I could have known of this recipe some 
 years ago." 
 
 "Don't be so absurd, Evelyn. But just get down 
 to solid facts, and tell me something." 
 
 Evelyn thought hard for a moment. "Why, you 
 see, Alie, there doesn't seem to be very much to tell,
 
 The Man 271 
 
 after all. Of course, he's charming, and very enter- 
 taining ; but come to think it over he hasn't said so 
 very much about himself. He seemed a little pre- 
 occupied most of the time. But Phil says his services 
 are absolutely incalculable at just this juncture." 
 
 "Doesn't Phil know how long he is going to stay?" 
 
 "Not exactly. He's going up with us to-morrow 
 and says he may stay a few weeks or a few days. 
 That's all we know. Of course, Phil isn't going to 
 press him in any way, for he doesn't want to take any 
 risk of losing him. He's too thankful to get him. I 
 suppose you can stand it up there for two weeks or 
 so, can't you?" 
 
 "I can stand it indefinitely after this experience, 
 Evelyn." She spoke gravely. 
 
 "What's been the matter, Alie? I knew there 
 was something or you wouldn't have looked, when I 
 saw you, as if we had come straight from paradise to 
 visit you and take you back with us." 
 
 Alison smiled ; sometimes it was best to be wholly 
 frank with her cousin. Evelyn always appreciated 
 that. So now she spoke out from her heart. 
 
 "Well, I don't mind telling you, dear, but I'm 
 afraid it is what you might call the destruction of an 
 ideal. You see, I have wanted all my life to visit 
 this old place where mother was a girl and had such 
 good times and so I came, hoping to relive some- 
 thing of what she told me she had enjoyed here a half 
 a century ago. You see, I forgot my own age in 
 wanting to realize this dream of mine. I've lived in 
 part on ideals all my life, and, somehow, the whole 
 thing has in a way depressed me ; and I'm so awfully 
 glad you've come. They have been kindness itself 
 to me here; but it's what the French call 'morne':
 
 272 Out of the Silences 
 
 these gloomy cedars, this graveyard of an old, old 
 house with the spirit of its old life gone from it. I 
 belong to To-day and then there is this awful war; 
 it weighs on me." 
 
 "Of course you do, you dear old thing. I know 
 just how you must have felt : as if you'd walked back 
 into another century and shut the door tight on your- 
 self. And as for the war, of course that's always with 
 us. I've just finished my tenth pair of stockings." 
 
 "That's just the way I felt. And now I am 
 beginning to feel as if I could breathe again. I can't 
 wait for to-morrow and the beginning of our trip 
 north." 
 
 "Well, if we live to get there we'll be lucky. And 
 what's ahead of us I don't know " 
 
 "And I don't care so long as it isn't like this." 
 
 "Of course you don't; and it won't be like this. 
 It couldn't be because we're going into a totally 
 unsettled wilderness, except for a few fishermen and 
 loggers, so our half-breeds tell us, and everything 
 new, nothing old. " 
 
 "Oh," she drew a long breath, "I'm so relieved 
 just thinking of the newness." 
 
 Evelyn Carrolly bounded up on the bed. "I be- 
 lieve you were actually homesick for that Reserva- 
 tion, Alison Doane." 
 
 "I believe I was." Alison spoke meekly. 
 
 "Well, my dear, all I can say is tastes differ. Now, 
 look here," she said, switching to a new idea of her 
 own, "let's make a jolly evening for the men and our 
 lovely hostess. You needn't tell me they wouldn't 
 enjoy livening up a little. We'll show them we're 
 not going to take any color from our surround- 
 ings. And there is that perfectly lovely young
 
 The Man 273 
 
 girl I know she will be thankful. What do 
 you say to it?" 
 
 "I'm with you heart and soul " 
 
 "You always were one-half angel, if you are queer 
 at times, Alison Doane. What are you going to 
 wear?" 
 
 Alison's laugh rang out at that, and Phil Carrolly, 
 coming down the corridor, heard it and without pre- 
 liminary rap poked his head in at the door. 
 
 "What's up, girls?" 
 
 "Oh, just clothes and a bit of fun, Phil," said Ali- 
 son, answering for both. " Evelyn is going to dress, 
 regularly dress, for dinner. But this is the best I 
 have here." 
 
 "You know well enough, Alison Doane, white is 
 the most becoming thing you can wear. And if you'll 
 put that muffler round your waist for a sash, you need 
 not be better dressed. I'm going to wear my pale 
 blue chiffon " 
 
 "Evelyn!" Alison made emphatic protest. 
 
 "I am; I'm not going to dress according to sur- 
 roundings, would you, Phil?" 
 
 "Not if I know myself." He spoke decidedly. 
 "Say, girls, I'd rather be at the Mission than here 
 it's getting on my nerves." Both women laughed. 
 "How have you stood it, Alie?" 
 
 "I had to, till you and Evelyn came; but I know 
 just what you mean." 
 
 "Had enough of it, eh?" 
 
 "More than enough; but it's only the place. 
 These people here have been hospitality itself." 
 
 "They're a fine lot. We must return this some- 
 how, Eve, when they get as far south as New 
 York."
 
 274 Out of the Silences 
 
 "Of course we will. Now I must dress. And you 
 needn't look at me like that, Phil, for I'm going to 
 put on that little ermine cape over the chiffon ; so I'm 
 safe if it drops to ten below in the dining room and 
 we have ices for dessert." This incongruous state- 
 ment, defiant of all unity of time and place, brought 
 a laugh from the other two. 
 
 4 
 
 It was, in truth, a merry evening. Evelyn's unadul- 
 terated gayety, the gayety of a care-free woman to 
 whom life has been very kind, proved infectious, and 
 Alison's secret joy in her discovery lent a double 
 charm to all she said and did. She sang for them the 
 "chansons" of the voyageurs the songs that so 
 many times, with the coming of the canoe brigades, 
 had floated over the waters of the lake to the ears 
 of generations of dwellers at the Old Post. 
 
 The young daughter of the house played the simple 
 accompaniments to "A la claire fontaine" (Unto 
 the fountain clear) ; "The Adventurous Crow", 
 known to her mother, and played by Antoine on that 
 never to be forgotten night in the forest hut; and 
 the familiar "Behind the manor there is a pond", 
 with its famous chorus, "Rouli, roulant, ma boule 
 roulant", in which they all joined. 
 
 Their host, his Scot's heart warming slowly but 
 very surely to the mood of such joyous and welcome 
 guests, brought out at last a set of rather antiquated 
 bagpipes on which, years before in his native town 
 in the Highlands, he had been proficient. With the 
 jests of his wife and daughter and the gratulatory re- 
 marks of his guests sounding in his ears, he tried his 
 hands and lungs on them again, and with no small 
 success. The merry reels and jolly jigs set their feet
 
 The Man 275 
 
 in rhythmic movement, Alison dancing with the young 
 daughter, Collamore with Evelyn Carrolly, and her 
 husband with his host's rather stately spouse. 
 
 When they were all half breathless with exercise 
 and laughter, Alison begged her host to play them 
 something with the real skirl of the bagpipes in it, 
 adding that her mother had told her she once heard 
 them at the Old Post. Then there rang through 
 the big room, all too small for such volume of sound, 
 the wild half -chanting moan and wail of the "Pibroch 
 of Donald Dhu. " 
 
 "So many of our brave Highland lads and our 
 Canadian boys, too, are hearing the bagpipes nowa- 
 days in such different circumstances, I think I never 
 want to hear the pibroch again, father," their hostess 
 said to her husband when he finished. 
 
 Even as she spoke, the thought of the war crowded 
 to the fore in the consciousness of all present all 
 they had heard of its turmoil, its horror, its unrest, its 
 discords ; but without the thought of its redeeming 
 harmonies the joy of service, the braving of death 
 in duty, the rejoicing in victory. Alison spoke im- 
 petuously : 
 
 "I ought not to have asked for the pibroch ; I did 
 not think at the tune." 
 
 To which her host made answer promptly and 
 emphatically : 
 
 "I am glad you did not think of it, Miss Doane. 
 We, here, would give much not to think so continually 
 of it as we do. How can we expect you to feel with 
 us who watch the coming of every mail, even to this 
 distant post, with dread and cold hands for we do 
 not know 'who next' among our boys. You are 
 happily free from all this as yet."
 
 276 Out of the Silences 
 
 Whether there was any intentional challenge in the 
 word "happily" his guests could not know; but 
 Robert Collamore interpreted it as such and, accept- 
 ing it, spoke in answer, abruptly, almost harshly : 
 
 "'Happily' ? I don't know about that." 
 
 His host looked at him in some surprise. "Then 
 you feel perhaps as we do?" 
 
 "Yes, I feel strongly on that point; it's a sore one 
 with me." 
 
 That was all he said at the moment, for the ladies 
 were saying good-night. It was early to bed, for on 
 the morrow it was a start at dawn into the wilderness 
 still farther north. But when he was alone with his 
 host Collamore freed his mind, and the two men sat 
 discussing the gravity of the situation until midnight. 
 
 5 
 
 When Alison Doane laid her head on her pillow it 
 was not to sleep at once, but to compare the two 
 evenings which, throughout her life, had given her the 
 most intense enjoyment. The first with its gay, 
 gentle music, product of Antoine's clarionet, followed 
 by the impassioned strains of the Czardas from the 
 Hungarian boy's violin, while the wind raged and 
 the wet snow was dashed against the window panes. 
 The second, this of to-night with the foreign skirl of 
 the bagpipes, suggestive of tumult and mourning. 
 Yet without there was no hint of storm, only an in- 
 tense stillness in the air, on the land, over the ice- 
 bound waters. Interwoven with the experiences of 
 both nights was the presence of the boy, "Little 
 Owl", now a man in whom she could never have 
 recognized the lad of white set face, drawn with grief 
 for the loss of his dog. 
 
 Had it not been for Kinni-kinmk's conclusive evi-
 
 The Man 277 
 
 dence, she would not have been sure that all this 
 experience was not a dream. 
 6 
 
 At midnight, Robert Collamore, knowing that there 
 was no sleep for him until he should have threshed 
 out matters with himself, went out into the white 
 night and its cold silences where alone he could hold 
 communion with his own soul. 
 
 He walked rapidly ; he knew the ground ; he had 
 been here before. 
 
 He felt most at home in this night stillness, for he 
 was born in the "silent places" of the great plains; 
 brought up in the wooded quiet of the Turtle Moun- 
 tain wilderness. Ever since then, during his journey- 
 ings to and fro in his own land and the lands to the 
 south and north, he had found the great silences of the 
 solemn-shadowed desert, or the wintry solitude of the 
 forested North-land, his best breeding places for de- 
 cisive thought upon which swift action must follow. 
 
 Without stopping in his walk he held commune 
 with himself, not silent but vocal ; for he spoke aloud 
 with and to himself a habit acquired years ago 
 when he was alone for weeks on the range, or in the 
 " bush ", or "cruising" in extensive tracts of virgin forest. 
 
 "It's the end of the trail, and you know it," he 
 said. "Now hold your head up like a man, Bob 
 Collamore, and look the thing squarely in the face. 
 
 "She is the woman and you know it. Don't 
 flinch at the truth. How you know it is a matter of 
 no importance. You know it ; and you knew it 
 with the first look into her face, didn't you? You 
 knew your hour had struck at last. You acknowl- 
 edge of your own free will this to be an incontrovertible 
 and unchangeable fact, do you ?
 
 278 Out of the Silences 
 
 "You do. Very well. Let's look at the facets of 
 this fact ; you'll find there are many : 
 
 "First, this woman belongs to you, doesn't she? 
 
 "Now and always ; for this world and the world to 
 come, if there be one. 
 
 "Why she belongs to you, you can't say and 
 anyway, that's neither here nor there you only 
 know she does. But she doesn't know it; and you 
 are the only one to make her realize this, doubtless 
 to her, mighty queer fact. This, Bob, is a matter of 
 time, and your time is limited before you go. 
 
 "For you're going, you know; this is a dead sure 
 thing. You've kind o' consecrated yourself. 
 
 "Yet you love this woman and you don't intend 
 that this love of yours for her shall conflict in any way 
 with your duty, boy, do you ? 
 
 "Not on your life. 
 
 "That's all right but how about her?" 
 
 His breath grew short for a moment. 
 
 "Get your wind, Bob, and at it again : How about 
 her? How about the woman? Let's turn the fact 
 around and look at another facet : 
 
 "What right have you, with every God-given force 
 in you to try to make her love you as you love her, 
 and then leave her 
 
 "My God, if she should come to love me love 
 me! 
 
 "You know your duty ; your consecration will per- 
 mit no dallying with love. You know this, don't 
 you? 
 
 "Yes, of course you know it 
 
 "You know you will leave her, loving you, to face 
 life perhaps alone, unprotected, unsatisfied with your 
 presence
 
 The Man 279 
 
 "I know all that, but 
 
 "But what ? Are you going to sacrifice the woman ? 
 
 "'Get thee behind me, Satan'!" He almost 
 shouted it into the night. " You're a mean low-down 
 soul, Bob Collamore, if you can't trust this woman 
 you love with your very soul to love you in the same 
 way, so that, distance or no distance, life apart or life 
 together, in death or hi life, your love for her and hers 
 for you will know no change; for if it could know 
 change, why she wouldn't be the woman, don't you 
 see? 
 
 "You doubting cuss, you're no man, or worthy of 
 the name, if you harbor that devil-thought, suggested 
 to you in your weakest hour, for a second time." 
 
 7 
 
 He shook himself, as if to rid himself of the hated 
 presence of an untrustful thought towards this woman 
 to whom he had given himself; then turned in his 
 steps and walked rapidly back towards the house. 
 
 "I will win out. I'd kick myself for a double- 
 dyed coward if I went into the fight over there with 
 such distrust of the outcome. I don't know the word 
 'fail.' This woman's love is for me and me alone. 
 
 "Haven't waited till I am thirty-five to lie down 
 on the trail with the end in sight. I've thought the 
 end would never come and now I know there will 
 be home and love, and cool water for my thirst, and 
 a gentle hand for my aching head ; and my soul shall 
 sit hi the silences with her, the woman I love, the only 
 one whom my Maker has made to share them with 
 me. 
 
 "Now make tracks to the house. Get some sleep. 
 Show to her clear eyes and a smile in the morning. 
 You've acted like a bumptious fool ever since you met
 
 280 Out of the Silences 
 
 her ten hours ago. Ten hours? Humph, what do 
 you know about it rather, ten thousand years. 
 But be cautious, Son, she is not the kind to be snared ; 
 she's got to come of her own accord for a man to 
 be sure." 
 
 THE NORTH LAKE 
 i 
 
 On the morrow the dawn was long in breaking into 
 low sunshine. The cold was not severe and the 
 weather perfect. It was primitive travelling a 
 large body sledge, and the three dog teams. But 
 the sleigh held all the comforts, as to rugs and 
 wraps, for keeping its occupants warm, besides many 
 packages that contained certain luxuries provided 
 by Evelyn to make life what she called "endurable" 
 for a few days in the wilderness. 
 
 Some vacant fishers' huts afforded them shelter, 
 such as it was, for their two nights on the way. 
 But it was all work and no play, this getting a 
 two days' journey northward of Groundhouse, and 
 much sociability was out of the question. The one 
 aim in view for all the outfit was to "get there" 
 before being overtaken by a storm. 
 
 Alison saw little of the "boy." Once Collamore 
 asked her if she would like to try his cariole and dogs 
 by way of experiment. Her joyful acceptance was 
 reward for what he termed his temerity in suggesting 
 it. He took his place with the Carrollys in the sleigh, 
 Evelyn positively refusing, although urged by her 
 husband, to make any experiments on ice. And once 
 at daybreak in a fisher's hut, when Alison pro- 
 posed to fry bacon and make coffee for her party, 
 Collamore swept her aside with gentle force and took 
 possession of food and utensils, saying :
 
 The Man 281 
 
 "No women, Carrolly, know how to cook bacon, 
 they fry it, men broil it, nor to make what you 
 might call life-saving coffee. But I yield the palm 
 to you, Mrs. Carrolly, on the tea," and proceeded to 
 broil the succulent strips of fat over a red-hot fire, and 
 make coffee after the most approved recipe of the 
 "bush." 
 
 2 
 
 Thirty-five miles on the last day was the record 
 to the credit of tired horses and dogs when, at ten 
 o'clock, they sighted the light in the window of 
 the foreman's hut on a bluff overlooking the 
 North Lake. The light was fading in the west 
 and the rising moon at full. Frozen lakes, snow- 
 covered portages, sparkling hi the clear sunlight, 
 silvered in the moonlight these had been their 
 winter highway, the only one for man and beast, 
 into the great northern wilderness. 
 
 Mr. Dunstanes, the foreman at the plant, and his 
 young wife were on the lookout for them, and the 
 welcome they and their hut gave them was a thing 
 to remember. 
 
 The hut was large, strongly built, with an ample 
 loft. One end Mrs. Dunstanes had partitioned off by 
 hanging some pretty cretonne on a pole for curtains ; 
 behind them was her bedroom which she gave to her 
 two women guests. Seeing this arrangement, all the 
 old joy of that night in the Minnesota forest came 
 back to Alison Doane. Her joy was so genuine, so 
 evident to all present, that Mrs. Carrolly took occa- 
 sion to whisper to her husband, after climbing the 
 ladder to the loft to see the accommodations for the 
 three men, their host and his two guests : 
 
 "What do you suppose ails Alison, Phil? She has
 
 282 Out of the Silences 
 
 looked like this, about seventeen, ever since we struck 
 {^roundhouse and this forsaken land ; in fact, she came 
 back from that trip to those Minnesota lands with 
 something in her face I fail to understand." 
 
 "Perhaps she is reconsidering what you told me 
 .about the man and his proposal. I've often wondered 
 if Alison were bluffing you there. Ten to one she's 
 engaged to him. But even if she is, and she keeps on 
 looking like this, she will prove dangerous for Colla- 
 more or any other man who has eyes in his head." 
 
 "Nonsense, Phil Carrolly," said Evelyn a bit 
 tartly, it really was not necessary for Phil to praise 
 Alison in such terms, " I know Alison Doane better 
 than you do. No man ever knows a woman as an- 
 other woman does. Alison is living with her ideals, 
 so she calls them. She is going back to her youth 
 and living again in imagination that good time she 
 had with Uncle Elton just before he died." 
 
 "Poor girl, I'm glad she had it. Well, let her have 
 all the pleasure she can get out of it. She's had a 
 hard row to hoe in her life " 
 
 Mrs. Carrolly interrupted him. 
 
 "You know perfectly well it's her own fault. My 
 home was open to her from the first." 
 
 " And she is young yet. Collamore can't be as 
 old as she is, from the little he has said." 
 
 "You don't know whether he is married or not; 
 you told me so. You'd better wait till you find that 
 out, my dear." 
 
 "I leave that for you. You generally know within 
 twenty-four hours whether there is a possible matri- 
 monial hitch-up in sight for a man and woman, if they 
 only happen to exchange remarks about the weather." 
 
 "Don't be sarcastic, Phil ; it isn't becoming to you,
 
 The Man 285 
 
 not In this climate. But I think you might sound the 
 gentleman on the subject " 
 
 "What for? About Me?" 
 
 "You know perfectly well what I mean " 
 
 "Well, I did sound him, if that is any satisfaction 
 to you ; but he gave me no bearings probably said 
 to himself, 'None of your darned business.' Come, 
 let's go down. The Dunstanes have planned this well 
 for such a crowd, but we mustn't trespass on their 
 hospitality too long. We'll get away just as soon as 
 we can. I take it from what Collamore said he 
 would go back with us " 
 
 "No, did he? Well, that's queer. Alison found 
 time to tell me just before we came up that she wanted 
 to stay here all winter for the experience. What 
 do you think of that for a wild notion?" 
 
 Her husband turned to her suddenly and spoke 
 forcefully in an undertone : 
 
 "You let Alison do exactly as she pleases; and 
 don't you meddle, Eve, with any of her notions and 
 intentions. I'd bank on Alison every tune for having 
 a level head. What she likes, we don't, but " 
 
 "No, thank fortune, we don't. And you needn't 
 speak so to me, Phil, for I'm dead tired, and you seem 
 to think I am going to ask for the banns to be cried 
 for her and your expert when we get back to Ground- 
 house. Men are so queer at times, and you, my dear, 
 are one of the queerest." 
 
 Hearing which, and knowing Evelyn was really 
 put out, her husband hastened to apologize : 
 
 "Well, my dear, I'm here for prospective pulp wood, 
 not romance; so you will have to look at things 
 through my eyes till we get away from here. Colla- 
 more says he has been up here once before, last year
 
 284 Out of the Silences 
 
 sometime, and is convinced the big mill will pay 
 roundly on our investment of capital in opening 
 up this wooded region. Dunstanes, too, is all en- 
 thusiasm for his job." 
 
 "Well, Phil, if we can get away from here and back 
 to that blessed old New York before Christmas I shall 
 be thankful enough. You might say to Alison that 
 you suspect the gentleman is married " 
 
 "I'll be hanged if I will. Now don't get me mad, 
 Evelyn, " 
 
 "Why, Phil Carrolly, as if I wanted you to get 
 mad" 
 
 Her husband went down the ladder backwards 
 with the agility of a monkey. He could gauge, from 
 long experience, the tenacity of his wife on a last word. 
 He really didn't want to lose his temper in the hut. 
 There were no partitions. 
 
 3 
 
 The next morning Alison took the first opportunity 
 after breakfast, in the preparation of which she and 
 Mrs. Dunstanes considered themselves partners, to 
 prospect a little for herself. Mrs. Carrolly preferred 
 the warm interior, her knitting, and a cozy chat with 
 lier young hostess. The men were to take them over 
 to the site of the prospective mill, and the small one 
 already in operation, the next day. 
 
 She had barely closed the door and walked a few 
 yards to the right of the hut, and nearer the edge of 
 the bluff, when she stopped short and gave vent to a 
 long-drawn breath of delight. 
 
 "Oh, how beautiful !" she exclaimed, and was glad 
 to be alone. 
 
 Before her, reaching miles to the southward, was 
 the noble North Lake.
 
 The Man 285 
 
 She stood there entranced. Such silent beauty! 
 The atmosphere was calm ; there was no movement 
 among the trees, no ripple of water, no call, no cry of 
 any living thing a stillness as deep as that sur- 
 rounding the Old Lake Post, but so different. This 
 seemed to her a young silence: air and sunshine, 
 sparkling unsullied snow, the dark woods, all in- 
 stinct with vitality, with life-giving refreshment. 
 
 4 
 
 The North Lake might well be called the great 
 head of the greater Winnipegosis, connected with it, 
 as it is, by the slight sinews of a short portage, were 
 it not for the fact that its waters drain into the 
 Saskatchewan and not into the " Little Sea." 
 
 Alison Doane stood there long, marvelling at its 
 beauty. Its frozen surface, snow covered, glittering 
 in the morning sun, was broken by many small 
 islands, showing black on white, for they were 
 rock-ledged and dark with woods. Its high- 
 ridged western shores were crowned by dense cedar 
 forests. 
 
 She turned to look at the foreman's hut, and 
 made her second discovery : it faced eastward and 
 looked across, not down the lake. It had a raw 
 appearance in this setting, although the boards 
 were already weather-beaten. At the back, leaning 
 against it, or possibly propping it, was a log cabin 
 of the primitive type. On the end of this was a 
 lean-to. Against it many cords of wood were neatly 
 piled. 
 
 She walked around it ; the small low entrance was 
 on the farther end. She stepped inside. 
 
 It was about eight feet in the walls. One tiny 
 window gave what light there was ; she looked out.
 
 286 Out of the Silences 
 
 It was the same point of view for the scenic setting 
 she admired from the edge of the bluff. 
 
 Then and there she made her decision : this cabin 
 should be hers for a while. For one winter, at least, 
 she would live here in this life-giving climate ; experi- 
 ence something of the freedom, the expansion of life 
 in this wonderful white solitude of the north so 
 filled with low white sunshine. This should be the 
 second chapter of her one adventure in life, the camp- 
 ing trip through northern Minnesota, and its climax 
 in that one night in the hut among its pine forests. 
 Besides 
 
 What "besides" remained for the tune unformu- 
 lated. 
 
 She began to make measurements with the sash of 
 her sweater, as is usual with an inventive woman who 
 prefers to trust her judgment with almost anything, 
 from an apron hem to the stretch of her arm from her 
 nose, rather than a man's accurate foot-rule. She 
 measured door space, window space, furniture space, 
 partition length. She paced a place for the stove. 
 Then she investigated. the lean-to. Evidently it was 
 satisfying and absorbing work, for she forgot time and 
 appeared in the hut just before dinner. 
 
 5 
 
 Mrs. Carrolly looked up inquiringly when she 
 entered. " Where have you been, Alison?" 
 
 " Stand and deliver, Alie, or I'll not take you over 
 to the new mill site to-morrow," said her husband. 
 
 "I've been prospecting, Phil." 
 
 "Good for you. What did you find, a new pulp 
 wood stand? 
 
 "Something better " 
 
 "You look as if you had discovered the pot of gold
 
 The Man 287 
 
 at the end of the rainbow." Mrs. Dunstanes spoke 
 at the same tune, looking admiringly at the flushed, 
 animated face. 
 
 "You have made a good guess. At any rate, it is 
 my pot of gold and a real rainbow end this time." 
 
 Collamore said nothing, but he watched the play 
 of her expressive face. She was wishing he would 
 interest himself in her affairs so far as to ask her one 
 question, at least. It was evident he was not going 
 to gratify her. 
 
 She plunged enthusiastically into the midst of her 
 undertaking, and ended by declaring she would spend 
 the winter in the log cabin plus the lean-to. 
 
 " A lean-to ? Well, Alison Doane, that's the lim " 
 Mrs. Carrolly's protest was cut short by her husband. 
 
 "You are all right, Alie ! Don't heed Evelyn. 
 Cut loose from civilization and convention, and do as 
 you choose for once in your life where there will be 
 no red tape to hamper your movements. I glory in 
 your independence; and I'll give you a commission 
 if you will do something for the comfort of my men 
 up here. They need it, that's a sure thing. I 
 should go to the devil if I had to stay here four 
 weeks." 
 
 They laughed at his earnestness ; but Collamore 
 told himself there was something more than a mere 
 business superstructure in Carrolly's make-up for 
 which he had not given him credit. If it weren't for 
 his wife 
 
 But there Robert Collamore halted his thought, for 
 he knew it was each to his taste in this world of wide 
 choice, and he read Evelyn Carrolly like a book. 
 
 Mrs. Dunstanes grasped both her hands: "Oh, 
 Miss Doane, if you only will ! It will be a perfect
 
 288 Out of the Silences 
 
 arrangement. I don't expect my sister for at least 
 two months." She appealed to her husband. 
 
 "I'll put every man at your disposal for one day, 
 Miss Doane, and charge it to the company, if you 
 will stay with us ; and every Indian and half-breed 
 that works for me." 
 
 "I will stay. It's all settled, Mr. Dunstanes, now 
 that I can have the men to fetch and haul and carry. 
 I wouldn't for the world poach on your business pre- 
 serve, Phil, but you know they are the one thing 
 necessary to make a paradise out of a wilderness " 
 
 "I have always had a sneaking idea that it was the 
 other way round, Mrs. Carrolly," said Collamore with 
 a mischievous look in Evelyn's direction, seeing which 
 that lady felt an immediate revival of courage. It 
 was the first opening he had made for her to ask 
 a certain question. 
 
 "Don't tease, Mr. Collamore, you know what I 
 mean. I want men who can work for me, for I can't 
 peel spruce bark, and that's what I want and a 
 load of it." 
 
 "What for?" Mrs. Carrolly demanded. 
 
 "Hold on a minute, Eve, one at a time. I must 
 make a few memoranda." With mock gravity her 
 husband drew out his notebook. "Men are not apt 
 to peel bark in winter for certain structural tree- 
 reasons, eh, Collamore? But we'll try for it. Any 
 more large orders Evelyn and I can fill for you in 
 Montreal or New York ? " 
 
 "Oh, you may laugh, both of you, but you'll see. 
 Mrs. Dunstanes says there is another big box 
 stove in cold storage here, in my lean-to, I saw 
 it and it's just what I want and need, and I'd like 
 it, if it is not to be used for any of the men's huts."
 
 The Man 289 
 
 "Nota bene," murmured Carrolly, making notes, 
 "another box stove hi case the men fall short on 
 account of supplying city guests ; and one bigger 
 stove for the new canteen 'A. D. Association'. 
 How's that ? Mem. Chairs and boards for tables 
 and shelves ; our little sawmill can't run before spring, 
 Dunstanes ? " 
 
 "Not before the last of May; but we have some 
 boards. Seems to me you are giving Miss Doane a 
 larger order than she gives you." 
 
 "Just what she dotes on, Mr. Dunstanes," said Mrs. 
 Carrolly. "Give her a wilderness, some men, and an 
 object in life, and you have my cousin at her best." 
 
 "In any case the stove is yours, Miss Doane. 
 Your cabin was a fisher's hut." 
 
 Alison turned triumphantly to her cousin. "You 
 see, now, don't you, Evelyn, how all things work 
 together, even to the comforts of life, up here in this 
 wilderness?" 
 
 "Oh, yes, I see well enough, my dear; but some- 
 how I don't recognize the end and aim of all this 
 working together." She looked thoroughly puzzled. 
 
 "Just have a little patience, Evelyn, and in time 
 you will recognize the face of an old friend ; then you 
 will rejoice with me. For surely you and Phil will come 
 up here next summer and all the way by water." 
 
 "Mercy, Alison, do let us get home first." 
 
 In the exuberance of her delight at the brightening 
 prospects of making the log cabin into a little home 
 of her own in the wilderness, Alison peeled off her 
 sweater and began to help Mrs. Dunstanes put the 
 simple dinner on a very primitive table three boards 
 laid on two carpenter's trestles at which after they 
 were seated the talk became general.
 
 290 Out of the Silences 
 
 "We are not going to tax your hospitality and the 
 capacity of the hut any longer than is absolutely 
 necessary, Mrs. Dunstanes," said Carrolly. " Mr. Col- 
 lamore finds he must return to Montreal to consult 
 with a man there. I go with him. As the weather, 
 you say, Mr. Dunstanes, is apt to be fine on the full of 
 the moon in this latitude, I think it will be best to 
 start day after to-morrow. The horses and dogs will 
 be fresh by that time." 
 
 "Have you any idea when you will be back, Mr. 
 Collamore?" Mr. Dunstanes asked. 
 
 "Not before the last of December at the earliest." 
 
 "It is too bad you have to be away from home at 
 Christmas time, Mr. Collamore. Phil and I always 
 think so much of that." Mrs. Carrolly's voice was 
 full of sympathy. 
 
 It was said innocently enough ; but Alison, looking 
 up quickly from her plate, caught just the slightest 
 lift of Collamore's left eyebrow, and by that token 
 she knew he had seen through her cousin's manoeuvre. 
 She wondered how he would take it. 
 
 "To be frank, Mrs. Carrolly, Christmas does not 
 mean much to me. It has passed many times with- 
 out my knowing of the day when I have been alone 
 in the bush or on the range. Much of my young life 
 was passed in the wilderness, and, somehow, my en- 
 trance into civilization did not take with it any 
 memories of holidays or home." 
 
 He spoke to Mrs. Carrolly, but he glanced quickly 
 at Alison ; he detected sudden tears in her eyes. 
 
 The very frankness with which she was answered 
 precluded, and for the first time, a ready answer from 
 Evelyn Carrolly's lips. A life that took no note of 
 holidays, a homeless life it was without the pale of
 
 The Man 291 
 
 her experience and imagination. Collamore relieved 
 her slight embarrassment by saying gayly : 
 
 "But I can assure you, Mrs. Carrolly, one memory 
 of civilization will linger with me to the end, the tea 
 you make. I never tasted its like, and I am going to 
 suggest you give us all an after dinner treat by making 
 us some. I speak for three cups, and two lumps of 
 sugar in each cup, please." 
 
 Hearing this, Evelyn Carrolly beamed on him and 
 made such a teapotful of delicious tea that it marked 
 the day in the hut calendar hanging on the wall, with 
 a red C. Mrs. Dunstanes made sure of that. 
 
 Alison Doane said nothing. She was recalling all 
 the saddle-maker had told about this boy-man, so she 
 called him to herself, of his hardships and struggle, 
 and, in the face of them, his ignoring of what defeat 
 could mean. 
 
 6 
 
 There were gray skies the following morning. Dur- 
 ing the forenoon the two women went over to the site 
 of the big mill. On their return for dinner it began to 
 snow, despite tradition of full moon influence, and for 
 that afternoon and evening the whole party were neces- 
 sarily thrown upon their own resources for entertain- 
 ment. The hut was really too full of humanity to 
 yield entire comfort. 
 
 This sudden change of weather gave 'Mr. Carrolly 
 the fidgets on his wife's account. He feared to be 
 weather-bound in such close quarters and in such a 
 high latitude. It was to bridge over this time of wait- 
 ing for things to look more propitious, that Collamore 
 entered the breach, assuring them that a little more 
 ; snow would make the travelling much easier. 
 
 Then some barrier of reserve seemed to give way,
 
 292 Out of the Silences 
 
 and he told them a little of his boyhood in the Turtle 
 Mountains, of his saddle-maker, of McGillie and 
 Kinni-kinnik. He spoke of the Indians who were his 
 friends. He told Mr. Dunstanes that Long John, 
 Kinni-kinnik's grandfather, still in his early sixties, 
 had asked for and obtained the contract for the mail 
 and expected to bring it up to the plant once in six 
 weeks. He hoped to make some arrangement by 
 which he might make the return trip with him. 
 And, speaking of the opening up of available tracts 
 of forest, he was led by some judicious questioning 
 on Phil Carrolly's part, who had conceived a great 
 admiration for the man, to speak of his own appren- 
 ticeship for expert in the famous timber belts of his 
 own and other lands ; and afterwards of some of his 
 experiences as cowboy, and small rancher in Wyoming. 
 
 The hut rang with laughter at some of his stories 
 and the inimitable way in which they were told. 
 When at last the long winter evening came to a close, 
 as good things will, Evelyn Carrolly declared it had 
 been one of the shortest in her life, and nothing would 
 prevent her, if they came up to the plant next 
 summer, from stopping on the way and paying a 
 flying visit to dear old Bill Plunket in Minnesota. 
 
 To all of which Alison Doane said never a word. 
 Robert Collamore, wondering a little at her non- 
 responsiveness, told himself that he had not yet 
 the clue to the right approach. But he recalled the 
 sudden tears when he spoke so casually of being home- 
 less, and, in that remembrance, fell asleep as con- 
 tentedly as does a child hugging to its heart its latest 
 gift, be it ever so small. 
 
 7 
 The morrow brought a marvellous dawn with
 
 The Man 293 
 
 promise of good weather. All were early a-stir, 
 horses, dogs, and humans refreshed by their three days 
 of rest. 
 
 "You take care of yourself, Alie dear. I can't bear 
 to leave you here, but, of course, if you will stay, 
 you will ; that's all there is about it. Phil and I will 
 send up all the things you will want in the way of pro- 
 vision, except what Mrs. Dunstanes says they have in 
 quantity for the men. And you have wood enough ; 
 that's one comfort. Good-by, and don't forget the 
 mail will leave once in six weeks. We shall worry if we 
 don't hear regularly." Her husband and Collamore 
 helped her into the sleigh and began to tuck the robes 
 about her. 
 
 "I'm so glad, Mr. Collamore, that you will be here 
 at least a part of the time. I feel better leaving 
 Alie " Her husband administered a surreptitious 
 pinch to the leg that was handiest as he put the 
 rugs about her knees. Mrs. Carrolly took the hint. 
 
 "You may depend on me to do what I can while 
 I'm here, Mrs. Carrolly." 
 
 "I know I can, Mr. Collamore." Evelyn Carrolly 
 smiled sweetly on him, despite the fact that she was 
 at that minute furious with her husband for taking so 
 drastic a method to cut short her diplomacy. "It's a 
 great comfort to me, whatever it may be to Phil." 
 
 So the last good-bys were said, Phil Carrolly calling 
 out from the sleigh as it left the hut: "Don't forget, 
 Alison, to have that canteen for the men ready by 
 the time Collamore gets back ; he'll need it." 
 
 "What are you talking about, Phil Carrolly?", said 
 his wife in surprise. " He won't want to use that 
 
 "You don't know what you are talking about, my 
 dear ; but Alison Doane knows what I mean."
 
 294 Out of the Silences 
 
 "Well, I never ! " That was all Mrs. Carrolly said 
 for a moment; then she spoke quite irrelevantly: 
 "Well, I, for one, am thankful to be alone with you 
 again, Phil. Three days without a single minute to 
 talk to you privately in was almost more than I could 
 stand." She snuggled cosily up to her husband, that 
 is, as well as her bundled-up condition would permit, 
 and said guilelessly : 
 
 "What do you think of it, Phil dear do you 
 think it will be a go between those two ? " 
 
 Whereupon Philip Carrolly groaned and shouted in 
 the same breath. There was no evading Evelyn, not 
 on the subject of matrimony. 
 8 
 
 Very quietly Robert Collamore manoeuvred with 
 an Indian's skill to give him a moment alone with the 
 woman he loved, just one minute. The Dunstanes 
 went into the house. The good-bys had all been said. 
 Alison, fully dressed for an early walk, she wanted 
 to see the sun rise over the dark wooded shores of the 
 lake, for the dawn promised something of unusual 
 beauty, turned first to the cabin with a sense of 
 ownership. She wanted to take just one peek from 
 that small window within, to see if it gave the full 
 effect of the dawn all adown the lake. 
 
 Robert Collamore, having driven a few rods, left 
 his cariole, and appeared at the door of the cabin. 
 She turned quickly from the window, as he entered 
 saying : 
 
 "Oh, I know what you are doing seeing it all, 
 aren't you, just as it will look a month from now?" 
 
 "You're right, but how do you know, not being a 
 woman?" 
 
 "Oh, I have a way of knowing unknowable things ;
 
 The Man 295 
 
 I learned it from my Indians. I just wanted to know 
 if there are any commissions for me in Montreal 
 it's the place to get things." 
 
 "It's awfully kind of you to think of that. Indeed 
 there are, and I forgot to tell Phil. I want a few 
 books about this country, this place, anything to make 
 my ignorance less dense, and twelve yards of turkey- 
 red cotton cloth, if you can get it. Thank you so 
 much." 
 
 For a moment his masculine bewilderment over his 
 last commission showed plainly. 
 
 She offered her hand, risking, as she thought, a 
 good deal after his ignoring of her cordial greeting at 
 the Old Lake Post. The little dawn-filled cabin was 
 at that moment heaven to the man who stood be- 
 fore her, showing, however, nothing of such environ- 
 ment in his face; but he took her hand in a firm 
 clasp. Then it was that Alison caught a look of the 
 "boy" in the forest hut; the features were slightly 
 drawn, the expression set and she almost told him 
 of it. 
 
 " Good-by," he said ; " I am looking forward already 
 to Christmas in this little cabin." He turned and left 
 the hut. 
 
 "You shall have one that you will remember with 
 Evelyn's tea," she called after him. Without think- 
 ing she waved her hand as she did years ago to him 
 when, from his pony's back, he watched the little 
 cavalcade depart from the Hungarians' hut and enter 
 on the trail. The mere moving motion of her hand 
 made a sudden thought-connection. Her face was 
 illumined by that lightning flash of memory. Again 
 she waved her hand to him as the dogs started on the 
 run.
 
 296 Out of the Silences 
 
 "Good-by, good-by," she called again, and under 
 her breath she added, "Little Owl." 
 
 If only he might have heard. He looked back at 
 her. The clear-ringing voice, the movement of the 
 hand, caused him the same confusion of thought that 
 Kinni-kinnik had experienced. Out of that confusion 
 a haunting memory gradually denned itself clearly 
 in his consciousness and the month of his absence 
 seemed to him eternal in its length. 
 
 THE SPRINGS OF LIFE 
 i 
 
 " The days are full, full to overflowing with all sorts 
 of things to do," Alison wrote to Evelyn Carrolly 
 after three weeks in the northern wilderness. "I 
 was never busier in my life, not even when there was 
 a rush of department work in the old days in Wash- 
 ington and I was a slave to deadly monotony. I feel 
 so free at last, Evelyn. If these three weeks set the 
 pace for the rest of the winter, it will have gone before 
 I am ready to welcome the spring which conies so late 
 here in June ! 
 
 "Tell Phil, with my love, that the hut ('A. D. Asso- 
 ciation') is quite another place from the ramshackle 
 affair he found on arrival. We expect some of the 
 teams to-morrow and the mail is due next week. I 
 do so hope it will be here before Christmas. 
 
 "Two of the men are very clever with their tools 
 and have made me two easy chairs out of some empty 
 hogsheads. One quarter of a hogshead sawed off 
 about twenty inches from the bottom, and canvas 
 and burlap packing remnants stretched and 
 fastened on securely for seats. They are saving all 
 the feathers from the winter game for me to make
 
 The Man 297 
 
 some cushions. They offer everything in their power 
 to 'help along.'" . . . 
 
 "The second biggest stove is in my cabin and works 
 beautifully. Of course, I have only tested it to 
 warmth-giving at 17 below this morning ; but it gives 
 promise of great comfort at 40 below. . . . 
 
 "I will write you about my own cabin when 
 the teams have come up and brought the things 
 I know you and Phil have sent. I do hope 
 you have put in an oilcloth for my table. I forgot 
 to put it on the list ; and it's just like you, Evelyn 
 dear, to send me as substitute a square linen center- 
 piece and a dozen doilies in Madeira drawn work 1 
 Now, isn't it? 
 
 "Good-night; and I'm glad you've been here to 
 know how good these nights are, how sound and sweet- 
 sleep-filled. I don't forget how you pinched me wide 
 awake, early on one of those three mornings, just to 
 remind me of the fact that we hadn't slept together 
 since we were young girls ; to whisper some of your 
 matrimonial nonsense about Phil, and declare you 
 could not have believed it possible for you to sleep in 
 such conditions so soundly and straight through the 
 night. Oh, Evelyn, Evelyn Carrolly 
 
 " I hear the teams ! And Mrs. Dunstanes is calling 
 to me. Good-by, love to you both, and more of it 
 after I see what you have sent up to high latitudes. 
 
 "Alie. 
 
 " P. S. Be sure to send all the papers you can by 
 every mail. Although we are so many thousands of 
 miles from entrenched battlefield and mine-strewn sea, 
 we are impatient for news all of us. It is getting 
 under the surface so, here in Canada, this horrible 
 war."
 
 298 Out of the Silences 
 
 2 
 
 Any man in this northern wilderness of snow and 
 ice, bitter cold, and cruel winds, be he trapper, hunter, 
 Indian, half-breed, explorer, pioneer, settler, or trav- 
 eller, knows what it means to him to see in any 
 stretch of a hundred miles along the ice-bound high- 
 ways the light of a camp fire, or the smoke from a 
 few poor wigwams, or a settler's cabin. The light, 
 the smoke, spell for him safety for another, night, 
 freedom from the danger of being frozen into uncon- 
 sciousness. 
 
 3 
 
 The mail arrived in the twilight of Christmas Eve. 
 The two men, Indian and white, had encountered 
 storms heavy winds and low temperature follow- 
 ing an unusual fall of snow for that region all the 
 way up from Groundhouse. Both men and dogs 
 were worn with buffeting such weather conditions. 
 When Robert Collamore saw the first light on the 
 bluff, Alison's lamp she had set in the window 
 in the hope of the coming of "Little Owl" and 
 the mail, and knew by its position that it was 
 from her cabin, he was conscious of a profound 
 sense of thankfulness that he had been permitted 
 to live to experience one such moment. To him 
 that light was a beacon. 
 
 Out of the bitter hardships of his younger life, out 
 of the turmoil, the stress, the fighting arena of his 
 later life, he was experiencing what it is to have been 
 led mysteriously, but none the less surely, along what 
 had seemed to him a blind trail into a little realm of 
 peace and home and love and all this coming to 
 him just before entering the great arena of a world 
 war in order to wage mortal combat !
 
 The Man 299 
 
 The lamplight shining from the snowy bluff was a 
 symbol to him of all this. 
 
 Little wonder then, that as he stood at the cabin 
 door, which was flung wide in welcome, he could say 
 nothing; only take the woman's two warm hands, 
 outstretched in welcome, in his cold ones, and look at 
 her as she drew him into the cabin and closed the 
 door. It was Alison who did the talking for a while. 
 
 "You're just about frozen !" she exclaimed, setting 
 one of the hogshead easy chairs away from the stove. 
 " So I can't let you sit too near the fire until you are 
 thawed out a bit ; it's not safe, you know. And the 
 very first thing a cup of tea, and warmth for the inner 
 man, even if I can't make tea like Evelyn. One cup ? 
 What am I talking about? I mean three cups and 
 two lumps in each. That's right, isn't it ? How will 
 this do for a merger?" 
 
 She held out a tin quart cup, and busied herself 
 with making the tea, wondering, meanwhile, if his 
 cheeks and chin, could be really frozen, he was so 
 quiet. No word as yet! Then she thought of the 
 "boy in the hut" and, in part, understood. 
 
 Mr. Dunstanes, coming in at that moment with 
 hearty handclasp and heartier words of welcome, took 
 in the situation at a glance. 
 
 " If Long John weren't an Indian and a Cree, Colla- 
 more, he would be in a worse condition than he is. 
 My wife is tending to him and serving him in about 
 the same way Miss Doane is serving you. But he is 
 thawing out ; you will in time." 
 
 Alison's talk still ran on like a brook. 
 
 "The Dunstanes have been lovely to me, Mr. Colla- 
 more, and they've been working like Trojans to get the 
 loft ready for you. They've had only a week since
 
 300 Out of the Silences 
 
 the teams came up. Phil and Evelyn sent such a lot 
 of nice things. They've put up another stove, Phil 
 sent, in your attic, and what I call a wilderness table 
 for your work. All the things were marked as from 
 both, but you could tell Evelyn's shopping from Phil's 
 with your eyes shut. A man never buys the same 
 things a woman does ; so I know the tea-kettle you'll 
 find on your stove is from Evelyn. It must be filled 
 once in two hours, to provide the advertised ' continu- 
 ous hot water service.' And one end of the loft is 
 filled with firewood. I have added some birch bark 
 of my own garnering; it's to start your fires if ever 
 you have the courage to let one go out. / tell the 
 Dunstanes they will spoil a good expert." 
 
 "How about you, Miss Doane?" said Mr. Dun- 
 stanes. "Seems to me you are doing your share to 
 effect the change." He watched her pour out a quart 
 cup of steaming tea, and drop six lumps into it before 
 she offered it to Collamore who took it and drank 
 eagerly. 
 
 He looked up over the rim. "I thank you," was 
 all he could say. 
 
 "Merely doing the honors of my new home to wel- 
 come a wayfarer, Mr. Collamore ; don't let the tea 
 spoil your appetite for supper. The Dunstanes are 
 coming to celebrate my first Christmas in the wilder- 
 ness, and we count, of course, on you. When did 
 you eat last?" At which practical question both 
 men smiled, and Alison, perceiving the relaxing of the 
 muscles in Collamore's face, sighed relief. At least, 
 he was not frozen into silence. 
 
 "Come along with me, Collamore, now you have 
 finished your tea, and thaw out gradually in your 
 attic. My wife is waiting for you rather impatiently,
 
 The Man 301 
 
 she wants you to see the old loft ; and be sure this 
 is a marital hint for which I charge no commission for 
 your future use to express your highest approval 
 of her efforts. Site did it. A man would have let 
 another man take his chances and bunk in where he 
 could ; but a woman takes no chances with a man's 
 comfort, that is, if she is the real article like my wife." 
 He turned at the door before opening it. "We'll all 
 be in for supper when Collamore is thoroughly thawed 
 out, Miss Doane, and we'll bring in the mail ; there 
 is a big pile of it. My wife is sorting it out now." 
 
 4 
 
 It was Robert Collamore's first real Christmas. 
 He recalled dimly an attempt at one when he was a 
 small boy living with his mother and uncle on the 
 sheep ranch ; but all details were blurred. He knew 
 this Christmas would live distinct in his memory till 
 the end, for a woman's hand was at the helm of all 
 the preparation, and that woman the one he loved. 
 
 No item of Christmassy importance was forgotten, 
 even to a stocking for each of the occupants of the 
 hut and cabin as well as for each man at the plant. 
 The teamsters were not forgotten, nor the Indians, 
 including Long John who carried back tales of the 
 "medicine- woman" to Kinni-kinnik and Carmastic. 
 
 When it was past, Collamore settled down to the 
 close exacting work in his special line. He preferred 
 to cook for himself in the men's canteen ; he was 
 used to living from his own base in his years of 
 knocking about, and he liked the independence. But 
 he accepted the Dunstanes' hospitality of the loft for 
 sleeping purposes. His evenings he spent between 
 the two huts, but mostly with Alison. They were his 
 refreshment, these evenings, his recreation, because
 
 302 Out of the Silences 
 
 he was with her and his time was short. The 
 second week of February was set for his return with 
 Long John after the delivery of the second mail. 
 
 The Dunstanes, discerning which way the wind was 
 blowing, tactfully aided and abetted him by ignoring 
 his preference for the cabin. 
 
 5 
 
 He was telling her one evening as he smoked tran- 
 quilly, both heart and soul taking their ease, of some 
 of the episodes of his life in the Turtle Mountains and 
 among them of his fast in the nest in the treetop, of 
 his dream and its "medicine." He dwelt especially 
 on the importance Carmastic attached to a man's 
 "medicine," and explained it to her as the old medi- 
 cine-man had explained it to him. 
 
 She listened eagerly, thoughtfully; then, at last, 
 she put a question : 
 
 "And what was the dream?" 
 
 "That I can't teU." 
 
 "You mean you are superstitious?" She chaffed 
 him a bit on his Indian superstitions, all of which he 
 accepted good-naturedly; but she knew he evaded 
 giving her any satisfactory answer. 
 
 "You can't help being affected somewhat by all 
 that mass of Indian tradition and lore if you live 
 with them as I did. It is all so wonderful and never 
 to be learned by a white man all symbolism. And 
 Turtle Mountain is a paradise of Indian lore. Do you 
 know, I used to call it my road to Paradise, that ap- 
 proach to the Mountains? It was so changed when 
 I went through there four months ago. The intrusion 
 of the Present was everywhere in evidence even to 
 a possible motor service ! That almost knocked my 
 Indian past into a cocked hat."
 
 The Man 303 
 
 She did not press him further, although she would 
 have given much to know what it was he dreamed, 
 and what its significance might be to him. 
 
 "So you too have had a road to Paradise?" 
 
 "Yes; did you?" 
 
 " Oh, didn't I ! Away back in my babyhood, pretty 
 nearly." 
 
 "Tell me about it, will you?" 
 
 "You tell first." 
 
 He smiled. Often they were as boy and girl 
 together. That was a part of her charm. 
 
 "You see, it was only my road; the Turtle Moun- 
 tains didn't prove to be a paradise, for Jane Plunket's 
 tongue could make a purgatory, or worse, out of any 
 paradise. However, I had more than three years of 
 grace with my saddle-maker before Jane put in her 
 appearance." 
 
 "But didn't it lead to some kind of paradise?" 
 
 "Yes; did yours?" 
 
 "Yes," she hesitated, "in a way it did." 
 
 "That sounds dubious. Any angel with the flam- 
 ing sword to bar your entrance?" 
 
 "Not exactly; I think a bolt was drawn instead. 
 What did you do after Jane came on the scene?" 
 
 "I cleared out as quickly as I could. But I had 
 one winter in my own little lean-to " 
 
 " No ! You don't mean to tell me you had a lean-to 
 like mine?" 
 
 " I did ; and one that's next best to this." 
 
 " Tell me about it, do." 
 
 He told her of those months on his own hook, as 
 he expressed it ; of the growing sense of isolation in 
 the mountains, of his burning desire to get away from 
 it all and see the world in his own way.
 
 304 Out of the Silences 
 
 " I was so dead lonely that winter. You see, I had 
 a dog," Alison kept her eyes on her knitting, 
 " and she died in the October before I moved into my 
 lean-to. She had been with me all the time in the 
 mountains. I never knew what it was to be really 
 lonesome while she was with me, and she was always 
 with me, day and night." 
 
 " What happened to her?" 
 
 " The saddle-maker and I set out to see some- 
 thing of the world over Minnesota way. You see, 
 Jane and he had had a tiff, a three-years-long, English- 
 Indian huff, and he thought it was about time to make 
 up Of course I took the bitch. She had a litter 
 while we were there " 
 
 " What part of Minnesota was that?" 
 
 " Not far from Bemidji, about thirty miles. 
 Why?" 
 
 It came rather suddenly. Alison Doane did some 
 thinking before she answered. Meanwhile, with a 
 woman's wile, she counted aloud some stitches on the 
 turn of the heel. 
 
 " Because my father owned some pine lands 
 near there, years ago when I was a young girl; 
 and I have always had an interest in that part 
 of the State." 
 
 " Do you own them now?" 
 
 " No. What about the bitch and her puppies?" 
 
 He smiled. " My saddle-maker always said I was 
 born wanting my own way, but I haven't always had 
 it just the same. You see, the mother of those 
 puppies knew a thing or two more than I did about 
 what she wanted to do with them, and how she wanted 
 to bring them up. But I was thirteen at the time, 
 and knew I knew better. So I tried to show her
 
 The Man 305 
 
 where she ought to keep the puppies ; naturally she 
 objected. I tried to have my way with her for three 
 days in succession. Then, because she disobeyed me 
 and did with her own what she knew to be the right 
 thing, I got mad and punished her struck her 
 and I had never laid hand on her in punishment 
 before ; she had never done anything to deserve it." 
 He was silent for a moment. 
 
 "I never could understand why she left ran 
 away, hid herself in the deep woods or in some place 
 where I and none of the Indians could rind her. I 
 think my boy's heart pretty nearly broke as the weeks 
 went by and no dog." 
 
 "Did you never find her?" 
 
 "Yes; three weeks after she disappeared I found 
 her in a hut, part of a loggers' camp not ten miles from 
 the Indian village where Jane and Plunket lived for a 
 month or two when they had made up. The dog was 
 dead when I got there." Alison was hoping he would 
 go further ; but he said nothing more. 
 
 "It seems to me easy enough to understand why 
 she left you." 
 
 " Why ? " He looked up a little surprised. 
 
 "Because she loved you and you struck her." 
 
 "I suppose that's the psychology of it. But I did 
 penance. I had to bring up those five puppies by 
 hand that winter. I kept Bully, one of the five, for 
 years ; then he died, and I had nothing but a wolf 
 cub for companion." 
 
 "What do you mean?" Alison spoke almost 
 abruptly. 
 
 "Why it's this way : a man has to have something 
 to love or he returns to the type, you know ; and I 
 was alone for some months in a wilderness to which
 
 306 Out of the Silences 
 
 this about here is civilization. The mother I had to 
 shoot ; the cub I saved. That was a cub ! I knew 
 the bitch was my shadow, but the cub considered 
 himself literally a part of me. It was bitterly cold 
 that year and he was brought up, you might say, in- 
 side my shirt. Anyway he felt he belonged there, and 
 he went with me wherever the shirt went and that 
 went most everywhere I went, for it was the only one 
 I had. 
 
 "But in time he forgot that he was growing up, 
 and when the shirt couldn't hold him any longer I 
 made a sort of kangaroo's pouch of skins, and hung it 
 round my neck in front. He occupied that till he 
 outgrew it. After that he had to stay in the dugout 
 door fast which did not please his cubship. 
 Honestly I could hear him howl and bark a mile off 
 of a still night." 
 
 "What was his name?" 
 
 "He was such a high-cock-o'-lorum of a cub that I 
 called him Solomon ; Sol, for short. It fitted him all 
 right." 
 
 Alison laughed. "However did you happen on 
 that name?" 
 
 "Oh, I found something about a certain king in a 
 part of an old book I brought with me to the moun- 
 tains. It was the only book I had there for years. 
 Once I got hold of a regular dime hair-raiser some one, 
 surveyor or trader, had dropped on the trail ; but it 
 couldn't thrill me like the stories in my book. I 
 think you would write that with a capital B." 
 
 "You mean the Bible?" 
 
 He nodded. "Yes, it's a great book, as my saddle- 
 maker used to say, although he didn't read in it. 
 But his mother used to, when he was a kid, and I've
 
 The Man 307 
 
 always fancied that had something to do with his 
 respect for it." 
 
 Alison Doane was silent, intent apparently on her 
 knitting; but she was not counting this time. She 
 was thinking what a many-sided man was this Robert 
 Collamore. No wonder the saddle-maker found him 
 interesting. 
 
 " How long did you keep Solomon ? " she said at last. 
 
 "Until he grew too large to have around. He used 
 to put his two paws about my neck and hang on for 
 dear life no small weight his hind legs dragging 
 on the ground. And then he reverted to his type. 
 It wouldn't have been safe to keep him any longer; 
 but he tided me over those nine months. Now tell 
 me something about your road to Paradise that is, 
 if you will." 
 
 "Were you ever in Annapolis?" 
 
 "Yes, once, several years ago." 
 
 "Then you don't know the old Yard, I mean before 
 the new buildings were put up?" 
 
 " No, that was long before I made acquaintance with 
 civilization." 
 
 "I was born there. Evelyn's father was county 
 judge and my father was clerk of his courts. You 
 remember the old gate? That is still there." 
 
 "Yes, distinctly." 
 
 "My road to Paradise led through that gate. In- 
 side there were long avenues of great trees, and 
 'Officers' Row', and a glimpse of the Chesapeake, the 
 old sea wall, and the fascinating ships beyond." 
 
 "And you used to sail away on those ships to won- 
 derful lands, didn't you?" 
 
 "Now, how do you know that?" Her face grew 
 bright and flushed with the recollection.
 
 308 Out of the Silences 
 
 "Because you're the kind that makes just such 
 voyages. I did, too, when I used to read in my old 
 fragment of a Book about the ' ships of Tarshish ' 
 which, I take it, the real Solomon commandeered 
 bringing in their cargoes : 'gold and silver, ivory and 
 apes, and peacocks.' I'd never seen so much as the 
 tail of an ape or peacock, nor a picture of them, but 
 my head used to swim reading about such things. I 
 was drunk with the joy of imagining them, especially 
 the apes and peacocks." 
 
 "Then you know." She spoke joyously. "I'll tell 
 you some more. It seemed to me as if within the 
 Gate the bugles were always blowing clear, beautiful 
 notes, and there was some sort of music all the time, 
 of bird or band. It was such a joy to me to stand 
 there beside it with my old nurse, 'Phemie, and watch 
 what passed through it: cadets, and middies, and 
 sailors, and officers in their blue and gold, and, every 
 June, bridal processions that used to fare so merrily 
 from old Saint Anne's to the Yard. I can see, even 
 now, all that shimmer of bride-white and the glitter 
 of epaulettes and swords. I can hear the music this 
 very minute, here in this wilderness silence." She 
 paused, seemingly lost in remembrance. 
 
 "But there was one great mystery, so solemn, so 
 over-shadowing to my child's soul. I used to watch 
 the long train of the military funeral, arms reversed, 
 passing through that Gate to the sound of muffled 
 drums. In a way, that shadow has never been 
 lifted; I can't account for that. But my road to 
 Paradise," she looked at him with a serene smile 
 and quiet eyes, "only led through that Gate. The 
 road itself was a long, long road." 
 
 "Tell me more, will you?" Robert Collamore's
 
 The Man 309 
 
 voice was deeply earnest. But she answered rather 
 lightly these were the sudden changes to which he 
 could not easily accustom himself : 
 
 "That was only one station on the way that I have 
 told you about. You know there must be just as 
 many ' stations ' on the road to" Paradise as to Calvary, 
 don't you ? " 
 
 The man simply nodded assent. He knew now 
 that all the lightness covered depths of experience. 
 He knew she was like himself in this. 
 
 "No, I'm not going to tell you my next station on 
 the road till you have told me yours if you will?" 
 she said, imitating his tone towards her. 
 
 He laughed out at that. "Oh, well, if you're going 
 to 'trade' about experiences on the road, I'll surely 
 meet you halfway. Perhaps two words will tell you 
 more about my boyhood and manhood than anything 
 I can say; they are 'hardship' and 'endurance.' 
 They cover many, many years." 
 
 "May I know something of those years?" 
 
 He hesitated to speak. 
 
 "I am wondering if the telling could give you any 
 real idea, any satisfaction. A man goes down into 
 the arena of life to fight. A woman I can't con- 
 ceive of her knowing anything about such fighting." 
 
 "We women don't always make our fight in public 
 like men, but we have our struggle, many of us, just 
 the same. We're human, you know." 
 
 "Yes, I know; but you don't fight in our way. 
 Mine has been a long struggle to get on my feet." 
 
 She might have retorted, "So has mine", but she 
 knew it was no time to speak. She was hoping he 
 would be more definite about himself. 
 
 "I don't believe you can understand it even if I
 
 3IO Out of the Silences 
 
 tell you. To lie in a snowdrift for warmth and to save 
 yourself from freezing ; to go hungry rather than beg ; 
 to starve, almost, at times ; to succumb, exhausted, 
 parched with thirst in the desert ; to live alone with 
 the cattle on the range; to round them up in the 
 bitter weather ; to look to them for companionship, no 
 other available ; to * cruise ' alone in a forest wilder- 
 ness, perhaps for months ; to bunk in with all sorts ; 
 make your bed in a manger, or a dugout, or trench. 
 Don't think I'm whimpering about life. It's only that 
 I can't think of you as knowing anything about such 
 an experience. I'm wondering if I had better say 
 much about it. It isn't my way." 
 
 "I know it isn't." She spoke understandingly. 
 
 "But, at least, my life was a free one. I was my own 
 master. I could go when and where I pleased, but 
 always with the end in view to get enough for mere 
 existence. Still there were joys, good ones too. I 
 actually used to enjoy the prospect of a stampede. 
 Sometimes the cattle become terrified, you know, 
 panic-stricken, and a stampede threatens. A severe 
 thunderstorm will do that. Or a few of them get 
 emotional ; think something unseen is going to hurt 
 them, and communicate their fear to the others. 
 At such times I used to measure myself, had to, 
 against the brute herd. It was the psychology of 
 the thing that was so intensely interesting to me, 
 although I knew no more of book psychology than the 
 cattle I attempted to quiet. 
 
 "I can hear even now their uneasy stirring at the 
 approach of a storm ; I can see the movements, I 
 used to call them 'rudderless/ Then I used to go in 
 and out among them, whistling low and serenely. 
 They knew my presence ; the human unit comforted
 
 The Man 311 
 
 them. Some one, something was there of power to be 
 a rudder for them. Then when the tempest of the 
 plains broke, with lightning zigzagging, blue, Gee, 
 what lightning ! and the thunder literally crashing 
 to earth, as if its mere sound could crush us all, man 
 and beasts, it was a man's eye, alert, commanding, 
 hypnotic, his low cool whistle, in the dead silence be- 
 tween the thunder roll and another crash, that held 
 the hundreds there where they belonged kept them 
 from stampeding. I rarely had to shoot to prevent 
 a stampede." 
 
 Alison Doane began to understand what he meant 
 when he said she could not enter into such experience 
 as his. This was a man's experience; it belonged 
 with the man-force in creation. 
 
 "But I'm talking you blind," he said half apolo- 
 getically. 
 
 She had dropped the stocking into her lap, her hands 
 were folded over it. Her eyes were fixed on the man 
 whom she knew as a little lad. In her mind's eye she 
 saw him again, lifting his dog to his shoulders ; saw 
 him leave the hut ; lay the animal across the pony, 
 fling himself on and disappear, with Long John follow- 
 ing. What a life had been his! As she did not 
 answer, he spoke again. 
 
 "Now for your second station; fair play, you 
 know." 
 
 She thought about it a moment before speaking. 
 This man was no strangef ; she had known him ever 
 since she was sixteen at least, she felt she had. 
 She decided she could trust him. Neither would he 
 think she was "whimpering" about life. 
 
 "I lost my mother when I was eleven, and my 
 father when I was nearly eighteen. Evelyn was all
 
 312 Out of the Silences 
 
 I had left of blood relations. She offered me her 
 home, but I wanted to live my life in my own way " 
 
 "Same here," he said, interrupting her. 
 
 "A life of dependence would have been no life for 
 me." She waited a minute, hesitating to make her 
 decision. Yes, she would tell him all. 
 
 "My father was almost obsessed with a desire to 
 invest his small property in this, that, and the other. 
 There were bird-lime men aplenty to snare him. He 
 was always telling me of what he was doing to pro- 
 vide handsomely for me. When he died I found my- 
 self the inheritor of all he left in this world debts. 
 They amounted to nearly ten thousand dollars." 
 
 She looked at him almost appealingly. "You 
 know, they say the greatest thing in life is love ; but 
 isn't there one thing more than life honor?" 
 
 Collamore was too moved to answer. He would 
 not show her how much. He could not trust his voice 
 at just that moment ; he knew it would shake. He 
 was thinking of that night at the Old Lake Post when 
 he trusted this woman to meet him with the same 
 trust he had in her, believing her ideals to be the 
 same. How she was living up, all^ unconsciously, 
 to that trust ! 
 
 "I did the best I could. I qualified for a position 
 in the Treasury Department and obtained one. Then 
 I told my father's creditors if they would trust me I 
 would, in time, pay them with interest. They did. 
 I paid them to the last cent. It took me eighteen 
 years eighteen years out of my girlhood and young 
 womanhood. 
 
 " I was treasury expert for ten years of the time. 
 I handled money mouldy, chewed, burnt-to-ashes, 
 water-soaked money, and redeemed it in part, bringing
 
 The Man 313 
 
 joy, I hope, to many a troubled man or woman. I 
 worked till my soul loathed the sight, the sound, of 
 money in the concrete. I worked day in day out till 
 I thought the monotony would kill me ; then," she 
 smiled archly, "/ stampeded, all by myself. You 
 see, in reality, I was a herd, a herd of revolted senti- 
 ments, ideas, outlooks. I had been in the strait- 
 jacket of routine for all those years, looking forward 
 to the time when, pensioned, I might breathe freely. 
 It took courage to give up that prospect. 
 
 "I remember I stood at an upper window of the 
 Treasury Building, looking into space as I thought, 
 for my sight was turned inwards on myself, my 
 trouble, my indecision; and suddenly I was aware 
 that the clouds, which had settled over the city, were 
 parting and above them and through them the top 
 of the Monument began to brighten in the sunshine 
 it caught and held. Somehow, that gave me courage 
 to act and act at once." 
 
 : She took a long breath. The man opposite, lean- 
 ing forward, his arms along his knees, his hands 
 clasped between them, involuntarily drew hi his. He, 
 too, felt that deliverance ; in the light of it, his own 
 experience seemed as naught. 
 
 "When were you free?" was all he said. 
 
 "About six months ago. I had saved something 
 out of those years, and I have a passion for out-of- 
 doors which I could not indulge myself in ; I used to 
 work through my vacations for the extra money. I 
 felt that if I could take up some piece of land in Min- 
 nesota at a reasonable price, I could have a little home 
 there and, at least, live. After I knew my father had 
 invested in some pine lands in that State, I hoped to 
 redeem them from the hands of others. That was
 
 314 Out of the Silences 
 
 not to be ; but, at least, I could see them. So I took 
 the proceeds of the land, eight hundred dollars, 
 sloughed off my old working skin and came out with 
 my cousins to Minnesota where, by the way, I stayed 
 with your saddle-maker a whole month " 
 
 " McGillie told me you did ; Kinni-kinnik told him." 
 
 "He did? Why didn't you tell me so?" she de- 
 manded, taken unawares. 
 
 "Because I knew if I waited long enough you would 
 tell me ; it comes with better grace from you." 
 
 She began to wonder if, by any possibility, he could 
 know of her in connection with that episode of the 
 dog and his boyhood. She thought not. There was 
 no way of his knowing ; the saddle-maker never wrote 
 letters, and Stella knew nothing of their conversation. 
 For a moment she thought rapidly both in a circle 
 and a straight line before she answered. At any rate 
 she would give him the message. She played for 
 time a little. 
 
 " Your saddle-maker seemed to look on this northern 
 wilderness from the Turtle Mountains to Groundhouse 
 as bounded by you, McGillie, Kinni-kinnik, and all his 
 old Indian friends ; and as he had told me about all 
 of you, and I told him I would try to look up Kinni- 
 kinnik at the New Mission, if my cousins remained 
 long enough, why he took it for granted, I suppose, 
 that you, too, might look them up. He said you were 
 going from the Turtle Mountains to Ottawa, and 
 from there 'north' he didn't say when or where; 
 but it was natural enough for the old man to think it 
 possible for me to run across you somewhere on my 
 indefinite travels, as," she added with a glint of fun 
 in her eyes, "I happened to." 
 . "Happened? Do you believe in chance?"
 
 The Man 315 
 
 It was an unexpected question, put abruptly and in 
 no particularly gentle tones. It quenched all the fun. 
 She realized she must answer this time without 
 subterfuge. 
 
 "No." 
 
 He took a long breath. "I feel better." 
 
 This was all he said, and left the woman to inter- 
 pret his words as she might. A right interpretation, 
 in such case, depends very generally on the make- 
 up character, temperament, and depth of insight 
 into another's character and temperament of the 
 woman to whom they are said. 
 
 "Mr. Plunket ," she began, but was interrupted 
 by such a peal of laughter that she looked at him in 
 amazement. 
 
 "'Scuse me, but I never in all my life heard Bill 
 Plunket called 'Mister' ; somehow that's a misfit." 
 
 "I don't see why. Of course I couldn't call him 
 ' Plunket ' or ' Bill ' ; and what is more I didn't want to, 
 for if ever there was a gentleman in this world he is 
 one." Her words showed slight resentment at which 
 Robert Collamore smiled. 
 
 "Of course he is. God's noblemen are always 
 gentlemen. But, you see, being bush-bred and range- 
 bred, I never associate gentleman with 'Mister.* 
 The man who is a man, decent, brave, cool-headed, 
 gentle, honest, a good fighter, and a better hater, as 
 well as an all-round good comrade, never gets 'mis- 
 tered' with us. It's only my point of view, however, 
 and I mustn't expect you to share it." 
 
 It was Alison Doane's turn to smile. "Just give 
 me time and the loan of your range-bred glasses once 
 in a while, and I think I shall get it. Anyway, Mr. 
 Plunket and my saddle-maker "
 
 316 Out of the Silences 
 
 "Not yours ; he is mine; always has been mine." 
 
 She knew he was teasing. "And you'll let me share 
 him with you?" 
 
 "I'll see; perhaps sometime. What was it you 
 were going to say about our 'Mr. Plunket'?" 
 
 "He told me to tell you if ever I should see you " 
 
 "What made him think of saying that? How 
 could he have any reason for thinking we should meet 
 anywhere on this earth?" 
 
 She realized at once he was trying to enmesh her 
 by this question, trying to find out if she had ever 
 heard of him, Robert Collamore, before she made 
 acquaintance with the saddle-maker. 
 
 She was not ready to gratify him, not yet. She 
 wanted to wait till just before he left her. This give- 
 and-take was so delightful ; this finding out little by 
 little about each other, man and woman who had seen 
 each other as boy and girl although all unknown 
 to him in such peculiar circumstances more than 
 twenty years ago. 
 
 She gave him Bill Plunket's message verbatim. 
 
 "He said, 'Tell him from me to let me know 'bout 
 that war business as soon as he knows himself.' I 
 thought from that you must have some war work in 
 view, perhaps in the interest of the Canadian govern- 
 ment." 
 
 "I have, in a way." 
 
 He waited to let that statement sink in for a 
 moment before telling her the whole truth. His time 
 was short ; but ten days, now, before he left for Val 
 Cartier. He was waiting for the arrival of Long John. 
 He knew the time had come to test this woman, who 
 by her very frankness baffled him, as to how deeply 
 she cared for him.
 
 The Alan 317 
 
 She looked at him inquiringly as if waiting for 
 something more definite, but without any indication 
 of emotional disturbance. Very evidently the sig- 
 nificance of his statement did not sink in. 
 
 "I fancied you had. So many of our own have 
 felt they must, and have had to cross the border to do 
 it." She spoke almost bitterly. He knew her 
 patriotism. They had talked the situation over 
 together, and he knew her position hi this matter. 
 
 "I took my own way the way that was made 
 plain to me. I am going from here to Val Cartier to 
 enlist in the Canadian overseas forces. McGillie and 
 a few of our Indians go with me." 
 
 He spoke in a matter-of-fact way, quietly, not look- 
 ing at her, for he was opening the stove top to drop 
 in his cigar end. Before straightening himself he 
 raised his eyes to her face. 
 
 She was looking at him intently, with no sur- 
 prise evident ; just a steady fixing of her eyes on 
 him, the pupils dilating till the blue showed black. 
 Her color, however, so clear and delicate always, and 
 beautifully deepened when she grew animated, was 
 gone, washed out, wiped out. But even as he looked 
 at her it came back, creeping at first into her cheeks, 
 then surging up her temples to the curve of the heavy 
 dark hair above them. 
 
 When she spoke her voice was clear and steady : 
 
 "If a man can, it is the only thing for him to do, I 
 know." 
 
 Robert Collamore was baffled. He did not sit 
 down again for it was late. 
 
 "I mustn't disturb the Dunstanes any more than I 
 can help," he said, putting on his blanket coat ; " they 
 are the best ever, but for that very reason no decent
 
 318 Out of the Silences 
 
 man wants to practise Indian tricks on them in order 
 to steal in at night without noise and I've been 
 doing it the last four weeks." 
 
 She smiled at that. She, too, knew his noiseless 
 Indian ways. So many times she had looked around 
 during her walks to the " great spruces," to find him 
 walking behind her ; or, coming hi from the lean-to 
 with an armful of pine boughs, found him seated 
 in the hogshead chair he had preempted, reading. 
 . "Good-night," she said; "come in to-morrow for 
 supper. I shall have a famous dish ready. Ba'tiste 
 brought it to me this morning. It's hanging in the 
 lean-to at present." 
 
 "I'll be here, sure thing. I wouldn't, shouldn't, 
 oughtn't, and couldn't if I would, miss that treat. I 
 know your top-of-the-stove roasts. No," he said, 
 putting her, the flat of his hand on her shoulder, 
 away from the door, "don't come any nearer; it's a 
 good forty below to-night, but no wind fortunately. 
 Keep up a good fire." 
 
 6 
 
 The night was the coldest thus far of the winter, 
 forty below. It was crystal clear, the star shine mag- 
 nificent, every golden light-ray of the far distant suns 
 accentuated in the frost atmosphere of the subarctic 
 north. 
 
 Warmly dressed and wrapped in the "comforts", 
 Alison Doane sat throughout that night by the stove, 
 "stoking" from time to time from the large pile of 
 wood the half-breed had brought in before supper. 
 During all the hours of that long northern night she, 
 as it were, "watched" beside her own heart and soul. 
 
 She wanted to be sure that what she felt for Robert 
 Collamore was what she had been waiting all her life
 
 The Man 319 
 
 to feel for some one. She wanted no illusion, no vain 
 imaginings to intervene, casting a transitory glamour 
 upon it. She wanted to know if this, which, making 
 itself known in her consciousness through the shock 
 of the impending and immediate loss of this man's 
 joyous companionship, had suddenly showed its full 
 face to her, was the real thing. She was going to 
 look it directly in the face, even as it looked her, in 
 order to make sure. 
 
 She sought both without and within for light. 
 Other women had loved this man. She knew of two, 
 a half-breed and an Indian ; and although he had re- 
 pulsed their advances, made according to the love in 
 their hearts, nevertheless he had kept during all these 
 years both their devotion and their respect. She 
 told herself this was one test of the man ; it satisfied 
 her. 
 
 Of white women who had loved him, she knew 
 none, nor did she care to know. What were they to 
 her ? What to her were even the women whom, in all 
 probability, he had loved ? What had she to do with 
 them? Nothing, she told herself. All that con- 
 cerned her was what she felt towards this man, whose 
 presence she was about to lose out of her life ; what 
 she hoped but dared not believe, for he had given 
 her no special cause for either hoping or believing 
 he might possibly feel towards her. She could not 
 know. 
 
 She had not looked at him or at herself through 
 any light other than the daily one of delightful ac- 
 quaintance, rather intimate because of the surround- 
 ings and circumstances in which they were thrown 
 together. She had been revelling in the fact, so far 
 as he was concerned, that she was playing a delightful
 
 320 Out of the Silences 
 
 game of hide-and-seek ; she knew him, but he did 
 not recognize her. And now the time was come that 
 it was all of no avail, either the disclosure of herself 
 to him, or the fact that she was enjoying in this new 
 acquaintance an interesting dual personality the 
 man-of-the-Present and the boy-of-the-Past. Some- 
 times he was the one, again the other ; then both so 
 evasively combined that she could not quite find her 
 bearings in talking with and addressing him. He was 
 to her man-boy and boy-man, according as her mood 
 changed to suit his, or to adjust itself to all the imagin- 
 ings of her girlhood and womanhood. 
 
 She knew, looking the newly discovered fact 
 squarely in the face, that the boy had filled many 
 of her waking thoughts and a few times her sleep- 
 enwrapped consciousness. Or was it, perhaps, the 
 waking hours that were sleep-filled and the dream- 
 hours the reality ? He had come to her in her dreams, 
 but always in search of her in the woods; always 
 with a gift in his hand that he was pressing on her. 
 It was never the shell which she knew now to be the 
 sacred shell of some Indian medicine-woman. Car- 
 mastic said it was his mother's ; but the old medicine- 
 man rambled at times ; he was too old to be reliable 
 as to memories. It was always something she could 
 not see, could not grasp ; only she was aware it was 
 a gift, and for her. 
 
 Many a time, coming home from the Treasury 
 Building to her room in Georgetown, in the late after- 
 noon of a winter's day when the dank mists from the 
 Potomac were rising and filling the whole city with 
 dreariness, the trees dripping moisture, the thought 
 of the hut in the pine woods, of the music and dancing, 
 swept away all realization of her environment, And
 
 The Man 321 
 
 time and again, when the dull routine of her working 
 life threatened to atrophy her innate enthusiasm for 
 what each new day might bring her in the way of an 
 acquaintance, a book, a new picture, or a sunset 
 beyond the Potomac, the remembrance of the dog, 
 and the coming of that boy, his heart torn with 
 grief, brought with it healthful diversion of mind. 
 
 In the past, it was always the anticipation of each 
 new day, the looking forward, with her vivid imagina- 
 tion as motive power, to what was a possibility in 
 each day, that kept her so fresh-hearted, so youthful 
 in looks, so alert in mind and body. 
 
 But now? Now, suddenly, there was complete 
 collapse of all her dream world, for without this man's 
 presence she could not anticipate the days. 
 
 "So it has come to this," she said to herself. 
 
 And now he had enlisted ; this was a fact. He was 
 going over late in spring or during the early summer. 
 The flood tide of war would not recede ; it was advanc- 
 ing overwhelmingly upon all that European land which 
 she had so longed to see. There was no lingering on 
 the part of the men training in Val Cartier. A few 
 months, and they were off these strong men of the 
 West and North with eyes keen for prairie distances, 
 and a sight that could discern the tiniest markings on 
 a mosquito's wing ; with arms and hands that could 
 clear the forest, till the land; build a log cabin, a 
 railroad, bridge an abyss ; wield a scythe as well as a 
 bayonet, and work a machine gun with the same 
 vigor with which they could handle a miner's pick. 
 And Robert Collamore was one of these. 
 
 After many hours she was at last passive, not 
 thinking at all, only feeling. 
 
 When at last the little cabin began slowly to fill
 
 322 Out of the Silences 
 
 with a vaguelmmaterial light, that in the north is 
 called dawn, she knew she had made sure. She knew 
 she loved this man upon whose trail her thought had 
 followed hard all these years ; knew she loved him 
 for time and for eternity. 
 
 In the light of this love, she knew that his going 
 could make no difference so far as the unchangeable- 
 ness of this love was concerned. She recognized, 
 moreover, that this love was her love. She knew 
 nothing of his real feeling towards her, but that did 
 not matter now. All her life, if she must go softly 
 along her special trail, she would know that this love 
 of hers for him must go with her. This was her comfort. 
 
 At sunrise she renewed the fire, which she had re- 
 plenished almost hourly during the night, and lay 
 down to get a little sleep before facing a new day. 
 
 7 
 
 He ran in upon her unexpectedly about four the 
 next afternoon while she was busy with the prepara- 
 tion of their simple supper. She heard his signal, a 
 tap on the window, and, as the door opened, his 
 cheery voice: 
 
 "Come on out, do, for a walk to the spruces. It's 
 only fifteen below now, a clear rise of twenty -five de- 
 grees since last night, and no wind. The west looks 
 as if it were staging for a good sunset, and we mustn't 
 miss that." 
 
 He stepped inside, closing the door. He sniffed 
 vigorously. "That ' something' smells bully." 
 
 "It won't smell so bully if I leave it to its own 
 destruction, so make your choice sunset or supper ; 
 but I want to go just the same." 
 
 Her back was towards him as she leaned over the 
 stove. When, at the last words, she turned, Colla-
 
 The Man 323 
 
 more looked at her, as Carmastic had once looked at 
 him, in amazement at the radiance of her face. His 
 first thought was purely masculine: "She can look 
 like this and yet she knows I am going." The next 
 was quite another. 
 
 After his eyes had rested for a full minute on her 
 face, he took in the fact of her white dress, white 
 sweater and white knitted sash looped through an 
 exquisitely tinted pink and white buckle buckle, no ! 
 
 "No," he told himself; "that's no buckle." 
 
 His thought ran like lightning over his past, il- 
 luminating every portion of his long trail for the 
 young girl in the hut who had been kind to his dog ; 
 who had been his boy's ideal of all that was best and 
 sweetest in life since he saw her sitting on the floor of 
 that hut, the bitch's head on her lap. 
 
 No; this was no buckle. He recognized it: the 
 shell belonging to Carmastic's old sister, Flying Loon, 
 and her peace gift to him. It was the sacred shell 
 belonging to the old squaw's mother ; the same shell 
 he had thrust into that girl's hand after following her 
 along the trail through the pine forest twenty-two 
 years ago. There could be no mistake ; they were 
 too rare among both whites and Indians. Moreover, 
 he recalled that motion of her hand when he left for 
 Montreal, her " Good-by, good-by." It was all clear to 
 him now. 
 
 In the presence of such a mystery of life's leadings, 
 the warm air of the cabin seemed about to suffocate 
 him. 
 
 He opened the door and, making no excuse, went out 
 into the clear cold. He walked to the edge of the 
 bluff and looked into space, seeing nothing but the 
 woman's radiant face and the divinely beautiful tints
 
 324 Out of the Silences 
 
 of the sacred shell at her belt. He realized she was 
 not smiling as she looked at him ; but it seemed to 
 the man, looking off into space and seeing nothing 
 but that face, as if the very flame of life, burning its 
 brightest in the woman's soul, were illumining the 
 delicately tinted shell of the flesh, so transfiguring it. 
 
 Just so the sacred shell had looked to him when, 
 long years ago in the Turtle Mountains, he kindled a 
 bit of birch bark in the night, and holding it behind 
 the convex surface saw the fine texture of pink and 
 white transfused and transfigured into a thing of un- 
 earthly beauty. 
 
 Had she known all the time? Had she sought him, 
 as he had sought her, through all the trails of memory 
 and the world ? Had they both come into this wilder- 
 ness of the great north to find each other ? He would 
 soon find out. He went back to the cabin. 
 
 " Almost ready?" he called, as he opened the door 
 for the second tune. 
 
 "Yes. I'll set the pot off the stove till I get back ; 
 but your supper will be late." 
 
 "Never mind for once; all the better appetite. 
 Got enough on ? Yes ? Well er suppose you 
 take that red thing, muffler you call it, you wear 
 around your neck sometimes, and sometimes around 
 your waist. I never knew a thing like that could be 
 put to so many uses ; it takes a woman to invent them. 
 It's liable to drop five degrees to every mile, after 
 sunset in this part of the world. You may need it." 
 8 
 
 Out into the silences they went, the frozen silences 
 of the great North Land. They went swiftly, he 
 trailing her ; went silently. It seemed a desecration 
 for either of them to speak an unnecessary word.
 
 The Man 325 
 
 Through the forest of cedar and jack-pine and 
 birch, the west began to send its shafts of sun- 
 set light. As they neared the " great spruces," there 
 was radiated from the illumined bark of the south- 
 westerly exposure of their trunks a dull, reddish- 
 brown, misty glow that filled all the atmosphere to 
 the height of the lowest branches. Above it, the bare 
 anatomy of birch here and there was finely etched into 
 the solid background of the flaming west. Every cedar 
 was a solid blotch against the crimson, and, across 
 a natural clearing, all the spruce tops "jagged" black 
 against blood red. 
 
 They reached the " great spruces " and stood beneath 
 them to watch the glory in the west. As yet neither 
 of them had spoken, for neither, unbeknown to the 
 other, felt it to be necessary. 
 
 Together they watched the background of changing 
 sky deepen from red to purple. Together they 
 marvelled at its shift from purple to pale gold, daffodil 
 yellow, orange-tawny yellow one mass of solid 
 color. They saw that fade slowly at last into bluish 
 gray which, in time, would deepen into the blue- 
 black of a northern night. 
 
 Alison shivered slightly. The sudden drop in tem- 
 perature, that Collamore had predicted, was making 
 itself felt. 
 
 "You're cold," he said. He thought he was speak- 
 ing in tones of the last trump, so clear his voice 
 sounded in the darkening woods, so loud the thump- 
 ing of his heart. Of a sudden with his left arm he 
 flung wide his ample blanket-coat. 
 
 "Come under my blanket, Alison," he said, and 
 waited for her to come. 
 
 He knew she knew th^ full significance of the
 
 326 Out of the Silences 
 
 words. He had told her of their deep meaning to 
 an Indian when he loved. For one moment she 
 hesitated; then drew close to his side. She was 
 enfolded and warmed against his heart. 
 
 And there under the great spruces they stood while 
 the fault stars came out, and in the silent wilderness 
 they drank together of the springs of life which 
 is love. 
 
 VAL CARTIER 
 
 i 
 
 During the week that followed, until Long John's 
 arrival with the mail, and for the four days after 
 while Collamore waited to return with him to Ground- 
 house, the man and woman, whose long trails had at 
 last met and merged, lived a lifetime that passed as 
 an hour. 
 
 Robert Collamore's heart and soul expanded in the 
 sunshine of the presence of his love ; he opened both 
 to her, wide. There was nothing he desired to hide 
 from her. Human he was, very, a "rank sinner" as 
 he once described himself to her, but on the whole he 
 had tried to walk upright, " face forward ", his back 
 to what he regretted, and his whole manhood out- 
 reaching to better ends, to helpfulness towards others,, 
 to as he said to her "some real living." 
 
 He told her of Carmastic's design of the Path of 
 Life, how what the old Indian said to him had in- 
 fluenced him for the past twenty years and more. 
 He told her of its temptations drawing the diagram 
 for her in the back of her notebook that he had 
 sometimes withstood, to which, sometimes, he had 
 yielded : the wiles of women, the lure of fire-water. 
 Of the "freezing cold, the hunger that starves, the.
 
 The Man 327 
 
 scorching heat that parches with thirst", of these she 
 already knew. 
 
 "But I never followed any one of them so far as to 
 lose the trail, Alie," he said to her that last evening 
 together, "the trail that I was sure was leading me 
 to what I have now in you. You see," he hesi- 
 tated, "I had never lived until I met you." 
 
 She looked at him inquiringly, rather surprised at 
 just such a statement. If any man had really 
 "lived", she would have said this man had, because 
 of his varied experience, his loving and hating, his 
 fighting and forgiving, his compassion for others, his 
 amusing undying big grudges against those who had 
 done him petty wrongs. 
 
 He nodded emphatically. 
 
 "Every man has his hour, and this is mine. One 
 hour, so far, in a whole lifetime. It's worth living for, 
 dying for, girl! And I expect to have one more of 
 another kind, when I'm over there and get my hands 
 on the throat of some slayer of old women and little 
 children." 
 
 He looked into her face and smiled. 
 
 "What more can a man ask for in this world? 
 This one hour here with you. And then my luck 
 think of it! to be one infinitesimal human atom 
 sandwiched in between the upheaved, broken-in- 
 pieces, red-lava-overflowed strata of two ages in 
 humanity's history ; and, just at the right moment, 
 to be given a fighting chance to strike one blow 
 for the survival of what should be most fit for this 
 world. Two , such hours I say the very gods may 
 envy me." 
 
 He lighted a cigar and smoked placidly. It did 
 Alison Doane's heart and soul good to see him.
 
 328 Out of the Silences 
 
 "I fancy Mrs. Carrolly will be disappointed that 
 she hasn't a wedding reception for you in immediate 
 prospect." 
 
 "I can hear her sputter to Phil about that 'wasted 
 opportunity.' She is so kind at heart, and has 
 wanted to do so much for me that I couldn't accept. 
 I'd be willing to wager that when I get her answer she 
 will insist on my coming in the circumstances to her." 
 
 "Will you go?" he spoke abruptly. 
 
 "Why, no, Bob, how can you think that? You 
 know, hi your old Book, there is a little book of 
 Ruth" 
 
 "Never read that. Tell me about it." 
 
 She told him ; a simple enough story which con- 
 tains, however, what is possibly the finest expression 
 of woman's devotion in the whole range of literature. 
 
 "And so, Bob dear, I, too, can say, 'Your people 
 shall be my people/ and consequently there will be 
 no going to live with Evelyn after this. I shall stay 
 here till the lakes are free from ice, and then meet 
 you at Val Cartier just before you go. Afterwards 
 I shall go back to the New Mission ; there is plenty 
 for me to do there. And next winter I shall still be 
 there, only I've half promised Mrs. Dunstanes she 
 has really been lovely to me in everything ; so dear 
 and sensible, you know, about all this selfishness of 
 ours to spend the three hard winter months up 
 here with her. 
 
 " And then, too, I know Phil's interest in the new 
 project. You see, I shall have a canteen, like the 
 women overseas, up here in this wilderness. Mr. 
 Dunstanes says there will be loggers and teamsters 
 coming and going next year ; and the men are so 
 appreciative of the little comforts only women can
 
 The Man 329 
 
 give them. I've already found that put. Oh, I've 
 work enough cut out to fill every day as well as 
 evening." 
 
 He reached for her hands, and held them close. 
 
 "I may as well tell you, Alison what you must 
 know that all mine is yours. I've seen to that up 
 here, taking no chances between here and Ground- 
 house. The Dunstanes and one of the men are 
 witnesses. And, moreover, when I get back into 
 civilization, the first thing will be to make you sole 
 manager, while I am away, of whatever is mine, with 
 use of same in case you need it for yourself or 'our 
 people.' I don't want them to suffer in any way, 
 now that McGillie and Chum and Kinni-kinnik's 
 brothers all go with me. You will know the right 
 thing to do every tune." 
 
 Her eyes filled, but she did not speak. 
 
 He laughed out happily. "Oh, but you are bully, 
 Alison Doane. I know all the bully things you will 
 do for them better than I could do them." He 
 drew her to him, to hold her close while he whispered : 
 
 "Tell me true, do you understand why I do not 
 ask you to have the wedding now before I go, rather 
 than to wait till I get back?" 
 
 Then Alison Doane, putting him away from her 
 that she might look into his face, and with both hands 
 on his shoulders, spoke out of the fineness of a loving 
 woman's understanding of the man who was her life : 
 
 "Bob, dear, I understand. I am your wife in heart 
 and soul. Indeed, I think I must have been ever 
 since that time when I took you as a boy into my 
 heart. No words of man, pronounced by man, can 
 make me more your wife in that way than I am 
 now. And you," she looked him directly in the
 
 33O Out of the Silences 
 
 eyes, "are what I call consecrated. When your sum- 
 mons came there in the Turtle Mountains, it was 
 as you have told me, consecration. It is no time to 
 put this matter of 'wedding' each other first. That 
 can wait. That makes no difference in my love for 
 you, or in yours for me." 
 
 His face grew white under the stress of his feeling. 
 How she had read him, met his ideals ! 
 
 "You are right, Alie. You understand. What we 
 feel for each other goes down deep into I thank 
 my Maker for it but I have no words to tell you. 
 Come here, to me." 
 
 2 
 
 Five months afterwards, on a July day, there came 
 slowly down the shed, where the troops from Val 
 Cartier were entraining, an old man, leaning heavily 
 on a cane. He was crippled with rheumatism. 
 With him was a woman whom many a man turned 
 to look after, for her face was like a benediction in 
 its expression of radiant serenity. Her arm was 
 linked in the old man's. 
 
 Alison Doane had taken the saddle-maker very 
 literally under her wing and escorted him from Min- 
 nesota to Val Cartier to see his "Son." 
 
 Collamore leaped from the steps of the train. He 
 had been afraid he might miss them. Yet, at one 
 time, for the space of a thought, he cried "Coward," 
 and wished for his own sake and Alison's he might 
 be spared the ordeal. 
 
 "Hi, there, Plunket," he cried out joyfully, waving 
 his hat and hands the sooner to attract their atten- 
 tion. "I was dead afraid you'd be late, both of you." 
 He was speaking to Plunket and pumping his hand, but 
 his eyes were on Alison, seeing which she was content.
 
 The Man 331 
 
 "'Tain't so easy gettin' here, Bob." Suddenly 
 he dashed the back of his hand across his eyes. 
 
 "Damn it all, Son, I want to go too. If I wasn't 
 so old, if it wasn't for these pesky rheumatics, I'd show 
 fight, an' an' show 'em an old man could could " 
 
 He was struggling painfully with his emotion, 
 ashamed and fearing to break down. But bracing 
 himself on his cane, he conquered. 
 
 "Give it to 'em, Bob!" He shouted so loud that 
 McGillie, hearing him, dashed from the train and 
 came plunging towards him through the crowd. 
 " Get yer dander up same as ye did when ye was 
 goin' to kill that Injun that did ye on the pony 
 trade. Ye'll get 'em then, or my name ain't Bill 
 Plunket. I can't take ye up by the slack o' yer shirt 
 as I did then an' hold ye back, even if I wanted to 
 which I don't. Hunk into 'em same as ye hunked 
 into McGillie that time in the Turtle Mountains when 
 ye fought for a girl, an' the folks to home will back 
 ye every time." 
 
 "You may bet your life I will, Plunket." 
 
 The starting signal was given. There followed a. 
 general handshaking. 
 
 The saddle-maker turned away then, that he might 
 not see the parting of the two he loved best on earth ; 
 but, Alison, catching him with both hands by his 
 bowed shoulders, turned him face about. She was 
 smiling bravely. 
 
 "Good-by, Bob; don't forget to look in the right 
 hand pocket of your rain coat. I tucked that long- 
 legged pair of socks in there." 
 
 The train moved out. She waved her hand. 
 
 Of such stuff are made the women of To-day who, 
 loving truly, give their all.
 
 33 2 Out of the Silences 
 
 THE WINGED WORD 
 
 Within twelve months many of the tribes of the 
 ; Great North sensed something of the truth. 
 
 The Montagnais about the headwaters of the 
 Saguenay, as well as the Indians of the St. John and 
 the Penobscot, knew of it. The ten thousand Chip- 
 pewa of Minnesota, on their own lands and Govern- 
 ment reservations, or foot-loose and wretched, yet 
 free, in groves and swamps, also knew White Earth, 
 Red Lake, Otter-tail, Pillager, Mille Lac : the Word 
 was whispered from one to the other. 
 
 Across the Dakota plains to the lone reservation 
 in that half -encircling bend of the Missouri, which 
 duplicates the Souris, the Word was carried as if on 
 wings. The Sioux knew of the Monstrosity to which 
 the white civilization had at last given birth, and all 
 the horror of its deformity. Thence, far westward 
 into Montana, among the foothills of the Rockies, 
 the Blackfeet heard and knew and considered the 
 White Man's burden. 
 
 Over the Canadian border, around the campfires 
 of the British Columbia Kootenais, the crucifixion 
 of a free humanity was spoken of with bated breath, 
 an echo thereof reaching even to the isolated band of 
 Bear-fighting Sioux in the mountainous district of 
 western Alberta. And from there, eastward, all 
 adown the far flung slope of the Great Divide to the 
 swampy shores of Hudson's Bay, the Word concern- 
 ing the Black Terror went forth by messenger, scout, 
 agent, hunter, trapper, trader, factor ; by rail, water, 
 steam, paddle, and electricity. 
 
 The Assiniboine and the Athabascan knew it, 
 and the Rocky Mountain S tonics. It came to the
 
 The Man 333 
 
 knowledge of Wood Cree, Swamp Cree, Plain Cree, 
 as many months before it had come to their poor 
 remnant from the Turtle Mountains, now living at 
 the New Mission where upon hut and tepee lay 
 the shadow of the Terror ; for because of it, their 
 "Son," together with Chum, with Colin McGillie, 
 Kinm-kinnik's brothers, and a few from the northern 
 tribes, had crossed the ocean with thousands of their 
 humankind to help throttle the hydra-headed Mon- 
 strosity of an unthinkable Tyranny.
 
 IV 
 
 IN THE HILLS OF FRANCE
 
 IV 
 
 IN THE HILLS OF FRANCE 
 
 i 
 
 WINTER silence is on the heights and in the little 
 valley, and on the plain, upon which it opens, now 
 covered with freshly fallen snow ; nor roar of gun nor 
 shriek of shell disturbs it. The air is crystal clear 
 and sunshine filled, unflecked, at this moment, by 
 bird or bird-machine. 
 
 Without warning a barrage is put down; followed 
 by drum fire, fire of machine guns, trench-mortar 
 fire, hell fire and some men are cut off in a salient. . . 
 2 
 
 Me Gillie salutes his commanding officer. Behind 
 McGillie are Chum and Kinni-kinnik's brothers, 
 statue-like, hands at helmets. 
 
 "Well, McGillie?" 
 
 "Me an' the Injuns, Sir, want to go through and 
 bring out Collamore alive or dead; he's my blood- 
 brother, Sir." 
 
 "Very well." 
 
 3 
 
 Sunset silence on hills and valley. The men, rest- 
 ing for a few hours behind the line, notice the flash 
 and flare of a fire kindled on the snowy hillside nearby 
 whore, in one of the smallest and most humble of 
 God's acres in France, are the newly made graves, 
 
 337
 
 338 Out of the Silences 
 
 the result of the day's work. They see silhouetted 
 against the reaching flames the crouching forms of 
 the Indians tending it. 
 
 ''What are they up to?" An officer, adjusting 
 his glass to observe them more closely, turned to his 
 aide. 
 
 "It's one of their customs; McGillie told me they 
 would do it if they got the chance. We had permis- 
 sion for them." 
 
 "McGillie is at the base hospital?" The officer 
 kept his eyes glued to the glass. 
 
 "Yes well shot up, though." 
 
 "Will he pull through?" 
 
 "They think so, but his day is over." 
 
 "I must see McGillie," the officer clapped to his 
 glass with decision; "he will be mentioned in orders 
 for the day and the rest of them," he added with 
 a nod in the direction of the hillside. 
 
 4 
 
 Night falls. The reflection of the firelight grows 
 dull. In the east the horizon is flooded with the 
 luminous white radiance that heralds a rising full 
 moon. From the hillside comes the sound of loud, 
 long wailing ; it pierces the cold air vibrant with 
 the continuous discharge of distant guns. 
 
 It is the death chant of the Indians mourning their 
 Son of the Silent Places who has come into his own. 
 
 THE SONG THAT WAS NEVER SUNG 
 
 i 
 
 There were quiet hours, quiet days, quiet nights, 
 sometimes they seemed eternal in their length, in 
 the cabin overlooking the North Lake after the com- 
 ing of the telegram, bringing the word which, for a
 
 In the Hills of France 339 
 
 time, froze the springs of life in a woman's heart. 
 Then the great silent land found voice in the break- 
 ing up of winter and the coming of spring which is 
 always on the very threshold of summer. 
 
 All the wilderness grew vocal with its waters free- 
 ing themselves from ice rill, rapid, shallow, torrent, 
 fall, the myriads of lakes, the marshes, the great 
 rivers ; each swelled the volume of sound with the 
 gradual passing of winter. There was a trickling, 
 tinkling, rippling, singing of little waters, a rushing 
 and roaring of rapid and cataract, but no hint other- 
 wise of spring, no swelling leaf-bud, no pricking of 
 grass blade, no cawing of crows, no whistling wings 
 of wild fowl. 
 
 There was no possibility of mail for two months. 
 The waterways of the north in the process of freeing 
 themselves from ice are untrustworthy highways for 
 man and beast. It is always so. 
 
 But in the last of May, three weeks before any mail 
 could be expected, the men at the mill saw an In- 
 dian in his canoe, paddling swiftly towards the bluff 
 where stood the foreman's hut. It was Long John 
 bringing the mail, and a special package from the front 
 for Alison Doane. 
 
 She had been trying to readjust her life during the 
 quiet of those winter days and nights ; in part she 
 had succeeded. She told herself that her word to 
 the man of her love, "Your people shall be my people," 
 should be proved by deeds to be no empty promise ; 
 for there was McGillie, who would be at home in a few 
 months, helpless, and Kinni-kinnik and her children 
 to be provided for ; there were the wives and children 
 of her two brothers to care for, and Chum's squaw 
 and pappooses all now at Groundhouse and the
 
 340 Out of the Silences 
 
 reservation, and each to be her special care hence- 
 forward. Her saddle-maker, also, who was growing so 
 old and crippled she must stand to him in Robert's 
 place ; and there was Stella to cheer and help onward 
 to independence. She was only waiting for the last 
 of June and settled conditions for making the water 
 journey thither. 
 
 When Long John appeared at her door he gave her 
 the package without a word. At the risk of life and 
 limb he had brought it up through a hundred miles 
 of almost impassable wilderness. She tried to thank 
 him, but she could only set abundant food before him. 
 Then, taking her package, she went out, walking 
 rapidly over to the woods where, more than two years 
 before, she and her beloved had drunk together of 
 the wellspring of love which is life. 
 
 There was no silence now, as then, for the air was 
 musical with the song of many waters. She took 
 her stand beneath the great spruces and opening her 
 package read : 
 
 2 
 
 From dugout to dugout ; that is a special fact in 
 my special life. It is a far cry from that river bench 
 of the Missouri to this ten by eighteen hole in the 
 ground in France ; but the sound carries far, for some- 
 how the above fact annihilates distance. 
 
 It is curious, but here in a foreign land, surrounded 
 by the fields of war's wreckage, I am reminded, and 
 more and more often, of my old-time days on the 
 prairies and the plains. 
 
 I was driving a provision wagon to the front yes- 
 terday. The shells were flying, one got a near drop
 
 In the Hills of France 341 
 
 on the tail of my cart, shrapnel falling. McGillie 
 was with me, and I was just saying to him that 
 I thought it looked like a good ''chicken" country, 
 when there came a sudden silence in the ear-splitting 
 chaos of sound, just like the lull in the midst of a 
 tempest on the plains. It's the one thing I can't 
 get used to here it's so dead quiet. In that short 
 breathless silence I actually saw over in the field a 
 "chicken" and heard its call; McGillie is witness. 
 It had the effect of a resurrection trump on both 
 of us. Then again the grinding shriek and roar 
 filled the air. 
 
 That momentary lull you might possibly have 
 counted ten in it gave time for a memory film to 
 develop in my consciousness, every detail of the 
 picture perfect. 
 
 Of course, I knew well enough I was driving a wagon 
 over a field in France and driving it mighty well, 
 if I do say it, considering the mud and shell holes. 
 But what I saw before me were the Dakota prairies in 
 spring ; their vast, treeless, grassy swells vividly green ; 
 the horizon line lost in the long ridges of crinkled 
 golden cloud masses lying low above an ocean of 
 changing sunset light. " And I heard the prairie 
 chickens calling from the knolls." 
 
 It's just like living in the Book, Alison, to see this 
 great marshalling of the tribes with the end in view 
 to wipe out other tribes. 
 
 What's the difference ? Call us Amalekites, Amor- 
 ites, Jebusites, Perizzites how I loved those jaw- 
 crackers when I was a kid ! or by our own names ; 
 it's all one in the end. And swords, slings, fire from 
 heaven, war chariots, plagues, all these, also, to the
 
 342 Out of the Silences 
 
 one end : the wiping out of tribal life that other tribes 
 may live. . . . 
 
 I wonder sometimes if the Vision of Ezekiel mightn't 
 have been a fighting plane (there go two of them now 
 in full flight, manoeuvring for a Gotha), and Jonah's 
 whale an ancient submarine? Don't laugh; it's 
 not at all unlikely; you remember there is nothing 
 new under the sun? Just read the accounts of both. 
 It's mighty interesting reading, let me tell you. You 
 needn't laugh either as in my mind's eye I see you 
 will if I tell you that, anyway, I know the first 
 bombs on this earth are recorded somewhere in the 
 Book annex, a part I never read until a few years ago 
 and don't take much stock in. But the bombs are all 
 right pitch and pig's grease. You'll find it in the 
 Apocrypha ; I don't know where Gee ! They've 
 got that Gotha, and inside our lines too. ... 
 
 I can't help wondering how long, how long ; whether 
 four years of this war wilderness, or forty, or four 
 hundred ? 
 
 Well, that's neither here nor there. I only know 
 that, ignorant of the way we are being led, there goes 
 before us, visible to the eyes of all the tribes, a pillar 
 of cloud by day battle smoke, the smoke of burn- 
 ing villages, gas clouds ; and by night a pillar of fire 
 shell fire, gun fire, the light of star shells, sometimes 
 the sudden fire curtain of the barrage. And because 
 of these two pillars, seen of us by day and by night, 
 we may not look upon God's face, not yet ; only, 
 I can tell this to you alone, I know that somehow 
 they are symbols of His presence as real to us as to 
 the Israelites of old.
 
 In the Hills of France 343 
 
 Thank God our Land has come in at last, but late, 
 late. There is no use crying over spilt milk lost 
 opportunities, loss of respect, loss of national manhood 
 in the eyes of the other tribes. At last we can begin, 
 as a nation, with the few thousands here, to redeem 
 these past two years and more of national silence by 
 blood sacrifice, the only way to wipe ^out our shame 
 and humiliation. And in time we, too, shall be 
 able to look God in the face again like men, 
 for we shall have quitted ourselves as such. This 
 is my faith. 
 
 I am to-day a "fully tested, experienced fighting 
 machine." And I intend to stay where this machine 
 can be of the most use in the fight. So you will 
 understand my remaining with the Canadian over- 
 seas force until our men shall have been trained into 
 just such machines as I am. Then I shall join up with 
 my own hi thankfulness of spirit. 
 
 The Indians, too, are a factor in this decision. I 
 don't want to leave them. We've trained together, 
 fought together, slept in shell craters half filled with 
 snow slush, and together sought shelter in the same 
 dugout. I shall stick to them as long as I can. 
 They're great ! 
 
 Smothering smoke, fire drift in our faces, scorch 
 of flame waves on our bodies. Holding my breath, 
 I held my head under the mud and ooze of the bog 
 pond into which we had driven the horses. We 
 ended by saving only ourselves; all else: animals, 
 houses, crops, swept clean away by that mighty flame 
 besom. 
 
 So it passed that miles-wide sheet of crisping
 
 344 Out of the Silences 
 
 roaring fire driven before a great wind over the 
 Dakota prairies. 
 
 A few of us had our baptism of fire yesterday ; for 
 me it was like reliving that experience of fourteen 
 years ago on the plains. 
 
 I didn't make the acquaintance of the New Testa- 
 ment until long years after I left the Mountain. 
 Then I found it slow, too tame (I was such a 
 born fighter!) in comparison with my fractional 
 part of the Old that dealt mainly with the warring 
 of the tribes. 
 
 I think I am beginning to understand something of 
 its meaning now in the light of this warfare. It is 
 a blinding light, Alison; so blinding that things, 
 events, grow "dark through excess of light." You 
 have experienced this when you have tried to look the 
 sun in the face for a second and then turned your 
 darkened sight on a landscape, haven't you ? 
 
 I think I am beginning to comprehend something 
 of the meaning of a certain blood redemption chron- 
 icled there in the new version of the old Hebrew 
 blood sacrifice. 
 
 Strange ! These experiences, through which I am 
 passing here, leave with me the impression that I 
 have been all through it before over home, during 
 my life on the plains, in the desert, in the forests, the 
 mountains. 
 
 Only last night the dull glow on the horizon of a 
 burning town brought to mind for a second time the 
 uncertain flame of prairie fires. 
 
 Again to-night I caught from some devastated gar- 
 den in that same smouldering town we've moved 
 up to it a good whiff of wild thyme. That and
 
 In the Hills of France 345 
 
 the drum fire, for things are lively on our right, 
 have set me wild. 
 
 It is the aroma of the wild sage of the plains that 
 is so strong on the night air. It is the rapid vibration 
 of the Indian drum I am hearing ; the tepees I am see- 
 ing ; the squaws wetting switches of the sage brush and 
 heating them for the use of the men hi preserving the 
 right resonance. I see the dance. I close my eyes 
 and hear "the shuffle of moccasins on the hard clay 
 floor." . . . 
 
 They must have thought I was plumb crazy, 
 for I rushed out into the night to search for that 
 garden. 
 
 I found something better than wild thyme or 
 sage, after locating the devastated garden. In 
 the cellar of a shell-gutted stone house, which once 
 this garden sanctified, as gardens do, you know, 
 I found a kiddie about hi my condition when the 
 soldiers from the fort rescued me and my saddle- 
 maker from the dugout. He was numb with cold and 
 nearly starved. I warmed him against my heart ; just 
 as once I warmed a tiny bird blown from somewhere 
 in the great North by a bitter wind to my nest in the 
 treetop. I didn't tell you this when I told you about 
 my three nights' experience in that tree. I've never 
 told it to any one but you and that's the same as 
 telling it to myself. 
 
 I know how that kiddie felt when he came to, none 
 of his own being left (let's adopt him, Alie) ; for I 
 have been there, my little brother I should say my 
 two little brothers, my bird-brother and my human 
 one. Our Indians have a way all their own of recog- 
 nizing brotherhood in bird or beast, and I've grown 
 into it.
 
 346 Out of the Silences 
 
 I'm throwing up my tin cap. The word has come, 
 "Jerusalem is delivered," after two thousand years 
 plus of bondage ! Great news for Jew and Gentile. 
 
 Once, years ago, down in "Alabamy", I heard the 
 darkies singing at a camp-meeting : 
 
 " Sound the loud timbrel o'er Egupt's dark sea, 
 Jehovah's triumphant, his people are free." 
 
 I'd like to yell it out right here and now I re- 
 member the tune only I'm in a listening post. 
 By the way, I've strained my eardrums for three 
 mortal hours and haven't yet heard a peep out of the 
 enemy. My relief has just come ; that's why I am 
 scribbling this. . . . 
 
 Back again in the dugout. I keep thinking of 
 Jerusalem, free. Golly, I'd like to take a peep into 
 some of the ancient cathedrals and chapels here just 
 at this creepy hour 1.30 in the morning. I 
 fancy I should see all the old cross-legged crusaders 
 getting busy, for surely their spirits must be stirring 
 and animating their mould what there is left of it. 
 
 I can see those grand old boys uncrossing their 
 legs they've lain so long, so stiff and straight, 
 those stone effigies, on their stone coffin lids. I 
 know just how cramped they must feel, although a 
 sarcophagus top has it easy with a frozen layer of 
 mud at the bottom of a shallow trench. I can see 
 'em shifting their heavy armor, lifting their visors 
 to get a good look about 'em in this twentieth century, 
 and wondering at the sky-filled naves, the shattered 
 columns, the broken altars, the mark of catapult, 
 cannon ball, and flame; and suddenly, with vision 
 cleared, knowing that our cause is theirs, making
 
 In the Hills of France 347 
 
 ready to close ranks and help us through to final 
 triumph. 
 
 Why, Alison, girl, not down-hearted? I can just 
 see you smile and hear your answer: "Not on your 
 life, Bob." 
 
 That's all right, but something is troubling you. 
 I wonder 
 
 Look here, Alie, let's thresh it out once and for all, 
 you and I. We don't talk these things here; no 
 real man does, here or anywhere, when he is in action. 
 I don't know that I can write it, much less say it, 
 but it looks to me this way : we've come out here to 
 fight to win, if possible, and what we knew before we 
 came out, what we have seen and felt since being here 
 resolves itself into this : that death explains life, and 
 dying here is really living. We can't die, even if they 
 post us as "dead." We're too durned interested in 
 living to die at any time, in any place. You see we've 
 got to live, even though they do say we are dead, to 
 help out and finish this job. Look at it so and 
 remember what I am telling you. . . . 
 
 It is my conviction, and has been for many years, 
 that the nations had forgotten God. On the surface 
 it did not look so ; but if they were put under oath 
 they would bear witness to the fact that the fear of 
 God was no longer with them. I write that "word", 
 but I prefer the Indian "Great Mystery." 
 
 Men have taken the words "God, our father" on 
 their lips, but their actions, their dealings with men, 
 have belied the brotherhood implied ; hi a word, they 
 have been perjuring themselves for centuries. 
 
 Men's souls have been veneered with the dross of
 
 348 Out of the Silences 
 
 gold, and veneer of any kind closes the pores. You 
 know well enough the result of that, physically and 
 spiritually. 
 
 Men were straining after supremity, very literally 
 stealing and misapplying the force behind the light- 
 ning, what the ancients called the "fire from heaven" ; 
 and their punishment is being meted out to them 
 through the death instruments of their own invention. 
 
 Men were bowing down before idols before the 
 things that don't count in real living : material 
 possessions, enervating luxuries; worshipping the 
 " beast", erecting altars to strange gods, attributing 
 to themselves something of the powers of the Supreme, 
 the Unknowable. 
 
 Now, we find the nations in this fourth year of their 
 purging. It may be the process will last forty years, 
 perhaps forty centuries. I remember Jerusalem and 
 the "two thousand years plus" ; and I have lived to 
 see its redemption through blood sacrifice, even as we 
 must be redeemed. 
 
 Dare we assert that we, as a nation, are more right- 
 eous than others? Better than they? Our skirts 
 cleaner? Our Indians what of that "century of 
 (national) dishonor " ? Our lips, are they more ready 
 to make high protest against injustice, oppression, 
 butchery, outrage ? Remember our silence and 
 Belgium bleeding, crushed. 
 
 Away with the hypocrisy of it all ! We've got to 
 take our medicine, all of us. 
 
 We've got to take it in the old Indian way as well, 
 for this war is a world dream, call it a world night- 
 mare if you will, and in it and by means of it we 
 shall find our "medicine." It will be shown to us 
 in this dream terror what that world medicine shall
 
 In the Hills of France 349 
 
 be. And sometime, whether this year, or a thousand 
 years hence, when we, or coming generations, shall 
 have fought this thing through to final victory, a 
 standard shall be lifted up for the people. They shall 
 all see it all the tribes, blood-redeemed, whether 
 Celt or Teuton, Slav or Latin. And on that standard 
 shall be pictured the "medicine" of their great world 
 dream of war, and the people shall look to that and 
 be healed. I am wondering what song they'll sing 
 in that day? 
 
 Preachy? Sounds like it; but I'm only telling 
 you the way it looks to me. 
 
 At this moment of writing you, I see old Carmastic, 
 his moccasmned feet shuffling over the "Path of Life" 
 he has drawn in the accumulated dirt on the wigwam's 
 hard clay floor, and hear him say to me : 
 
 "So it is with our Path of Life. We leave no trace 
 on the trail. It is only our medicine that lives on." 
 
 Now's my chance ! The Colonel's son-in-law, Dick 
 L. you remember meeting him at Groundhouse ? 
 goes home shortly, permanently invalided. He 
 will take this package and get it through to you some- 
 how. It's just a lot of scrappy thinks and thoughts 
 and thunks of all kinds jotted down at all times and 
 places for just you and me. I have permission. 
 I'm so glad I have a woman of my own with whom I 
 can share my "silences", inner and outer. So, al- 
 though I'm dead tired, here goes for a kind of post- 
 script to all the scribble. We're back of the lines 
 resting. 
 
 This writing to your best friend, who happens to be 
 the woman you love, under the gag rule of censorship 
 is, of course, all right militarily ; but humanly it's a
 
 3 SO Out of the Silences 
 
 fool thing just the same. You see, surface drainage 
 is needed for a man's heart and affections even in the 
 midst of war ; and if he doesn't get it Well, you 
 know, Alie, just what I mean and what might happen. 
 This is a part of the comfort of you, that you do know 
 just what I mean ; you touch bottom with both feet 
 where another woman would flounder. 
 
 Wish you could see this ; it's some land. It's like 
 what I mean to show you some day that day when 
 we take the long road together, "We two together" 
 (do you remember that Indian Song of Cadman's? 
 A beautiful thing), and follow the trails of my youth. 
 I shall never rest in mind or muscle until I shall have 
 shown them to you, never. 
 
 It's like all that region of the Turtle Mountains 
 with a touch of the forests to the west of North 
 Lake. Think of that, to find yourself over here in 
 France on a piece of country that's part United States, 
 part Canada! Gee whiz, it gives a man a heart- 
 jump just to look out over it from a hill as I did this 
 afternoon : little valleys, and lakes, and hills, almost 
 mountains a broken country and forests dark 
 against their snow-covered slopes ; great cloud masses, 
 brilliantly white in the winter sunshine, sailing through 
 a deep blue sky over hills, valleys, lakes, woods. 
 Beyond these eastern heights there is the continual 
 roar of guns. 
 
 The mere looking at it ! And I am back again for an 
 hour in my boyhood with my saddle-maker, McGillie, 
 and the dogs; and my old medicine-man peace 
 to his ashes ! He was full of years and it was time. 
 His last message to me in one of your letters was his 
 first: "Endure" has been telling me of the centu- 
 ries of struggle between Cree and Sioux for the region
 
 In the Hills of France 351 
 
 of the Turtle Mountains sacred to them through tra- 
 dition; how for centuries, Alie, the tide of battle 
 ebbed and flowed around that hill wilderness of the 
 plains a regular " Indian Verdun ", that land. 
 
 How Carmastic used to set me on fire with his tales 
 of the old Indian days and ways ! I count it some- 
 thing for a white boy of my generation to have heard 
 those stories once from such a source. . . . 
 
 It's curious; I see Chum and Kinni-kinnik's 
 brothers side by side with white men in this struggle, 
 there has been no segregation of the Indians; 
 they are in the battalions just like the rest of us, 
 doing the same stunts, and doing them even better; 
 heart and soul in this work of warring; seeing daily 
 enemy acts that even in the days of their race's ut- 
 most savagery were never equalled, for savagery is 
 not civilized brutery; dependable, helpful, faithful, 
 quiet, mostly silent, trained and I marvel at the 
 change in the Indian status. 
 
 These men represent the longing and desire of their 
 race. They are fighting for their freedom as well as 
 for ours. They deserve well of their country, and the 
 nation that refuses to them freedom, citizenship, and 
 the same protection of the common law and the ap- 
 peal to it that is given to the white race, will write 
 its name black on the nation's honor roll, after this 
 here to which I bear witness. 
 
 I wish I might read the whole Indian mind on this 
 matter. Chum said to me once that he wished his 
 grandfather might have lived to see this special day. 
 
 "What do you mean by 'day'?" I asked him. 
 
 "I mean this fight with white men to free other 
 white men. It is our warpath to freedom." 
 
 You get the Indian thought? They're fighting
 
 352 Out of the Silences 
 
 for their own freedom, fighting all the more desperately 
 because they know from their fathers of the wrongs 
 their race has suffered at the hands of the whites. 
 After centuries of the white man's dominion and 
 tyranny over his red brothers, after his damnable 
 injustice towards them, his persecution of them, 
 his starving and killing them, his uprooting and 
 hounding them from one reservation to another, 
 often forgetting, or rather showing unwillingness to 
 recognize them in brotherhood because they happen 
 to be human, if not always, under the goad of the 
 white race's ways of dealing with them, humane, 
 just look at these few Indians here, fighting for 
 us ! It makes me so mad to think of what they 
 have endured that I must not write about it or I 
 shall "cuss" all over this page, and then what would 
 you say to 
 
 Three days later. 
 
 A hurry call from the trenches interrupted that last. 
 
 You remember my telling you about my boy's fast 
 in the treetop nest, and your asking me to tell you 
 that dream ? And how I told you that, according to 
 Indian belief, a man may not tell his dream until 
 he shall have followed the warpath? That he might 
 never sing his dream song until he should have 
 followed that path to victory ? 
 
 I remember just how you looked when you asked me 
 if I, not being an Indian, wouldn't tell you? And 
 you were the woman I loved, and I so wanted to 
 tell you what had never been told. I recall the look 
 in your eyes when, not wishing to break my spell 
 it was that ; I shall have to own up I gave you 
 an evasive answer. You see, had I told before any
 
 In the Hills of France 353 
 
 victory was mine, I should have lost my "medicine." 
 It was hard to deny you, but I would not have told 
 you that dream, love or no love. Now, interpret 
 this as best you can. I'll trust you to understand. 
 
 Never mind. You did not tease or fret me as a 
 smaller-souled woman might have done ; did not 
 tempt me with coaxing. You just smiled again at 
 your own thoughts wish I knew what they were ! 
 
 And now, my only Beloved, whom I found in that 
 northern wilderness of ice and snow ; whose love I 
 have set "as a seal upon my heart, as a seal upon my 
 arm" (the love I bear you, Alie, is as "strong as 
 death"; and out here we have come to know that 
 the "strength of death" is life eternal}, I may, at 
 last, tell you my dream. When I see you I may sing 
 for you this song which has never been sung; for 
 know that I have fought to-day, fought desperately 
 to Victory ! (Big V Glory be !) and shall fight 
 again to-night. But after next week, I shall join 
 up with our own boys on another sector, and fight 
 under our own Red, White, and Blue thanks be to 
 God. 
 
 I couldn't help it, I let out a regular warwhoop 
 when we made the last bayonet charge; and 
 you'll have to believe me although it seems un- 
 believable above the awful confusion of battle, I 
 heard an answering yell. It was Chum near me and 
 in the thick of it. We're out of that thirty minutes 
 of hell all whole I mean the Indians and I. 
 
 Do you know, I think I shall try, sometime, to set 
 my dream song to some real music. All day long, 
 amidst the boom of the great war symphony, a little 
 tune has been running in my head ; the idea came to 
 me when
 
 354 Out of the Silences 
 
 The little tune of this morning will have an obligate 
 accompaniment of roaring "75's" we're off again 
 to the front. Good-night, and love always. 
 
 3 
 
 The woman looked up and around as if seeking a 
 presence. He, to whom the giving of himself in 
 death was true living he dead? She repudiated 
 the thought. 
 
 She turned homewards, and, of a sudden, knew she 
 was not alone. Out of the great Unbroken Silence 
 he had come to walk there beside her in the Land of 
 Singing Waters.
 
 Far outside the common run ofjiction. Dial, Chicago 
 
 THE WOOD-CARVER 
 OF 'LYMPUS 
 
 By M. E. WALLER 
 
 Author of " A Daughter of the Rich," etc. 
 
 With frontispiece by Chase Emerson. 19mo. $1.5 net. 
 
 A strong tale of human loves and hopes set in a back- 
 ground of the granite mountain-tops of remote New Eng- 
 land. Brooklyn Eagle. 
 
 Hugh Armstrong, the hero, is one of the pronouncedly high 
 class character delineations of a quarter century. Boston 
 Courier. 
 
 It is a book which does one good to read and which is not 
 readily forgotten ; for in it are mingled inextricably the ele- 
 ments of humor and pathos and also a strain of generous 
 feeling which uplifts and humanizes. Harry Thurston Peck, 
 Editor of The Bookman. 
 
 A few books are published every year that really minister 
 to the tired hearts of this hurried age. They are like little 
 pilgrimages away from the world across the Delectable Moun- 
 tains of Good. . . This year it is "The Wood-Carver of 
 'Lympus." ... It is all told with a primitive sweetness that 
 is refreshing in these days when every writer cultivates the 
 clever style. Independent, New York. 
 
 The book is as manly as Ralph Connor s, and written with 
 a more satisfying art. Amos R. Wells, in Christian Endeavor 
 World. 
 
 LITTLE, BROWN, & CO., PUBLISHERS, BOSTON 
 At all Booksellers'
 
 By the author of " The Wood-carver of 'Lympus." 
 
 A CRY 
 IN THE WILDERNESS 
 
 By MARY E. WALLER 
 Frontispiece in color by A. I. Keller. $1.50 net. 
 
 As complete a revelation of a woman's heart and mind as 
 Jane Eyre. Boston Globe. 
 
 A fresh and delightful story, full of living interest and of 
 sentiment New York World. 
 
 A worthy successor to "The Wood-carver of 'Lympus" and 
 "Flamsted Quarries." . . . Absorbing and emotion-stirring. 
 Philadelphia Record. 
 
 Really an uncommonly interesting romance. ... It 
 carries with it a deep human appeal that cannot escape mature 
 readers. Chicago Tribune. 
 
 Miss Waller has written good books before, notably "The 
 Wood-carver of 'Lympus," but her latest may be regarded as 
 her best St. Louis Post-Despatch. 
 
 Tells with much emotional power, a story with a tangled plot 
 and mystery. Miss Waller writes with distinction, and her work 
 is always characterized by fineness of fibre and nobility of 
 feeling. New York Times. 
 
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 34 BEACON STREET, BOSTON
 
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