TALES OF THE KLONDYKE
THE GOD OF HIS FATHERS
On every hand stretched the forest primeval,--the home of noisy
comedy and silent tragedy. Here the struggle for survival
continued to wage with all its ancient brutality. Briton and
Russian were still to overlap in the Land of the Rainbow's End--
and this was the very heart of it--nor had Yankee gold yet
purchased its vast domain. The wolf-pack still clung to the flank
of the cariboo-herd, singling out the weak and the big with calf,
and pulling them down as remorselessly as were it a thousand,
thousand generations into the past. The sparse aborigines still
acknowledged the rule of their chiefs and medicine men, drove out
bad spirits, burned their witches, fought their neighbors, and ate
their enemies with a relish which spoke well of their bellies.
But it was at the moment when the stone age was drawing to a
close. Already, over unknown trails and chartless wildernesses,
were the harbingers of the steel arriving,--fair-faced, blue-eyed,
indomitable men, incarnations of the unrest of their race. By
accident or design, single-handed and in twos and threes, they
came from no one knew whither, and fought, or died, or passed on,
no one knew whence. The priests raged against them, the chiefs
called forth their fighting men, and stone clashed with steel; but
to little purpose. Like water seeping from some mighty reservoir,
they trickled through the dark forests and mountain passes,
threading the highways in bark canoes, or with their moccasined
feet breaking trail for the wolf-dogs. They came of a great
breed, and their mothers were many; but the fur-clad denizens of
the Northland had this yet to learn. So many an unsung wanderer
fought his last and died under the cold fire of the aurora, as did
his brothers in burning sands and reeking jungles, and as they
shall continue to do till in the fulness of time the destiny of
their race be achieved.
It was near twelve. Along the northern horizon a rosy glow,
fading to the west and deepening to the east, marked the unseen
dip of the midnight sun. The gloaming and the dawn were so
commingled that there was no night,--simply a wedding of day with
day, a scarcely perceptible blending of two circles of the sun. A
kildee timidly chirped good-night; the full, rich throat of a
robin proclaimed good-morrow. From an island on the breast of the
Yukon a colony of wild fowl voiced its interminable wrongs, while
a loon laughed mockingly back across a still stretch of river.
In the foreground, against the bank of a lazy eddy, birch-bark
canoes were lined two and three deep. Ivory-bladed spears, bone-
barbed arrows, buckskin-thonged bows, and simple basket-woven
traps bespoke the fact that in the muddy current of the river the
salmon-run was on. In the background, from the tangle of skin
tents and drying frames, rose the voices of the fisher folk.
Bucks skylarked with bucks or flirted with the maidens, while the
older squaws, shut out from this by virtue of having fulfilled the
end of their existence in reproduction, gossiped as they braided
rope from the green roots of trailing vines. At their feet their
naked progeny played and squabbled, or rolled in the muck with the
tawny wolf-dogs.
To one side of the encampment, and conspicuously apart from it,
stood a second camp of two tents. But it was a white man's camp.
If nothing else, the choice of position at least bore convincing
evidence of this. In case of offence, it commanded the Indian
quarters a hundred yards away; of defence, a rise to the ground
and the cleared intervening space; and last, of defeat, the swift
slope of a score of yards to the canoes below. From one of the
tents came the petulant cry of a sick child and the crooning song
of a mother. In the open, over the smouldering embers of a fire,
two men held talk.
"Eh? I love the church like a good son. Bien! So great a love
that my days have been spent in fleeing away from her, and my
nights in dreaming dreams of reckoning. Look you!" The half-
breed's voice rose to an angry snarl. "I am Red River born. My
father was white--as white as you. But you are Yankee, and he was
British bred, and a gentleman's son. And my mother was the
daughter of a chief, and I was a man. Ay, and one had to look the
second time to see what manner of blood ran in my veins; for I
lived with the whites, and was one of them, and my father's heart
beat in me. It happened there was a maiden--white--who looked on
me with kind eyes. Her father had much land and many horses; also
he was a big man among his people, and his blood was the blood of
the French. He said the girl knew not her own mind, and talked
overmuch with her, and became wroth that such things should be.
"But she knew her mind, for we came quick before the priest. And
quicker had come her father, with lying words, false promises, I
know not what; so that the priest stiffened his neck and would not
make us that we might live one with the other. As at the
beginning it was the church which would not bless my birth, so now
it was the church which refused me marriage and put the blood of
men upon my hands. Bien! Thus have I cause to love the church.
So I struck the priest on his woman's mouth, and we took swift
horses, the girl and I, to Fort Pierre, where was a minister of
good heart. But hot on our trail was her father, and brothers,
and other men he had gathered to him. And we fought, our horses
on the run, till I emptied three saddles and the rest drew off and
went on to Fort Pierre. Then we took east, the girl and I, to the
hills and forests, and we lived one with the other, and we were
not married,--the work of the good church which I love like a son.
"But mark you, for this is the strangeness of woman, the way of
which no man may understand. One of the saddles I emptied was
that of her father's, and the hoofs of those who came behind had
pounded him into the earth. This we saw, the girl and I, and this
I had forgot had she not remembered. And in the quiet of the
evening, after the day's hunt were done, it came between us, and
in the silence of the night when we lay beneath the stars and
should have been one. It was there always. She never spoke, but
it sat by our fire and held us ever apart. She tried to put it
aside, but at such times it would rise up till I could read it in
the look of her eyes, in the very in-take of her breath.
"So in the end she bore me a child, a woman-child, and died. Then
I went among my mother's people, that it might nurse at a warm
breast and live. But my hands were wet with the blood of men,
look you, because of the church, wet with the blood of men. And
the Riders of the North came for me, but my mother's brother, who
was then chief in his own right, hid me and gave me horses and
food. And we went away, my woman-child and I, even to the Hudson
Bay Country, where white men were few and the questions they asked
not many. And I worked for the company a hunter, as a guide, as a
driver of dogs, till my woman-child was become a woman, tall, and
slender, and fair to the eye.
"You know the winter, long and lonely, breeding evil thoughts and
bad deeds. The Chief Factor was a hard man, and bold. And he was
not such that a woman would delight in looking upon. But he cast
eyes upon my woman-child who was become a woman. Mother of God!
he sent me away on a long trip with the dogs, that he might--you
understand, he was a hard man and without heart. She was most
white, and her soul was white, and a good woman, and--well, she
died.
"It was bitter cold the night of my return, and I had been away
months, and the dogs were limping sore when I came to the fort.
The Indians and breeds looked on me in silence, and I felt the
fear of I knew not what, but I said nothing till the dogs were fed
and I had eaten as a man with work before him should. Then I
spoke up, demanding the word, and they shrank from me, afraid of
my anger and what I should do; but the story came out, the pitiful
story, word for word and act for act, and they marvelled that I
should be so quiet.
"When they had done I went to the Factor's house, calmer than now
in the telling of it. He had been afraid and called upon the
breeds to help him; but they were not pleased with the deed, and
had left him to lie on the bed he had made. So he had fled to the
house of the priest. Thither I followed. But when I was come to
that place, the priest stood in my way, and spoke soft words, and
said a man in anger should go neither to the right nor left, but
straight to God. I asked by the right of a father's wrath that he
give me past, but he said only over his body, and besought with me
to pray. Look you, it was the church, always the church; for I
passed over his body and sent the Factor to meet my woman-child
before his god, which is a bad god, and the god of the white men.
Then was there hue and cry, for word was sent to the station
below, and I came away. Through the Land of the Great Slave, down
the Valley of the Mackenzie to the never-opening ice, over the
White Rockies, past the Great Curve of the Yukon, even to this
place did I come. And from that day to this, yours is the first
face of my father's people I have looked upon. May it be the
last! These people, which are my people, are a simple folk, and I
have been raised to honor among them. My word is their law, and
their priests but do my bidding, else would I not suffer them.
When I speak for them I speak for myself. We ask to be let alone.
We do not want your kind. If we permit you to sit by our fires,
after you will come your church, your priests, and your gods. And
know this, for each white man who comes to my village, him will I
make deny his god. You are the first, and I give you grace. So
it were well you go, and go quickly."
"I am not responsible for my brothers," the second man spoke up,
filling his pipe in a meditative manner. Hay Stockard was at
times as thoughtful of speech as he was wanton of action; but only
at times.
"But I know your breed," responded the other. "Your brothers are
many, and it is you and yours who break the trail for them to
follow. In time they shall come to possess the land, but not in
my time. Already, have I heard, are they on the head-reaches of
the Great River, and far away below are the Russians."
Hay Stockard lifted his head with a quick start. This was
startling geographical information. The Hudson Bay post at Fort
Yukon had other notions concerning the course of the river,
believing it to flow into the Arctic.
"Then the Yukon empties into Bering Sea?" he asked.
"I do not know, but below there are Russians, many Russians.
Which is neither here nor there. You may go on and see for
yourself; you may go back to your brothers; but up the Koyukuk you
shall not go while the priests and fighting men do my bidding.
Thus do I command, I, Baptiste the Red, whose word is law and who
am head man over this people."
"And should I not go down to the Russians, or back to my
brothers?"
"Then shall you go swift-footed before your god, which is a bad
god, and the god of the white men."
The red sun shot up above the northern skyline, dripping and
bloody. Baptiste the Red came to his feet, nodded curtly, and
went back to his camp amid the crimson shadows and the singing of
the robins.
Hay Stockard finished his pipe by the fire, picturing in smoke and
coal the unknown upper reaches of the Koyukuk, the strange stream
which ended here its arctic travels and merged its waters with the
muddy Yukon flood. Somewhere up there, if the dying words of a
ship-wrecked sailorman who had made the fearful overland journey
were to be believed, and if the vial of golden grains in his pouch
attested anything,--somewhere up there, in that home of winter,
stood the Treasure House of the North. And as keeper of the gate,
Baptiste the Red, English half-breed and renegade, barred the way.
"Bah!" He kicked the embers apart and rose to his full height,
arms lazily outstretched, facing the flushing north with careless
soul.
