II
'So; one--two--three, one--two--three. Now reverse! No, no! Start
up again, Jack. See--this way.' Prince executed the movement as
one should who has led the cotillion.
'Now; one--two--three, one--two--three. Reverse! Ah! that's
better. Try it again. I say, you know, you mustn't look at your
feet. One--two--three, one--two--three. Shorter steps! You are not
hanging to the gee-pole just now. Try it over.
'There! that's the way. One--two--three, one--two--three.' Round
and round went Prince and Madeline in an interminable waltz. The
table and stools had been shoved over against the wall to
increase the room. Malemute Kid sat on the bunk, chin to knees,
greatly interested. Jack Harrington sat beside him, scraping away
on his violin and following the dancers.
It was a unique situation, the undertaking of these three men
with the woman.
The most pathetic part, perhaps, was the businesslike way in
which they went about it.
No athlete was ever trained more rigidly for a coming contest,
nor wolf-dog for the harness, than was she. But they had good
material, for Madeline, unlike most women of her race, in her
childhood had escaped the carrying of heavy burdens and the toil
of the trail. Besides, she was a clean-limbed, willowy creature,
possessed of much grace which had not hitherto been realized. It
was this grace which the men strove to bring out and knock into
shape.
'Trouble with her she learned to dance all wrong,' Prince
remarked to the bunk after having deposited his breathless pupil
on the table. 'She's quick at picking up; yet I could do better
had she never danced a step. But say, Kid, I can't understand
this.' Prince imitated a peculiar movement of the shoulders and
head--a weakness Madeline suffered from in walking.
'Lucky for her she was raised in the Mission,' Malemute Kid
answered. 'Packing, you know,--the head-strap. Other Indian women
have it bad, but she didn't do any packing till after she
married, and then only at first. Saw hard lines with that husband
of hers. They went through the Forty-Mile famine together.' 'But
can we break it?' 'Don't know.
'Perhaps long walks with her trainers will make the riffle.
Anyway, they'll take it out some, won't they, Madeline?' The girl
nodded assent. If Malemute Kid, who knew all things, said so, why
it was so. That was all there was about it.
She had come over to them, anxious to begin again. Harrington
surveyed her in quest of her points much in the same manner men
usually do horses. It certainly was not disappointing, for he
asked with sudden interest, 'What did that beggarly uncle of
yours get anyway?' 'One rifle, one blanket, twenty bottles of
hooch. Rifle broke.' She said this last scornfully, as though
disgusted at how low her maiden-value had been rated.
She spoke fair English, with many peculiarities of her husband's
speech, but there was still perceptible the Indian accent, the
traditional groping after strange gutturals. Even this her
instructors had taken in hand, and with no small success, too.
At the next intermission, Prince discovered a new predicament.
'I say, Kid,' he said, 'we're wrong, all wrong. She can't learn
in moccasins.
'Put her feet into slippers, and then onto that waxed
floor--phew!' Madeline raised a foot and regarded her shapeless
house-moccasins dubiously. In previous winters, both at Circle
City and Forty-Mile, she had danced many a night away with
similar footgear, and there had been nothing the matter.
But now--well, if there was anything wrong it was for Malemute
Kid to know, not her.
But Malemute Kid did know, and he had a good eye for measures; so
he put on his cap and mittens and went down the hill to pay Mrs.
Eppingwell a call. Her husband, Clove Eppingwell, was prominent
in the community as one of the great Government officials.
The Kid had noted her slender little foot one night, at the
Governor's Ball. And as he also knew her to be as sensible as she
was pretty, it was no task to ask of her a certain small favor.
On his return, Madeline withdrew for a moment to the inner room.
When she reappeared Prince was startled.
'By Jove!' he gasped. 'Who'd a' thought it! The little witch! Why
my sister--' 'Is an English girl,' interrupted Malemute Kid,
'with an English foot. This girl comes of a small-footed race.
Moccasins just broadened her feet healthily, while she did not
misshape them by running with the dogs in her childhood.' But
this explanation failed utterly to allay Prince's admiration.
Harrington's commercial instinct was touched, and as he looked
upon the exquisitely turned foot and ankle, there ran through his
mind the sordid list--'One rifle, one blanket, twenty bottles of
hooch.' Madeline was the wife of a king, a king whose yellow
treasure could buy outright a score of fashion's puppets; yet in
all her life her feet had known no gear save red-tanned
moosehide. At first she had looked in awe at the tiny white-satin
slippers; but she had quickly understood the admiration which
shone, manlike, in the eyes of the men. Her face flushed with
pride. For the moment she was drunken with her woman's loveliness;
then she murmured, with increased scorn, 'And one rifle, broke!'
So the training went on. Every day Malemute Kid led the girl out
on long walks devoted to the correction of her carriage and the
shortening of her stride.
There was little likelihood of her identity being discovered, for
Cal Galbraith and the rest of the Old-Timers were like lost
children among the many strangers who had rushed into the land.
Besides, the frost of the North has a bitter tongue, and the
tender women of the South, to shield their cheeks from its biting
caresses, were prone to the use of canvas masks. With faces
obscured and bodies lost in squirrel-skin parkas, a mother and
daughter, meeting on trail, would pass as strangers.
The coaching progressed rapidly. At first it had been slow, but
later a sudden acceleration had manifested itself. This began
from the moment Madeline tried on the white-satin slippers, and
in so doing found herself. The pride of her renegade father,
apart from any natural self-esteem she might possess, at that
instant received its birth. Hitherto, she had deemed herself a
woman of an alien breed, of inferior stock, purchased by her
lord's favor. Her husband had seemed to her a god, who had lifted
her, through no essential virtues on her part, to his own godlike
level. But she had never forgotten, even when Young Cal was born,
that she was not of his people. As he had been a god, so had his
womenkind been goddesses. She might have contrasted herself with
them, but she had never compared.
It might have been that familiarity bred contempt; however, be
that as it may, she had ultimately come to understand these
roving white men, and to weigh them.
True, her mind was dark to deliberate analysis, but she yet
possessed her woman's clarity of vision in such matters. On the
night of the slippers she had measured the bold, open admiration
of her three man-friends; and for the first time comparison had
suggested itself. It was only a foot and an ankle, but--but
comparison could not, in the nature of things, cease at that
point. She judged herself by their standards till the divinity of
her white sisters was shattered. After all, they were only women,
and why should she not exalt herself to their midst? In doing
these things she learned where she lacked and with the knowledge
of her weakness came her strength. And so mightily did she strive
that her three trainers often marveled late into the night over
the eternal mystery of woman.
In this way Thanksgiving Night drew near. At irregular intervals
Bettles sent word down from Stuart River regarding the welfare of
Young Cal. The time of their return was approaching. More than
once a casual caller, hearing dance-music and the rhythmic pulse
of feet, entered, only to find Harrington scraping away and the
other two beating time or arguing noisily over a mooted step.
Madeline was never in evidence, having precipitately fled to the
inner room.
On one of these nights Cal Galbraith dropped in. Encouraging news
had just come down from Stuart River, and Madeline had surpassed
herself--not in walk alone, and carriage and grace, but in
womanly roguishness. They had indulged in sharp repartee and she
had defended herself brilliantly; and then, yielding to the
intoxication of the moment, and of her own power, she had
bullied, and mastered, and wheedled, and patronized them with
most astonishing success. And instinctively, involuntarily, they
had bowed, not to her beauty, her wisdom, her wit, but to that
indefinable something in woman to which man yields yet cannot
name.
The room was dizzy with sheer delight as she and Prince whirled
through the last dance of the evening. Harrington was throwing in
inconceivable flourishes, while Malemute Kid, utterly abandoned,
had seized the broom and was executing mad gyrations on his own
account.
At this instant the door shook with a heavy rap-rap, and their
quick glances noted the lifting of the latch. But they had
survived similar situations before. Harrington never broke a
note. Madeline shot through the waiting door to the inner room.
The broom went hurtling under the bunk, and by the time Cal
Galbraith and Louis Savoy got their heads in, Malemute Kid and
Prince were in each other's arms, wildly schottisching down the
room.
As a rule, Indian women do not make a practice of fainting on
provocation, but Madeline came as near to it as she ever had in
her life. For an hour she crouched on the floor, listening to the
heavy voices of the men rumbling up and down in mimic thunder.
Like familiar chords of childhood melodies, every intonation,
every trick of her husband's voice swept in upon her, fluttering
her heart and weakening her knees till she lay half-fainting
against the door. It was well she could neither see nor hear when
he took his departure.
'When do you expect to go back to Circle City?' Malemute Kid
asked simply.
'Haven't thought much about it,' he replied. 'Don't think till
after the ice breaks.' 'And Madeline?'
He flushed at the question, and there was a quick droop to his
eyes. Malemute Kid could have despised him for that, had he known
men less. As it was, his gorge rose against the wives and
daughters who had come into the land, and not satisfied with
usurping the place of the native women, had put unclean thoughts
in the heads of the men and made them ashamed.
'I guess she's all right,' the Circle City King answered hastily,
and in an apologetic manner. 'Tom Dixon's got charge of my
interests, you know, and he sees to it that she has everything
she wants.' Malemute Kid laid hand upon his arm and hushed him
suddenly. They had stepped without. Overhead, the aurora, a
gorgeous wanton, flaunted miracles of color; beneath lay the
sleeping town. Far below, a solitary dog gave tongue.
The King again began to speak, but the Kid pressed his hand for
silence. The sound multiplied. Dog after dog took up the strain
till the full-throated chorus swayed the night.
To him who hears for the first time this weird song, is told the
first and greatest secret of the Northland; to him who has heard
it often, it is the solemn knell of lost endeavor. It is the
plaint of tortured souls, for in it is invested the heritage of
the North, the suffering of countless generations--the warning
and the requiem to the world's estrays.
Cal Galbraith shivered slightly as it died away in half-caught
sobs. The Kid read his thoughts openly, and wandered back with
him through all the weary days of famine and disease; and with
him was also the patient Madeline, sharing his pains and perils,
never doubting, never complaining. His mind's retina vibrated to
a score of pictures, stern, clear-cut, and the hand of the past
drew back with heavy fingers on his heart. It was the
psychological moment. Malemute Kid was half-tempted to play his
reserve card and win the game; but the lesson was too mild as
yet, and he let it pass. The next instant they had gripped hands,
and the King's beaded moccasins were drawing protests from the
outraged snow as he crunched down the hill.
Madeline in collapse was another woman to the mischievous
creature of an hour before, whose laughter had been so infectious
and whose heightened color and flashing eyes had made her
teachers for the while forget. Weak and nerveless, she sat in the
chair just as she had been dropped there by Prince and Harrington.
Malemute Kid frowned. This would never do. When the time of
meeting her husband came to hand, she must carry things off with
high-handed imperiousness. It was very necessary she should do it
after the manner of white women, else the victory would be no
victory at all. So he talked to her, sternly, without mincing of
words, and initiated her into the weaknesses of his own sex, till
she came to understand what simpletons men were after all, and
why the word of their women was law.
A few days before Thanksgiving Night, Malemute Kid made another
call on Mrs. Eppingwell. She promptly overhauled her feminine
fripperies, paid a protracted visit to the dry-goods department
of the P. C. Company, and returned with the Kid to make
Madeline's acquaintance. After that came a period such as the
cabin had never seen before, and what with cutting, and fitting,
and basting, and stitching, and numerous other wonderful and
unknowable things, the male conspirators were more often banished
the premises than not. At such times the Opera House opened its
double storm-doors to them.
So often did they put their heads together, and so deeply did
they drink to curious toasts, that the loungers scented unknown
creeks of incalculable richness, and it is known that several
checha-quas and at least one Old-Timer kept their stampeding
packs stored behind the bar, ready to hit the trail at a moment's
notice.
Mrs. Eppingwell was a woman of capacity; so, when she turned
Madeline over to her trainers on Thanksgiving Night she was so
transformed that they were almost afraid of her. Prince wrapped a
Hudson Bay blanket about her with a mock reverence more real than
feigned, while Malemute Kid, whose arm she had taken, found it a
severe trial to resume his wonted mentorship. Harrington, with
the list of purchases still running through his head, dragged
along in the rear, nor opened his mouth once all the way down
into the town. When they came to the back door of the Opera House
they took the blanket from Madeline's shoulders and spread it on
the snow. Slipping out of Prince's moccasins, she stepped upon it
in new satin slippers. The masquerade was at its height. She
hesitated, but they jerked open the door and shoved her in. Then
they ran around to come in by the front entrance.
