Chapters 5
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1 01 Graybeard and Goldhair 29:37
Greybeard and Goldhair. The year was 1823. Twas when the guns that blustered at the Rhee had ceased to brag in tenscore martial clowns turned from the unwhipped Arikara towns, earning the scornful laughter of the Sioux. A withering blast, the arid south still blew, and creeks ran thin beneath the glaring sky. For twas a month when— Honking geese would fly southward before the great white hunter's face, and many generations of their race as bow-flung arrows now have fallen spent. It happened then that Major Henry went with eighty trappers up the dwindling grand, bound through the weird unfriending barren land, for where the big horn meets the yellow stone, and old Hugh Glass went with them, large of bone, deep-chested, that his great heart might have play, grey-bearded, grey of eye, and...
Crowned with gray glass. It seemed he never had been young, and for the grudging habit of his tongue none knew the place or season of his birth. Slowly he woke to anger, or to mirth, yet none laughed louder when the rare mood fell, and hate in him was like a still white hell, a thing of doom, not lightly reconciled. What memory he kept of wife or child? was never told, for when his comrades sat about the evening fire with pipe and chat exchanging talk of home and gentler days, old Hugh stared long upon the pictured blaze, and what he saw went upward in the smoke. But once, as with an inner lightning-stroke, the vile was rent, and briefly men discerned what pent-up fires of selfless passion burned beneath the still grey smouldering of him.
There was a rake-hell lad, Called Little Jim, Jamie, or Petit Jacks, for scarce began the downy beard to mark him for a man. Blue-eyed was he, and femininely fair. A maiden might have coveted his hair that trapped the sunlight in its tangled skein. So tardily outflowered the wild-blonde strain, that gutted Rome grown over fat in sloth. A Ganymedes haunted by a goth was Jamie, when the restive ghost was laid. He seemed some fancy-ridden child who played at manliness mid all those bearded men. The sternest heart was drawn to Jamie then, but his one mood never linked two hours together. to schedule jamie's way, as prairie weather was to get fact by wedding doubt and whim, for very lightly slept that ghost in him.
No cloudy brooding went before his wrath. That, like a thunder-squall, reeked not its path, but raged upon what happened in its way. Some called him brave who saw him on that day, when Ashley stormed a bluff town of the Rhe. And all save beardless Jamie turned to flee for shelter from that steep lead-harrowed slope. Yet hardly courage, but blind rage, a grope inspired the foolish deed. "'Twas then old Hugh, tore off the grey mask, and the heart shone through, for halting in the dry flood-guttered draw, the trappers rallied, looked aloft, and saw that travesty of war against the sky. Out of a breathless hush, The old man's cry leaped shivering, an anguished cry and wild, as of some mother, fearing for her child, and up the steep he went with mighty bounds.
Long afterward, the story went the rounds how old Glass fought that day with gun for club. Grim as a grizzly fighting for a cub, he laid about him, cleared the way, and so, supported by the firing from below, brought Jamie back, and when the deed was done, Taking the lad upon his knee. My son, brave men are not ashamed to fear, said Hugh, and I've a mind to make a man of you, so he is your first acquaintance with the law. Whereat he spanked the lad with vigorous paw, and having done so, limped away to bed. For wounded in the hip, the old man bled. It was a month before he hobbled out, and Jamie, like a fond son, Hung about the old man's tent and waited upon him, and often would the deep grey eyes grow dim with gazing on the boy, and there would go, as though spring fire should waken out of snow.
A wistful light across that mask of grey, and once Hugh smiled his enigmatic way while pouring long on Jamie's face, and said, So with their sons are women brought to bed, sore wounded. Thus united were the two, and some would dub the old man Mother Hugh, while those in Hume or living waters sank to some dull inner pool that teemed and stank with formless evil into that morass, gazed and saw darkly there, as in a glass, the foul shape of some weakly envied sin. For each man builds a world and dwells therein, nor could these know what mocking ghost of spring. Stirr'd hugh's gray world with dreams of blossoming that woo'd no seed to swell or bird to sing. So might a dawn-struck digit of the moon dream back the rain of some old lunar june, and ache through all its craters to be green.
Little they know what life's one love can mean, who shrine it in a bower of peace and bliss. Pang dwelling in a pocket cicatrice, more truly figures this belated love. Yet very grievous was the hurt thereof, Grievous to bear, too dear to cast away. Now Jamie went with Hugh, but who shall say if Twas a warm heart, or a wind of whim, Love, or the rovers teasing itch in him, Moved Jamie. Howsoever Twas good to see, Grey beard and gold hair riding knee to knee, One age in young adventure, one who saw, Was likened to a February thaw, Hues mellow mood those days, and truly so, for when the tempering southwest wakes to blow a phantom April over melting snow, deep in the north some new white wrath is brewed.
Out of a dim-trailed inner solitude, the old man summoned many a stirring story, lived grimly once, but now shot through with glory, caught from the wandering eyes of him who heard, tales jagged with the bleak, unstudied word. Stark, Sagustaff. A fellow that I knew, so nameless, went the hero that was Hugh, a mere pelt merchant, as it seemed to him, yet trailing epic thunders through the dim, whist-world of Jamie's oar. And so they went. One heart, it seemed, and that heart well content with tale and snatch of song and careless laughter. Never before and surely, never after, the grey old man seemed nearer to his youth. That myth that somehow had to be the truth, yet could not be convincing any more.
Now when the days of travel numbered four, and nearer drew the barons with their need, on glass the hunter fell the task to feed those four score hungers when the game should fail. For no young eye could trace so dim a trail, or line the rifle sights with speed so true, nor might the wistful Jamie go with Hugh. For, so Hugh chafed, my trick of getting game Might teach young eyes to put old eyes to shame An old dog never risks his only bone. Wolves' praying packs, the lion hunts alone Is somewhat nearer what he should have meant. And so with very jest the old man went, and so they parted at an unseen gate, That even then some gust of moody fate clanged to betwixt them, Each a tale to spell. One in the nightmare scrawl of dreams from hell, one in the blistering trail of days a-crawl, venomous-footed.
Nor might it ere befall these two should meet in after-days, and be, grey-beard and gold-hair riding, knee to knee, recounting with a bluff, heroic scorn, the haps of either tale. Twas early morn, When Hugh went forth, and all day Jamie rode with Henry's men, while more and more the goad of eager youth sore fretted him and made, the dusty progress of the cavalcade, the journey of a snail flocked the moon, until the shadow weaving. Afternoon turned many fingers nightward, then he fled, pricking his horse, nor diined to turn his head at any dwindling voice of reprimand. For somewhere in the brakes along the grand, surely Hugh waited with a goodly kill. Hoofbeats of ghostly steeds on every hill, mysterious muffled hoofs on every bluff, spurred Echo horses clattering up the rough confluent drawers.
These flying, Jamie heard, the lagging air droned like a drowsy word of one who tells weird stories late at night, half-headlong joy and half-delicious fright, his day-dreams pace outstripped. The plunging steeds. Lean galloper in a wind of splendid deeds like Hughes. He seemed unto himself until, snorting a haunch above a breakneck hill, the horse stopped short, and Jamie was aware of lonesome flatlands fading skyward there beneath him, and, zigzag on either hand, a purple haze denoted how the grand fought wide twixt sunset and the polar star. A tiptoe in the stirrups. Gazing far, he saw no hue. Nor any moving thing save for a welter of cawing crows a-wing. About some banquet in the further hush, one faint star, set above the fading blush of sunset, saw the coming night, and grew.
With hand for trumpet, Jamie gave halloo, and once again, Francis, the horse neighed. Some vague mistrust now made him half afraid some formless dread that stirred beneath the will as far as sleep from waking. Down the hill, close-footed in the skitter of the shale, The spurred horse floundered to the solid vale, and galloped to the north-west, whinnying. The outstripped ear moaned like a wounded thing, but Jamie gave the lie unto his dread. The old man's camping out tonight, he said. Somewhere about the forks is like as not, and there'll be hunks of fresh meat steaming hot and fighting stories by a dying fire. The sunset reared a luminous phantom spire that crumbling sifted ashes down the sky.
Now pausing, Jamie sent a searching cry into the twilight river-skirting brush, and in the vast denial of the hush, the champing of the snaffled horse seemed loud. Then, startling as a voice beneath a shroud, a muffled boom woke somewhere up the stream, and like vague thunder hearkened in a dream, drawled back to silence, now with heart abound, keen for the quarter, Of the perished sound the lad spurred gaily, for he doubted not. His cry had brought hughes answering rifle-shot. The laggardere was like a voice that sang, and Jamie half believed he sniffed the tang of wood-smoke and the smell of flesh arost, when presently before him, like a ghost upstanding, huge in twilight, arms flung wide, a gray form loomed, the wise horse reared and shied, snorting his inborn terror of the bear.
And in the whirlwind of a moment there, betwixt the brute's horse, challenge and the charge, the lad beheld upon the grassy marge of a small spring that bulberries stooped to scan, a ragged heap that should have been a man, a huddled broken thing. And it was Hugh. There was no need for any closer view as, on the instant of a lightning flash, ere yet the split gloom, Closes with a crash, a landscape, stairs with every circumstance of rock and shrub. Just so the fatal chance of hugh's one shot made futile with surprise was clear to Jamie. Then before his eyes, the light whirled in a giddy dance of red, and, doubting not, the crumpled thing was dead that was a friend. With but a skinning knife he would have striven for the hated life that triumphed there.
But with a shriek of fright, the mad horse bolted through the falling night, and Jamie, fumbling at his rifle boot, heard the brush crash behind him, where the brute came headlong close upon the straining flanks. But while at length low-lying, river banks, white rubble in the gloaming, glimmered near, A swift thought swept the mind of Jamie Clear, of anger and of anguish for the dead. Scarce seemed the raging beast a thing to dread, but some foul-playing braggart to outwit. Now hurling all his strength upon the bit, he sank the spurs, and with a groan of pain, the plunging horse obedient to the rein swerved sharply streamward. Slittering in the sand, the bear shot passed, and suddenly the grand loomed up beneath and rose to meet the pair.
That rowed a moment upon empty air, then smote the water in a shower of spray, and when again the lowly ebbing day came back to them adrip from nose to flank, the steed was scrambling up the further bank, and Jamie saw across the narrow stream, like some vague shape of fury in a dream, the checked beast ramping at the water's rim. Doubt struggled with a victor's thrill in him, as hand to buckle The rifle sheath, he thought of dampened powder, but beneath the rawhide flap the gun lay snug and dry. Then, as the horse wheeled and the mark went by, a patch of shadow dancing upon grey, he fired. A sluggish thunder trialled away, the spreading smoke-rack lifted slow, and there, floundering in a sea the foam the bear hugged, yielding water for the foe that slew, triumphant, Jamie wondered what old Hugh would think of such a trick of getting game.
Young eyes, indeed. And then that memory came, like a dull blade thrust back into a wound. One moment, "'Twas as though the lad had swooned into a dream adventure, Waking there. To sicken at the ghastly land a-stare like some familiar face gone strange at last. But as the hot tears came, the moment passed. Song snatches, broken tales, a troop forlorn, like merry friends of elde came back to mourn, overwhelmed him there, and when the black bulk churned, the star-flecked stream no longer, Jamie turned, recrossed the river, and rode back to Hugh. A burning twist of valley grasses threw blear light about the region of the spring. Then Jamie, torch aloft and shuddering, knelt there beside his friend and moaned, O Hugh!
If I had been with you, just been with you, we might be laughing now, and you are dead. With gentle hand he turned the hoary head, that he might see the good grey face again. The torch burned out, the dark swooped back, and then his grief was frozen with an icy plunge in horror. Twas as though a bloody sponge had wiped the pictured features from a slate. So, Pillaged by an army drunk with hate home stairs upon the homing refugee. A red gout clung where either brow should be. The haughty nose lay crushed amid the beard. Thick with slow ooze, whence, like a devil leered, the battered mouth convulsed into a grin. Nor did the darkness cover, for therein some torch unsnuffed with blear funereal flare.
Still painted upon black that alien stare to make the lad more terribly alone. Then in the gloom there rose a broken moan, quick stifled, and it seemed that something stirred about the body. Doubting that he heard, the lad felt, with a panic catch of breath, pale vagrants from the legendary of death potential in the shadows there. But when the motion and the moaning came again, hope, like a shower at daybreak, cleansed the dark. And in the lad's heart, something like a lark sang morning. Bending low, he crooned, Hugh, Hugh, it's Jamie, don't you know? I'm here with you. As one who in a nightmare strives to tell, shouting across the gap of some dim hell what things assail him, so it seemed Hugh heard, and flung some unintelligible word athwart the muffling distance of his swoon.
Now, kindled by the yet unrisen moon, the east went pale, and like a naked thing, a little wind ran vexed and shivering along the dust till Jamie shivered too, and worried, lest twere bitter cold where Hugh hung clutching at the bleak raw edge of life. So Jamie rose, and with his hunting-knife split wood and built a fire, nor did he fear the staring face now. For he found it dear, with the warm presence of a friend returned. The fire made cosy chatter as it burned, and reared a tent of light in that lone place. Then Jamie set about to bathe the face, with water from the spring, oft crooning low. It's Jamie here beside you. Don't you know? Yet came no answer save the labored breath of one who wrestled mightily with death, where watched no referee to call a foul.
The moon now cleared the world's end, and the owl gave voice unto the wizardry of light, while in some dim-lit chancel of the night, snoutced the goddess, wolfish corybants, intoned their wild antiphonery chants, the oldest, saddest worship in the world. And Jamie watched until the firelight swirled softly about him, sound and glimmer merged, to make an eerie void, Through which he urged with frantic spur some whirlwind of a steed that made the way as glass beneath his speed, yet scarce kept pace with something dear that fled. On, ever on, just half a dream ahead, until it seemed by some vague shape dismayed. He cried aloud the hue, and the steed neighed, a neigh that was a burst of light, not sound, and Jamie, sprawling on the dewy ground, knew that his horse was sniffing at his hair.
While mumbling through the early morning air, there came a roll of many hoofs, and then he saw the swinging troop of Henry's men canter up the valley with the sun. Of all Hugh's comrades, crowding round, not one but would have given heavy odds on death. For, though the greybeard fought with sobbing breath, no man, it seemed, might break upon the hip, so stern a wrestler, with the strangling grip that made the neck veins like a purple thong. Tangled with knots, nor might Hugh tarry long there where the trull forked outward far and dim, or so it seemed. And when they lifted him, his moan went treble like a song of pain he was so tortured. Surely it were vain to hope he might endure the toilsome ride across the barrens.
Better let him bide there on the grassy couch beside the spring. And, furthermore, it seemed a foolish thing that eighty men should wait the issue there, for dying is a game of solitaire, and all men play the losing hand alone. But when at noon he had not ceased to moan, and fought still like the strong man he had been, there grew a vague mistrust that he might win, and all this be a tale for wandering ears, So Major Henry called for volunteers, to men among the eighty who would stay to wait on glass and keep the wolves away until he did whatever he should do. All quite agreed. Twas bitter bread for Hugh, yet none save Jamie felt in duty bound to run the risk, until the hat went round and pity wakened at the silver's clink in Jules Le Bon.
He would not have them think that mercenary motives prompted him. But somehow just the grief of little Jim was quite sufficient, not to mention Hugh. He weighed the risk. As everybody knew, the rickarees were scattered to the west. The late campaign had stirred a hornet's nest to fill the land with stingers, which was so. And yet, three days a southwest wind may blow, false April, with no drop of dew at heart, so Jules ran on, while ready for the start, the pouring horses nickered, and the men. Impatient in their saddles yawned, and then, with brief advice, a round of bluff good-byes, and some few reassuring backward cries. The troop rode up the valley with the day. Intent upon his friend, with naught to say, sat Jamie, while Le Bon discussed at length the reasonable limits of a man's strength, a self-conducted dialectic strife that made absurd all argument for life, and granted but a fresh-dug hole for Hugh, Twas half-like murder.
Yet it seemed Jules knew unnumbered tales accordant with the case, each circumstantial as to time and place, and furnished with a death's-head colophon. Vivaciously despondent, Jules ran on. Did he not share his judgment with the rest? You see, Twas some contusion of the chest that did the trick, heart, lungs and all that mixed in such a way they never could be fixed. A bear's hug, ugh! And often Jamie winced at some knife-thrust of reason that convinced, yet left him sick with unreliquished hope, as one who in a darkened room might grope for some beloved face with shuddering anticipation of a clammy thing. So in the lad's hard sorrow fumbled round for some old joy to lean upon, and found the stark cold something Jamie knew was there, yet womanlike, He stroked the hoary hair, or bathed the face, while Jules found tales to tell.
Lugubriously garrulous. Night fell. At sundown, day-long winds alike to fear, so summoning a mood of relished fear Le Bon remembered dire alarms by night. The sweep of savage hordes, the desperate fight of men outnumbered, and, like him of old, in all that made Jules shudder as he told his the great part, A man by field and flood, fate tossed. Upon the gloom he limned in blood, their situations, possibilities. Two men against the fury of the Ries, a game in which two hundred men had failed. He pointed out how little it availed to run the risk for one as good as dead. Yet Jules Le Bon meant every word he said, and had a scalp to lose, if need should be. That night, through Jamie's dreaming, swarmed the Rie.
Grey-souled, he wakened to a dawn of grey, and felt that something strong had gone away. Nor knew what thing, some whisper of the will, bade him rejoice that Hugh was living still, but Hugh, the real, seemed somehow otherwhere. Jewels, snug and snoring in his blanket, there was half a life the nearer. Just so pain is nearer than the peace we seek in vain, and by its very sting compels belief. Jules woke, and with a fine restraint of grief saw early dissolution. One more night, and then the poor old man would lose the fight. Ah, such a man! A day and night crept by, and yet the stubborn fighter would not die, but grappled with the angel. All the while, with some conviction, but with more of guile, Jules colonized the vacancy with Ries.
Till Jamie felt that looseness of the knees that comes of oozing courage. Many men may tower for a white-hot moment when the wild blood surges at a sudden shock, but when insistent, as a ticking clock blind peril haunts and whispers, fewer dare. Dread hovered in the hushed and moony air the long night through, nor might a fire be lit, lest some far-seeing foe take note of it. And daylong jamie scanned the blank sky rim for hoof-flung dust-clouds, till there woke in him childish anger, dumb for ruth and shame that Hugh so dallied. But the fourth dawn came, and with it lulled the fight, as on a field where broken armies sleep but will not yield. Or had one conquered? Was it Hugh or death? The old man breathed with faintly fluttering breath, nor did his body shudder as before.
Jules triumphed sadly. It would soon be o'er, so men grew quiet when they lost their grip, and did not care. At sundown he would slip into the deeper silence. Jamie wept. Unwitting how a furtive gladness crept into his heart that gained a stronger beat. So cities, long beleaguered, take defeat unto themselves half-traitors. Jules began to dig a hole that might conceal a man, and as his sheath-knife broke the stubborn sod, He spoke in kindly vein of life and God and mutability and rectitude. The immemorial funerary mood brought tears mute tribute to the mother dust, and Jamie, seeing, felt each cutting thrust less like a stab into the flesh of Hugh. The sun crept up and down the ark of blue, and through the air a chill of evening ran, but, though the grave yawned, waiting for the man, the man seemed scarce yet ready for the grave.
Now, Prompted by a coward or a knave that lurked in him, Le Bon began to hear. Faint sounds that to the lads, less cunning ear was silence. More like tremors of the ground. They were, Jules said, than any proper sound. Thus one detected horseman miles away. For many moments big with fate he lay, ear pressed to earth and rose, and shook his head as one perplexed. There's something wrong, he said. And, as at daybreak, whiten. Winter skies, agape and staring with a wild surmise. The lad's face whitened at the other's word. Gels could not quite interpret what he heard. A hundred horse might noise their whereabouts in just that fashion. Yet he had his doubts it could be bison moving quite as well.
But if twere rees, there'd be a tale to tell that two men he might name should never hear. He reckoned scalps that four were selling dear. In keeping with the limited supply, men fit to live were not afraid to die. Then, in that caution suits not courage ill, Jules saddled up and cantered to the hill a white dam set against the twilight stream. And as a horseman riding in a dream, the lad beheld him, watched him clamber up to wear the dusk, as from a brimming cup ran over, saw him pause against the gloom, pretentious, huge, A brooder upon doom. What did he look upon? Some moments passed. Then suddenly it seemed as though a blast of wind, keen cutting with the whips of sleet, smote horse and rider.
Haunched on huddled feet, the steed shrank from the ridge, then rearing wheeled, and took the rubbly incline, fury-heeled. Those days and nights, like seasons creeping slow, had told on Jamie. Better blow on blow of evil hap with doom seen clearer head than that monotonous abrasive dread. Blind Nora at the sole fuse of the blind. Thin-worn, the last heart-string that held him kind, strung taut, the final tie that kept him true now snapped in Jamie as he saw the two so goaded by some terrifying sight. Death riding with the vanguard at the night, life dwindling yonder with the rear of day. What choice for one whom panic swept away from moorings in the sanity of will? Jules came, and summed the vision of the hill in one hoarse cry that left no word to say, Rees!
Saddle up! We've got to get away! Small wit had Jamie left to ferret guile, but fumblingly obeyed Le Bon the while. Jules knelt beside the man who could not flee, for big hearts lacked not Time for charity, however thick the blows of fate may fall. Yet in that, Jules Verbonne was practical. He could not quite ignore a hunting-knife, a flint, a gun, a blanket, gear of life, scarce suited to the customs of the dead. And Hugh slept soundly in his ample bed, star-canopied and blanketed with night, unwitting how venality and fright made hot the westward trail of Henry's men. End of part one. Recorded by Nathan at antipodeanwriter.wordpress.com.
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2 02 The Awakening 11:55
The Awakening No one may say what time elapsed, or when, The slumberous shadow lifted over Hugh. But some globose immensity of blue enfolded him at last within whose light he seemed to float, as some faint swimmer might, a deep beneath and overhead a deep. So one late plunged into a lethal sleep, a spirit-diver fighting for his breath, swoops through the many-fathomed glooms of death, emerging in a daylight strange and new. Rousing a liquid wonder came on Hugh at the quiet, steep-arched splendour of the day. A grope for some dim memory he lay upon his back, and watched a lucent fleece fade in the blue profundity of peace, as did the memory he sought in vain. Then, with a stirring of mysterious pain, old habit of the body bade him rise.
But when he would obey, the hollow skies broke as a bubble punctured, and went out. Again he woke, and with a drowsy doubt remote unto his horizontal gaze, he saw the world's end kindle to a blaze, and up the smoky, steep, pale heralds run, and when at length he knew it, for the sun-dawn found the darkling reaches of his mind, for in the twilight he began to find strewn shards and torsos of familiar things, as from the rubble. In a place of kings men school the dream to build the past anew. So out of dream and fragment builded Hugh, and came upon the reason of his plight, the bear's attack, the shot, and then the night wherein men talked as ghosts about a grave. Some consciousness of will the memory gave he would get up.
The painful effort spent made the wide heavens billow as a tent wind struck, the shaken prairies sag and roll. Some moments with an effort at control he swayed, half raised upon his arms until the dizzy cosmos righted, and was still. Then would he stand erect, and be again the man he was, and overwhelming. Pain smote him to earth, and one unruly limb refused the weight and crumpled under him. Sickened with torture, he lay huddled there, gazing about him with a great despair proportioned to the might that felt the chain. Far-flung as dawn, collusive sky and plain stared bleak denial back. Why strive at all? That vacancy about him like a wall. Yielding as light a granite scarp to climb, some little waiting on the creep of time, abandonment to circumstance, and then—here flashed a sudden thought of Henry's men into his mind and drove the gloom away.
They would be riding westward with the day, how strange he had forgot that battered leg or some scalp wound had set his wits a beg. Was this Hugh Glass to whimper like a squaw? Grimley amused, he raised his head and saw the empty distance, listened long, and heard naught but the twitter of a lonely bird that emphasized the hush. Was something wrong? "'Twas not the Major's way to Dally Long, and surely they had camped not far behind. Now woke a query in his troubled mind. Where was his horse? Again came creeping back the circumstances of the bear's attack. He had dismounted, thinking at the spring to spend the night, and then— The grisly thing. Of course, the horse had bolted, plain enough. But why was all the soil about so rough as though a herd of horses had been there?
The riddle vexed him, till his vacant stare fell on a heap of earth beside a pit. What did that mean? He wormed his way to it, the newly wakened wonder dulling pain. No pore of beast had scooped it. That was plain. T'was squared. Indeed, t'was like a grave, he thought. A grave, a grave. The mental echo wrought sick fancies. Who had risen from the dead? Who lying there had heard above his head the ghostly talker's death unto his shout? Now, searching all the region round about as though the answer were a lurking thing, he saw along the margin of the spring an ash heap and the litter of a camp. Suspicion, like a little smoky lamp that daubs the murk, but cannot fathom it, flung bare grotesques before his groping wit.
Had Ries been there? And he alive? Who then? And were he dead, it might be Henry's men. How many suns had risen while he slept? The smoky glow flared wildly, and he crept, the dragged limb throbbing, till at length he found the trail of many horses, westward-bound and in one breadth. The groping light became a gloom-devouring, ecstasy of flame, a dazing conflagration of belief. Plunge deeper, and the seats of— Hate and grief he gazed about for aught that might deny such baseness. Saw the non-committable sky, the prairie apathetic in a shroud, the bland complacence of a vagrant cloud, world-wide connivance. Smilingly, the sun approved a land wherein such deeds were done, and careless breezes, like a troop of youth, unawed before the presence of such truth went scampering amid the tussled brush.
Then by and by came on him with a rush his weakness. and the consciousness of pain, while, with the chill insistence of a rain that pelts the solemn wreck of summer's end, his manifest betrayal by a friend beat in upon him. Jamie had been there, and Jamie, Jamie, Jamie did not care. What no man yet had witnessed, the wide sky looked down and saw, a light wind idling by, heard what no ear of mortal yet had heard, for he, whose name was like a magic word to conjure, The remote heroic mood of valiant deed and splendid fortitude, wherever to that shared a fire might be, gave way to grief, and wept unmanfully. Yet not as they for whom tears fall like dew to greener frosted heart again wept Hugh, so thewed to strive, so engine'd to prevail, and make harsh fate the zanier for tale his own might shook and tore him.
For a span he lay a gray old ruin of a man, with all his years upon him like a snow. And then at length, as from the long-ago remote beyond the other side of wrong, the old love came like some remembered song, whereof the strain is sweet, the burden sad. A retrospective vision of the lad grew up in him. As in a foggy night, the witchery of semi-lunar light mysteriously quickens all the air. Some memory of wind-blown, golden hair, the boyish laugh, the merry eyes of blue wrought marvellously in the heart of Hugh, as under snow the demon of the spring, And momently it seemed a little thing to suffer. Nor might treachery recall the miracle of being loved at all, the privilege of loving to the end.
And thereupon a longing for his friend made life once more a struggle for the prize. To look again, upon the merry eyes, to see again, the wind-blown golden hair, aye, one should lavish very tender care upon the vessel of a hope so great, lest it be shattered, and the precious freight as water on the arid waste poured out, Yet, though he longed to live, a subtle doubt still turned on him the weapon of this pain. Now, as before, collusive sky and plain outsteared his purpose for a puny thing. Praying to live, he crawled back to the spring with something in his heart like gratitude, that by good luck his gun might furnish food, his blanket shelter, and his flint a fire. For, after all, what thing do men desire to be or have but these condition it?
These, with a purpose and a little wit, and howsoever smitten one might rise, push back the curtain of the curving skies and come upon the living dream at last. Exhausted by the spring he lay and cast dull eyes about him, what did it portend? Nought but the footprints of a fickle friend a yawning grave and ashes met his eyes. Scarce feeling yet the shock of a surprise, he searched about him for his flint and knife, knew vaguely that his seeking was for life, and that the place was empty where he sought. No food, no fire, no shelter, Dully wrought the bleak negation in him, slowly crept, to where, despite the pain, his love had kept a shrine for Jamie undefiled of doubt. Then suddenly, conviction like a shout aroused him.
Jamie! Jamie was a thief! The very difficulty of belief was fuel for the simmering of rage that grew and grew the more he strove to gauge the underlying motive of the deed. Untempered youth might fail a friend in need, but here had wrought some devil of the will, some heartless thing too cowardly to kill that left to nature what it dared not do. So bellowed, all the kindled soul of Hugh became a still white hell of brooding ire, and through his veins Regenerating fire ran driving out the lethargy of pain. Now once again he scanned the yellow plain conspirant with the overbending skies, and, lo, the one was blue as Jamie's eyes, the other of the color of his hair, twin hues of falseness, merging to a stare, as though such guilt, thus visibly immense, regarded its effect with insolence.
Alas, for those who fondly place above the act of loving what they chance to love, Who prize the gold, more dearly than the way. For time shall plunder them, and change betray, and life shall find them vulnerable still. A bitter-sweet narcotic to the will, whose love increased the peril of his might. But anger broke the slumber of his might, quickened the heart and warmed the blood that ran. Defiance for the treachery of man, defiance for the meaning of his pain, defiance for the distance of the plain, that seemed to gloat, you cannot master me. And for one burning moment he felt free to rise and conquer in a wind of rage. But as a tiger, conscious of the cage, a smoulder with purpose, brutes and weights, so with the sullen patience that his hates, Hugh taught his wrath to bide expedience.
Now cognizant, a very quickened sense thirst came upon him. Leaning to the spring, he stared with fascination on a thing that rose from giddy-deeps to share the draught, a face it was, So tortured that it laughed, a ghastly mask that murder well might wear. And while as one they drank together there, it was as though the deed he meant to do took shape, and came to kiss the lips of Hugh, lest that revenge might falter. Hunger woke, and from the bush with leafage gray as smoke, wherein like flame the bulberries glinted red, scarce sweeter than the heart of him they fed, Hugh feasted, and the hours of waiting crept, agloom, aglow, And though he waked or slept the pondered purpose, or a dream that roared, by night the murder of his waking thought sustained him till he felt his strength returned, and then at length the longed-for morning burned, and beckoned down the waste way he should crawl, that waste, to be surmounted as a wall, sky rims, and yet more sky rims, steep to climb, that simulacrum of enduring time, the hundred empty miles twixt him, and where the stark misery ran, Yet why not dare?
Despite the useless leg, he could not die one hair's-breadth farther from the earth and sky, or more remote from kindness.
End of part two. Recorded by Nathan at antipodeanwriter.wordpress.com.
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3 03 The Crawl 1:03:56
Straight away. Beneath the flare of dawn the Rhe land lay, and through it ran the short trail to the goal. Thereon a grim turnpikeman waited toll, that twas so doomed that southering geese should flee, nine times ere yet the vengeance of the Rhe should make their foe the haunter of a tale. Midway to safety on the northern trail, the scoriac region of a hell-burned black forbade the crawler, and for all his lack Hugh had no heart to journey with the sons, no suppliant unto those faithless ones should bid for pity at the bighorn's mouth. The greater odds for safety in the south allured him, so he felt the midday sun blaze down the coolie of a little run. It dwindled upward to the watershed, whereon the feeders the morrow head, scarce more than deep-carved runes of vernal rain.
The trailing leg was like a galling chain, And bound him to a doubt that would not pass. Defiant clumps of thirst in bittered grass that bit parched earth with bared and fanglike roots. Dwarf thickets, jealous for their stunted fruits, harsh-tempered by their disinheritance. These symbolized the enmity of chance for him who, with his fate unreconciled, equipped for travel as a weanling child, essayed the journey of a mighty man. Like agitated oil, the heat-waves ran, and made the scabrous gulch appear to shake as some reflected landscape in a lake, where laggard breezes move, a taunting reek rose from the grudging seepage, off the creek whereof you drank and drank and still would drink, and where the mottled shadow dripped as ink from scanty thickets on the yellow glare.
The crawler faltered, with no heart to dare ungen the torture of that toil, until— The master thought of vengeance woke the will to goad him forth, and when the sun quiesced amid ironic heavens in the west, the region of false friends, Hugh gained a rise, whence to the fading cincture of the skies a purpling panorama swept away. Scarce farther than a shout might carry lay the place of his betrayal. He could see the yellow blotch of earth where treachery had digged his grave. O futile wrath and toil! Tucked in beneath yon coverlet of soil turned back for him. How soundly had he slept. Fool, fool! to struggle, when he might have crept so short a space yet farther than the flight of swiftest dreaming through the longest night into the quiet house of no false friend.
Alas for those who seek a journey's end! They have it ever with them like a ghost, nor shall they find who deem they seek it most, but crave the end of human ends, as hew. Now, swoopingly, the world of dream broke through the figured wall of sense. It seemed he ran, as wind above the creeping ways of man, and came upon the place of his desire, where burned far luring, as a beacon fire, the face of Jamie, but the vengeful stroke bit ere the darkness lifted like a smoke, and it was early morning. Gazing far, from where the west yet kept pallid star, to thinner sky, where dawn was wearing through, Hugh shrank with dread, Reluctant to renew the war with that serene antagonist. More fearsome than a smashing iron fist seemed that vast negativity of might, until the frustrate vision of the night came moonwise on the gloom of his despair, and, lo, the foe was naught but yielding air a vacancy to fill with his intent.
So from his spacious bed he rose and went, three-footed, and the vision goaded him. Or morning, southward. To the bare sky rim the rugged, coolly zigzagged, mounting slow, and ever as it rose the lean creeks flow dwindled and dwindled steadily until, at last, a scooped-out basin would not fill, and thenceforth twas a way of mocking dust. But in that Hugh still kept the driving lust for vengeance. This new circumstance of fate served but to brew more venom for his hate, and nerved him to avail the most with least. Ere noon the crawler chanced upon a feast of bread-root sunning in a favored drawer. A sentry gopher from his stronghold saw some three-legged beast bear-like, yet not a bear, with quite misguided fury, digging where no hapless brother gopher might be found.
And while, with striped nose above his mound, the sentinel chirped shrilly to his clan, scare tales of that anomaly the man devoured the chance-flung manner of the plains. That some vague reminiscence of old rains kept succulent despite the burning drouth. So with new vigor Hugh assailed the south, his pockets laden with the precious roots, against that coming traverse where no fruits of herb or vine or shrub might brave the land spread roof-like twixt the morrow and the grand. The coolie deepened. Yellow walls, flung high, sheer to the ragged strip of blinding sky, dazzled and sweltered in the glare of day. Capricious draughts that woke and died away into the heavy drowse were breathed as flame, and midway down the afternoon Hugh came.
Upon a little patch of spongy ground his thirst became a rage. He gazed around, seeking a spring. But all about was dry, a strewn bone bleaching to a desert sky. Nor did a clawed hole, bought with needed strength, return a grateful ooze, and when at length Hugh sucked the mud, he spat it in disgust. It had the acrid tang of broken trust, the sweetish, tepid taste of feigning love. Still hopeful of a spring somewhere above, he crawled the faster for his taunted thirst, More damp spots, no less grudging than the first, occurred with growing frequency on the way, until amid the purple wane of Dave a crawler came upon a little pool. Clear as a friend's heart, Twas, and, seeming cool, a crystal bowl whence skie deeps looked up.
So might a god set down his drinking-cup, charged with a distillation of haught skies, as famished horses, thrusting to the eyes, parched muzzles take a long-sword water-hole. Hugh plunged his head into the brimming bowl as though to share the joy with every sense, and, lo, the tang of that wide insolence of sky and plain was acrid in the draught. How ripplingly the lying water laughed, how like fine sentiment the mirrored sky. One credence for a sink of alkali, so with false friends. And yet, as may accrue from specious love some prophet of the true one gift of kindness had the tainted sink, Stripped of his clothes, Hugh let his body drink at every thirsting pour through trunk and limb. The elemental blessing so laced him, nor did he rise till, vague with stellar light, the lone gulch buttressing an arch of night, was like a temple to the Holy Ghost.
As priests in slow procession, with the host a gusty breeze intoned, now low, now loud, and now as to the murmur of a crowd yielding The dim-torched wonder of the nave. Aloft along the dusky architrave, the wonder-tale of drifting stars evolved, and Hugh lay gazing to the whole resolved into a haze. It seemed that little Jim had come to share a merry fire with him, and there had been no trouble twixt the two, and Jamie listened eagerly, while Hugh essayed a tangled tale of bears and men, bread-root and stars, But ever now and then the shifting smoke-cloud dimmed the golden hair, the leal blue eyes, until, with sudden flare, the flame effaced them utterly, and, lo, the gulch-bank full with mourning.
Loath to go, Hugh lay beside the pool and pondered fate. He saw his age-long pilgrimage of hate stretch out, a fool's trail, and it made him cringe. For still amid the nightly visions fringe, his dull wit strayed, companioned with regret. But when the sun, a tilted cauldron set upon the gulch rim, poured a blaze of day. He rose and bathed again, and went his way, sustaining wrath returning with the toil. At noon the gulch walls, hewn in lighter soil, fell back, and coolies dense with shrub and vine climbed zigzag to the sharp horizon line, whence one might choose the pilotage of crows. He labored upward, Through the noonday doze of breathless shade, where plums were turning red, entangled boughs and grapevines overhead, purpled with fruit to taunt the crawler's thirst.
With little effort, Hugh attained the first, the latter, bargained sharply ere they sold their luscious clusters for the hoarded gold of strength that had so very much to buy. Now, having feasted, it was sweet to lie beneath a sun-proof canopy, and sleep came swiftly, Hugh Wakened to some deep star snuffing well of night, while he lay, and wondered what had happened to the day, and where he was, and what were best to do. But when, foglike, the drowse dispersed, he knew how far the rim above the plain stretched far to where the evening and the morning are, and that, twere better, he should crawl by night, sleep out the glare. With groping hands for sight, skyward along the broken steep he crawled, and saw at length immense and purple-walled or sensed, the dusky mystery of plain.
Gazing aloft, he found the capsized wain in mid-plunge down the polar steep. There, too, he set his back, and far ahead there grew as some pale blossom from a darkling root the star-blanched summit of a lonely boot, and thitherward he dragged his heavy limb. It seemed naught moved. Time hovered over him an instant of incipient endeavor, Twas ever thus, and should be thus, forever, this groping for the same armful of space, and in substantial essence of one place, extentless on a weird frontier of sleep, sheer deep upon unfathomable deep. The flood of dusk bore down without a sound, as ocean on the spirits of the drowned awakened headlong leagues beneath the light. So lapsed the drowsy aeon of the night, a strangely tensile moment in a trance, and then as quickened, To somnambulance, the heavens imperceptibly in motion were altered as the upward deeps of ocean diluted with a seepage of the moon.
The boot-top, later gossamer balloon in mid-air tethered hovering, grew down, and rooted in a blear expanse of brown that, lifting slowly with the ebb of night, took on the harsh solidity of light, and day was on the prairie like a flame. Scarce had he munched the hoarded roots. When came a vertigo of slumber, Snatchy dreams, of sick pools, Inaccessible cool streams, Lured on through giddy vacancies of heat In swooping flights, now hills of roasting meat Made savory the oven of the world, Yet kept remote peripheries, And whirled about a burning center that was hue. Then all were gone, say One, and it turned blue, And was a heap of cool and luscious fruit, Until at length he knew it for the boot, Now mantled with a weaving.
of the clone. It was the hour when cattle struggle home. Across the clearing in a hush of sleep, they saunter lowing. Loiter belly deep amid the lush grass by the meadow stream. How like the sound of water in a dream, the intermittent tinkle of yon bell, a windlass creaks contentment from a well, and cool deeps gurgle as the bucket sinks. Now blowing at the trough, the plough team drinks, the shaken harness rattles. Sleepy quails call far. The warm milk hisses in the pails. Therein the dusky barn lot. Crickets cry. The meadow twinkles with the glowing fly. One hears the horses munching at their oats. The green grows black. A veil of slumber floats across the haunts of home-enamored men. Some freak of memory brought back again the boyhood world of sight and scent and sound.
It perished, and the prairie ringed him round. Blank as the face of fate, in listless mood, Hugh set his face against the solitude and met the night, the new moon, low and far. A frail cup, tilted, nor the high-swung star, it seemed, might glint on any stream or spring, or touch with silver any toothsome thing. The coyote voiced the universal lack, as from another fire. The plain gave back the swelter of the noon glare to the gloom. In the hot hush, Hugh heard his temple's boom, thirst, tortured. Motion was a languid pain. Why seek some further nowhere on the plain? Here might the coyotes feast as well as there. So spoke some loose-lipped spirit of despair, and still he moved, volitionless, a weight submissive to that now unconscious hate, darkened water too, the hidden moon.
And when the night wore on in middle swoon, the crawler roused from stupor was aware of some strange alteration in the air. To breathe became an act of conscious will. The starry waist was ominously still. The far-off quixote's yell became sharp and clear as through a tunnel in the atmosphere, a ponderable, resonating mass. The limp leg dragging on the sun-dried grass produced a sound unnaturally loud. Cranched panting. Hugh looked up, but saw no cloud. An oily film seemed spread upon the sky, now dully staring as the open eye of one in fever. Gasping, choked with thirst, a childish rage assailed Hugh, and he cursed. T'was like a broken spirit's outcry tossed upon Hell's burlesque Sabbath for the lost, and briefly space seemed crowded with the voice.
To wait and die, to move and die. What choice? Hugh chose not, yet he crawled. Though more and more he felt the futile strife was nearly o'er, and as he went a muffled rumbling grew, more felt than heard. For long it puzzled Hugh. Somehow twas coextensive with his thirst, yet boundless. Swollen blood veins, ere they burst, might give such warning, so he thought, and still the drone seemed heaping up a phonic hill that towered in a listening profound. Then suddenly a mountain peak of sound came toppling to a heaven-jolting fall. The prairie shuddered, and a raucous drawl ran far and perished in the outer deep. As one, too roughly shaken out of sleep, Hugh stared bewildered. Still the face of night remained the same, save where, upon his right, the moon had vanished neath the prairie rim.
Then suddenly the meaning came to him. He turned and saw athwart the northwest sky like some black eyelid, shutting on an eye a coming night to which the night was day. Star-hungry ranged in regular array, the lifting mass assailed the dragon's lair, submerged the region of the hounded bear, out topped the tall ox-driver and the pole, and all the while there came a low-toned roll, less sound in air than tremor in the earth, from where, like flame upon a windy hearth, deep in the further murk, sheet-lightning flared, and still the southern arc of heaven stared a half-shut eye, near blind with fever-room, And still the plain lay tranquil as a tomb, wherein the dead reek not a menaced world. What turmoil now?
Lo! Ragged columns hurled pell-mell up stellar slopes. Swift blue fires leap above the wild assailants of the steep. Along the solid rear a dull boom runs, so light-horse squadrons charged beneath the guns. Now once again the night is deathly still. What ghastly peace upon the zenith hill no longer starry? Not a sound is heard, so poised the hush. It seems a whispered word might loose all noises in an avalanche. Only the black mass moves, and far glooms blanch with fitful flashes. The capricious flare reveals the boot-top tall and lonely there, like some grey prophet contemplating doom. But hark! What spirits whisper in the gloom? What sibilation of conspiracies ruffles the hush, or murmuring of trees?
Ghosts of the ancient forest rolled rain. In some hallucination of the plain, a frustrate phantom morning, all around, that ever-evolving, never-resolving sound gropes in the stifling hollow of the night. Then once, twice, thrice, a blade of blinding light ripped up the heavens, and the deluge came. A burst of wind and water, noise and flame, that hurled the watcher flat upon the ground. A moment past Hugh, famished, now half-drowned, he gasped for a breath amid the hurtling drench. So might a testy god long sought to quench a puny thirst poor wassail hurling after the crashing boll with wild sardonic laughter to see man wrestle with his answered prayer. Prone to the roaring floor and ceaseless flare, the man drank deeply with the drinking grass until it seemed the storm would never pass but raven down the painted murk.
For aye. When had what dreamer seen a glaring day, and leagues of prairie pantingly aquiver? Flame, flood, wind, noise, and darkness were a river tearing a cosmic channel to no sea. The tortured night wore on. Then suddenly peace fell. Remotely the retreating wroth trailed dull, reluctant thunders in its path, and up along a broken stair of cloud, the dawn came creeping whitely like a shroud. Grey vapours clung along the sudden plain, uprose the sun, to wipe the final stain of fury from the sky and drink the mist against a flawless arch of amethyst. The boot soared like a sole serene and white because of the catharsis of the night. All day Hugh fought with sleep and struggled on south-eastward, for the heavy heat was gone despite the naked sun.
The blank north-west breathed coolly, And the crawler thought it best to move while yet each little break and hollow and shallow basin of the bison wallow begrudged the earth and air its dwindling store. But now that thirst was conquered, more and more he felt the gnaw of hunger like a rage, and once from dozing in a clump of sage alone jack-rabbit bounded as a flame, hope fled in hue, until the memory came of him who robbed a sleeping friend and fled. Then hate and hunger merged, the man saw red, and momently the hare and little Jim were unblurred mark the murder unto him, elusive, taunting, sweet to clutch and tear. The rabbit paused to scan the crippled bear that ground its teeth as though it chewed a root, but when, in witless rage, Hugh drew his boot and hurled it with a curse, the hare loped off, its critic ears turned back, as though to scoff at silly brutes that threw their legs away.
Night, like a shadow, on enduring day, swooped by. The dream of crawling and the act were phases of one everlasting fact he woke. And he was doing what he dreamed. The boot, outstripped at eventide, now seemed intent to follow. Ever now and then, the crawler paused to calculate again what deer-bought yawn of distance dwarfed the hill. Close in the rear it soared, a titan still, whose hand-in-pocket saunter kept the pace. Distinct along the southern rim of space a low ridge lay, the crest of the divide, what rest and plenty on the other side, through what lush valleys ran, what crystal brooks, and there in virgin meadows wayside nooks with leaf and purple cluster dulled the light. All day it seemed that distant Pisgah height retreated, and the tall boot dogged the rear.
At eve a striped gopher chirping near gave hue and inspiration. Now at least no thieving friend should rob him. His great idea stirred him as a shout. Off came a boot. A sock was ravelled out, the coarse yarn fashioned to a running snare. He placed about the gophers whole with care, and then withdrew to hold the yarn and wait. The night-bound moments, ponderous with fate, crept slowly by. The battered gray face leered in expectation. Down the grizzled beard ran slaver from anticipating jaws. Evolving twilight hovered. To a pause the light wind fell. Again and yet again the man devoured his fancied prey, and then within the noose a timid snout was thrust, his hand unsteadied. With the hunger-lust you jerked the yarn.
It broke. Down swooped the night. A shadow of despair. Bleak height on height, it seemed. A sheer abyss enclosed him round. Clutching a strand of yarn, he heard the sound of some infernal turmoil under him. Grimly, he strove to reach the ragged rim that snared a star until the skie's space was darkened with the roof of Jamie's face, and then the yarn was broken, and he fell. A tumble like a stricken bat, his yell woke hordes of laughers down the giddy yawn of that black pit, and suddenly, "'Twas dawn. Dream dawn, dream noon, dream twilight, yet possessed by one stern dream more clamorous than the rest hue headed for a gap that notched the hills. Where, through alluring murmur of cool rills, a haunting smell of the dure seemed to creep.
By fits, the wild adventure of his sleep became the cause of all his waking care, and he complained unto the empty air how Jamie broke the yarn. The sun and breeze had drunk all shallow basins to the lees, but now and then some gully, choked with mud, retained a turbid relict of the flood. Dream dawn, dream noon, dream night, And still obsessed by that one dream more clamorous than the rest, Hugh struggled for the crest of the divide, and when at length he saw the other side, t'was but a rumpled waste of yellow hills. The deep-sunk wiser self had known the rills and looks to be the facture of a whim. Yet had the pleasant lie befriended him, and now the brutal fact had come to stare. Succumbing to a languorous despair, he mourned his fate with childish uncontroll.
And nursed that deadly adder of the soul self-pity. But the crows sweep down and feed, aye, batten on a thing that died of need, a poor old wretch betrayed of God and man. So peevishly his broken musing ran, till, glutted with the luxury of woe, he turned to see the boot that he might know how little all his striving could avail against ill-luck. And lo, a finger-nail at arm-length could blot it out of space, A goading purpose and a creeping pace had dwarfed the titan in a haze of blue, and suddenly new power came to Hugh with gazing on his masterpiece of will. So fair the wise on Pisgah. Down the hill, unto the higher vision consecrate now sullied forth the new triumvirate, a weariness, a hunger, and a glory, against tyrannic chance.
As in a story, some higher Hugh observed the baser part, So sits the artist, thrown above his art, nor wreaks the travail, so the end be fair. It seemed the wrinkled hells pressed into stair, the arch of heaven was an higher gaze, and as Hugh went, he fashioned many a phrase for use when, by some friendly ember light, his tale of things endured, should speed the night, and all this gloom grow golden in the sharing. So wrought the old evangel of high daring, the duty and the beauty of endeavor, the privilege of going on forever, A victor in the moment. Ah! but when the night slipped by, and morning came again, the sky and hill were only sky and hill, and crawling but an agony of will, so once again the old triumvirate, a buzzard hunger, and a viper hate, together with the baser part of hue, went visionless.
That day the wild geese flew, vague in a gray profundity of sky, and on into the night their muffled cry haunted the moonlight like a far farewell. It made Hugh homesick, though he could not tell. For what he yearned, and in his fitful sleeping the cry became the sound of Jamie weeping immeasurably distant. Morning broke. Blear chilly through a fog that drove as smoke before the booming northwest. Sweet and sad came creeping back old visions of the lad, some trick of speech, some merry little lilt, the brooding blue of eyes too clear for guilt, the wind-blown golden hair, Hate slept that day, and half of Hugh was half a life away, a wandering spirit wistful of the past, and half went drifting with the autumn blast that mourned among the melancholy hills.
For something of the lethargy that kills came creeping close upon the ebb of hate. Only the raw wind, like the lash of fate, could have availed to move him any more. At last, the buzzard beak no longer tore his vitals, and he ceased to think of food. The fighter slumbered, and a maudlin mood foretold the dissolution of the man. He sobbed, and down his beard the big tears ran, and now the scene is changed. The bleak wind's cry becomes a flight of bullets snarling by. From where on yonder summit sculped the rees? Against the sky in silhouette he sees the headstrong Jamie in the leaden rain. Now serenely beautiful and slain, the dear lad lies within a gusty tent. Thus, vexed with doleful whims, the crawler went adrift before the wind, nor saw the trail, till close on night he knew.
A rugged veil had closed about him, and a hush was there. Though still a moaning in the upper air told how the gray-winged gale blew out the day. Beneath a clump of brush he swooned away into an icy void. And waking numb, it seemed the still white dawn of death had come on this some cradle-valley of the soul. He saw a dim enchanted hollow roll beneath him, and the brush thereof was fleece. And like the body of the perfect peace that thralled the whole abode the break of day, it seemed no wind had ever come that way, nor sound dwelt there, nor echo found the place, and Hugh lay lapped in wonderment of space, vexed with a snarl, Whereof the ends were lost, till shivering. He wondered if a frost had fallen with the dying of the blast.
So vaguely troubled, listlessly he cast a gaze about him. Lo, above his head, the grey-green curtain of his chilly bed was broidered thick with plums, or so it seemed, for he was half persuaded that he dreamed, and with a steady stare he strove to keep that treasure for the other side asleep. Returning hunger bade him rise in vain. He struggled with a fine-spun mesh of pain that trammelled him until a yellow stream of day flowed down the white veil of a dream, and left it disenchanted in the glare. Then, warmed and soothed, he rose and feasted there, and thought once more of reaching the moreau. To southward, with a painful pace and slow, he went stiff-jointed, With a gnawing ache, in that hip wound he had for Jamie's sake oft made him groan, nor wrought a tender mood.
The rankling weapon of ingratitude was turned again with every puckering twinge. Far down the vale, a narrow winding fringe of wilted green, betokened how a spring there sent a little rill, meandering, and Hugh was greatly heartened. For he knew what fruits and herbs might flourish in the slough, and thirst henceforth should torture not again. So day on day, despite the crawler's pain, all in the windless golden autumn weather, these two as comrades struggled south together, the homeless graybeard and the homing rill, and one was sullen with the lust to kill, and one went crooning of the moon-wood vast. The many-fathomed peace at last, but, oh, the boon of singing on the way. So came these in the golden fall of day unto a sudden turn in the ravine, wherefrom Hugh saw a flat of cluttered green beneath the further bluffs of the moreau.
With sinking heart, he paused and gazed below upon the goal of so much toil and pain. John Green had seemed a paradise to gain the while he thirsted, where the lonely boot looked far and saw no toothsome herb or fruit in all that yellow barren dim with heat. But now the wasting body cried for meat, and sickness was upon him. Game should pass, nor deign to fear the mighty hunter-glass, but curiously sniffing paused to stare. Now, while thus musing, Hugh became aware of some low murmur. Vasek and profound, scarce risen over the border-line of sound. It might have been the coursing of his blood, or thunder heard remotely, or a flood flung down a wooded valley far away. Yet that had been no weather-reading day.
"'T'would frost that night. Amid the thirsty land all streams ran thin, and when he pressed a hand on either ear, the world seemed very still." The deep-worn channel of the little rill here fell away to eastward, rising rough, with old-rain furrows to a lofty bluff that faced the river with a yellow wall. There, too, perplexed, Hugh set about to crawl, nor reached the summit till the sun was low. Far-spread, shade dimpled, in the level glow the still land told not whence the murmur grew, but where the green strip melted into blue far down the winding valley of the stream, Few saw what seemed the tempest of a dream. At mimic havoc in the timber glooms, as from the sweeping of gigantic brooms, a dust-cloud deepened down the dwindling river.
Upon the distant tree-tops ran a shiver, and huddled thickets writhed as in a gale. On creeps the windless tempest up the vale, the while the murmur deepens to a roar, as with the wider yawning of a door, and now the agitated green-gloom gapes. To belch a flood of countless dusky shapes that mill and wrangle in a turbid flow, migrating myriads of the buffalo bound for the winter pastures of the plat. Exhausted, faint with need of meat, Hugh sat and watched the mounting of the living flood. Down came the night, and like a blot of blood the locked moon welted in the dust-bleared east. Sleep came, and gave a barmicidal feast about a merry flame with simmering. Sweet haunches of the carving of the spring in tender tongues that never tasted snow, and marrow-bones that yielded to a blow such treasure.
Hugh awoke with gnashing teeth, and heard the mooing drone of cows beneath the roll of hoofs, the challenge of the bull, so sounds afresh it when the banks are fallen, bursting brush-jams bellow to the croon. of water through green leaves. The ragged moon now drenched the valley in an eerie rain. Below, the semblance of a hurricane above the perfect calm of brooding frost, through which the wolves, in doleful tension, tossed from hill to hill the ancient hunger song. In broken sleep, Hugh rolled the chill night long, half conscious of the flowing flesh below, and now he trailed a bison in the snow that deepened till he could not lift his feet. Again he battled. For a chunk of meat with some gray beast that fought with icy fang, and when he woke, the wolves no longer sang.
White dawn athwart a white world smote the hill, and thunder rolled along the valley still. Morn, wiping up the frost as with a sponge, day on the steep and down the nightward plunge and twilight, saw the myriads moving on. Dust to the westward, where the van had gone, and dust and muffled thunder in the east. Hugh starved, while gazing on a titan feast, the tons of beef that eddied there and swirled had stilled the crying hungers of the world, yet not one little morsel was for him. The red sun, pausing on the dusty rim, induced a panic aspect of his plight. The herd would vanish and pass in the night and be another dream to cling and flout. Now scanning all the summit round about amid the rubble of the ancient drift, he saw a boulder.
"'Twas too big to lift, yet he might roll it, painfully and slow. He worked it to the edge, then let it go, and breathlessly expectant watched it fall. It hurtled down the leaning yellow wall, and bounding from a brushy ledger's brow. It barely gazed at the buttocks of a cow, and made a moment's heady where it struck. In the peevish wrath, Hugh cursed his evil luck, and seizing rubble, gave his fury vent by pelting bison till his strength was spent. So might a child assail the crowding sea, then sick at heart, and musing bitterly he shambled down the steep way to the creek, and having stayed the tearing buzzard beak with breadroot, and the waters of the rill slept till the white of morning over the hills like a whisper groping in a hush.
The stream's low trill seemed loud. The tumbled rush and rumpled tree-tops in the flat below, upon a fog that clung like spectral snow lay motionless. Nor any sound was there. No frost had fallen, but the crystal air smacked of the autumn, and a heavy dew lay hoar upon the grass. There came on Hugh, a picture, vivid in the moment's thrill, of marshalled corn-shocks marching up a hill and spiked fields dotted with the pumpkin's gold. It vanished, and a shiver with the cold he brooded on the mockeries of chance, the shrewd malignity of circumstance that either gave too little or too much. Yet, With the fragment of a hope for Crutch his spirit rallied, and he rose to go, though each stiff joint resisted as a foe, and that old hip-wound battled with his will.
So down along the channel of the rill, unto the vale below he fought his way, the fraw fog, rifting in the risen day, revealed the havoc of the living flood, the river shallows beaten into mud, the slender saplings shattered in the crush, all lower leafage stripped, Tussled, brushed, spoiled, fruitage, winter-thin aghast, and where the avalanche of hoofs had passed, it seemed nor herb nor grass had ever been, and this, the hard-won paradise, wherein a food devouring plethora of food had come to make a starving solitude. Yet hope and courage mounted with the sun. Surely, Hugh thought, some ill-begotten one of all that striving mass had lost the strife, Perished in the headlong stream of life, a feast to fill the bellies of the strong that still the weak might perish.
All day long he struggled down the stricken vale, nor saw what thing he sought. But when the twilight awe was creeping in, beyond a bend arose a din, as though the coyotes and the crows fought there with shrill and raucous battle-cries. Small need had hew to ponder and surmise what Girdon beak and fang contended for, within himself, the oldest cause of war. Wrought forth upon the instant fang and beak, he too would fight, nor had he far to seek amid the driftwood strewn about the sand for weapons suited to a brawny hand with such a purpose. Armed with club and stone, he forged ahead into the battle zone, and from a screening thicket spied his foes. He saw a bison carcass, black with crows, and over it a welter of black wings, and round about a press of tawny rings that, like a muddy current, churned to foam upon a snag, flashed whitely in the gloam with naked teeth, while close about the prize red beaks and muzzles, bloody to the eyes, betrayed how worth a struggle was the feast.
Then came on Hugh the fury of the beast to eat or to be eaten, better so, To die contending with a living foe, then fight the yielding distance and the lack. Masked by the brush, he opened the attack, and ever where a stone or club fell true about the stricken one, an uproar grew, and brute to brute, forgetful of the prey, until the whole pack tumbled in the fray. With bleeding flanks and lacerated throats, then, as the leader of a host who notes the cannon-wrought confusion of the foe, you seized the moment for a daring blow. A wolf's a coward who, in goodly packs, may counterfeit the courage that he lacks, and with a craven's fury crush the bold. But when the disunited mass that rolled in suicidal strife became aware, how some great beast that shambled like a bear bore down with roaring challenge, fell a-hush upon the pack, some slinking to the brush with tails a-droop, while some that whined in pain writhed off on reddened trails with bristled mane, Before the flying stones, a bolder few snarled minutes at the foe, as they withdrew, to fill the outer dusk with clamourings.
Aloft, upon a moaning wind of wings, the crows with harsh, vituperative cries, now saw a gray wolf of prodigious size devouring with the frenzy of the starved. Thus fell to hue a bison, killed and carved, and so fate's winds mysteriously trend, Woe in the silken meshes of the friend. Weal in the might and menace of the foe. But with the fading of the afterglow, the routed wolves found courage to return. Amid the brush, Hugh saw their eyeballs burn, and will he knew how futile stick and stone should prove by night to keep them from their own. Better is less with safety than enough with ruin. He retreated to a bluff, and scarce had reached it when the pack swooped in upon the carcass. All night long the din of wrangling wolves assailed the starry air, while high above them in a brushy lair Hugh dreamed of gnawing at the bloody feast.
Along about the blanching of the east, when sleep is weirdest, and a moment's flight, remembered coextensive with the night, may team with hapful years, as light in smoke upon the jumble of Hugh's dreaming broke a buzz of human voices once again, He rode the westward trail with Henry's men hoof-smitten leagues consuming in a dust, and now the nightmare of that broken trust was on him, and he lay beside the spring, a corpse, yet heard the muffled parleying above him of the looters of the dead. But when he might have riddled what they said, the babble flattened to a blur of grey, and lo, upon a bleak frontier of day, the spent moon staring down, A little space, Hugh scrutinized the featureless white face as though twould speak.
But when again the sound grew up and seemed to come from underground, he cast the drowse, and, peering down the slope, beheld what set at grapple, fear, and hope. Three Indian horsemen riding at a jog. Their ponies, wading belly-deep in fog that clung along the valley, seemed to swim, and through a thinner vapor, moving dim, the men were ghost-like. Could they be the Sioux? Almost the wish became belief in Hugh. Or were they Ries? As steadily the doubt withheld him from the hazard of a shout, and while he followed them with baffled gaze, grown large and vague, dissolving in the haze, they vanished westward. Knowing well the want of Indians moving on the bison hunt, forthwith, Hugh Guest, the early riders were the outflung feelers of a try of a stir.
Like some huge cat gone mousing, so he lay, concealed impatient with the sleepy day that dawdled in the dawning. Would it bring, good luck or ill? His eager questioning as crawling fog took on a golden hue. From sunrise he was waiting for the Sioux, their parfleche panniers, fat with sun-dried maize, and wussna. From the mint of evil days he would coin tales and be no begging guest about the tribal feast-fires burning west. But kinsmen of the blood of daring men. And when the crawler stood erect again, O friend, betrayer, at the bighorn's mouth, beware of someone riding from the south to do the deed that he had lived to do. Now when the sun stood hour-high in the blue, from where a cloud of startled blackbirds rose, downstream a panic-tourmult broke the dose of windless morning.
What unwelcome news embroiled the parliament of feathered shrews, a boiling Cloud against the sun they lower. Flackering strepant, now a sooty shower. Big-flaked, squall-driven westward, down they flutter, to set a clump of cottonwoods a-sputter. With cold black fire, and once again some shock of sight or sound flanks, panic in the flock, grey boughs exploding in a ruck of birds. What augury in ornoscopic words did yon swart sibyl's on the morning scrawl? Now broke abruptly, through the clacking A camp-dog's barking, and a pony's neigh, whereat a running nicker fled away, attenuating to a rearward hush. And lo, in hailing distance round the brush that fringed a jutting bluff's base like a beard, upon a stubborn chin-outthrust appeared, a band of mounted warriors in their van, aloof and lonely, rode a gnarled old man upon a piebald stallion.
Stooped was he, beneath his heavy years, yet haughtily he wore them, Like the purple of a king. Keen for a goal, as from the driving string a barbed and feathered arrow truly sped, his face was like a flinty arrow-head, and brooded westward in a steady stair. There was a sift of winter in his hair, the bleakness of brown winter in his look. Hugh saw, and huddled closer in his nook, fled the bright dreams of safety, feast and rest, before that keen, cold brooder on the west, as gaudy leaves before the blizzard flee. Twas Elk-tongue, fighting chieftain, up the ree with all his people at his pony's tail, full two-score lodges, emptied on the trail of hunger. On they came in ravelled rank, and many a haggard eye and hollow flank made plain how close and piteously pressed the enemy that drove them to the west such foemen as no warrior ever slew.
A tale of cornfields plundered by the Sioux, their sagging panniers told. Yet rich enough, they seemed to him who watched them, From the bluff, yea, pampered nigh the limit of desire. No friend had filched from them the boon of fire, and hurled them shivering back upon the beast. Erect they went, full-armed to strive at least, and nightly, in a cosy ember glow, hope fed them with a dream of buffalo soon to be overtaken. After that, home with their pawnee cousins on the plat, much meat and merry-making till the spring, undragged the rubble like a fraying string to tautly drawn. The rich in ponies rode, for much is light, and little is a load among all heathen with no Christ to save. Grace-seekers for the yet begrudging grave, bent with the hoeing of forgotten maize.
Wood-hewers, water-bearers, all their days, toil'd neath the lifelong hoarding of their packs, and nursing squaws, their babies at their backs, whining because the milk they got was thinned in dugs of famine. Strove as with a wind invincibly equipped with their first bows, the striplings strutted, knowing as youth knows how fair life is beyond the beckoning blue. Cold-eyed, the grand size plodded, for they knew as frosted heads may know how all trails merge in what lone land, raw maidens on the verge of some half-guessed-out mystery of life, in wistful emulation of the wife stooped to the fancied burden of the race, nor read, Upon the withered grandam's face the scrawled tale of that burden and its woe.
Slant to the sagging poles of the trevaux, numb to the squaw's harsh railing and the goad, the lean Cayusses toiled, and children rode atop the household plunder, wonder-eyed to see a world flow by on either side. From blue air sprung to vanish in blue air a river of enchantments. Here and there the campers loped upon a vexing quest. Countless hooves had left a palimpsest, a taunting snarl of broken sense, and now they sniffed the clean bones of the bison cow, howled the skies, and now with manes a-ruff they nose the man-smell leading to the bluff. Hawes puzzled at the base and sweeped the height with questioning yelps aloft, crouched low in fright already who can hear the brave's guffaws at their scorned foemen yielded.
To the squaw's inverted mercy, and to slay one grave. Since Earth's first mother scolded from a cave, and that dear riddle of her love began, no man has wrought a weapon against man to match the deadly venom brood above, the lean blue blinding heart-fires of her love. Well might the hunted hunter shrink aghast, but thrice three seasons yet should swell the past. So was it writ, ere fate's keen harriers should run Hugh Glass to Earth. The hungry curs took up again the tangled scent of food. Still flowed the rubble through the solitude, a thinning stream, now of the halt, the weak and all who had not very far to seek for that weird pass whereto the fleet are slow, and out of it, keen winds and numbing blow shrill with the fleeing voices of the dead.
Slowly, the scattered stragglers, making head against their wearinesses up a steep, fled westward, and the morning lay asleep upon the valley. Fallen wondrous still. Hugh kept his nook, nor ventured forth until the high day toppled to a blue descent when thirst became a master, and he went with painful scrambling down the broken scarp, lured by the stream, that like a smitten harp rippled a muted music to the sun. Scarce had he crossed the open flat and won the halfway fringe of willows when he saw, slow plodding up the trail, a tottering squaw, whose years made big the little pack she bore. Crouched in the brush, Hugh watched. More and more the little burden tempted him. Why not? A thin cry throttled in that lonely spot could bring no succor.
None should ever know, save him, the feasted coyote and the crow. Why, one poor crone found not the midnight fire. Nor would the vanguard, quick with young desire devouring distance, westward like a flame, regret this ash-dropped rearward. On she came, slow-footed, staring blankly on the sand so close now. That it needed but a hand outthrust to overthrow her, aye, to win that priceless spoil, a little tent of skin, a flint and steel, a kettle and a knife. What did the dying with the means of life, that thus the fit to live should suffer lack? Hoised for the lunch. What whimsy held him back? Why did he gaze upon the passing prize, nor seize it? Did some gust of ghostly cries awaken round her? Whispings of eld, wraith Voices of the babies she had held to plead for pity on her grave-wood days.
Far down a moment's cleavage in the haze of backward years, Hugh saw her now, nor saw the little burden and the feeble squaw, but someone sitting haloed like a saint beside a hearth long cold. The dream grew faint, and when he looked again the crone was gone beyond a clump of willow. Crawling on, he reached the river. Leaning to a pool, calm in its cup of sand, he saw—a fool! A wild, wry mask of mirth, a grin, yet grim, rose there to claim identity with him and ridicule his folly. Pity, for! Who pitied this that it should spare a squaw spent in the spawning of a scorpion brood? He drank and hastened, down the solitude, fleeing that thing which cleared him and was Hugh, and as he went his self-accusing grew, and with it anger, Till it came to seem that somehow some sly jamie of a dream had plundered him again, and he was strong with lust of vengeance and the sting of wrong so that he travelled faster than for days.
Now when the eve in many shade of greys wove the day's shroud, and through the lower lands, lean fogarns groped with chilling spirit hands, he paused perplexed, elusive, haunting dim, as though some memory that stirred in him, invasive of the real, grew the dream. There came upon the breeze that stole up a stream a whiff of wood-smoke. Twixt a beat and beat of Hugh's deluded heart it seemed the sweet allure of home, a brief way. And one came upon the clearing, where the sumac flame ran round the forest fringe, and just beyond one saw the slough grass nodding in the pond unto the sleepy troll the bull-frogs sung. And then one saw the place where one was young, the log-house. Sitting on a stumpy rise, half-lit within, its windows were as eyes that loved much, and are faded with old tears.
It seemed regretful of a life's arrears, yet patient, with a self-denying poise, like some old mother, for her bearded boys waiting sweet-hearted and a little sad, so briefly dreamed a recrudescent lad beneath grey hairs, and fled, through chill and damp, still groped the odour, hinting at a camp, a two-tongued herald wooing. Hope and fear. Was hospitality or danger near? A Sioux-war party, hot upon the trail, or laggard rears? Hugh crawled across the vale, twirled up along a zigzag gully's bed, and reached a bluff's top. In a smudge of red, the west burned low, hill summits, yet alight, and pearls of gloom, anticipating night, mottled the landscape to the dull blue rim. What freak of fancy had imposed on him?
Could one smell home smoke fifty years away? He saw no fire. No pluming spire of grey rose in the dimming air to woo all worn. He lay upon the bare height, fagged, forlorn, and old times came upon him with the creep of subtle drugs that put the world to sleep and wreaked doom to the soothing of a dream. So listlessly he scanned the sombrous stream, scarce seeing what he scanned, the dark increased till wind wakened from the frowning east and soured along the vale. Then with a start, He saw what broke the torpor of his heart and set the wild blood free. From where he lay, an easy point-blank rifle-shot away appeared a mystic germinating spark, that in some secret garden of the dark upreared a frail blue nodding stem whereon a ruddy lily flourished, and was gone.
What miracle was this? Again it grew, the scarlet blossom on the stem of blue, and withered back again into the night. With pounding heart, Hugh crawled along the height and reached a point of vantage whence below. He saw capricious witch-lights dim and glow like far-spent embers quickened in a breeze. "'Twas surely not a camp of laggard-reeze, nor yet of Suan warriors hot in chase. Dusk and a quiet bivouacked in that place, a doddering vagrant with numb hands the wind, fumbled the dying ashes there, and whined. It was the day-old camp-ground of the foe. Glad-hearted now." Hugh gained the veil below, keen to possess once more the ancient gift nearing the glow. He saw vague shadows lift out of the painted gloom of smouldering logs, distorted bulks that bristled, and were dogs, snarling at this invasion of their lair.
Hugh charged upon them, growling like a bear, and sent them whining. Now again to view the burgeoning of scarlet gold and blue, the immemorial miracle of fire from heaped-up twigs, a tenuous, Smoky Spire arose and made an altar of the place. The spark-glow, faint upon the grizzled face, transformed the kneeling outcast to a priest, and, native of the light begetting, east the wind became a chanting acolyte. These two entempled in the vaulted, night-breathed conjuries of interwoven breath. Then hark, the snapping of the chains of death from dead wood. Lo, the epiphanic God! Once more the freightage of the fennel-rod dissolved the chilling pall of jove in scorn. The wonder of the resurrection mourned the face apocalyptic, and the sword, the glory of the many-symboled Lord, Hugh, lifting up his eyes about him, sore, and something in him, like a vernal thaw voiced with the sound of many waters, ran and quickened to the laughter of the man.
Lightheartedly he fed the singing flame and took its blessing. Till a soft sleep came with dreaming that was like a pleasant tale. The far-white dawn was peering up the vale when he awoke to indulge and content. A few shorn stars, in pale astonishment, were huddled westward. And the fire was low, three scrawny camp-curs mustered in a row. Beyond the heap of embers, heads askew, ears pricked to question what the man might do. Sat wistfully regarded. He arose, and they, grown canny in a school of blows, To a safer distance, there to raise a dolorous chanting, Of the evil days, their gray breath like the body of a prayer. Hugh nursed the sullen embers to a flare, Then set about to view an empty camp as once before, But now no smoky lamp of blear suspicion Searched a gloom of fraud, wherein a smirking friendship Like a board embraced coward safety, now no grief, Hideous revelation and belief made womanish the man, but glad to strive with hope to nerve him, and a will to drive, he knew that he could finish in the race.
The staring impassivity of space no longer mocked. The dreadful sky would climb, where distance seemed identical with time was past now, and that mystic something, luck, without which worth may flounder in the ruck, had turned to him again. So flame-like sword rekindled hope in him as he explored among the ash-heaps, and the lean dogs ran and barked about him for the love of man wistful yet fearing. Surely he could find some trifle in the hurry left behind, or haply hidden in the trampled sand, that to the cunning of a needy hand should prove the master key of circumstance. For tis the little gifts of grudging chance well husbanded make victors. Long he sought, without avail, And crawling back, he thought of how the dogs were growing less afraid, and how one might be skinned without a blade.
A flake of flint might do it. He would try, and then he saw. Or did the servile eye trick out a mental image like the real? He saw a glimmering of whetted steel beside a heap now washed with morning light. Scarce more of marvel and the sense of might moved Arthur when he reached a hand to take The Feywrought brand emerging from the lake whereby a kingdom should be lopped of strife. Then Hugh now, pouncing on a trader's knife worn hollow in the use of bounteous days. And now behold a rich man by the blaze of his own hearth, a lord of steel and fire, not having, but the measure of desire determines wealth, who gaining more seek most, are ever the pursuers of a ghost and lend their fleetness to the fugitive for Hugh.
Long goaded by the wish to live what gauge of mastery in fire and tool, that twain wherewith time put the brute to school evolving man, the maker and the seer. Twixt urging hunger and restraining fear, the gaunt dogs hovered round the man while he cajoled them in the language of the rea and simulated feeding them with sand until the boldest dared to sniff his hand bare-fanged and with conciliative wine Through bristled mane the quick blade bit the spine below the skull, and as a flame-struck thing, the body humped and shuddered, withering, the lank limbs huddled, wilted. Now to skin the carcass, dig a hole, arranged therein, and fixed the pelt with stakes, the flesh side up, this done. He shaped the bladder to a cup on willow-withes, and filled the rawhide pot with water from the river, made it hot with roasted stones, and set the meat a-boil, those days of famine.
And prodigious toil had wrought bulimic cravings in the man, and scarce the cooking of the flesh outran the eating of it, as a fed flame towers. According to the fuel it devours, his hunger with indulgence grew nor ceased, until the kettle, empty of the feast went dim, the sky and valley merging swirled, and subtle smoke that smothered out the world, he slept, and then as diverse mounting sunder a murmuring murk to blink him. Sudden wonder upon a dazzling upper-deep of blue. He rose again to consciousness, and knew the low sun beating slantily on his face. Now, indolently, gazing round the place, he noted how the curls had revelled there, the bones and entrails gone, some scattered hair alone remaining of the pot of hide.
How strange! He had not heard them at his side, and granting but one afternoon had passed, what could have made the fire burn out so fast? Had daylight waned, night fallen, morning crept, noon blazed, a new day dwindled while he slept? And was the friendlike fire a jamie too? Across the twilight consciousness of Hugh the old obsession like a wounded bird fluttered. He got upon his knees and stirred the feathery ash. But not a spark was there. Already with the failing sun the air went keen, betokening a frosty night. Hugh winced with something, like the clutch of fright. How could he bear the torture? How sustain the sting of that antiquity of pain rolled back upon him face again the foe, that yielding victor, fleet in being slow, that huge impersonal malevolence.
So readily the tentacles of sense root in the larger standard of desire, that Hugh fell farther in the loss of fire than in the finding of it he arose. And suddenly the place grew strange as grows a friend's house when the friend is on his bier, and all that was familiar there endear puts on a blank. Inhospitable look. He set his face against the east and took that dreariest of ways, the trial of flight. He would outcrawl the shadow of the night and have the day to blanket him in sleep. But as he went to meet the gloom, a creep bemused with life's irrational rebuffs. A yelping of the dogs among the bluffs rose, hunger-wetted, stabbing, rent the pall of evening silence, blunted to a draw amid the arid waterways, and died.
And as the echo, To the sound replied, so in the troubled mind of Hugh was wrought a reminiscent cry of thought to thought that groping found an unlocked door to life, the dogs, keen flint to skin one, then the knife, discovered, why, that made of flint and steel! No further with the subtle foe at heel he fled, for all about him in the rock, to waken, when the needy hand might knock, a saviour slept, he found a flake of flint, scraped from his shirt a little Wad of lint, spilled on it from the smitten stone a shower of ruddy seed, and saw the mystic flower that genders its own summer, bloom anew! And so capricious luck came back to Hugh, and he was happier than he had been. Since Jamie, to that unforgiven sin had yielded ages back upon the grand, now he would turn the cunning of his hand to carving crutches, that he might arise, be manlike, lift more rapidly the skies that crouched between his purpose and the mark.
The warm glow housed him from the frosty dark, and there he wrought in very joyous mood, and sang by fits, whereat, the solitude set laggard singers snatching at the tune, the gaunter for their hunt, the dogs came soon to haunt the shaken fringes of the glow, and pitching voices to the timeless woe outwailed the lilting, so the chorus sings of terror pity, and the tears of things when most the doomed protagonist is gay. The stars swarmed over, And the front of day whitened above a white world, and the sun rose on a sleeper, with a task well done, nor roused him till its burning topped the blue. When Hugh awoke, there woke a younger Hugh, now half a stranger, and twas good to feel with ebbing sleep the old green vigor, steel thrilling, along his muscles and his veins, as in a lull of winter, cleansing rains, the gray bough quickens to the sap a creep.
It chanced. The dogs lay near him, sound asleep, curled nose to buttock in the noonday glow. He killed the larger with a well-aimed blow, skinned, dressed, and set it roasting on a spit, and when t'was cooked ate sparingly of it, for need might yet make little seem a feast. Fording the river shallows south by east, he hobbled now along a withered rill that issued, where old floods had gashed the hill a cyclopean portal yawning sheer. No storm of countless hooves had entered here. It seemed a place where nothing ever comes but change of season. He could hear the plums plash in the frosted thicket over-lush, while, like a spirit, lisping in the hush, the crisp leaves whispered round him as they fell, and ever now and then the autumn spell was broken by an ululating cry.
From far way back, with muzzle to the sky, the lone dog followed, mourning. Darkness came, and huddled up beside a cozy flame whose sleep was but a momentary flight across a little shadow into light. So day on day he toiled, and when afloat above the sunset like a stygian boat, the new moon bore the sceptre of the old. He saw a dwindling strip of blue out-rolled the valley of the tortuous Cain, and ere the half-moon sailed the night again, those far lone leagues had sloughed their garb of blue, and dwindled, dwindled, Dwindled after Hugh until he saw that titan of the plains, the sinewy Missouri. Dearth of rains had made the giant gaunt as he who saw. This loud chain-smasher of a late March Thor seemed never to have bellowed at his banks.
And yet, with staring ribs and hollow flanks, the urge of an indomitable will proclaimed him of the breed of giants still and where the current ran, a boiling track, t'was like the muscles, Of a mighty back-grown Atlantean in the wrestler's craft. Hugh set to work, and built a little raft of driftwood bound with grapevines. So it fell, that one with an amazing tale to tell came drifting to the gates of Gaia War.
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4 04 The Return of the Ghost 16:22
The Return of the Ghost.
Not long, Hugh, let the lust of vengeance Upon him idling, though the tale he told and what report proclaimed him were as gold to buy a winter's comfort at the post. I cannot rest, for I am but the ghost of someone murdered by a friend, he said. So long as yonder traitor thinks me dead, aye, buried in the bellies of the crows and coyotes. Whereupon said one of those who heard him, noting how the old man shook as with a chill, God, fend that one should look with such a blizzard of a face for me. For he went grayer, like a poplar-tree that shivers ruffling to the first faint breath of storm, while yet the world is still as death, save where, far off, the kenneled thunder's bay. So brooding, he grew stronger day by day, until at last he laid the crutches by, and then one evening came a rousing cry, from where the year's last keelboat hove in view, around the bend its swarthy sweating.
crew slant to the shouldered line. Men sang that night, and Kiowa, and by the ruddy light of leaping fires amid the wooden walls, the cups went round, and there were merry brawls of bearded lads no older for the beard, and laughing stories vied with tales of weird by stream and prairie trail and mountain pass, until the tipsy bourgeois bawled for glass to shame these with a man's tale fit to hear. The graybeard, Sitting where the light was blear, with little heart for revelry began his story, told as of another man, who loving late loved much, and was betrayed. He spoke unwitting, how his passion played upon them, how their eyes grew soft or hard with what he told. Yet something of the bard he seemed in his the purpose, that is arts, whereby men make a vintage of their hearts, and with the wine of beauty dead in pain.
low-toned, insistent, as October rain his voice beat on, and now and then would flit across the melancholy grey of it. A glimmer of cold fire that, like the flare of soundless lightning, showed a world made bare, green summer slain, and all its leafage stripped, and bronze jaws tightened, brawny hands were gripped as though each hearer had a fickle friend. But when the old man might have made an end rounding the story to a peaceful close at Guyawall, Songlike, his voice arose, the grinning gray mask lifted, and the eyes burned as a bard's who sees and prophesies conning the future as a time long gone. Swaying to rhythm, the dizzy tale plunged on even to the cutting of the traitor's throat, and ceased, as though a bloody strangling smote the voice of that gray chanter, drunk with doom, and there was shuddering in the blue-smeared gloom of fallen fires.
It seemed the deed was done. Before their eyes who heard. The morrow's sun lay over leagues of frost-enchanted plain, saw glass upon his pilgrimage again, northbound as hunter for the keel-boat's crew, and many times the wide autumnal blue. Burned out and darkened to a deep of stars, and still they toiled among the snags and bars, those lean upstream men straining at the rope, lashed by the doubt and strengthened by the hope of backward winter, engines wrought of bone, and muscle, panting for the yellow stone, bend after bend, and yet more bends away. Now was the river, like a sandy bay at ebb-tide, and the far-off cut-banks, boom, mocked them in shallows. Now it was like a flume, with which the toilers, barely creeping, strove, and, bend by bend, the selfsame poplar grove, set on the selfsame headland, so it seemed, confronted them, as though they merely dreamed of passing one drear point.
So on and up. Past where the tawny titan gulps the cup of cayenne waters, past Morrow's mouth, and still wry league and stubborn league fell south, becoming haze and weary memory. Then past the empty lodges of the Rhee that gaped at cornfields, plundered by the Sioux, and there old times came mightily on Hugh, for much of him was born and buried there, some troubled glory of that wind-tossed hair. Was on the trampled corn. The lonely skies, so haunted with the blue of Jamie's eyes, seemed taunting him, and through the frosted wood along the flat, where once their tent had stood, a chill wind sorrowed, and the blackbirds brawl, amid the funeral torches of the fall, ran raucously, a desecrating din.
Past where the cannon-ball and heart came in, they laboured. Now the north-west woke at last. The gaunt bluffs bellowed back the trumpet-blast of charging winds that made the sand-bars smoke. To breathe now was to gulp fine sand and choke. The stinging air was sibilant with whips. Leaning the moor, and with the firmer grips, still northward the embattled toilers pressed. To where the river yawes into the west, there stood the Mandan village. Now began the chaining of the Titan. Drift-ice ran. The winged hounds of winter ceased to bay. The stupor of a doom completed lay upon the world. The biting darkness fell. Out in the night, resounding as a well, they heard the deck-planks popping in a vice of frost.
All night the smithies of the ice re-echoed with the grinding jar and clink of ghostly hammers, welding link to link, and morning found the world without a sound. There lay the stubborn prairie, tight and bound to wait the far-off Heraclean thaw. Though still in silent rage, he strove to gnaw the ragged shackles knitting at his breast. And so the boatman, one a winter's rest among the Mandan traders, but for Hugh, there yet remained a weary work to do across the naked country, west by south. His purpose called him, at the big horn's mouth, three hundred miles of winging for the crow, but by the river trail that he must go, to a seven hundred winding miles at least. So now he turned his back upon the feast-snuggies, the pleasant tale, the merry mood, and took the bare foot sounding solitude northwestward.
Long they watched him from the post, skied on a bluff rim, fading like a ghost at gray cock-crow, and hooded in his breath. He seemed indeed a fugitive from death, on whom some tatter of the shroud still clung. Blank space engulfed him. Now the moon was young, when he set forth, and day by day he strode his scarce healed wounds upon him. Like a load, and dusk by dusk his fire outflared the moon that waxed until it wrought a spectral noon at nightfall. Then he came to wear a whirl with spring's wild rage, the snow-born titan girl, a skyey wonder on her virgin face, receives the virile yellow-stone's embrace, and bears the lusty seeker for the sea. Oblique, horizon-wide, serenity clung round the valley.
Where the twain lay dead, a winding-sheet was on the marriage-bed. "'Twas warmer now. The sky grew overcast, and as Hugh strode south-westward, all the vast grey void seemed suddenly astir with wings and multitudinary whisperings, the muffled sibilance of tumbling snow. It seemed no more might living waters flow, moon-gleam, star-glint, Dawn smoulder through birds sing, or ever any fair familiar thing be so again. The outworn winds were furled, weird weavers of the twilight of a world wrought, thread on kissing thread the web of doom, grown insubstantial in the knitted gloom. The bluffs loomed eerie, and the scanty trees were dwindled to remote dream traceries that never might be green or shield a nest.
All day with swinging stride, hew forged southwest along the yellow stone's smooth paven stream, a dream shape moving in a troubled dream, and all day long the whispering weavers wove, and close on dark he came to where a grove of cottonwoods rose tall and shadow thin against the northern bluffs. He camped therein, and with cut boughs made shelter as he might. Close pressed the blackness of the snow-choked night about him, And his fire of plumwood heard. Athwart a soft penumbral drowse he heard, the tumbling snowflakes sowing all around, till sleep transformed it to a summer sound of boyish memory, sussurrant bees, the south wind in the tussled apple trees and slumber flowing from their leafy gloom.
He wakened to the cottonwoods deep boom. Black fury was the world, the northwest's roar, as of a surf upon, A shipwreck sure plunged high above him from the sheer bluff's verge, and like the backward sucking of the surge far fled the sobbing of the wild snow-spray. Black blindness grew white blindness, and, "'Twas day, all being now seemed narrowed to a span that held a sputtering wood-fire, and a man, beyond was tumult and a whirling maze. The trees were but a-roaring in a haze. The sheer bluff wall that took the blizzard's charge was thunder, Flung along the hidden marge of chaos, stridden by the ghost of light. White blindness grew black blindness, and was night, where through nor moon, nor any star might grope.
Two days since, Hugh had killed an antelope, and what remained sufficed the time of storm. The snow banked round his shelter, kept him warm, and there was wood to burn, for many a day. The third dawn, oozing through a smudge of grey, awoke him. It was growing colder fast. Still from the bluff, I over-boomed the blast, but now it took the void with numbing wings. By noon the woven mystery of things frayed raggedly, and through a sudden rift at length Hugh saw the beetling-bluff wall lift, a sturdy shoulder to the flying rack. Slowly the sense of distances came back, as with the waning day the great wind fell, the pale sun set upon a frozen hill, the wolves howled. Hugh had left the Mandan town.
When heifer-horned, the maiden moon lies down beside the sea of evening. Now she rose, scar-faced and staring blankly on the snows, while yet the twilight tarried in the west. And more and more she came a tardy guest as Hugh pushed onward through the frozen waste, until she stole on midnight, shadow-faced a haggard spectre. Then no more appeared. "'Twas on that time the man of hoary beard paused in the early twilight." Looming loam upon a bluff rim of the yellow stone, and peered across the white stream to the south. In the flatland, at the bighorn's mouth, the new fort stood that Henry's men had built. What perfect peace for such a nest of guilt! What satisfied immunity from woe, yon spalling shadow, pied with candle-glow, and plumed with sparkling wood-smoke, might have been a homestead, with the children gathered in to share its bounty through the holidays.
You saw their faces. Round the gay half-blaze, the hail old father, in a mood for yarns, or boastful, of the plenty of his barns, fruitage of honest toil, and grateful lands, and, half a stranger to her folded hands, the mother with October, in her hair, and Auguste in her face. One moment there you saw it. Then the monstrous, brutal fact wiped out the dream, and goaded him to act, though now to act seemed strangely like a dream. Descending from the bluff, he crossed the stream, the dry snow fiefing to his eager stride. Reaching the fort stockade, he paused to bide the passing of a whimsy. Was it true, or was this but the fretted wraith of Hugh, whose flesh had fed the coyotes long ago? Still, through a chink, he saw the candle glow, so like an eye that brazened out a wrong, and now there came a flight of muffled song.
The rhythmic thudding of a booted heel that timed a squeaking fiddle to a reel how swiftly men forget. The spawning earth is fat with graves, and what is one man worth that fiddles should be muted at his fall? He should have died and did not. That was all. Well, let the living jig it. He would turn back to the night. The spacious unconcern of wilderness that never played the friend. Now came the song and fiddling to an end, and someone laughed within. The old man winced, listened with bated breath, and was convinced, "'Twas Jamie laughing. Once again he heard. Joy filled a hush twixt heart-beats like a bird, and like a famished cat his lurking hate pounced crushingly. He found at the outer gate, beat on it with his shoulder, raised a cry.
No doubt, "'twas deemed a fitful wind went by, none stirred, but when he did not cease to shout, a door creaked open, and a man came out amid the spilling candle-glimmer, raised the wicket in the outer gate, and gazed one moment on a face as white as death, because the beard was thick with frosted breath, made mystic by the stars. Then came a gasp, the clatter of the falling wickets, hasp, the crunch of panic-feet along the snow, and someone stammered, huskily and low, my God! I saw the old man's ghost out there. "'Twas spoken, as one speaks, who feels his hair prickle the scalp.' And then another said, it seemed like Henry's voice, "'The dead are dead. What talk is this, Le Bon? You saw him die.
Who's there?' He strove to shout, to give the lie to those within, but could not fetch a sound. Just so he dreamed of lying underground beside the grand, and hearing overhead the talk of men. Or was he really dead, and all this but a maggot in the brain?' Then suddenly the clatter of a chain aroused him, and he saw the portal yawn, and saw a bright, rectangle patch of dawn as through a grave's mouth. No, it was candlelight, poured through the open doorway on the night, and those were men before him, bulking black against the glow. Reality flashed back. He strode ahead and entered. At the door, a falling fiddle jangled on the floor and left a deathly silence. On his bench, the fiddler shrank, a row of eyes of Lensch with terror.
Ran about the naked hall, and there was one who huddled by the wall and hid his face and shivered. For a spell, that silence clung, and then the old man, Well, is this the sort of welcome that I get? Twas not my time to feed the coyotes yet. Put on the pot, and stew a chunk of meat, and you shall see how much a ghost can eat. I've journeyed far, if what I hear be true. Now in that none might doubt the voice of Hugh, nor yet the face. However it might seem a blurred reflection in a flowing stream, a buzz of wonder broke the trance of dread. "'Good God!' the Major gasped. "'We thought you dead. Two men have testified. They saw you die.' "'If they speak truth,' Hugh answered, "'then I lie, both here and by the ground.
If I be right, then two lie here and shall lie from this night. Which are they?' Hugh Henry answered. "'Yon is one.' The old man set the trigger off his gun and gazed on jewels. who cowered by the wall. Eyes blinked, expectant of the hammer's fall, ears strained, anticipative of the roar. But Hugh walked leisurely across the floor and kicked the croucher, saying, Come, get up, and wag your tail. I couldn't kill a pup. Then turning round. I had a faithful friend. No doubt he, too, was with me to the end. Where's Jamie? Started out before the snows. Fratkinson.
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5 05 Jamie 19:35
Hard Five. Jamie.
The country of the crows, through which the bighorn and the rosebud run, sees over mountain peaks the setting sun, and southward from the yellowstone flung wide it broadens ever, to the morning side, and has the powder on its vague frontier, about the subtle changing of the year. E'er even favoured valleys felt the stir of spring, and yet expectancy of her was like a pleasant rumour or repeat, Yet none may prove the sound of horses' feet went eastward through the silence of that land. For then it was there rode a little band of trappers out of Henry's post to bear, dispatches down to Atkinson, and there to furnish out a keelboat for the horn. And four went lightly, but the fifth seemed worn as with a heavy heart, for that was he who should have died but did not.
Silently he heard the careless parley of his men, Thought of how the spring should come again, that garish strumpet with her world-old lure, to waken hope where nothing may endure, to quicken love, where loving is betrayed. Yet now and then some dream of Jamie made slow music in him for a little while, and they who rode beside him saw a smile glimmer upon that ruined face of grey, as on a winter fog the groping day pours glory through a momentary rift. Yet never did the gloom that bound him lift. He seemed as one who feeds upon his heart and finds, despite the bitter and the smart, a little sweetness, and is glad for that. Now up the powder, striking for the plat across the bleak divide, the horsemen went, attained that river, where its course is bent from north to east, and, spurring on a pace along the wintry valley, reached the place where from the west flows in the larramie, Thence fearing to encounter with the re they headed eastward through the barren land, to where fleet-footed, down a track of sand, the Neo-brara races for the morn, a gaunt-lawned runner.
Here at length was borne upon the southern slopes the baby's spring, a timid fretful, your begotten thing a suckle at the winter's withered paps, not such as when announced by thunderclaps and ringed with swords of lightning she would ride the haughty victrix, And the mystic bride clad splendidly as never Sheba's queen, before her marching multitudes of green in many-bannered triumph grudging slow. Amid the fraying fringes of the snow the bunch-grass sprouted, and the air was chilled. Along the northern slopes, "'Twas winter still, and no root dreamed what triumph over death was nurtured now in some bleak Nazareth beyond the crest to sunward. On they spurred, Through vacancies that waited for the bird, and everywhere the Odig presence dwelt, the southwest blew, the snow began to melt, and when they reached the valley of the snake, the Neobrarra's ice began to break, and all night long and all day long it made a sound as of a random cannonade with rifles snarling down a skirmish line.
The geese went over. Every tree and vine was dotted thick with leaf-buds when they saw the little river of the Kiyapur, Mighty for the moment. Then they came, one evening when all thickets were aflame with pale green witch-fires and the wind-flowers blue, to where the headlong Neobrara threw his speed against the swollen Missouri's flank, and hurled him roaring, to the further bank a giant staggered by a pygmy's sling. Thence, plunging ever deeper into spring across the greening prairie, east by south, they rode, and just above the platts' wide mouth came weary with the trail. To Atkinson. There all the vernal wonder-work was done, no care-free heart might find aught lacking there. The Dove's cool wandered, in the drowsy air a love-dream brooded, in the lucent haze.
Prior-pick revellers, the shrieking jays held mystic worship. In the secret shade, woodpeckers briskly plied their noisy trade. Along the tree-bowls, and their scarlet hoods flashed flame-like in the smoky cotton-woods, what lacked? Not sweetness in the sun-lulled breeze, the plum-bloom murmurous with bumble-bees, whist drifted deep in every draw and slew? Not colour? Witcheries of gold and blue, the dandelion and the violet, wove in the green. Might not the sad forget the happy here have nothing more to seek? Lo, yonder by that pleasant little creek How one might loll upon the grass, and fish and build the temple of one's wildest wish twixt nibbles. Surely there was quite enough of wizard timber, and of wonder stuff to rear it nobly to the blue-domed roof.
Yet there was one whose spirit stood aloof from all this joyousness, a grey old man, no nearer now than when the quest began to what he sought on that long winter trail. I, Jamie had been there, but when the tale that roving trappers brought from Kiel wore was told to him, he seemed as one who saw a ghost, and could but stare on it, they said, until one day he mounted horse, and fled. Into the north, a devil-ridden man. I've got to go and find him, if I can, was all he said for days before he left. And what of Hugh? So long of love bereft, so long sustained and driven by his hate, a touch of ruth now made him. Desolate, no longer eager to avenge the wrong, with not enough of pity to be strong, and just enough of love to choke and sting.
A gray old hulk, amid the surge of spring, he floundered on a lee-shore of the heart. But when the boat was ready for the start up the long watery stairway to the Horn, you joined the party, and the year was shorn of blooming girlhood as they forged amain into the north. The late green-mantled plain grew sallow. And the ruthless golden shower of summer wrought in lust upon the flower that withered in the endless martyrdom to seed. The scarlet quickened on the plum about the heart's mouth. When they came thereto, among the mandan scrapes were turning blue, and they were purple at the yellowstone. A frosted scrub-oak standing out alone upon a barren bluff-top, gazing far above the crossing at the powder's bar, was spattered with the blood of summer slain.
So it was autumn in the world again, and all those months of toil had yielded naught to Hugh. How often is the seeker sought by what he seeks a blind, heart-breaking game? For always had the answer been the same from roving trapper, and at trading-post, Aye, one who seemed to stare upon a ghost and followed willy-nilly where it led had gone that way in search of Hugh, they said, a haggard, blue-eyed, yellow-headed chap. And often had the old man thought, Mayhap he'll be at Henry's post, and we shall meet, and to forgive and to forget were sweet, tis for its nurse that vengeance whets the tooth, and, oh, the golden time of Jamie's youth, that it should darken for a greybeard's whim. So Hugh had brooded till there came on him the pity of a slow rain after drouth.
But at the crossing of the rosebud's mouth a shadow fell upon his growing dream, A band of Henry's traders bound downstream who paused to traffic in the latest word. Down-river news for matters, seen and heard, in higher waters, had not met the lad, nor yet encountered any one who had. Alas, the journey back to yesterwhiles, how tangled are the trails, the stubborn miles, how wearily they stretch! And if one win the long way back in search of what has been, shall he find aught that is not strange and new. Thus wrought the melancholy news in Hugh, as he turned back with those who brought the news. For more and more he dreaded now to lose what doubtful seeking rendered doubly dear. And in the time, when keen winds stripped the year, he came with those to where the poplar joins the greater river, their Asinoboines, which from the summer's hunting had come down, and flung along the flat their ragged town that traders might bring goods and winter there, So leave the heart-sick grey-beard, otherwhere the final curtain rises on the play.
Tis dead of winter now. For day on day the blizzard wind has thundered sweeping wide from Mississippi to the great divide. Out of the north beyond Saskatchewan, brief evening glimmers like an inverse dawn. After a long white night, the tempest dies, the snow-haze lifts. Now let the curtain rise upon milk river valley, and reveal the stars like broken glass on frosted steel. Above the pagan lodges, huddled deep in snowdrifts like a freezing flock of sheep, a crystal weight the dread cold crushes down, and no one moves about the little town that seems to grovel as a thing that fears. But see! A lodge-flap swings. A squaw appears, hunched. With the sudden cold, her footsteps creak, shrill in the hush.
She stares upon the bleak, white sky-line for a moment, then goes in. We follow her. Push back the flap of skin, enter the lodge, inhale the smoke-tanged air, and blink upon the little, faggot flare that blossoms in the centre of the room. Unsteady shadows haunt the outer gloom wherein the walls are guessed at. Upward far, the smoke-vent now and then reveals a star as in a well. The ancient squaw, astute, her face light-stricken, stirs a pot of soup that simmers with a pleasant smell and sound. A gnarled old man, cross-legged upon the ground, sits brooding near. He feeds the flame with sticks. It brightens. Lo, a leaden crucifix upon the wall! These heathen eyes, though dim, have seen the white man's god and cling to him, lest on the sunset trail slow feet should err.
But look again. From yonder bed, of fur beside the wall, a white man strives to rise. He lifts his head. With yearning, sightless eyes gropes for the light. A mass of golden hair falls round the face that sickness and despair somehow make old, albeit he is young. His weak voice, stumbling to the mongrel, Tongue of traders, flings a question to the squaw. You saw no black robe? Tell me what you saw. And she, reef spoken as her race, replies. Heaped snow, sharp stars, a quixote on the rise. The blind youth huddles, moaning in the firs. The firewood spits and pops. The boiled pot purrs and sputters. On this little isle of sound, the sea of winter silence presses round. One feels it like a minute's.
Now the crone. Dips out a cup of soup, and having blown upon it, takes it to the sick man there, and bids him eat. With wild, unseeing stare, he turns upon her. Why are they so long? I cannot eat. I've done a mighty wrong. It chokes me. Oh, no, no! I must not die until the black robe comes. His feeble cry sinks to a whisper. Tell me, did they go, your kinsmen? They went south before the snow. And will they tell the black robe? They will tell. The crackling of the faggots for a spell seems very loud. Again the sick man moans, and, struggling with the weakness in his bones, would gain his feet, but cannot. Go again, and tell me that you see the bulks of men dim in the distance there. The score obeys.
Returns anon to crouch beside the blaze, numb-fingered, and a shudder from the night. The vacant eyes that hunger for the light are turned upon her. Tell me what you saw. Or maybe snow-shoes sounded up the drawer. Quick, tell me what you saw and heard out there. Heaped snow, sharp stars, big stillness everywhere. One clutching at thin ice with numbing grip cries while he hopes, but when his fingers slip he takes the final plunge without a sound. So sinks the youth now hopeless all around. The winter silence presses in the walls, grow vague and vanish in the gloom that crawls close to the failing fire. The pygins sleep. Night hovers midway down the morning steep. The sick man drowses. Nervously he starts, and listens.
He hears no sound except his heart's and that weird murmur brooding stillness makes. But stealthily, upon the quiet breaks, vague is the coursing of the hearer's blood, a muffled rhythmic beating, thud on thud that growing nearer deepens to a crunch. So hungry for the distance, snowshoes munch the crusted leagues of winter stride by stride. A camp-dog barks. The hollow world outside rims with the running howl of many curs. Now wide awake, half-risen in the thurs, the youth can hear low voices, and the creak of snow-shoes near the lodge. His wild, thin shriek startles the old folk from their slumberings. He comes, the black robe. Now the door-flap swings, and briefly one who splutters peeg and bars the way the knitters.
Now the patch of stars is dark, With a greater bulk that bends beneath the lentil. Peace be with you, friends, and peace with him herein who suffers pain. So speaks the second-comer of the twain, a white man by his voice, and he who lies beside the wall with empty, groping eyes, turned to the speaker. There can be no peace for me, good father, till this gnawing cease, the gnawing of a great wrong I have done. The big man means above the youth, my son. Grown. Husky with the word, the deep voice breaks, and for a little spell the whole man shakes, as with the clinging cold. Have faith and hope. Tis often nearest dawn, when most we grope. Does not the good book say, Who seek shall find? But, Father, I am broken now and blind, and I have sought, and I have lost the way.
To which the stranger, What would Jesus say? Hark! In the silence of the heart, Tis said, By their own weakness of the feeble sped, The humblest feet assurest for the goal. The blind shall see the city of the soul. Lay down your burden at his feet to-night. Now, while the fire replenished, bathes in light, the young face scrawled with suffering and care, Flinging ironic glories. On the hair and glinting on dull eyes that once flashed blue, the sick one tells the story of old Hugh to him whose face, averted from the glow, still lurks in gloom. The winds of battle blow once more along the steep. Again one sees the rescue from the fury of the wreaths, the greybeard's fondness for the gay lad, then, the westward march with Major Henry's men, with all that happened there upon the Grand.
And so we hit the trail of Henry's band, the youth continues. For we feared to die, and dread of shame was ready with the lie we carried to our comrades. He was dead, and buried there beside the ground, we said. Could any doubt that what we said was true? They even praised our courage. But I knew the knights were hell, because I heard his cries, and saw the crows a-pecking at his eyes. The coyote's tearing at him. Oh, my God! I tried and tried to think him under sod, but every time I slept it was the same, and then one night I lay awake. He came! I say he came! I know I hadn't slept. Amid a light like rainy dawn, he crept out of the dark upon his hands and knees. The wound he got that day among the rees was like red fire.
A snarl of bloody hair hung round the eyes that had a pleading stare and down the ruined face, and gory beard big tear-drops rolled. He went as he appeared, trailing a fog of light that died away, and I grew old before I saw the day, O father, I had paid too much for breath. The devil traffics in the fear of death, and may God pity any one who buys what I have bought with treachery and lies this rat-like gnawing in my breast. I knew I couldn't rest until I buried Hugh, and so I told the Major I would go to Atkinson with letters, ere the snow had choked the trails. Jules wouldn't come along. He didn't seem to realize the wrong. He called me foolish, couldn't understand. I rode alone, not south, but to the grand day long my horse-feet thunder from the sod accusing me and all my prayers to God seemed flung in vain at bolted gates of brass, and in the night, The wind among the grass hissed endlessly the story of my shame.
I do not know how long a road I came, upon the ground at last, and found the place, and it was empty. Not a sign or trace was left to show what end had come to hue. And oh, that grave! It gaped upon the blue a death-wound, pleading dumbly for the slain. I filled it up, and fled across the plain, and somehow came to Atkinson at last. And there I heard the living Hugh had passed along the river northward in the fall. Oh, father, he had found the strength to crawl that long, heart-breaking distance back to life, though Jules had taken blanket, steel, and knife, and I, his trusted comrade, had his gun. They said I'd better stay at Atkinson, because old Hugh was surely hunting me, white-hot to kill.
I did not want to flee or hide from him. I even wished to die. If so, this aching Cancer of a lie might be torn out for ever. So I went as eager as the homesick homeward bent in search of him and peace. But I was cursed. For even when his stolen rifle burst and spewed upon me this eternal night, I might not die as any other might. But God so willed that friendly pygons came to spare me yet a little unto shame. O father, is there any hope for me? Great hope indeed, my son. So huskily the other answers. I recall a case like yours, no matter what time and place. T'was somewhat like the story that you tell, each seeking and each sword, and both in hell, but in the tale I mind they met at last. The youth sits up, white-faced and breathing fast.
They met, you say? What happened? Quick, oh, quick! The old man found the dear lad, blind and sick, and both forgave. T'was easy to forgive, for, oh, we have so short a time to live. We're out the youth. Who's here? The black robe's gone. Whose voice is this? The gray of winter dawn, now creeping round the door-flap, lights the place and shows thin fingers groping for a face deep-scarred and hoary with the frost of years, whereover runs a new spring-tide of tears. O Jamie, Jamie, Jamie! I am Hugh. There was no black robe yonder. Will I do?
End of part five. End of the song of Hugh Glass by John Neihardt. Recorded by Nathan at antipodeanwriter.wordpress.com