Chapter II: The Burial of Blackburn

Hector Blackburn’s own room revealed a beautiful austerity fitting to the chamber of death. It was plastered and ceiled like the room of Loseis, but the color was a cool stone gray. The few articles of furniture that it contained had all been constructed in the old style, carved and polished by the owner himself, who had a taste that way. The lustrous pelts were more sparingly used here.

The narrow bedstead with its four slender columns had been dragged into the center of the room. Upon it lay the body of Hector Blackburn clad in decent black clothes; his big hands crossed on his breast. Beside the bed knelt Loseis, her rapt gaze fixed on her father’s face. Six feet two in height, and forty-eight inches around the chest, he made a splendid figure of death. There was not a white thread to be seen in his spreading black beard, nor in the plentiful wavy hair of his crown. To be sure, the high red color was strangely gone out of his transparent cheeks; and the passionate features were composed into a look of haughty peace. For sheer manhood, truly a father to be proud of.

Loseis thought of the feats of strength and daring that had made his name famous throughout the Northwest Territories; how he had strangled a full grown black bear with his naked hands; how he had leaped from his canoe at the very brink of the American Falls and had brought safely ashore an Indian who was clinging to a rock. He had been even more remarkable for his strength of will. The last of the great free traders, he had defied the power of the mighty Company, and had prospered exceedingly. He held his vast territory against all comers, by the power of his personality alone. Thinking of these things Loseis’ mind was confused. There lay his still body before her eyes, but what had become of the wild energy which had lately animated it? Surely, surely that could not be blown out like a candle flame.

Dragging herself to her feet, she went into the adjoining kitchen. She had had no opportunity to change her dress, but in an impulse of grief had torn off the gay embroidery; and now she was all in black like the corpse. In the kitchen Mary-Lou sat huddled on the floor, with her arms wrapped around her head. Jimmy Moosenose stood beside the open door, looking out, a withered, bent little figure, but still capable of activity. As Loseis entered he said in an expressionless voice:

“They have gone.”

“Who?” asked Loseis sharply.

“The people; all the people.”

She ran to the door. It was true; every tepee was gone from the meadow below. Except for certain litter abandoned in their haste there was no sign that a village had ever stood there. The Slavis had taken flight and vanished like a cloud of insects.

“Where have they gone?” demanded Loseis in astonishment. Though she had been born amongst them she did not understand this inscrutable, timid, savage race. It was impossible for any white man to know what went on inside their cramped skulls, Blackburn used to say. He had ruled them without making any attempt at understanding.

“Gone up river,” muttered Jimmy.

“For why?”

“They moch scare’.”

“But they are familiar with death. Death comes to all alike.”

Jimmy Moosenose cast an uneasy look towards the room where the dead man lay. He was near enough akin to the Slavis to share in their fears. “They think ver’ powerful strong spirit live in Blackburn’s body,” he muttered. “Now that spirit free they not know what it do to them.”

“Oh, what nonsense!” cried Loseis helplessly.

“What we do now?” asked Jimmy fearfully.

Loseis looked him over. “Are you man enough to ride all night?” she asked brusquely. “The trail is good.”

“What trail?” asked Jimmy with a terrified face.

“To Fort Good Hope to fetch the parson,” said Loseis in surprise.

“It is ondred-feefty mile,” faltered Jimmy.

“What of it? Two days to go and two to come. You can drive three spare horses before you. I don’t care if you kill them all.”

“I not man enough for that,” said Jimmy shaking his head.

“Well six days to go and come then. I’d go myself, but I know you two wouldn’t stay here alone.”

Jimmy’s and Mary-Lou’s frightened faces testified eloquently to that. Jimmy shook his head. “No good! No good!” he said. “It is summer time now. He no keep six days.”

Loseis groaned aloud. In her desperate helplessness she looked like a little girl. “How can I bury him without a parson!” she cried.

“You have the parson’s little book,” said Jimmy. “You can say the prayers from that. It is just as good.”

Loseis turned her back on them, that they might not see her childish, twisted face. “Very well,” she said in a strangled voice; “I will be the parson.”

“What I do now?” asked Jimmy Moosenose.

“First you must make a coffin.”

“There is no planks.”

“Oh, tear down the counter in the store!” cried Loseis with a burst of irritation. “Must I think of everything?”

“You tell me how big?” asked Jimmy, with another glance of sullen terror towards the inner room.

“Yes, I will measure,” said Loseis. “And the coffin must be covered all over with good black cloth from the store. Mary-Lou will put it on with tacks. And lined with white cloth. While you are making it I will go across the river, and dig the grave. We will bury him to-morrow.”

“That is well,” said Jimmy with a look of relief. “Then the people come back.”

“Ah, the people!” cried Loseis with a flash of angry scorn. “They are well-named Slaves!”

At the end of May in the latitude of Blackburn’s Post it does not become dark until nearly ten; and it was fully that hour before Loseis, having completed her task, returned dog-weary, across the river. During the balance of the night she sat wide-eyed and dry-eyed beside her dead, her hands in her lap, planning in her childlike and passionate way how best to conduct everything next day with dignity and honor.

At sun-up Jimmy Moosenose was despatched to the river shore to construct a raft, the light bark canoes that they possessed not being sufficient to ferry the coffin across. No flowers were available so early in the season, and Mary-Lou was set to work to twist a handsome wreath of the crisp green leaves of the high-bush cranberry. Neither Jimmy nor Mary-Lou could be induced to enter Blackburn’s room, so Loseis herself dragged the completed coffin in beside the bed; and she unaided, managed somehow to lift the body into it. In life Hector Blackburn had weighed more than two hundred pounds. It was Loseis, too, who nailed the lid on the coffin with an aim no better than any other woman’s. Those crookedly driven nails distressed her sorely.

When Jimmy came up from the river, they slipped short lengths of pole under the coffin, and rolled it to the door. Outside the house, since there was nothing in the nature of wheels at Blackburn’s Post, they hitched an old horse directly to the coffin, and dragged it at a slow pace over the grass down hill to the river. Jimmy led the horse, while Loseis and Mary-Lou walked behind, steadying the coffin with ropes affixed to each side. During this part of the journey Loseis was all child. Every time the coffin [word missing in original] over an unevenness her heart was in her mouth. “Oh! Oh! Oh!” she cried involuntarily; and her agonized eyes seemed to add: “My darling! did that hurt you?”

At the river edge they worked the coffin onto the raft with rollers and short lengths of plank; and Loseis draped the Post flag upon it, and placed the green wreath. Jimmy and Mary-Lou propelled the raft across with long poles, while the slender, black-clad figure of Loseis stood looking down at the coffin like a symbolical figure of Bereavement. In her grief-drowned eyes there was a look of piteous pride, too; for the black coffin with its flag and green wreath looked beautiful.

The smooth brown river moved down in silky eddies; the freshly budded greens of poplar and willow made the shores lovely, backed by the grave, unchanging tones of the evergreens. Behind them the low, solid buildings of the Post crouched on the bench above the river with a sort of human dignity; before them rose the steep grassy promontory with the waiting grave on top. Over their heads smiled the Northern summer sky of an enchanting tenderness of blue that is not revealed to lower latitudes.

Landing upon the further shore they caught another horse—there was no lack of horses at Blackburn’s Post. In order to drag the coffin up the rough, steep hill it was necessary to construct a travois of poles to lift the front end clear of the ground. The horse was fastened between the poles as between shafts. At the top of the hill Loseis had removed the palings; and the new grave yawned beside the old one. She had dug the shallow hole with sloping ends, that the horse might walk right through, leaving his burden in its place.

The animal was then liberated; and Loseis stood on one side, prayer-book in hand, with Jimmy Moosenose and Mary-Lou facing her on the other. It was a meagerly attended burial for the great lord of that country. Loseis read the noble prayers in a grave voice charged with emotion. The sound of it caused the tears to run silently down the smooth cheeks of Mary-Lou; but Jimmy merely looked uncomfortable. The feelings of white people were strange to him. He had given his master a doglike devotion while he lived; but he was dead now, and that was an end to it.

“Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live and is full of misery,” read the brave young voice. “He cometh up and is cut down like a flower; he fleeth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay. In the midst of life we are in death; of whom may we seek for succour but of Thee, O Lord, who for our sins art justly displeased?”

When she came to the end of the service, Loseis dropped the book and involuntarily broke into an extempore prayer, standing with straight back and lifted face like an Indian, her arms at her sides. Her words were hardly couched in the same humble strain as those of the book; but the passionate sincerity of the speaker redeemed them from irreverence.

“O God, this is my father. He was a strong man, God, and you must make allowances for him. You gave him a proud heart and a terrible anger when he was crossed, and it would not be fair to judge him like common men. He could have done anything he wanted here, because he was the master, but he was always square. Every season he paid the Indians half as much again for their fur as the Company would pay, and that is why the Company traders spoke evil of him. He was hard and stern to the Indians, but that was the only thing they could understand. How else could you deal with a tribe of slaves? Be merciful to my father, O God! for he would never ask mercy for himself; and let him see my mother again, for that was all he wanted. Amen.”

Jimmy Moosenose picked up the spade with a businesslike air, and threw a clod on the coffin. At the dreadful sound that it gave forth, a sharp cry broke from Loseis. She wrapped her arms about her head and fled away down the hill.