Chapter V: The Whole Armor

I--RENUNCIATION

When the sun wears the snow thin, the butter-cups underneath feel the light and the warmth, so they have faith, melting their way up through the edges of the drifts until they reach the glory of the day. Then the ice breaks, roaring down the river, shatters and founders on the lake, while the birds proclaim the summer to the valleys, avalanches thunder in the hills, because it is Easter, the time of the Resurrection.

The American trapper was much surprised at having behaved himself so nicely as to win Storm's friendship and the hearty good will of the tribe. He was quite touched by the treatment he met with. The trapping outfit, lost when they burned him out of winter quarters, had been most lavishly replaced in payment for his gunpowder. He said he felt good. He helped to ballast the canoes with bullets, even to stow the cargo of powder and furs for Fort Colville. And yet he had misgivings.

The Kutenais bark canoe is curiously fashioned with a long horn or ram at either end below the water line. Because its natural position is bottom upwards, it is not popular. Nobody really enjoys it except the Flatbow Indians of Flatbow Lake. And yet it has one merit: one can spell Kutenai in seventy-six recognized orthodox ways and always pronounce the word Flatbow. Still Hunt-the-girls saw the loaded canoes and heard of the cataracts, and to him the spelling and pronunciation were mere details. He was quite frank about it. He flatly refused the journey. He would be doggoned and several other disagreeable things would happen to him before he would go trading to a British Fort. He had no sort of use for Britishers anyways, having whipped 'em at Bunker Hill--wherever that was--and kep' 'em on the dead run ever since. He didn't give a continental--whatever that might be--about Injuns, which wasn't good unless they was dead, and hadn't ought to be allowed out with guns for shooting the whites. Moreover, he'd heard tell of a crick up North a-ways, which was plumb spoiled with beaver dams, as needed clearing out with his little set of traps. Two Bits would loan him her dugout. There was no two ways about it. "And I'm due," he told Storm, "to roll my tail in the mawning."

Now the four widows, resolved that the trader who represented the tribe at Fort Colville should be dressed to do them credit, had made a deerskin hunting shirt, leggings and moccasins soft as silk, golden-tawny, perfumed with wood smoke. The deep fringes about the shoulders and along the seams, whose pattering throws off snow to keep the leather dry, the decoration of porcupine quills, dyed lemon, plum bloom, indigo, and vermilion, in sacred patterns which charm away disease, wounds, or death, made this gift beautiful, the most precious that love could offer. When Hunt-the-girls refused to trade for the tribe the widows brought their offering to Storm, and, cut to the quick, the trapper declared it was rotten anyway.

Storm sat in Fatbald's chair before the fire and let the women lay the hunting dress upon his knees. "Get out!" he said to Hunt-the-girls. "Get out of my camp--you!"

And Hunt-the-girls left in a rage. Storm heard him swearing at the men while he got his dugout canoe afloat and loaded for the North. Then the women saw that their friend wanted to be alone, so they left him.

"Rain!" he whispered. "My Dream! Rain!"

"Storm," she answered out of the air, "I heard, dear."

"How long?" he asked--"how long?" And tears were running down his face.

"We have waited," she answered, "all our lives. Dearest, you are not obliged to go to the Fort of the Stone-hearts."

"That's all you know," he said indignantly.

"But they'll arrest you for murder!"

"What of that! If I let these silly savages trade for guns, they'll waste the furs on imitation jewelry, sham silk handkerchiefs, liquor, all sorts of foolishness. They'll come back with two or three old fukes, and say that arrows are better. Of course I'll have to go."

He heard a chirp like that of a squirrel, cheeky, truculent.

"You're laughing at me," he said peevishly.

"T-t. T-t. T-t. Krr-aw-aw! Storm, dear, your mother is with me."

"Humph! What does she want?"

"She says that long ago, in the big-canoe-on-the-salt-water, you had an enemy."

"Silas? Oh, we were pretty good friends after."

"Yes. When you loved your enemy. Then, when you came within three suns' journey of my lodge, you stayed three years to nurse a fat old man."

"How could I help that? It wasn't my fault."

"That you didn't pass him by on the other side? He died though, and left you the richest man in all the mountain tribes."

"What was the good? I couldn't carry all that, and come to you."

"Your mother asks what you will do with this dress."

Storm had given away a fortune without one pang of regret, but he was filled now with a sick longing for this gift from the four widows. To give it up? Oh, well, it would please his mother, make Rain happy. "It's all one to me," he said quite cheerfully. "And after all, I ain't no hunter that I should swagger about in such a kit. Old clothes are good enough for the likes o' me. But then, Rain, there's them widders. They'd cry their eyes out!"

He heard Rain singing her happy song, the squirrel song. Then she spoke as though she were crying.

"Storm!"

"Yes."

"We'll make a low-down savage of you, a Redskin brave like my brother Heap-of-dogs."

"All right. I wasn't much use as a white man, and my tribe here say I'll never make an Indian."

"You gave everything away. That's Indian."

"Nothing to brag about."

"Take all your old clothes and everything you've got except your hunting weapons, and hang them up as a sacrifice to the Sun Spirit. That's Indian."

"Right."

"Had your bath to-day?"

"Of course."

"That's a good Indian! Now swim across the river in the running ice. A Blackfoot thinks nothing of that."

"I wasn't raised for a pet."

"Go naked into the woods, eat no food, pray till your Secret Helper comes to you. Every Indian does that before he's a warrior."

"I won't be beat."

"To-morrow at this hour swim back across the river, call the tribe together, and ask them to pray for you to the Sun, the Moon, and Morning Star.

"Go to the Council Lodge, and you shall use the big-turnip smoke to purify your body. The chief is to open the bundle of the medicine pipe, and after the ceremony the medicine man will dress you in these new clothes which the widows made of love, prayers, and the honor of the tribe to the glory of the Sun. It is full of spiritual power to guard you from evil, but your mother says that the dress is not completed until you reach Fort Colville."

II--COMMUNION

Naked and hungry, torn by the thorns, and bruised, his feet bleeding on the rough ground, Storm climbed to keep himself warm until he stood among the last trees. They were like torches, gaunt, funereal, their feet in the old gray snow, their heads among the stars waiting until the moon should rise and kindle them. Far down beneath, the howls of the timber wolves cleft the still deeps of night. Storm leaned against a tree facing the south, awed by the silence to the verge of terror. And then through the silence there came a voice more beautiful than he had ever heard on earth:

Spirit in the Sun,
I thank Thee for my training
In sorrow and adversity, in want and peril,
Which have brought me nearer to Thee;
For the happy adventures of my life,
The beauty of the earth,
The revelations of Thy mighty power,
And all the love which has enfolded me.

"Who prays?" cried Storm. "Who says the prayer?"

He looked about him, and found he was not alone, for Rain was on her knees close by, her mother, Thunder Feather, his mother, Catherine, the three of them busy kindling a little fire. The man whose voice he had heard stood just beyond them, a figure of radiant light and more than human stature, wearing a ceremonial robe of milk-white deerskin and a single eagle plume in his hair, the token of chiefship. Storm looked up very humbly at the Spirit whose face had so grave, so sweet a majesty.

A glance of the great chief's eyes commanded him to look at the scene surrounding them.

The trees had faded into mist. Now they were gone, and the snow lay unbroken, level, a headland from whose edges, near on either side, the walls went down into deep immensities of space. On the far side of this abyss, all round the east, the south, and the west, mountains were taking substance in slow revelation of walls inimitably deep, broken by five small glaciers. Precipice immeasurably high, scored here and there by cornices of clear green ice, shouldered the starlit snow fields, from whence there soared seven peaks of hewn and graven starlight.

As he watched, these mountains began to glow with an inner light, each of one clear color, the whole a spectrum enclosing the level hilltop. From where the three women knelt, a thin blue smoke ascended, as from an altar.

Storm turned again to the chief whose mysterious power had made this vision.

"Who are you, sir?" he asked.

"In my last earth-life," answered the chief, "my name was Hiawatha. It used to be a custom among my people that a young man seeking to have the rank of a warrior gave away all his property, except his weapons. Then having bathed, and left every impurity behind him, he went naked into the wilderness, and there fasted until his Secret Helper came to instruct him. My son, you have followed the custom of my people. Will you accept me as your Secret Helper?"

"Thank you, sir."

"The dress of a brave is something more than clothing. It is the outward sign of his training for war, his obedience to his leader, his cheery endurance of hardships, his gift to his tribe of all that he is, all that he has, and all he can do, his dedication not only of his life, but also of his death."

Storm bent his head in token that, understanding, he stood in readiness.

"Under what leader shall you serve?"

"I don't brag," said Storm, "or even talk about that. I suppose you've got to know. I was one of four soldiers, we were Romans, on execution fatigue, and we hanged a man. Well, He's my leader."

Hiawatha made the sign of the cross.

"And mine," he said, "Warrior!"

Then Storm knew that he was no longer naked, but clad in the splendid dress whose earthly counterpart he should put on for the first time to-morrow.

"This Easter morning," said Hiawatha, "before the day breaks, your wife and your mother here have asked me, Storm, to tell you a few things about my Indian people."

They sat down in comfort round the fire, the three women on the chief's right, Storm on his left, after the Indian manner. Rain lighted Hiawatha's pipe, then that of her man.

"I am the cracked earth," said Storm cheerily, "which prays for rain."

"It seems to me," the chief's retort was prompt, "that a cracked mouth makes fun of our holy animals."

"They seem so silly."

"What, even in your Bible?"

Storm thought for a moment, concerning the four beasts full of eyes, within and without. There were the jolliest horses. There was the symbolism of the sheep, of the lamb.

"Truths," Hiawatha spoke with reverence, "veiled in allegory, illustrated by symbols."

"But are there animals, real ones?"

"Many. There is, for instance, one Spirit who has charge of the buffalo. The group-consciousness of all the buffalo, their herd-awareness, which you know as instinct, is a part of his mind that warns the buffalo herds of coming storms, of changing seasons, and leads them to winter pastures where the bunch grass stands out clear from the thin snow. To this buffalo spirit my people address their prayers, asking him to guide them also in search for food, and in his pity to plead for them in their need to the Spirit in the Sun.

"Such prayers give them spiritual strength. Now, sonny, which will give you spiritual power--to make fun which hurts your wife, or to learn the lessons which she had from me?"

"Oh, damn the 'oly animals!" said Storm in his heart. "Old Daddy swore I'd never be a bargeman. Silas claimed he couldn't make a sailor of me. Even these Injuns despise me. I know I'm no good; I'm nothing."

He had forgotten that in the spirit-realms no secret thought is hidden. Now Rain winked at her mother, Thunder Feather, and Hiawatha, seeing that, nearly betrayed his laughter, which would give such pain if it were seen; but Catherine crept behind them and sat beside her son. "They're only a pack of savages," she whispered. "I 'aven't seen no 'oly animals neither."

Hiawatha made signs to the Indian women, composed his face to severity, and in the manner of a schoolmaster addressed himself to Storm.

"Storms-all-of-a-sudden, what is a savage?" he asked with Indian gravity.

"Oh, I dunno!" The white man was sulky, ashamed, and moaning to himself because his pride was wounded.

"A dog," said Hiawatha, "has only four fingers, so that he cannot hold or aim a gun to shoot at other people. A savage has four fingers and a thumb, so you see he must be rather better than a dog, because he can handle a gun, to shoot his neighbors when he is not pleased. A white man is still better because he can make the gun. In his rich country he finds the medicine stones, copper, tin, and iron for making tools. With the tools to strengthen his hands he can coin money, forge weapons, and build ships. As he labors his mind grows, his will increases, his intellect is strengthened, until he becomes as greedy as a pike, swift as a horse, and like the buffalo he tramples down the flowers, for none can resist his rush. He rules the seas, he occupies the lands, he wields dominion over mankind, and having the whole earth for his possession, dies, leaving it behind, divested of all that he had. All that he is goes to the spirit-lands, where the dogs pity him. The dog's unselfish love is worth more in the spirit-realms than the money, the weapons, the ships of his rich master. Dogs and savages have not much to be selfish about on earth, but only the hearts of little children."

Storm and his mother were not so proud of their blood as they had been; but Rain and Thunder Feather looked complacent as Hiawatha again took up his legend.

"When I lived on earth, my son, our Iroquois towns were not so very savage. London has lately copied our municipal police. While your doctors were bleeding their patients to death, ours were far advanced in hypnotic medicine, and among the Indian drugs were the salicylates, quinine, coca, and jalap. Our Indian farming gave to man tobacco, corn and potatoes. Of our monuments I dare not boast, for the tremendous pyramids of Mexico were an heresy, seeing that the body of man is the real temple of the Holy Spirit; and the palaces, however vast and lovely, were seats of tyranny.

"At the time of my last earth-life your little England was ruled by a sickly but very good and able sovereign, Queen Elizabeth. Philip the Second ruled Europe for the Pope, Suleiman the Great had command of the Mediterranean and held a splendid Empire for Mahomet. A still wealthier and better-ordered empire was held for the Prophet by Akbar the Magnificent, who reigned over Hindustan. Greatest and most stable of all was the throne of China. In every case the princes were tyrants, the people what we should call war slaves.

"I believe that Iceland was first of Republics--but half the people there were only slaves.

"In my little nation, the Iroquois, only the women could own lands or houses, only the mothers could elect the President. Women and men sat together in congress.

"As President, it was my dream to put an end to war. For that ideal of an everlasting peace I called four other nations into counsel. They made me President of the Five Nations, the Federated Republic of the Iroquois.

"Here in the west there were many visitors from other lands, Polynesians, Chinese, and Japanese. They say that our first news of Europe came with the Saint Quetzal-Coatl to the Toltec nation, and to his memory they built a temple at Cholula four times as large as the Great Pyramid in Egypt. To my own people came the hero Leif Ericson, and he was followed by many Norsemen who traded with us or hewed out cargoes of hardwood timber.

"Five centuries later, Columbus came, but he never visited North America. His people brought us horses, but also they carried with them germs of disease, of pestilences which are sweeping away almost the whole Red Indian race."

"Sweeping us away?" asked Rain.

"Yes."

Thunder Feather lifted the death wail, mourning for her people.

Hiawatha sheltered Rain in his arms:

"Be brave," he said. "The bodies of our people are wasted and destroyed with strange diseases not to be healed by our medicine. Our tribes are driven from their farms, their fisheries, and their hunting grounds, crowded into the west, forced to make war against each other in order to get meat, resorting in despair to savage crimes and eating human flesh, our wild herds slaughtered, grass eaten, lands stolen, faith betrayed, until only a last remnant shall be left on the earth."

"On earth," Rain answered bravely. "But we are a spirit-race which cannot die."

Again the sacred woman Thunder Feather sent up her desolate cry for the lost nations.

But Hiawatha clasped Rain to his heart. "I love your courage," he said under his breath, "but still I warn you never to let there be anger in your heart against the white man or towards your husband. Promise me."

"I promise."

"Catherine," said Hiawatha, "Storm, Rain, Thunder Feather, I tell you on this Easter morning: The seed is not quickened except it die, and the race crucified shall rise again."

Once more the wailing of the old priestess shook their hearts, and she began to sing the death-song of her race.

Beware, ye base, relentless Ghost Invaders!
I see your bones lie naked on the prairie,
And such a frightful Death as yet you know not
Shall flap his wings in triumph o'er your women--
So shall your black deeds make your souls accursed
And God shall blast your spirits to destruction!

"Oh! Thunder Feather," said Hiawatha gently, "bad words come back like fleas to bite you in bed. You make your nights all scratches. Cover your head with your robe, and pray the Spirit Porcupine to smooth your quills, my dear.

"It is lucky for you, Storms-all-of-a-sudden, that in the Blackfoot custom a son-in-law and mother-in-law are never allowed to meet, so if your wife's prickly mother tries to haunt you, tell Thunder Feather to mind her manners."

The old woman had been glaring vindictively at the white man, but now, discovered, she had a rather sheepish grin to hide under her robe.

"Chief," said Rain, turning away from her malicious little old mother, "my man and I have often been over the Wolf Trail in our dreams. Oh, but my dear man is so stupid. I cannot make him understand how spirit-animals and spirit-men speak all one language as we do--thought-flashings. He is so blind and deaf to natural things that animals are shy, and cannot flash their thoughts to him, no, not even his horse along the lead rope when we ride together. Yet we have ridden up there the dearest spirit-horses who died gallant deaths on earth. We have raced with the herds of spirit-buffalo on prairies gay with fairy flowers. We sat in my father's lodge, and Thunder Feather with us, while we smoked the everyday pipe, or used the medicine pipe for the great prayers. We worshiped together in the Medicine Lodge. We played with the spirit-children. Oh, but my man is so dull that he still fears Death!"

"My daughter," said Hiawatha, "only the most awful sorrow can awake your man until he is fully alive. Then will the animals converse with him as they do with us, the little children will teach him as they teach us, and he will see how our nature worship is part of a great faith. Words cannot teach, only experience.

"Now we must tell him about the race-death."

"I would," said Rain, "that all my people were past the race-death, safe in our Happy Hunting grounds from Windmaker's tempests, Coldmaker's blizzards, from the magicians of the Hunger Lodge, the peril of wild rivers, the hatreds, wounds, and pain, the pestilence, the wailing of the mourners."

"The lily," said Hiawatha, "has her roots in the dirt, but her white vesture is not soiled whose warp and weft are sunshine and clear rain, her home the winds invisible.

"So stands the Indian Spirit seeded on earth, but flowering in the heavens."

And after that there was silence.

Storm looked about him, and found that he was alone. Around him were trees like torches, gaunt, funereal, their feet in old gray snow. At the foot of one of these he crouched naked, famished, shivering, his feet bruised, his limbs benumbed and scarred with wounds which seemed to have been bleeding. Far down across the forest he saw the icy river, and beyond, thin threads of smoke went up from the lodges of the Kutenais camp. Cramped and in pain he stood, remembering that he must observe the rite of purification, and how he should put on the sacred dress of a warrior. Mother said that this must be completed at Fort Colville. What, then, was lacking?

So he set forward upon this adventure.

III--THE SWORD

Some time in the third decade of the nineteenth century certain voyageurs of the Hudson's Bay brigades made their homes in the Rocky Mountains. They were Iroquois warriors, devoutly Christian, were fit messengers. The fiery Cross is not carried very far by smug pastors who let the flame die out, but, brandished by knights-errant such as these Iroquois, it kindled the mountaineer Nez Percés, Flatheads, Cœur d'Alènes, and Pend d'Oreilles, and like a forest fire the Faith swept through the hills. Not satisfied, but craving for more light, the Nez Percés dispatched a couple of young warriors as their envoys on foot through countries held by hostile nations to visit the white men's lands, and beg the Big Father at Washington to send them Black-robes.

The White-tie missions responded, forwarding a brace of Methodist ministers who settled on the Lower Columbia where the tribes were tame, the lands fertile, and prospects favorable in godliness and possibly real estate. Later a couple of Presbyterian White-ties came to the mountains, with their courageous wives, and were welcomed by an assemblage of the tribes, thousands of mounted warriors at full gallop, a display of frantic joy and terrifying grandeur. The ladies fainted, and their husbands were properly shocked by naked, painted, plumed, and yelling savages. For some few years this intensely respectable mission showed off their sober paces, their small proprieties to ferocious idealists, wild saints of the Silent Places. In the end, utterly disillusioned, the Nez Percés took the scalps of the missionaries as the only useful asset of the mission.

If one cannot lighten one's darkness with sun rays, a rushlight is better than nothing, so the pony tribes were still quite patient with their White-tie medicine men when in May, 1839 Storm came with a following of his Kutenais to trade for guns at Fort Colville. Upon the morning after his arrival he brought his people to a church parade in progress outside the stockade. The gate, of course, was closed, and in the covered gallery above a sentry lounged to watch proceedings through the loopholes, while on a bastion to the left a gun was manned commanding the curtain wall, just to make sure. The fish-eating tribes assembled for the salmon run were not more dangerous than an average mothers' meeting, but some of the mounted Indians had come to trade, and Storm's Kutenais might prove excitable. So in this congregation the salmon fishers were squatted in the sunshine, the Kutenais standing aloof, as aristocrats who observe the savor of the commonalty, and the haughty mountaineers remained on horseback. Under the bastion stood a group of American trappers, long-haired, dressed like the fighting Indians in buckskin, chewing cable-twist tobacco and spitting with an air of absolute detachment, spectators not devotees.

The White-tie medicine man, in blacks, attired like the Reverend Mr. Stiggins or dear Brother Chadband, despite the repulsive dress, parsonic voice, and pious mannerisms, had a suggestion of rough-neck about him, something manful, real, earnest, a glitter of the eyes, a smile. He served out Presbyterian views on Predestination as though he thought the stuff important. Certainly he pleased the Hudson's Bay officers, who sat with their native wives on adze-hewn benches, all in their Sunday swallow-tails, nursing top hats, Scots to a man, alert to the shrewd and pawky argument. As to the native interpreters, sound on fish, but hazy as theologians, each of them preached a sermon of his own, which, had he known, would have horrified the missionary. Here and there in the congregation were grubby naked boys conducting dog fights, groups of mothers exchanging the latest gossip, and stolid babies lashed to their board cradles making the most of the sunshine. The fleas were not wasting time.

Long afterwards when Storm told his mother about that service: "Tea ain't much good," was his summing-up, "unless you've boiled the water."

After dinner Mr. James Douglas went for a walk, a Sabbath stroll taken in civilized dress, tall beaver hat, gloves, his mother's New Testament in his left hand, a cane in his right--the sort of things to remind an exile of Home. His close-cropped mutton-chop whiskers and clean-shaven chin, clear-cut features, gray eyes, stern jaw, belonged, one would suppose, to city life, to business management; but the soul of him, despite all such appearances, in defiance of the uttermost self-discipline, was kin to the wild solitude of the frontier. Yet of all frontiersmen Storm was the one man with vision keen enough to discern Black Douglas as he was, and, when they happened to meet beside the farm, he offered his hand to the factor as to an equal.

"Beastly familiar. Confound these Yankee trappers!" So Douglas felt as he pulled up short and took a pace backward. "And yet no trapper would sport a single straight-up eagle pinion worn at the back of the head. This fellow claims my hand as an Indian, as a chief!"

Against the verdure of the meadows, in clear sunshine, this creature was certainly most beautiful. Deep tan, sun-lighted mane, and buckskin dress appeared all dusty gold save for the flashing blue of his clear eyes. The stature, strength, grace, dignity, commanding power of the fellow made the factor catch his breath as he asked:

"Who are you? Surely, I've seen you somewhere. Not--not Bill Fright?"

"They call me Storm, now. The Kutenais call me Storms-all-of-a-sudden."

"H'm. As Justice of the Peace, I'm supposed to want young Fright for parricide."

White teeth flashed as the man laughed. "And you might get me," he answered, "with, say, five hundred men--or even hold me, until my Kutenais had time to raise the tribes."

Then as the shadow of a passing cloud will soften the hard brightness of the snows, the youngster's laughing, triumphant manhood became all tenderness. "You said as you'd make a man of me," he added under his breath and very humbly. "I owe all this to you. I'm not running away or asking for a fight, Mr. Douglas, or even bragging; but if you should ever 'appen to want a friend--my heart is good towards you."

"Thank you, thank you. I might be glad of that. One never knows. Will you shake hands, Mr. Storm?"

"Rather!"

Storm felt without resentment that the great man condescended, as to a servant, yet tried to put an inferior at ease. Accepting that as natural, he wiped his paw on his deerskin leggings before he would venture to shake hands.

"I never thought to meet you, sir, upcountry, but I wants 'elp for my tribe, and your trader here at Colville is--well--_cultus_!" He snarled the word, for which the factor snubbed him.

They turned along the pathway by the river, and for the next few minutes cut and thrust were sharp as they came to business.

"Well, what can I do for you?" asked Douglas.

"You wants pelts. You may need help of a fighting tribe."

"Well?"

"One armed mountain tribe is worth more to you in trade and war than all the fishing Injuns in the world."

"Perhaps," was the dry response, "or they might take their trade to the American Fur Company, and use our guns to blackmail our brigades."

"Depends on who runs the tribe."

"It does. How's Tschirikov?"

"Dead."

"Left everything to you?"

"Alow and aloft."

"You run the Lower Kutenais now?"

"Yes. Do you trust me?"

"Personally, yes. But the Company is here on business. When we're attacked, it's time enough to serve out guns to our men."

"Who don't know butt from barrel, and can't hit a house from inside."

"There's something in that. At the same time, Mr. Storm, we have not found your Lower Kutenais especially reliable for trade."

"They're true as steel!"

"No doubt. Perhaps twenty years back, or even more, Lieut. Tschirikov, late of the Russian Navy, came down the coast from Russian America with a schooner-load of sea otter. Had he gone west to China with that cargo he might have done much better, but still, that was not our business. The pelts were, so far as we know, honestly come by. We bought them. He took trade goods, and set off upcountry, to start a trading post among the Kutenais. Quite naturally we expected to buy his furs. We got none."

Storm grinned amiably, and Douglas probed a little deeper now.

"Once or twice when I was passing with our brigades, I camped with the good old fellow and offered to talk pelts. He would change the subject at once. I never found out what sort of business he was--well, concealing in our Territory. I thought, to tell you the plain truth, Storm, that it might be worth while to send you, to find out Tschirikov's game."

Storm laughed until the tears came.

"It ain't no sort of secret," he said at last. "According to old Fatbald that load of sea otter and fur seal was worth at Pekin about a million pounds."

"Say half."

"Well, you got 'em cheap at twenty thousand pounds' worth of trade goods."

"Reasonably cheap, yes."

"For trade goods as any Injun tribe is better without."

"Of all the confounded impudence!"

"Better without, and you know it as well as I does. Is trade rum and sham silk handkerchiefs the cargo as makes any nation strong to defend their 'unting grounds, or rich to tide through famines?"

"Well, perhaps not, perhaps not. More useful merchandise would rot on our hands for want of buyers. We are traders, not philanthropists--or dreamers."

"So Fatbald warned the Injuns. Called 'em fools for trading. They traded with him, though, until the bales of furs crowded him into a tipi. He sold them pelts to the Upper Kutenais in trade for 'orses. His pony herds filled all the pastures up above our lake. They bred. He sold them ponies to our Lower Kutenais, for furs of course. In twenty years he's made that low-down fishing tribe into hunters, fighting mountaineers, able to 'old their own, and defend their 'omes. The little kiddies, what used to starve to death if the salmon run came late, is fat as butter now. Our people rides level with the Upper Kutenais and the Flatheads, runs buffalo out on the Blackfoot plains. They're rich. They're respected. They has peace because they don't buy no more rubbish from either you nor them Americans."

"Fatbald the First," said the factor sarcastically, "being gathered to his portly forefathers, King Storm ascends the throne, whose little finger is heavier than the old monarch's thigh. At least, my late friend, however reticent, was not insulting." Then, with a malicious smile, "Your Majesty has, I hear, a few loads of pelts here, eh?"

"You're making fun of me," said Storm, uneasy, ruffled, a little truculent. "Go on! Your medicine is bad, but it ain't strong. Go on."

"I might venture to point out," said Douglas, "that your manners at the shop-counter are not ingratiating."

"I seen some Yakimas play 'umble Injun in front of your Colville trader. Their trade prayer and their rum-dance don't make _him_ what you calls infatuating. I played big chief, but all the brains he has for politics won't fill a hollow tooth. Carries a mighty head of sail, and forgets he's anchored! No-head is a big noise and a big smell, but you're a chief, and so I comes to you."

The factor chuckled. This was worth keeping for Mrs. Douglas.

"When I was your prisoner," said Storm, "at Fort Vancouver, I seen the furs beat once a week for dust and moth. I done that these three snows, and my skins are prime."

"Bravo!"

"But No-head forks his tongue, so he lost my trade. Besides, he asks too much and gives too little. The American Fur Company, so them trappers tell me, ain't so far south as all that."

"I see. Of course you want ball and powder?"

"None. I make both."

"What!"

"Tons."

"Oh yes, I remember now. Of course, our lead mine is on Lake Kootenay. But then the trader here has orders not to lend our bullet molds to anybody."

"I found a bullet mold," said Storm, "in the bos'n's locker aboard of the _Beaver_. I don't lend mine, neither."

Again the factor showed some little irritation.

"You seem," he said testily, "to have more brains than Dr. McLoughlin and I had reckoned on. But it's all damned nonsense. Make powder! _We_ can't! The thing's impossible."

"Well," said Storm, enjoying this, "the couple of hundredweights I bring with me ain't much to offer for sale to people as was here before Christ."

"Does it go off?"

"You might care to try, Mr. Douglas. And the bullets. I'm using 'em as ballast under the cargoes of pelts. I'm here trading for guns. The only question, sir, is this--do I trade at Fort Colville or down south?"

Guns! This was a leader of men, chief of a tribe quite strong enough, under his discipline, to take and loot Fort Colville for the guns.

"And why do you want trade guns?"

"I have a range of mountains," answered Storm. "See--here--I'll show you."

Old Beaver-tail had mapped the country for him, and like an Indian, Storm squatted on his heels making lines on the dust of the trail with a dry twig. "The river of the Kutenais," he said, "starts here."

In the heart of the Rockies, within a mile or so of the Canadian Pacific Railway, snows on ten-thousand-foot Alps drain to the southward, down tangled steeps of forest, calling from stream to stream along the hillsides, a shrill assembly of many waters, source of a white-maned torrent roaring through deep gorges. Purling over gravels, hurling round short curves, and undercutting cliffs, the river widens out among pine-crested isles, and spreads in beaver-flooded jungle. Then it snakes through meads of wild flowers, and coils like a serpent by miles of widening prairie, glittering in the sunshine.

"'Ere," said Storm, "across these pastures it swings, being here ten bowshots distant from the head source of the Columbia. The Kootenay River wagers ponies to little dogs on the path towards the sun, but the Columbia says its prayers and hits the trail nor'west. Both is beaten, for here's my range of mountains walling off the west, miles high snows, hundreds of miles in length."

Look at the maps and see how very few large rivers manage to flow to the westward against the terrific eastward trend of the earth's surface.

"At last," said Storm, "the Columbia finds a way round the norrard end of my Alps, and the Kootenay sneaks around the southern foothills. Each makes a hairpin bend. They've both got lost in the woods, so the Columbia flows due south, and the Kootenay due north. Here on the Kootenay is our herd camp, that's the bulrush swamps, and there's my trading post on the only bit of gravel which doesn't flood in summer. And here's our hundred-mile lake.

"By this time the Kootenay cools off and gets lonesome, so it finds a hollowed lip 'ere at the West Arm, and goes ramping down big falls to the Columbia. This way!' says he, 'due west!' but the old Columbia knows what's best, and keeps straight on down through them lava deserts, and the big volcanoes."

"Your mountains form the island, then?" said the factor.

Storm looked up at Douglas, and his face had a yearning, hungry ferocity reminding the factor of a mother wolf guarding her cubs.

"When I gets my guns," he said, "I can 'old that range of Alps agin the world. But you wants trade. Well, here's the World Spine, and them Blackfoot prairies. Here's the Flatheads down south past Tobacco Plains. Here's the Shushwap tribes nor'west of us. There's trade enough."

He stood up facing Douglas. "Who gets the trade?" he asked--"you or them Americans?"

"You'll be trader?"

"No. Fatbald's widow Two Bits owns the post, not me. She got more brains than me when it comes to trading, and she's wife of the Head Chief Sitting Wolf, my friend."

"I see," said Douglas thoughtfully. "And you? Where do you come into this? When you've given everything away, what then, King Storm?"

"What then?"

Storm's mood changed always with bewildering suddenness. Within this brief conversation he had been cordial, truculent, grateful, shrewd, poetic, whimsical, wistful, ferocious, and now astounded Douglas by showing the reserve of an English gentleman intruded upon by strangers. This forlorn bargee and ordinary seaman, fugitive from justice, had an extraordinary air of breeding. "I don't understand you," he said, and turned away, as though to end the interview.

"My dear chap," said the administrator, treating Storm, for the first time, as an equal, "I really must beg your pardon. Your private affairs----"

Storm swung around sharply.

"'Ow about them guns?"

"Oh, I must see our resident officer. You'll count on my good offices?"

"Thank you."

"But when I spoke so bluntly just now, I was only wondering, Storm, if I can do you a good turn, somehow. We white men stick together out here, eh? And your life must be rather lonely."

Storm had a quizzing, twisty sort of smile. He did not know what impulse moved him, or realize that his mother, invisible, but most urgent and determined for his good, guided his mind, directed his hand as he pointed to the New Testament in the factor's hand, and said outright:

"I wants that!"

"What?"

"That book, sir. The New Testament."

"I brought it out with me," said the factor, "to read here under the trees. You want to see it? Here. It was my mother's copy," he added.

Storm took it in his hands, but looked away across the sun-bright river. "My mother's! I left my mother's behind," he said. "You see, it was under her pillow when daddy knifed her. I couldn't go down into the cabin to fetch it then. I just couldn't. Now she says--says she--I got to ax you for this."

"Man! She's dead. She can't be speaking."

"Why not? She hain't so dead as all that. She says there is no death. She told me I'd got to come here to Fort Colville because--to complete my outfit. It hain't complete, she says, without--without that book."

"The Word of God," said Douglas. "No outfit is complete without that weapon. Take it, my boy. You're welcome. It is the sword of the Spirit."

IV--THE TRAIL

Alone upon the river bank, under a tree, Storm opened the book. So long a time had passed since he had last seen the written word, the white man's greatest magic, that all he could do was to spell out letters and make syllables aloud, forgetting the beginnings of a line before he reached its end. So reading he fell into a doze, and presently into deep sleep, dreaming true. In his dream he stood once more among funereal and torchlike pines upon a level tract of old gray snow. There were the tracks quite fresh of a white man's boots, which following, he came to the edge of the snow-clad plateau. Thence he looked down a thousand feet or so of corkscrew trail among dark junipers, and at the foot of the hill he saw Rain's sacred tipi. The tracks led down the trail, and halfway to the tipi lurched a man who carried pack and gun. Storm recognized the beaver cap, the deerskin hunting shirt, the breeches with long fringes down the seams, the long boots gone over at the heels. So there went the only white man save himself in all the Kutenais, for this was American trapper Hunt-the-girls. Evening was closing in, and down there the hearth fire made Rain's tipi glow, while a thin thread of smoke went up as from an altar. So Hunt-the-girls would seek for hospitality at the Sacred Lodge.

In his dream Storm went directly to the lodge, where he saw Rain at her evensong. Storm would not venture to make his presence known at such a time, but stood behind her joining his prayer to hers. A few days more, after a lifetime of waiting and years of self-denial, he would come there in the body, to be joined with Rain in wedlock. Both of them prayed that the time might be shortened until they were man and wife.

When Hunt-the-girls came to the tipi he drew aside the door flap and entered. He seemed a little daunted at finding a woman at prayer, but presently Rain stood up, gave him a kindly greeting, helped to take off his pack, then let him have tobacco to smoke while she made supper. They talked a little in the Kutenais, of the weather, the trails, the hunting, and the beaver, but all the while the white man, fascinated, enthralled, gazed at the woman, desire in his eyes, while she, kneeling at the work, her back turned, grew more and more uneasy. Storm saw her loose the dagger in her belt sheath, and tried to let Rain know that he was present, but could not reach her mind. He wanted with all his might to restrain the white man, to frighten him, to drive him away, or even in the last resort to kill, but Storm's spiritual presence might have no influence upon the material body of this felon, nor hands invisible defend the woman he loved, in the extremity of her peril. She was praying in desperation. At her summons her mother, Thunder Feather, and Storm's mother, Catherine, were present instantly, and presently the great spirit Hiawatha. These joined Storm, and by agreement all of them bent their wills to daunt the trapper, while they inspired Rain to coolness, skill, and daring in her defense.

The mad beast passion had called up demons also until a crowd of evil spirits urged the trapper on so that Rain's friends could not avail to hold him from his purpose. The trapper leaped at Rain, flung her headlong beside the little fire on the hearth, then dragged her across the floor, laying her on the bison robes against the back rest. There they fought long, desperately, until at last Rain's strength failed. She seemed to have fainted, yet her eyelids parted almost invisibly as she got ready. Only she opened her eyes wide when she struck, driving the dagger home into the white man's lungs. It seemed but a minute later that she dragged the wounded man abreast of the hearth fire, rolled him face downwards across the belt of red-hot coals, and stood holding him there with her foot, until the awful vengeance was accomplished.

Then Storm remembered her words of long ago: "If a woman will not defend her honor, with her weapons defend her honor, with all that she is, all that she has, defend her honor, then let her not think that she shall dare the Wolf Trail. She shall not climb the Wolf Trail to the land of the Blessed Spirits."

So be it. Her honor was defended, and avenged. Henceforth he who had offended her, if he should live, so long as he should live should have but one name, No-man.

And the dream faded.

* * * * * * *

The dusk had fallen, the lamp was alight in the chief factor's room at the Fort.

"My dear," said Douglas to his Indian wife, "I've given my New Testament to Storm of the East Kutenais."

The woman wondered at him.

"After all," Douglas explained, "what could I do? We've got the big Bible with us and I'm sure my mother would have given him that little Testament, as of course I did. You'll laugh at what I say, but if you'd seen him there, a sort of spirit, all dusty sunshine, his eyes dreaming, seeing things unearthly, as he looked across the blaze of light on the water! My dear! why, his face was inspired."

"Hush! Some one at the door," said Mrs. Douglas, who was undressing to go to bed. "Who can it be, so late?"

The factor opened the door, and Mrs. Douglas hid herself behind it. Storm stood there, deathly-pale, shaking all over, holding on to the lintel overhead.

"I want you," he said huskily. "My wife's in danger. I got to go at once."

"You've had a message?"

"Yes. From her mother, Thunder Feather. I'm starting now with the three best canoe men. But I can't leave my Injuns in the lurch about them guns. You got to do the trading for me, with this Fort Colville man?"

"I?" asked the factor.

"You. I trust you. You're straight."

"The Hudson's Bay Company is not exactly crooked."

"It's you I trust. You'll do it?"

"Gladly," said Douglas.

"Fatbald's widow, Two Bits, Sitting Wolf's woman, will come to you in the morning. Or you can send for her."

He was gone, and Douglas stood in the doorway listening as Storm ran towards the river and his canoe.