The Promise Page 26

  CHAPTER XXV

  "THE-MAN-WHO-CANNOT-DIE"

  During the infinitesimal interim between the shock which hurled himinto the air, and the closing of the waters of Blood River over hishead, Bill Carmody's brain received a confusion of flashlikeimpressions: The futile shouting and waving of arms upon theman-crowded bank of the river; the sudden roar of the rapid; the tenseface of Fallon; the set jaw of big Stromberg as he stood ready to shootout the line; and, above all, the leering eyes and sneering lips ofMoncrossen.

  The accident happened a scant sixty feet from the side of the strainingbateau, and the features of its occupants were brought out strongly inthe clear morning light.

  As he disappeared beneath the surface Bill drew a long breath and,opening his eyes, looked upward. A couple of swift strokes and his heademerged where a small patch of light showed an open space.

  Reaching out he grasped the rough bark of a log, shook the icy waterfrom his eyes, and reviewed his situation. His first thought was of thebateau, but a shoreward glance revealed only the swiftly gliding trunksof the forest wall with the bateau and the gesticulating crowd but ablur in the distance.

  Near him floated smoothly a huge forked trunk from whose prongsprotruded the stubs of lopped limbs. Releasing his hold, he swam towardthe big log which floated butt foremost among its lesser neighbors,and, diving, came up between the forks and gripped firmly a limb stub.

  On every hand thousands of logs floated quietly, seemingly motionlessas logs on the bosom of a mill-pond. Only the rushing walls of pine oneither side of the narrow river-aisle spoke of the terrific speed ofthe drive.

  Suddenly, as the great forked log swept around a bend, the peril of hissituation dawned upon him in all its horror. The dull roar changed to amighty bellow where the high-tossed white-water leaped high among thesubmerged rocks of the rapid, and above its thunder sounded the heavyrumble of the shock and grind of thousands of wildly pitching logs.

  Only for a moment did he gaze out over the heaving forefront of thedrive. His log shot forward with the speed of a bullet as it was seizedin the grip of the current; the next moment it leaped clear of thewater and plunged blindly into the whirling tossing pandemonium of thewhite-water gut.

  Bill clung desperately to the stub, expecting each moment to be hislast. Close in the fork he was protected on either side from thehammering blows of the caroming timber. All about him the air wasfilled with flying logs which ripped the bark from each other's sides,while the shock and batter of the wild stampede threatened momentarilyto tear loose his grip.

  It seemed to the desperate man that hours passed as he clung doggedlyto the huge trunk which trembled and shivered and plunged wildly at thepounding impact, when suddenly it brought up against a half-submergedrock, stopped dead, grated and jarred at the crash of following logs,poised for an instant, and then slanted into deeper water, while up theman's leg shot a twisting, wrenching pain, sickening--nerve-killing inits intensity.

  His grasp relaxed and his whole body went limp and lifeless as the biglog overrode the last rock barrier and was caught in the placid, slowlyrevolving water of a shore eddy.

  * * * * *

  Half concealed by the naked tangle of underbrush on the verge of a lowbluff where the rock-ribbed rapid broke suddenly into smooth water, anold Indian woman and a beautiful half-breed girl of twenty crouchedclose, watching the logs plunge through the seething white-water.

  The dark eyes of the girl shone with excitement, but this was no newsight to the eyes of the older woman who in times past had watchedother drives on other rivers. As she looked her frown deepened and thehundred little weather wrinkles in the tight-drawn smoke-darkened skinshowed thin and plain, like the crisscross cracks in old leather.

  The shriveled lips pressed tight against the hard, snag-studded gums,and in the narrow, lashless black eyes glowed the spark of undyinghate.

  The sight of the rushing logs brought bitter memories. These werethings of the white man--and, among white men, only Lacombie wasgood--and Lacombie was dead.

  Young Lacombie, who came into the North with a song on his lips to workfor the great company whose word is law, and whose long arm is destiny.Lacombie, who, in the long ago had won her, Wa-ha-ta-na-ta, thedaughter of Kas-ka-tan, the chief, who was called the most beautifulmaiden among all the tribes of the rivers.

  The old crone drew her blanket about her and shuddered slightly as sheglanced from her own withered, clawlike hands, upon which dark veinsstood out like the cords of a freight bale, to the fresh beauty of theyoung girl at her side who gazed in awed fascination upon the rush ofthe pounding logs.

  Lacombie was dead, and Pierre, his son, who was her first-born, wasdead also; and his blood was upon the head of the men of the logs. Forhe had left the post and gone among white men, and she, the mother whobore him, and Lacombie, his father, had seen him no more.

  Years slipped by, bringing other children; Jacques, in whom the whiteblood of Lacombie was lost in the blending, and the girl who crouchedat her side.

  Long after, from the lips of a passing _Bois brule_, she heard thestory of Pierre's death--how, crazed by whisky and the taunts of adrunken companion, he had leaped upon a passing log and plunged intothe foaming white chute of the dreaded Saw Tooth rapid through which noman had passed and lived.

  _Sacre._ He was brave! For he came nearly to the end of the rapid,standing upon his log--but, only nearly to the end--for there he wasdashed and broken upon the rocks in the swirl of the leapingwhite-water, and here was she, his mother, gazing at other logs in therush of other rapids.

  She started at the sudden clutch at her blanket and glanced sharply atthe girl who strained forward upon the very edge of the bluff andstared, not at the rapid, but straight downward where a few logsrevolved lazily in the grip of the shore eddy.

  The girl was pointing excitedly with a tapering white-brown finger tothe fork of a great log where, caught on a sharp limb stub, was thestriped sleeve of a mackinaw, from the end of which protruded a hand,while after the log, trailing sluggishly in the V of the fork, was thelifeless body of a man.

  As she looked a light of exultation gleamed in the sharp old eyes. Herewas vengeance! For the life of her son--the life of a white man.

  She noted with satisfaction that the body was that of a large man. Itwas fitting so. For her Pierre had been tall, and broad, andstrong--she would have been disappointed in the meaner price of a smallman's life.

  Suddenly she leaped to her feet and ran swiftly along the bluff seekinga place to descend.

  Even among the men of the logs, who are bad, one man stands alone asthe archfiend of them all.

  And now--it is possible, for he is a big man--she, Wa-ha-ta-na-ta, themother of Pierre and of Jeanne, maybe is permitted to stoop close andbreathe upon the dead face of this man the weird curse of the barrenlands--almost forgotten, now, even among her own people--the blightingcurse of the "Yaga Tah!"

  In the telling, the _Bois brule_ had mentioned the name of the drunkenlumber-jack who had baited her Pierre to his death, and in the oldwoman's brain the name of Moncrossen was the symbol of all blackdeviltry.

  After the death of Lacombie, Wa-ha-ta-na-ta had stolen Jeanne from themission that she might forget the ways of the white man, and returnedto her people.

  Jeanne, whose soft skin, beneath the sun tan, was the white skin ofLacombie, and who was the most beautiful among all the women of theNorth, with her straight, lithe body, and dark, mysterious eyes--eyeswhich, in color, were the eyes of the wood folk, but in whose baffling,compelling depths slumbered the secrets of an alien race.

  Jacques, she could understand, for in thought and deed and body he wasIndian--a whelp of her own breed. But the girl, she did not understand,and her love for her was the idolatrous love with which she had lovedLacombie.

  Through many lean years they lived among the tepees of the Indians,but, of late, they had come to the lodge of Jacques, who had become atrapper and guide.

 
His lodge, of necessity, must be pitched not too far from the lumbercamps of the white men, whose laws make killing deer in winter acrime--and pay liberally for fresh venison.

  Swiftly she descended a short slope of the bluff, uttering quick, lowwhines of anticipation. For Jacques, Blood River Jack he was called bythe white men, had told her that Moncrossen was boss of the camp at thehead of the rapid.

  All through the winter she had kept the girl continually within hersight, for she remembered the previous winter when this same Moncrossenhad accidentally come upon their lodge on the south fork of BrokenKnee, and the look in his eyes as he gazed upon the beauty of Jeanne.

  She remembered the events that followed when Jacques was paid liberallyby the boss to make a midwinter journey to the railroad, and the lowsound in the night when she awakened to find the girl struggling in thebear-like grasp of the huge lumberjack, and how she fought him off inthe darkness with a hatchet while Jeanne fled shrieking into thetimber.

  Now she stood upon the brink, and beside her stood the girl in whosedark eyes flashed a primitive tiger-hate--for she, too, remembered theterror of that night on the south fork of Broken Knee.

  And, although she knew nothing of the wild death-curse of the Yaga Tah,she could at least stoop and spit upon the dead face of the one worstwhite man.

  Almost touching their feet lapped the brown, bubble-dotted waters ofthe river, and close in, at a hand's reach from the bank, the logspassed sluggishly in the slow swing of the shore eddy.

  The eyes of the pair focused in intense eagerness upon the great forkedlog which poised uncertainly at the outer edge of the whirl.

  For a breathless moment they watched while it seemed that the great logwith its gruesome freight must be swept out into the main current ofthe stream. Sluggishly it revolved, as upon an axis, and then, in thegrip of a random cross-current, swung heavily shoreward.

  The form of the old woman bent forward and, as the log drifted slowlypast, a talon-like hand shot out and fastened upon the bit of stripedcloth, and the next moment the two were tugging and hauling in theirefforts to drag the limp body clear of the brown waters.

  Seizing upon the heavy calked boots they worked the body inch by inchup the steep slope, and the dry lips of the old squaw curled in asnaggy grin as she noted the shattered leg and the toe of the boottwisted backward--a grin that deepened into a grimace of sardoniccruelty at the feel of the grating rasp of the shattered bone ends.

  After frequent pauses they returned to their task, and at each jerkwater gushed from the man's wide-sprung jaws.

  At last, panting with exertion, they gained the top of the bank. Withglittering eyes the old squaw stooped swiftly and turned the body uponits back. The unseeing eyes stared upward, water ceased to gush fromthe open mouth, and the lolling tongue settled flabbily between themud-smeared lips.

  A cry of savage disappointment escaped her, for the face into which shelooked was not the face of Moncrossen!

  The curse of the Yaga Tah died upon her lips, for this curse may bebreathed but once in a lifetime, and if, as Father Magnus said, "God isgood," she might yet live to gaze into the dead face of the one worstwhite man, and chant the curse of the Yaga Tah.

  So she stifled the curse and contented herself with gloating over thebattered body of the man of logs which the churning white-water of theBlood River rapid had tossed at her feet, even as the seethingwhite-water of the Saw Tooth had tossed the body of her Pierre at thefeet of the white men.

  At her side the girl gazed curiously at the exanimate form. In herheart was no bitterness against the people of her father--no damning ofthe breed for the sins of the individual.

  Lacombie, she knew, was good--the one good white man--oldWa-ha-ta-na-ta called him. And Moncrossen was bad.

  Between these two extremes were the unnumbered millions of whomLacombie used to tell her in the long Northern twilight, when, as alittle girl, she would creep upon his knees as he sat before the doorof the log trading-post, and his arms would steal about her, and afar-away look would creep into his blue eyes.

  Often he spoke of beautiful women; of mighty tepees of stone; ofbridges of iron, and of trains which rushed along the iron trails atthe speed of the flight of a bird, and spat fire and smoke, and whosevoice shrieked louder than the mate-call of the _loup-cervier_.

  And she would listen, round-eyed, until the little head would droopslowly against the great chest, and the words would rumble softly andblend bewilderingly with the wheezing of the black pipe and the strongsmell of rank tobacco.

  Sometimes she would wake up with a start to hear more, and it would bemorning, and she would be between the blankets in her own little bunk,and Wa-ha-ta-na-ta would come and laugh, and pinch her fat legs, andcroon strange Indian songs in low minor keys.

  There were stories, too; stories of Kas-ka-tan, the chief; of the CrazyMan of the Berry Moon; of Zuk, the lost hunter; of the Maiden of theSnows, whose heart was of ice, and whose voice was the splashing oftiny waters, and of the mighty Fire God, whose breath alone could movethe heart of the Maiden of the Snows, so that in the springtime when hespoke to her of love, her laughter was heard in the tiny rills of thewoodland.

  But it was of Lacombie's tales she thought most. Only she could neverstay awake to hear the end, and the next night there would be othertales of other wonders, and all without end.

  So in her heart grew a strange unrest, a wild, irrepressible longing tosee these things in the wonderful country of the white men, to whom, intime of sickness and death, came smiling, round-faced priests, withlong black clothes and many buttons; instead of hideous medicine-men,with painted faces and strings of teeth and shriveled claws.

  As she gazed upon the form of the white man, a soft wistfulness stoleinto her eyes. Unconsciously, she drew closer, and the next instantthrew herself upon the body, tearing frantically at the shirt-front.

  Sounded the tiny popping of buttons and the smooth rip of flannel, anda small, white-brown hand slipped beneath the tattered cloth andpressed tight against the white skin of the mighty chest.

  For a long moment it rested there while the old woman looked on inwonder. Then the girl faced her, speaking rapidly, with shining eyes:

  "He is not dead!" she gasped. "There is life in the heart that moves!See! It is not the face of Moncrossen, but of the great _chechako_ ofwhom Jacques told us. The man who is hated of Moncrossen. Who killedDiablesse, the _loup-garou_, with a knife.

  "The man whom Creed fears, and of whom he spoke the night he camewhining to the tepee with his heart turned to water within him, andtold Jacques of how this man lay helpless in the flames of the burningshack, and the next day walked unscorched into the store at Hilarity.

  "He is The-Man-Who-Cannot-Die. Quick! Help me, and together we willbring him to life!"

  The old squaw held aloof, scowling.

  "Lacombie is dead," she muttered. "There is no good white man. The menof the logs are bad. Where is Pierre, thy brother? And where are thefathers of the light-skinned breeds of the rivers?

  "Who bring sorrow and death among the women of my people? Whence comesthe whisky that is the curse of the red men of the North? Would youwarm the rattlesnake in your bosom, to die from its poisoned tooth? Allmen die! Lacombie, who was good, is dead. And this one who, being a manof logs, is bad, will die also. Come away while yet there is time!"

  The girl sprang to her feet and, with uplifted hand, facedWa-ha-ta-na-ta, and in her eyes was the compelling light of prophecy.

  "Is it not enough, O Wa-ha-ta-na-ta," she cried, "that Moncrossen, theevil one, hates this man? He is M's'u Bill, The-Man-Who-Cannot-Die.Neither by wolves nor fire nor water can he die, nor will he be killedin the fighting of men. But one day he will kill Moncrossen, that thoumayest lay upon the head of the evil one the black curse of the YagaTah! And then will the blood of Pierre, thy son, be avenged."

  At the words, the smoldering black eyes of the old squaw wavered, theyswept the limp form upon the ground, and returned a long, searchinggaze into the blazin
g eyes of the girl. With a low gutturalthroat-sound, she dropped to her knees, and together they bent to theirtask. At the end of an hour the breath fluttered irregularly betweenthe bearded lips and the gray eyes closed of their own accord.

  As the two women rested, the sound of shouting voices was borne totheir ears. The old woman started, listening.

  "Back from the river!" she cried, "soon will come men who, with long,sharp poles, will push out the logs from the eddies, and from the stillwaters of the bends, and, should the men of Moncrossen find this manthey will kill him--for all men die! Did not Lacombie die?"