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The Lake Of The Great Slave
by
Tybalt seized Pierre’s arm. “You know more. Damnation, can’t you see I’m on needles to hear? Was there anything in the letters about the lady? Anything more than you’ve told?”
Pierre liked no man’s hand on him. He glanced down at the eager fingers, and said coldly:
“You are a great man; you can tell a story in many ways, but I in one way alone, and that is my way–mais oui!”
“Very well, take your own time.”
“Bien. I got the story from two heads. If you hear a thing like that from Indians, you call it ‘legend’; if from the Company’s papers, you call it ‘history.’ Well, in this there is not much difference. The papers tell precise the facts; the legend gives the feeling, is more true. How can you judge the facts if you don’t know the feeling? No! what is bad turns good sometimes, when you know the how, the feeling, the place. Well, this story of the Great Slave–eh?… There is a race of Indians in the far north who have hair so brown like yours, m’sieu’, and eyes no darker. It is said they are of those that lived at the Pole, before the sea swamped the Isthmus, and swallowed up so many islands. So. In those days the fair race came to the south for the first time, that is, far below the Circle. They had their women with them. I have seen those of to-day: fine and tall, with breasts like apples, and a cheek to tempt a man like you, m’sieu’; no grease in the hair–no, M’sieu’ Tybalt.”
Tybalt sat moveless under the obvious irony, but his eyes were fixed intently on Pierre, his mind ever travelling far ahead of the tale.
“Alors: the ‘good cousin’ of Charles Rex, he made a journey with two men to the Far-off Metal River, and one day this tribe from the north come on his camp. It was summer, and they were camping in the Valley of the Young Moon, more sweet, they say, than any in the north. The Indians cornered them. There was a fight, and one of the Company’s men was killed, and five of the other. But when the king of the people of the Pole saw that the great man was fair of face, he called for the fight to stop.
“There was a big talk all by signs, and the king said for the great man to come and be one with them, for they liked his fair face–their forefathers were fair like him. He should have the noblest of their women for his wife, and be a prince among them. He would not go: so they drew away again and fought. A stone-axe brought the great man to the ground. He was stunned, not killed. Then the other man gave up, and said he would be one of them if they would take him. They would have killed him but for one of their women. She said that he should live to tell them tales of the south country and the strange people, when they came again to their camp-fires. So they let him live, and he was one of them. But the chief man, because he was stubborn and scorned them, and had killed the son of their king in the fight, they made a slave, and carried him north a captive, till they came to this lake–the Lake of the Great Slave.
“In all ways they tried him, but he would not yield, neither to wear their dress nor to worship their gods. He was robbed of his clothes, of his gold-handled dagger, his belt of silk and silver, his carbine with rich chasing, and all, and he was among them almost naked,–it was summer, as I said, yet defying them. He was taller by a head than any of them, and his white skin rippled in the sun like soft steel.”