The Woodsman’s Story Of The Great White Chief
by
The old woodsman shifted the knife with which he was mending his fishing-rod from one hand to the other, and looked at it musingly, before he replied to Medallion. “Yes, m’sieu’, I knew the White Chief, as they called him: this was his”–holding up the knife; “and this”–taking a watch from his pocket. “He gave them to me; I was with him in the Circle on the great journey.”
“Tell us about him, then,” Medallion urged; “for there are many tales, and who knows which is the right one?”
“The right one is mine. Holy, he was to me like a father then! I know more of the truth than any one.” He paused a moment, looking out on the river where the hot sun was playing with all its might, then took off his cap with deliberation, laid it beside him, and speaking as it were into the distance, began:
“He once was a trader of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Of his birth some said one thing, some another; I know he was beaucoup gentil, and his heart, it was a lion’s! Once, when there was trouble with the Chipp’ways, he went alone to their camp, and say he will fight their strongest man, to stop the trouble. He twist the neck of the great fighting man of the tribe, so that it go with a snap, and that ends it, and he was made a chief, for, you see, in their hearts they all hated their strong man. Well, one winter there come down to Fort o’ God two Esquimaux, and they say that three white men are wintering by the Coppermine River; they had travel down from the frozen seas when their ship was lock in the ice, but can get no farther. They were sick with the evil skin, and starving. The White Chief say to me: ‘Galloir, will you go to rescue them?’ I would have gone with him to the ends of the world–and this was near one end.”
The old man laughed to himself, tossed his jet-black hair from his wrinkled face, and after a moment, went on: “There never was such a winter as that. The air was so still by times that you can hear the rustle of the stars and the shifting of the northern lights; but the cold at night caught you by the heart and clamp it–Mon Dieu, how it clamp! We crawl under the snow and lay in our bags of fur and wool, and the dogs hug close to us. We were sorry for the dogs; and one died, and then another, and there is nothing so dreadful as to hear the dogs howl in the long night–it is like ghosts crying in an empty world. The circle of the sun get smaller and smaller, till he only tramp along the high edge of the north-west. We got to the river at last and found the camp. There is one man dead–only one; but there were bones–ah, m’sieu’, you not guess what a thing it is to look upon the bones of men, and know that–!”
Medallion put his hand on the old man’s arm. “Wait a minute,” he said. Then he poured out coffee for both, and they drank before the rest was told.
“It’s a creepy story,” said Medallion, “but go on.”
“Well, the White Chief look at the dead man as he sit there in the snow, with a book and a piece of paper beside him, and the pencil in the book. The face is bent forward to the knees. The White Chief pick up the book and pencil, and then kneel down and gaze up in the dead man’s face, all hard like stone and crusted with frost. I thought he would never stir again, he look so long. I think he was puzzle. Then he turn and say to me: ‘So quiet, so awful, Galloir!’ and got up. Well, but it was cold then, and my head seemed big and running about like a ball of air. But I light a spirit-lamp, and make some coffee, and he open the dead man’s book–it is what they call a diary–and begin to read. All at once I hear a cry, and I see him drop the book on the ground, and go to the dead man, and jerk his fist as if to strike him in the face. But he did not strike.”