If the air had not been
December's, I should have said there was balm in it. Balm there was, to me, in
the sight of the road before me. The first snow of winter had been falling for
an hour or more; the barren hill was white with it. What wind there was was
behind me, and I stopped to look my fill.
The long slope
stretched up till it met the sky, the softly rounded white of it melting into
the gray clouds--the dove-brown clouds--that touched the summit, brooding,
infinitely gentle. From my feet led the track, sheer white, where old
infrequent wheels had marked two channels for the snow to lie; in the middle a
clear filmy brown,--not the shadow of a color, but the light of one; and the
gray and white and brown of it all was veiled and strange with the blue- gray
mist of falling snow. So quiet, so kind, it fell, I could not move for looking
at it, though I was not halfway home.
My eyes are not very
good. I could not tell what made that brown light in the middle of the track
till I was on it, and saw it was only grass standing above the snow; tall,
thin, feathery autumn grass, dry and withered. It was so beautiful I was sorry
to walk on it.
I stood looking down at
it, and then, because I had to get on, lifted my eyes to the skyline. There was
something black there, very big against the low sky; very swift, too, on its
feet, for I had scarcely wondered what it was before it had come so close that
I saw it was a man, a priest in his black soutane. I never saw any man who
moved so fast without running. He was close to me, at my side, passing me even
as I thought it.
"You are hurried,
father," said I, meaning to be civil. I see few persons in my house,
twelve miles from the settlement, and I had my curiosity to know where this
strange priest was going. For he was a stranger.
"To the
churchyard, my brother,--to the churchyard," he answered, in a chanting
voice, yet not the chanting you hear in churches. He was past me as he
spoke,--five yards past me down the hill.
The churchyard! Yes,
there was a burying. Young John Noel was dead these three days. I heard that in
the village.
"This priest will
be late," I thought, wondering why young John must have two priests to
bury him. Father Moore was enough for every one else. And then I wondered why
he had called me "brother."
I turned to watch him
down the hill, and saw what I had not seen before. The man was lame. His left
foot hirpled, either in trick or infirmity. In the shallow snow his track lay
black and uneven where the sound foot had taken the weight. I do not know why,
but that black track had a desolate look on the white ground, and the black
priest hurrying down the hill looked desolate, too. There was something
infinitely lonely, infinitely pathetic, in that scurrying figure, indistinct
through the falling snow.
I had grown chilled
standing, and it made me shiver; or else it was the memory of the gaunt face,
the eyes that did not look at me, the incredible, swift lameness of the strange
priest. However it was, virtue had gone from me. I went on to the top of the
hill without much spirit, and into the woods. And in the woods the kindliness
had gone from the snowfall. The familiar rocks and stumps were unfamiliar,
threatening. Half a dozen times I wondered what a certain thing could be that
crouched before me in the dusk, only to find it a rotten log, a boulder in the
bare bushes. Whether I hurried faster than I knew, for that unfriendliness
around me, I did not trouble to think, but I was in a wringing sweat when I
came out at my own clearing. As I crossed it to my door something startled me;
what, I do not know. It was only a faint sound, far off, unknown,
unrecognizable, but unpleasing. I forgot the door was latched (I leave my house
by the window when I go out for the day), and pushed it sharply. It gave to my
hand. There was no stranger inside, at least. An old Indian sat by the
smouldering fire, with my dog at his feet.
"Andrew!"
said I. "Is anything wrong?" I had it always in my mind, when he came
unexpectedly, that his wife might be dead. She had been smoking her pipe and
dying these ten years back.
"I don'
know." The old man smiled as he carefully shut and barred the door I had
left ajar. "He want tobacco, so I come. You good man to me. You not home;
I wait and make supper; my meat." He nodded proudly at the dull embers,
and I saw he had an open pot on them, with a hacked-off joint of moose-meat.
"I make him stew."
He had done the same
thing before, a sort of tacit payment for the tobacco he wanted. I was glad to
see him, for I was so hot and tired from my walk home that I knew I must be
getting old very fast. It is not good to sit alone in a shack of a winter's
night and know you are getting old very fast.
When there was no more
moosemeat we drew to the fire. Outside the wind had risen, full of a queer
wailing that sounded something like the cry of a loon. I saw Andrew was not
ready to start for home, though he had his hat on his head, and I realized I
had not got out the tobacco. But when I put it on the table he let it lie.
"You keep me here
to-night?" he asked, without a smile, almost anxiously. "Bad night,
to-night. Too long way home."
I was pleased enough,
but I asked if the old woman would be lonely.
"He get tobacco
to-morrow." (Andrew had but the masculine third person singular; and why
have more, when that serves?) "Girl with him when I come.
To-morrow"-- He listened for an instant to the wind, stared into the fire,
and threw so mighty a bark-covered log on it that the flames flew up the
chimney.
"Red deer come
back to this country!" exclaimed he irrelevantly. "Come down from
Maine. Wolves come back, too, over the north ice. I s'pose smell 'em? I don't
know."
I nodded. I knew both
things, having nothing but such things to know in the corner of God's world I
call my own.
Andrew filled his pipe.
If I had not been used to him, I could never have seen his eyes were not on it,
but on me.
"To-morrow,"
he harked back abruptly, "we go 'way. Break up here; go down Lake
Mooin."
"Why?" I was
astounded. He had not shifted camp for years.
"I say red deer
back. Not good here any more."
"But"-- I
wondered for half a minute if he could be afraid of the few stray wolves which
had certainly come, from Heaven knew how far, the winter before. But I knew
that was nonsense. It must be something about the deer. How was I to know what
his mind got out of them?
"No good," he
repeated; he lifted his long brown hand solemnly,--"no good here. You come
too."
I laughed. "I'm
too old! Andrew, who was the strange priest I met to-day crossing the upland
farm?"
"Father Moore--no?
Father Underhill?"
"No. Thin,
tired-looking, lame."
"Lame! Drag leg?
Hurry?" I had never seen him so excited, never seen him stop in full
career as now. "I don' know." It was a different man speaking.
"Strange priest, not belong here. You come Lake Mooin with me."
"Tell me about the
priest first," though I knew it was useless as I ordered it.
He spat into the fire.
"Lame dog, lame woman, lame priest,-- all no good!" said he.
"What time late you sit up here?"
Not late that night,
assuredly. I was more tired than I wanted to own. But long after I had gone to
my bunk in the corner I saw Andrew's wrinkled face alert and listening in the
firelight. He played with something in his hand, and I knew there was that in
his mind which he would not say. The wind had died away; there was no more
loon-calling, or whatever it was. I fell to sleep to the sound of the fire, the
soft pat of snow against the window. But the straight old figure in my chair
sat rigid, rigid.
I opened my eyes to
broad, dull daylight. Andrew and the tobacco were gone. But on the table was
something I did not see till I was setting my breakfast there: three bits of
twig, two uprights and a crosspiece; a lake-shore pebble; a bit of charred
wood. I supposed it was something about coming back from Lake Mooin to sit by
my fire again, and I swept the picture-writing away as I put down my teapot.
Afterwards I was glad.
I began to wonder if it
would ever stop snowing. Andrew's track from my door was filled up already. I
sat down to my fly- tying and my books, with a pipe in my mouth and an old tune
at my heart, when I heard a hare shriek out. I will have no traps on my
grant,--a beggarly hundred acres, not cleared, and never will be; I have no
farmer blood,--and, for a moment I distrusted Andrew. I put on my boots and
went out.
The dog plumped into
the woods ahead of me, and came back. The hare shrieked again, and was cut off
in midcry.
"Indian is
Indian!" said I savagely. "Andrew!" But no one answered.
The dog fell behind me,
treading in my steps.
In the thick spruces
there was nothing; nothing in the opener hardwood, till I came out on a clear
place under a big tree, with the snow falling over into my boot legs. There,
stooping in the snow, with his back to me, was a man,--the priest of yesterday.
Priest or no priest, I would not have it; and I said so.
He smiled tightly, his
soutane gathered up around him.
"I do not snare.
Look!" He moved aside, and I saw the bloody snow, the dead hare.
"Something must have killed it and been frightened away. It is very
odd." He looked round him, as I did, for the fox or wild-cat tracks that
were not there. Except for my bootprints from my side, and his uneven track
from his, there was not a mark on the snow. It might have been a wild cat who
jumped to some tree, but even so it was queer.
"Very odd,"
he said again. "Will you have the hare?"
I shook my head. I had
no fancy for it.
"It is good
meat."
I had turned to see
where my dog had gone, but I looked back at the sound of his voice, and was
ashamed. Pinched, tired, bedraggled, he held up the hare; and his eyes were
sharp with hunger.
I looked for no more
phantom tracks; I forgot he had sinned about the hare. I was ashamed that I,
well fed, had shamed him, empty, by wondering foolishly about wild cats. Yet
even so I had less fancy for that hare than ever.
"Let it lie,"
said I. "I have better meat, and I suppose the beasts are hungry as well
as we. If you are not hurried, come in and have a bite with me. I see few
strangers out here. You would do me a kindness."
A very strange look
came on his face. "A kindness!" he exclaimed. "I--do a
kindness!"
He seemed so taken
aback that I wondered if he were not a little mad. I do not like madmen, but I
could not turn round on him.
"You are off the
track to anywhere," I explained. "There are no settlements for a
hundred miles back of me. If you come in, I will give you your bearings."
"Off the
track!" he repeated, almost joyfully. "Yes, yes. But I am very
strong. I suppose"--his voice dragged into a whisper--"I shall not be
able to help getting back to a settlement again. But"-- He looked at me
for the first time, with considering eyes like a dog's, only more afraid, less
gentle. "You are a good man, brother," he said. "I will
come."
He cast a shuddering
glance at the hare, and threw it behind him. As I turned to go, he drifted
lamely after me, just as a homeless dog does, half hope, half terrified
suspicion. But I fancied he laid a greedy eye at the bloody hare after he had
turned away from it.
Somehow, he was not a comfortable
companion, and I was sorry I had no lunatic asylum. I whistled for my dog, but
he had run home. He liked neither snow nor strangers. I saw his great square
head in my bed as I let the priest in, and I knew he was annoyed. Dogs are
funny things.
Mad or sane, that
priest ate ravenously. When he had finished his eyes were steadier, though he
started frightfully when I dropped some firewood,--started toward the door.
"Were you in time
for the funeral yesterday, father?" I asked, to put him at his ease. But
at first he did not answer.
"I turned
back," he said at last, in the chanting voice of yesterday. "You live
alone, brother? Alone, like me, in the wilderness?"
I said yes. I supposed
he was one of the Indian priests who live alone indeed. He was no town priest,
for his nails were worn to the quick.
"You should bar
your door at night," he continued slowly, as if it were a distasteful
duty. "These woods are not--not as they were."
Here was another
warning, the second in twenty-four hours. I forgot about his being crazy.
"I always bar
it." I answered shortly enough. I was tired of these child's terrors, all
the more that I myself had felt evil in the familiar woods only yesterday.
"Do more!"
cried the priest. He stood up, a taller man than I had thought him, a gaunt,
hunted-looking man in his shabby black. "Do more! After nightfall keep
your door shut, even to knocking; do not open it for any calling. The place is
a bad place, and treachery"-- He stopped, looked at the table, pointed at
something. "Would you mind," said he, "turning down that loaf?
It is not--not true!"
I saw the loaf bottom
up on the platter, and remembered. It is an old custom of silent warning that
the stranger in the house is a traitor. But I had no one to warn. I laughed,
and turned the loaf.
"Of course there
is no traitor."
If ever I saw
gratitude, it was in his eyes, yet he spoke peevishly: "Not now; but there
might be. And so I say to you, after nightfall do not open your door--till the
Indians come back."
Then he was an Indian
priest. I wondered why Andrew had lied about him.
"What is this
thing"--I was impatient--"that you and they are afraid of? Look out
there,"--I opened the door (for the poor priest, to be truthful, was not
savory), and pointed to the quiet clearing, the soft-falling snow, the fringe
of spruces that were the vanguard of the woods,--"look there, and tell me
what there is in my own woods that has not been there these twelve years past!
Yet first an Indian comes with hints and warnings, and then you."
"What
warnings?" he cried. "The Indian's, I mean! What warnings?"
"I am sure I do
not know." I was thoroughly out of temper; I was not always a quiet old
man in a lonely shack. "Something about the red deer coming back, and the
place being bad."
"That is nonsense
about the red deer," returned the priest, not in the least as if he meant
it.
"Nonsense or not,
it seems to have sent the Indians away." I could not help sounding dry. I
hate these silly mysteries.
He turned his back to
me, and began to prowl about the room. I had opened my mouth to speak, when he
forestalled me.
"You have been
kind to an outcast priest." He spoke plainly. "I tell you in return
to go away; I tell you earnestly. Or else I ask you to promise me that for no
reason will you leave your house after dark, or your door on the latch, till
the Indians come ba--" He stopped in the middle of a word, the middle of a
step, his lame leg held up drolly. "What is that?"
It was more like the
howl of a wild beast than a question, and I spun round pretty sharply. The man
was crazier than I liked.
"That rubbish of
twigs and stones? The Indian left them. They mean something about his coming
back, I suppose."
I could not see what he
was making such a fuss about. He stood in that silly, arrested attitude, and
his lips had drawn back from his teeth in a kind of snarl. I stooped for the
things, and it was exactly as if he snapped at me.
"Let them be. I--I
have no fancy for them. They are a heathen charm." He backed away from
them, drew close to the open door, and stood with a working face,--the saddest
sight of fierce and weary ruin, of effort to speak kindly, that ever I saw.
"They're just a
message," I began.
"That you do not
understand." He held up his hand for silence, more priest and less madman
than I had yet seen him. "I will tell you what they mean. The twigs, two
uprights and a crosspiece, mean to keep your door shut; the stone is--the stone
does not matter--call it a stranger; the charcoal"--for all the effort he
was making his hand fell, and I thought he trembled--"the charcoal"--
I stooped mechanically
to put the things as he described them, as Andrew had left them; but his cry
checked me.
"Let the cruel
things be! The charcoal means the unlucky, the burned-out souls whose bodies
live accursed. No, I will not touch them, either. But do you lay them as you
found them, night after night, at your door, and--and"--he was fairly
grinding his teeth with the effort; even an outcast priest may feel shame at
believing in heathenry--"and the unlucky, the unhappy, must pass by."
I do not know why such
pity came on me, except that it is not right to see into the soul of any man,
and I knew the priest must be banned, and thought Andrew had meant to warn me
against him. I took the things, twigs, stone, and charcoal, and threw them into
the fire.
"I'd sooner they
came in," I said.
But the strange priest
gave me a look of terror, of agony. I thought he wrung his hands, but I could
not tell. As if I had struck him he was over my threshold, and scurrying away
with his swift lameness into the woods and the thin-falling snow. He went the
way we had come in the morning, the way of the dead hare. I could not help
wondering if he would take it with him if it were still there. I was sorry I
had not asked him where he was going; sorrier I had not filled his pockets with
food. I turned to put away my map of the district, and it was gone. He must
have moved more silently than a wolf to have stolen it, but stolen it was. I
could not grudge it, if I would rather have given it. I went to the bunk to
pull out my sulky dog, and stood amazed. Those books lie which say dogs do not
sweat.
"The priest certainly
had a bad smell," I exclaimed, "but nothing to cause all this fuss!
Come out!"
But he only crawled
abjectly to the fire, and presently lifted his great head and howled.
"Snow or no snow,
priest or no priest," said I, "we will go out to get rid of these
vapors;" for I had not felt much happier with my guest than had the dog.
When we came back we
had forgotten him; or why should I lie?-- the dog had. I could not forget his
lameness, his poor, fierce, hungry face. I made a prayer in my bed that night.
(I know it is not a devout practice, but if the mind kneels I hold the body
does not matter, and my mind has been kneeling for twenty years.)
"For all that are
in agony and have none to pray for them, I beseech thee, O God!" And I
meant the priest, as well as some others. But, however it was, I heard--I mean
I saw--no more of him. I had never heard of him so much as his name.
Christmas passed. In
February I went down to the village, and there I heard what put the faint
memory of the lame man out of my head. The wolves who had followed the red deer
were killing, not deer in the woods, but children in the settlements. The
village talked of packs of wolves, and Heaven knew how many children. I
thought, if it came to bare truth, there might have been three children eaten,
instead of the thirty rumor made them, and that for the fabled pack there
probably stood two or three brutes, with a taste for human flesh, and a
distaste for the hard running of pulling down a deer. And before I left the
village I met a man who told the plain tale.
There had been ten
children killed or carried off, but there had been no pack of wolves concerned,
nor even three nor two. One lame wolf's track led from each robbed house, only
to disappear on some highroad. More than that, the few wolves in the woods
seemed to fear and shun the lonely murderer; were against him as much as the
men who meant to hunt him down.
It was a queer story; I
hardly thought it held water, though the man who told it was no romance-maker.
I left him, and went home over the hard shining of the crusted snow, wondering
why the good God, if he had not meant his children to kill, should have made
the winter so long and hard.
Yellow shafts of low
sunlight pierced the woods as I threaded them, and if they had not made it
plain that there was nothing abroad I should have thought I heard something
padding in the underbrush. But I saw nothing till I came out on my own
clearing; and there I jerked up with surprise.
The lame priest stood
with his back to my window,--stood on a patch of tramped and bloody snow.
"Will you never
learn sense?" he whined at me. "This is no winter to go out and leave
your window unfastened. If I had not happened by, your dog would be dead."
I stared at him. I
always left the window ajar, for the dog to go out and in.
"I came by,"
drawled the priest, as if he were passing every day, "and found your dog
out here with three wolves on him. I--I beat them off." He might speak
calmly, but he wiped the sweat from his face. "I put him in by the window.
He is only torn."
"But you"--
My wits came back to me. I thanked him as a man does who has only a dumb beast
to cherish. "Why did you not go in, too? You must be frozen."
He shook his head.
"The dog is afraid of me; you saw that," he answered simply. "He
was better alone. Besides, I had my hands full at the time."
"Are you
hurt?" I would have felt his ragged clothes, but he flinched away from me.
"They were afraid,
too!" He gave a short laugh. "And now I must go. Only be careful. For
all you knew, there might have been wolves beside you as you came. And you had
no gun."
I knew now why he
looked neither cold nor like a man who has been waiting. He had made the window
safe for the dog inside, and run through the woods to guard me. I was full of
wonder at the strangeness of him, and the absurd gratitude; I forgot--or
rather, I did not speak of--the stolen map. I begged him to come in for the
night. But he cut me off in the middle.
"I am going a long
way. No, I will not take a gun. I have no fear."
"These wolves are
too much!" I cried angrily. "They told me in the village that a lame
one had been harrying the settlements. I mean a wolf"-- Not for worlds
would I have said anything about lameness if I had remembered his.
"Do they say
that?" he asked, his gaunt and furrowed face without expression. "Oh,
you need not mind me. It is no secret that I--I too am lame. Are they
sure?"
"Sure enough to
mean to kill him." Somehow, my tongue faltered over it.
"So they ought. He
spoke in his throat. "But--I doubt if they can!" He straightened
himself, looked at the sun with a queer face. "I must be going. You need
not thank me,--except, if there comes one at nightfall, do not, for my memory,
let him in. Good-night, brother."
And, "Good-night,
brother," said I.
He turned, and drifted
lamely out of the clearing. He was out of my sight as quickly as if he had gone
into the ground. It was true about the wolves; there were their three tracks,
and the priest's tracks running to the place where they had my dog down. If,
remembering the hare, I had had other thoughts, I was ashamed of them. I was
sorry I had not asked in the village about this strange man who beat off wolves
with a stick; but I had, unfortunately, not known it in the village.
I was to know. Oh, I
was to know!
It might have been a
month after--anyhow, it was near sunset of a bitter day--when I saw the lame
priest again.
Lame indeed. Bent
double as if with agony, limping horribly, the sweat on his white face, he
stumbled to my door. His hand was at his side; there was a dry blood stain
round his mouth; yet even while he had to lean against the doorpost he would
not let me within arm reach of him, but edged away.
"Come in,
man." I was appalled. "Come in. You--are you hurt?" I thought I
saw blood on his soutane, that was in flinders.
He shook his head. Like
a man whose minutes are numbered, he looked at the sun; and, like a man whose
minutes are numbered, could not hurry his speech.
"Not I," he said
at last. "But there is a poor beast out there," nodding vaguely,
"a--a dog, that has been wounded. I--I want some rags to tie up the wound,
a blanket to put over him. I cannot leave him in his--his last hour."
"You can't go.
I'll put him out of his misery: that will be better than blankets."
"It might,"
muttered he, "it might, if you could! But I must go."
I said I would go, too.
But at that he seemed to lose all control of himself, and snarled out at me.
"Stay at home. I
will not have you. Hurry. Get me the things."
His eyes--and, on my
soul, I thought death was glazing them-- were on the sinking sun when I came
out again, and for the first time he did not edge away from me. I should have
known without telling that he had been caring for some animal by the smell of
his clothes.
"My brother that I
have treated brotherly, as you me," he said, "whether I come back
this night or not, keep your door shut. Do not come out-- if I had strength to
kneel, I would kneel to you--for any calling. And I--I that ask you have loved
you well; I have tried to serve you, except" (he had no pause, no
awkwardness) "in the matter of that map; but you had burnt the heathen
charm, and I had to find a way to keep far off from you. I am--I am a driven
man!"
"There will be no
calling." I was puzzled and despairing. "There has been none of that
loon-crying, or whatever it was, since the night I first met you. If you would
treat me as a brother, come back to my house and sleep. I will not hurt your
wounded dog," though even then I knew it was no dog.
"I treat you as I
know best," he answered passionately. "But if in the morning I do not
come"-- He seized the blanket, the rags; bounded from me in the last rays
of sunlight, dragging his burden in the snow. As he vanished with his swift,
incredible lameness, his voice came back high and shrill: "If I do not
come in the morning, come out and give--give my dog burial. For the love
of"--he was screaming--"for the love I bore you--a Christian
burial!"
If I had not stayed to
shut the door, I should not have lost him. Until dark I called, I beat every
inch of cover. All the time I had a feeling that he was near and evading me,
and at last I stopped looking for him. For all I knew he might have a camp
somewhere; and camp or none, he had said pretty plainly he did not want me. I
went home, angry and baffled.
It was a freezing
night. The very moon looked fierce with cold. The shack snapped with frost as I
sat down to the supper I could not eat for the thought of the poor soul outside;
and as I sat I heard a sound, a soft, imploring call,--the same, only nearer
and more insistent, as the cry on the wind the night after I first saw the
priest. I was at the door, when something stopped me. I do not exaggerate when
I say the mad priest's voice was in my ears: "If there comes one to your
door after nightfall, do not let him in. Do not open for any crying. If I had
strength to kneel, I would kneel to you."
I do not think any pen
on earth could put down the entreaty of that miserable voice, but even
remembering it I would have disregarded it if, before I could so much as draw
breath, that soft calling had not broken into a great ravening howl, bestial,
full of malice. For a moment I thought the priest had come back raving mad; I
thought silly thoughts of my cellar and my medicine chest; but as I turned for
my knitted sash to tie him with, the horrid howl came again, and I knew it was
no man, but a beast. Or I think that is a lie. I knew nothing, except that
outside was something more horrible than I had ever dreamed of, and that I
could not open my door.
I did go to the window;
I put a light there for the priest to see, if he came; but I did no more. That
very day I had said, "There will be no more calling," and here, in my
sober senses, stood and sweated because my words were turned into a lie.
There seemed to be two
voices, yet I knew it was but one. First would come the soft wailing, with the
strange drawing in it. There was more terror for me in that than in the furious
snarl to which it always changed; for while it was imploring it was all I could
do not to let in the one who cried out there. Just as I could withstand no
longer, the ravening malice of the second cry would stop me short. It was as if
one called and one forbade me. But I knew there were no two things outside.
I may as well set down
my shame and be done. I was afraid. I stood holding my frantic dog, and dared
not look at the unshuttered window, black and shining like new ice in the
lamplight, lest I should see I knew not what inhuman face looking at me through
the frail pane. If I had had the heathen charm, I should have fallen to the
cowardice of using it.
It may have been ten
minutes that I stood with frozen blood. All I am sure of is that I came to my
senses with a great start, remembering the defenseless priest outside. I shut
up my dog, took my gun, opened my door in a fury, and--did not shoot.
Not ten yards from me a
wolf crouched in the snow, a dark and lonely thing. My gun was in my shoulder,
but as he came at me the sound that broke from his throat loosened my arm. It
was human. There is no other word for it. As I stood, sick and stupid, the poor
brute stopped his rush with a great slither in the snow that was black with his
blood in the moonlight, and ran,--ran terribly, lamely, from my sight,--but not
before I had seen a wide white bandage bound round his gray-black back and
breast.
"The priest's
dog!" I said. I thought a hundred things, and dared not meddle with what I
did not understand.
I searched as best I
might for what I knew I should not find,- -searched till the dawn broke in a
lurid sky; and under that crimson light I found the man I had called brother on
the crimson snow. And as I hope to die in a house and in my bed, my rags I gave
for the dying beast were round his breast, my blanket huddled at his hand. But
his face, as I looked on him, I should not have known, for it was young. I put
down my loaded gun, that i was glad was loaded still, and I carried the dead
home. I saw no wounded wolf nor the trace of one, except the long track from my
door to the priest's body, and that was marked by neither teeth nor claws, but,
under my rags, with bullets.
Well, he had his
Christian burial!--though Father Moore, good, smooth man, would not hear my
tale.
The dead priest had
been outcast by his own will, not the Church's; had roamed the country for a
thousand miles, a thing afraid and a thing of fear. And now some one had killed
him, perhaps by mistake.
"Who knows?"
finished Father Moore softly. "Who knows? But I will have no hue and cry
made about it. He was once, at least, a servant of God, and these,"--he
glanced at the queer-looking `bullets that had fallen from the dead man's side
as I made him ready for burial,--"I will encourage no senseless
superstition in my people by trying to trace these. Especially"-- But he
did not finish.
So we dug the priest's
grave, taking turn by turn, for we are not young; and his brother in God buried
him. What either of us thought about the whole matter he did not say.
But the very day after,
while the frozen mound of consecrated earth was raw in the sunshine, Andrew
walked in at my door.
"We come
back," he announced. "All good here now! Lame wolf dead. Shoot him after
dark, silver bullet. Weguladimooch. Bochtusum."[1]Evil spirit, wolf.
Weguladimooch is a word no Indian cares to say.
He said never a word
about the new grave. And neither did I.
S. Carleton.