The God of His Fathers

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THE GOD OF HIS FATHERS: TALES OF THE KLONDYKE


Contents:

The God of His Fathers
The Great Interrogation
Which Make Men Remember
Siwash
The Man with the Gash
Jan, the Unrepentant
Grit of Women
Where the Trail Forks
A Daughter of the Aurora
At the Rainbow's End
The Scorn of Women

_These tales have appeared in "McClure's," "Ainslee's," "Outing," the
"Overland Monthly," the "Wave," the "National," and the San Francisco
"Examiner." To the kindness of the various editors is due their
reappearance in more permanent form_.

TO THE DAUGHTERS OF THE WOLF WHO HAVE BRED AND SUCKLED A RACE OF MEN




THE GOD OF HIS FATHERS


I


On every hand stretched the forest primeval,--the home of noisy comedy
and silent tragedy. Here the struggle for survival continued to wage
with all its ancient brutality. Briton and Russian were still to overlap
in the Land of the Rainbow's End--and this was the very heart of it--nor
had Yankee gold yet purchased its vast domain. The wolf-pack still clung
to the flank of the cariboo-herd, singling out the weak and the big with
calf, and pulling them down as remorselessly as were it a thousand,
thousand generations into the past. The sparse aborigines still
acknowledged the rule of their chiefs and medicine men, drove out bad
spirits, burned their witches, fought their neighbors, and ate their
enemies with a relish which spoke well of their bellies. But it was at
the moment when the stone age was drawing to a close. Already, over
unknown trails and chartless wildernesses, were the harbingers of the
steel arriving,--fair-faced, blue-eyed, indomitable men, incarnations of
the unrest of their race. By accident or design, single-handed and in
twos and threes, they came from no one knew whither, and fought, or died,
or passed on, no one knew whence. The priests raged against them, the
chiefs called forth their fighting men, and stone clashed with steel; but
to little purpose. Like water seeping from some mighty reservoir, they
trickled through the dark forests and mountain passes, threading the
highways in bark canoes, or with their moccasined feet breaking trail for
the wolf-dogs. They came of a great breed, and their mothers were many;
but the fur-clad denizens of the Northland had this yet to learn. So
many an unsung wanderer fought his last and died under the cold fire of
the aurora, as did his brothers in burning sands and reeking jungles, and
as they shall continue to do till in the fulness of time the destiny of
their race be achieved.

It was near twelve. Along the northern horizon a rosy glow, fading to
the west and deepening to the east, marked the unseen dip of the midnight
sun. The gloaming and the dawn were so commingled that there was no
night,--simply a wedding of day with day, a scarcely perceptible blending
of two circles of the sun. A kildee timidly chirped good-night; the
full, rich throat of a robin proclaimed good-morrow. From an island on
the breast of the Yukon a colony of wild fowl voiced its interminable
wrongs, while a loon laughed mockingly back across a still stretch of
river.

In the foreground, against the bank of a lazy eddy, birch-bark canoes
were lined two and three deep. Ivory-bladed spears, bone-barbed arrows,
buckskin-thonged bows, and simple basket-woven traps bespoke the fact
that in the muddy current of the river the salmon-run was on. In the
background, from the tangle of skin tents and drying frames, rose the
voices of the fisher folk. Bucks skylarked with bucks or flirted with
the maidens, while the older squaws, shut out from this by virtue of
having fulfilled the end of their existence in reproduction, gossiped as
they braided rope from the green roots of trailing vines. At their feet
their naked progeny played and squabbled, or rolled in the muck with the
tawny wolf-dogs.

To one side of the encampment, and conspicuously apart from it, stood a
second camp of two tents. But it was a white man's camp. If nothing
else, the choice of position at least bore convincing evidence of this.
In case of offence, it commanded the Indian quarters a hundred yards
away; of defence, a rise to the ground and the cleared intervening space;
and last, of defeat, the swift slope of a score of yards to the canoes
below. From one of the tents came the petulant cry of a sick child and
the crooning song of a mother. In the open, over the smouldering embers
of a fire, two men held talk.

"Eh? I love the church like a good son. _Bien_! So great a love that
my days have been spent in fleeing away from her, and my nights in
dreaming dreams of reckoning. Look you!" The half-breed's voice rose to
an angry snarl. "I am Red River born. My father was white--as white as
you. But you are Yankee, and he was British bred, and a gentleman's son.
And my mother was the daughter of a chief, and I was a man. Ay, and one
had to look the second time to see what manner of blood ran in my veins;
for I lived with the whites, and was one of them, and my father's heart
beat in me. It happened there was a maiden--white--who looked on me with
kind eyes. Her father had much land and many horses; also he was a big
man among his people, and his blood was the blood of the French. He said
the girl knew not her own mind, and talked overmuch with her, and became
wroth that such things should be.

"But she knew her mind, for we came quick before the priest. And quicker
had come her father, with lying words, false promises, I know not what;
so that the priest stiffened his neck and would not make us that we might
live one with the other. As at the beginning it was the church which
would not bless my birth, so now it was the church which refused me
marriage and put the blood of men upon my hands. _Bien_! Thus have I
cause to love the church. So I struck the priest on his woman's mouth,
and we took swift horses, the girl and I, to Fort Pierre, where was a
minister of good heart. But hot on our trail was her father, and
brothers, and other men he had gathered to him. And we fought, our
horses on the run, till I emptied three saddles and the rest drew off and
went on to Fort Pierre. Then we took east, the girl and I, to the hills
and forests, and we lived one with the other, and we were not
married,--the work of the good church which I love like a son.

"But mark you, for this is the strangeness of woman, the way of which no
man may understand. One of the saddles I emptied was that of her
father's, and the hoofs of those who came behind had pounded him into the
earth. This we saw, the girl and I, and this I had forgot had she not
remembered. And in the quiet of the evening, after the day's hunt were
done, it came between us, and in the silence of the night when we lay
beneath the stars and should have been one. It was there always. She
never spoke, but it sat by our fire and held us ever apart. She tried to
put it aside, but at such times it would rise up till I could read it in
the look of her eyes, in the very intake of her breath.

"So in the end she bore me a child, a woman-child, and died. Then I went
among my mother's people, that it might nurse at a warm breast and live.
But my hands were wet with the blood of men, look you, because of the
church, wet with the blood of men. And the Riders of the North came for
me, but my mother's brother, who was then chief in his own right, hid me
and gave me horses and food. And we went away, my woman-child and I,
even to the Hudson Bay Country, where white men were few and the
questions they asked not many. And I worked for the company a hunter, as
a guide, as a driver of dogs, till my woman-child was become a woman,
tall, and slender, and fair to the eye.

"You know the winter, long and lonely, breeding evil thoughts and bad
deeds. The Chief Factor was a hard man, and bold. And he was not such
that a woman would delight in looking upon. But he cast eyes upon my
woman-child who was become a woman. Mother of God! he sent me away on a
long trip with the dogs, that he might--you understand, he was a hard man
and without heart. She was most white, and her soul was white, and a
good woman, and--well, she died.

"It was bitter cold the night of my return, and I had been away months,
and the dogs were limping sore when I came to the fort. The Indians and
breeds looked on me in silence, and I felt the fear of I knew not what,
but I said nothing till the dogs were fed and I had eaten as a man with
work before him should. Then I spoke up, demanding the word, and they
shrank from me, afraid of my anger and what I should do; but the story
came out, the pitiful story, word for word and act for act, and they
marvelled that I should be so quiet.

"When they had done I went to the Factor's house, calmer than now in the
telling of it. He had been afraid and called upon the breeds to help
him; but they were not pleased with the deed, and had left him to lie on
the bed he had made. So he had fled to the house of the priest. Thither
I followed. But when I was come to that place, the priest stood in my
way, and spoke soft words, and said a man in anger should go neither to
the right nor left, but straight to God. I asked by the right of a
father's wrath that he give me past, but he said only over his body, and
besought with me to pray. Look you, it was the church, always the
church; for I passed over his body and sent the Factor to meet my woman-
child before his god, which is a bad god, and the god of the white men.

"Then was there hue and cry, for word was sent to the station below, and
I came away. Through the Land of the Great Slave, down the Valley of the
Mackenzie to the never-opening ice, over the White Rockies, past the
Great Curve of the Yukon, even to this place did I come. And from that
day to this, yours is the first face of my father's people I have looked
upon. May it be the last! These people, which are my people, are a
simple folk, and I have been raised to honor among them. My word is
their law, and their priests but do my bidding, else would I not suffer
them. When I speak for them I speak for myself. We ask to be let alone.
We do not want your kind. If we permit you to sit by our fires, after
you will come your church, your priests, and your gods. And know this,
for each white man who comes to my village, him will I make deny his god.
You are the first, and I give you grace. So it were well you go, and go
quickly."

"I am not responsible for my brothers," the second man spoke up, filling
his pipe in a meditative manner. Hay Stockard was at times as thoughtful
of speech as he was wanton of action; but only at times.

"But I know your breed," responded the other. "Your brothers are many,
and it is you and yours who break the trail for them to follow. In time
they shall come to possess the land, but not in my time. Already, have I
heard, are they on the head-reaches of the Great River, and far away
below are the Russians."

Hay Stockard lifted his head with a quick start. This was startling
geographical information. The Hudson Bay post at Fort Yukon had other
notions concerning the course of the river, believing it to flow into the
Arctic.

"Then the Yukon empties into Bering Sea?" he asked.

"I do not know, but below there are Russians, many Russians. Which is
neither here nor there. You may go on and see for yourself; you may go
back to your brothers; but up the Koyukuk you shall not go while the
priests and fighting men do my bidding. Thus do I command, I, Baptiste
the Red, whose word is law and who am head man over this people."

"And should I not go down to the Russians, or back to my brothers?"

"Then shall you go swift-footed before your god, which is a bad god, and
the god of the white men."

The red sun shot up above the northern sky-line, dripping and bloody.
Baptiste the Red came to his feet, nodded curtly, and went back to his
camp amid the crimson shadows and the singing of the robins.

Hay Stockard finished his pipe by the fire, picturing in smoke and coal
the unknown upper reaches of the Koyukuk, the strange stream which ended
here its arctic travels and merged its waters with the muddy Yukon flood.
Somewhere up there, if the dying words of a ship-wrecked sailorman who
had made the fearful overland journey were to be believed, and if the
vial of golden grains in his pouch attested anything,--somewhere up
there, in that home of winter, stood the Treasure House of the North. And
as keeper of the gate, Baptiste the Red, English half-breed and renegade,
barred the way.

"Bah!" He kicked the embers apart and rose to his full height, arms
lazily outstretched, facing the flushing north with careless soul.



II


Hay Stockard swore, harshly, in the rugged monosyllables of his mother
tongue. His wife lifted her gaze from the pots and pans, and followed
his in a keen scrutiny of the river. She was a woman of the Teslin
Country, wise in the ways of her husband's vernacular when it grew
intensive. From the slipping of a snow-shoe thong to the forefront of
sudden death, she could gauge occasion by the pitch and volume of his
blasphemy. So she knew the present occasion merited attention. A long
canoe, with paddles flashing back the rays of the westering sun, was
crossing the current from above and urging in for the eddy. Hay Stockard
watched it intently. Three men rose and dipped, rose and dipped, in
rhythmical precision; but a red bandanna, wrapped about the head of one,
caught and held his eye.

"Bill!" he called. "Oh, Bill!"

A shambling, loose-jointed giant rolled out of one of the tents, yawning
and rubbing the sleep from his eyes. Then he sighted the strange canoe
and was wide awake on the instant.

"By the jumping Methuselah! That damned sky-pilot!"

Hay Stockard nodded his head bitterly, half-reached for his rifle, then
shrugged his shoulders.

"Pot-shot him," Bill suggested, "and settle the thing out of hand. He'll
spoil us sure if we don't." But the other declined this drastic measure
and turned away, at the same time bidding the woman return to her work,
and calling Bill back from the bank. The two Indians in the canoe moored
it on the edge of the eddy, while its white occupant, conspicuous by his
gorgeous head-gear, came up the bank.

"Like Paul of Tarsus, I give you greeting. Peace be unto you and grace
before the Lord."

His advances were met sullenly, and without speech.

"To you, Hay Stockard, blasphemer and Philistine, greeting. In your
heart is the lust of Mammon, in your mind cunning devils, in your tent
this woman whom you live with in adultery; yet of these divers sins, even
here in the wilderness, I, Sturges Owen, apostle to the Lord, bid you to
repent and cast from you your iniquities."

"Save your cant! Save your cant!" Hay Stockard broke in testily. "You'll
need all you've got, and more, for Red Baptiste over yonder."

He waved his hand toward the Indian camp, where the half-breed was
looking steadily across, striving to make out the newcomers. Sturges
Owen, disseminator of light and apostle to the Lord, stepped to the edge
of the steep and commanded his men to bring up the camp outfit. Stockard
followed him.

"Look here," he demanded, plucking the missionary by the shoulder and
twirling him about. "Do you value your hide?"

"My life is in the Lord's keeping, and I do but work in His vineyard," he
replied solemnly.

"Oh, stow that! Are you looking for a job of martyrship?"

"If He so wills."

"Well, you'll find it right here, but I'm going to give you some advice
first. Take it or leave it. If you stop here, you'll be cut off in the
midst of your labors. And not you alone, but your men, Bill, my wife--"

"Who is a daughter of Belial and hearkeneth not to the true Gospel."

"And myself. Not only do you bring trouble upon yourself, but upon us. I
was frozen in with you last winter, as you will well recollect, and I
know you for a good man and a fool. If you think it your duty to strive
with the heathen, well and good; but, do exercise some wit in the way you
go about it. This man, Red Baptiste, is no Indian. He comes of our
common stock, is as bull-necked as I ever dared be, and as wild a fanatic
the one way as you are the other. When you two come together, hell'll be
to pay, and I don't care to be mixed up in it. Understand? So take my
advice and go away. If you go down-stream, you'll fall in with the
Russians. There's bound to be Greek priests among them, and they'll see
you safe through to Bering Sea,--that's where the Yukon empties,--and
from there it won't be hard to get back to civilization. Take my word
for it and get out of here as fast as God'll let you."

"He who carries the Lord in his heart and the Gospel in his hand hath no
fear of the machinations of man or devil," the missionary answered
stoutly. "I will see this man and wrestle with him. One backslider
returned to the fold is a greater victory than a thousand heathen. He
who is strong for evil can be as mighty for good, witness Saul when he
journeyed up to Damascus to bring Christian captives to Jerusalem. And
the voice of the Saviour came to him, crying, 'Saul, Saul, why
persecutest thou me?' And therewith Paul arrayed himself on the side of
the Lord, and thereafter was most mighty in the saving of souls. And
even as thou, Paul of Tarsus, even so do I work in the vineyard of the
Lord, bearing trials and tribulations, scoffs and sneers, stripes and
punishments, for His dear sake."

"Bring up the little bag with the tea and a kettle of water," he called
the next instant to his boatmen; "not forgetting the haunch of cariboo
and the mixing-pan."

When his men, converts by his own hand, had gained the bank, the trio
fell to their knees, hands and backs burdened with camp equipage, and
offered up thanks for their passage through the wilderness and their safe
arrival. Hay Stockard looked upon the function with sneering
disapproval, the romance and solemnity of it lost to his matter-of-fact
soul. Baptiste the Red, still gazing across, recognized the familiar
postures, and remembered the girl who had shared his star-roofed couch in
the hills and forests, and the woman-child who lay somewhere by bleak
Hudson's Bay.



III


"Confound it, Baptiste, couldn't think of it. Not for a moment. Grant
that this man is a fool and of small use in the nature of things, but
still, you know, I can't give him up."

Hay Stockard paused, striving to put into speech the rude ethics of his
heart.

"He's worried me, Baptiste, in the past and now, and caused me all manner
of troubles; but can't you see, he's my own breed--white--and--and--why,
I couldn't buy my life with his, not if he was a nigger."

"So be it," Baptiste the Red made answer. "I have given you grace and
choice. I shall come presently, with my priests and fighting men, and
either shall I kill you, or you deny your god. Give up the priest to my
pleasure, and you shall depart in peace. Otherwise your trail ends here.
My people are against you to the babies. Even now have the children
stolen away your canoes." He pointed down to the river. Naked boys had
slipped down the water from the point above, cast loose the canoes, and
by then had worked them into the current. When they had drifted out of
rifle-shot they clambered over the sides and paddled ashore.

"Give me the priest, and you may have them back again. Come! Speak your
mind, but without haste."

Stockard shook his head. His glance dropped to the woman of the Teslin
Country with his boy at her breast, and he would have wavered had he not
lifted his eyes to the men before him.

"I am not afraid," Sturges Owen spoke up. "The Lord bears me in his
right hand, and alone am I ready to go into the camp of the unbeliever.
It is not too late. Faith may move mountains. Even in the eleventh hour
may I win his soul to the true righteousness."

"Trip the beggar up and make him fast," Bill whispered hoarsely in the
ear of his leader, while the missionary kept the floor and wrestled with
the heathen. "Make him hostage, and bore him if they get ugly."

"No," Stockard answered. "I gave him my word that he could speak with us
unmolested. Rules of warfare, Bill; rules of warfare. He's been on the
square, given us warning, and all that, and--why, damn it, man, I can't
break my word!"

"He'll keep his, never fear."

"Don't doubt it, but I won't let a half-breed outdo me in fair dealing.
Why not do what he wants,--give him the missionary and be done with it?"

"N-no," Bill hesitated doubtfully.

"Shoe pinches, eh?"

Bill flushed a little and dropped the discussion. Baptiste the Red was
still waiting the final decision. Stockard went up to him.

"It's this way, Baptiste. I came to your village minded to go up the
Koyukuk. I intended no wrong. My heart was clean of evil. It is still
clean. Along comes this priest, as you call him. I didn't bring him
here. He'd have come whether I was here or not. But now that he is
here, being of my people, I've got to stand by him. And I'm going to.
Further, it will be no child's play. When you have done, your village
will be silent and empty, your people wasted as after a famine. True, we
will he gone; likewise the pick of your fighting men--"

"But those who remain shall be in peace, nor shall the word of strange
gods and the tongues of strange priests be buzzing in their ears."

Both men shrugged their shoulder and turned away, the half-breed going
back to his own camp. The missionary called his two men to him, and they
fell into prayer. Stockard and Bill attacked the few standing pines with
their axes, felling them into convenient breastworks. The child had
fallen asleep, so the woman placed it on a heap of furs and lent a hand
in fortifying the camp. Three sides were thus defended, the steep
declivity at the rear precluding attack from that direction. When these
arrangements had been completed, the two men stalked into the open,
clearing away, here and there, the scattered underbrush. From the
opposing camp came the booming of war-drums and the voices of the priests
stirring the people to anger.

"Worst of it is they'll come in rushes," Bill complained as they walked
back with shouldered axes.

"And wait till midnight, when the light gets dim for shooting."

"Can't start the ball a-rolling too early, then." Bill exchanged the axe
for a rifle, and took a careful rest. One of the medicine-men, towering
above his tribesmen, stood out distinctly. Bill drew a bead on him.

"All ready?" he asked.

Stockard opened the ammunition box, placed the woman where she could
reload in safety, and gave the word. The medicine-man dropped. For a
moment there was silence, then a wild howl went up and a flight of bone
arrows fell short.

"I'd like to take a look at the beggar," Bill remarked, throwing a fresh
shell into place. "I'll swear I drilled him clean between the eyes."

"Didn't work." Stockard shook his head gloomily. Baptiste had evidently
quelled the more warlike of his followers, and instead of precipitating
an attack in the bright light of day, the shot had caused a hasty exodus,
the Indians drawing out of the village beyond the zone of fire.

In the full tide of his proselyting fervor, borne along by the hand of
God, Sturges Owen would have ventured alone into the camp of the
unbeliever, equally prepared for miracle or martyrdom; but in the waiting
which ensued, the fever of conviction died away gradually, as the natural
man asserted itself. Physical fear replaced spiritual hope; the love of
life, the love of God. It was no new experience. He could feel his
weakness coming on, and knew it of old time. He had struggled against it
and been overcome by it before. He remembered when the other men had
driven their paddles like mad in the van of a roaring ice-flood, how, at
the critical moment, in a panic of worldly terror, he had dropped his
paddle and besought wildly with his God for pity. And there were other
times. The recollection was not pleasant. It brought shame to him that
his spirit should be so weak and his flesh so strong. But the love of
life! the love of life! He could not strip it from him. Because of it
had his dim ancestors perpetuated their line; because of it was he
destined to perpetuate his. His courage, if courage it might be called,
was bred of fanaticism. The courage of Stockard and Bill was the
adherence to deep-rooted ideals. Not that the love of life was less, but
the love of race tradition more; not that they were unafraid to die, but
that they were brave enough not to live at the price of shame.

The missionary rose, for the moment swayed by the mood of sacrifice. He
half crawled over the barricade to proceed to the other camp, but sank
back, a trembling mass, wailing: "As the spirit moves! As the spirit
moves! Who am I that I should set aside the judgments of God? Before
the foundations of the world were all things written in the book of life.
Worm that I am, shall I erase the page or any portion thereof? As God
wills, so shall the spirit move!"