第43章 CHAPTER X JACK FRENCH OF THE NIGHT HAWK RANCH(1)

A map of Western Canada showing the physical features of the country lying between the mountains on the one side and the Bay and the Lakes on the other, presents the appearance of a vast rolling plain scarred and seamed and pitted like an ancient face. These scars and seams and pits are great lazy rivers, meandering streams, lakes, sleughs and marshes which form one vast system of waters that wind and curve through the rolls of the prairie and nestle in its sunlit hollows, laying, draining, blessing where they go and where they stay.

By these, the countless herds of buffalo and deer quenched their thirst in the days when they, with their rival claimants for the land, the Black Feet and the Crees, roamed undisturbed over these mighty plains. These waterways in later days when The Honourable the Hudson's Bay Company ruled the West, formed the great highways of barter. By these teeming lakes and sleughs and marshes hunted and trapped Indians and half-breeds. Down these streams and rivers floated the great fur brigades in canoe and Hudson's Bay pointer with priceless bales of pelts to the Bay in the north or the Lakes in the south, on their way to that centre of the world's trade, old London. And up these streams and rivers went the great loads of supplies and merchandise for the faraway posts that were at once the seats of government and the emporiums of trade in this wide land.

Following the canoe and Hudson's Bay boat, came the river barge and side-wheeler, and with these, competing for trade, the overland freighter with ox train and pack pony, with Red River cart and shagginappi.

Still later, up these same waterways and along these trails came settlers singly or in groups, the daring vanguard of an advancing civilization, and planted themselves as pleased their fancy in choice spots, in sunny nooks sheltered by bluffs, by gemlike lakes or flowing streams, but mostly on the banks of the great rivers, the highways for their trade, the shining links that held them to their kind. Some there were among those hardy souls who, severing all bonds behind them, sought only escape from their fellow men and from their past. These left the great riverways and freighting trails, and pressing up the streams to distant head waters, there pitched their camp and there, in lonely, lordly independence, took rich toll of prairie, lake and stream as they needed for their living.

Such a man was Jack French, and such a spot was Night Hawk Lake, whose shining waters found a tortuous escape four miles away by Night Hawk Creek into the South Saskatchewan, king of rivers.

The two brothers, Jack and Herbert French, of good old English stock, finding life in the trim downs of Devon too confined and wearisome for their adventurous spirits, fell to walking seaward over the high head lands, and to listening and gazing, the soft spray dashing wet upon their faces, till they found eyes and ears filled with the sights and sounds of far, wide plains across the sea that called and beckoned, till in the middle seventies, with their mother's kiss trembling on their brows and on their lips, and their father's almost stern benediction stiffening their backs, they fared forth to the far West, and found themselves on the black trail that wound up the Red River of the North and reached the straggling hamlet of Winnipeg.

There, in one of Winnipeg's homes, they found generous welcome and a maiden, guarded by a stern old timer for a father and four stalwart plain-riding brothers, but guarded all in vain, for laughing at all such guarding, the two brothers with the hot selfishness of young love, each unaware of the other's intent, sought to rifle that house of its chief treasure.

To Herbert, the younger, that ardent pirate of her heart, the maiden struck her flaming flag, and on the same night, with fearful dismay, she sought pardon of the elder brother that she could not yield him like surrender. With pale appealing face and kind blue eyes, she sought forgiveness for her poverty.

"Oh, Mr. French," she cried, "if I only could! But I cannot give you what is Herbert's now."

"Herbert!" gasped Jack with parched lips.

"And oh, Jack," she cried again with sweet selfishness, "you will love Herbert still, and me?"

And Jack, having had a moment in which to summon up the reserves of his courage and his command, smiled into her appealing eyes, kissed her pale face, and still smiling, took his way, unseeing and unheeding all but those appealing, tearful eyes and that pleading voice asking with sweet selfishness only his life.

Three months he roamed the plains alone, finding at length one sunny day, Night Hawk Lake, whose fair and lonely wildness seemed to suit his mood, and there he pitched his camp. Thence back to Winnipeg a month later to his brother's wedding, and that over, still smiling, to take his way again to Night Hawk Lake, where ever since he spent his life.

He passed his days at first in building house and stables from the poplar bluffs at hand, and later in growing with little toil from the rich black land and taking from prairie, lake and creek with rifle and with net, what was necessary for himself and his man, the Scotch half-breed Mackenzie, all the while forgetting till he could forget no longer, and then with Mackenzie drinking deep and long till remembering and forgetting were the same.

After five years he returned to Winnipeg to stand by her side whose image lived ever in his heart, while they closed down the coffin lid upon the face dearest to her, dearest but one to him of all faces in the world. Then when he had comforted her with what comfort he had to give, he set face again toward Night Hawk Lake, leaving her, because she so desired it, alone but for her aged mother, bereft of all, husband, brothers, father, who might guard her from the world's harm.

"I am safe, dear Jack," she said, "God will let nothing harm me."

And Jack, smiling bravely still, went on his way and for a whole year lived for the monthly letter that advancing civilization had come to make possible to him.