Chapter 25

"THE-MAN-WHO-CANNOT-DIE"

During the infinitesimal interim between the shock which hurled him into the air, and the closing of the waters of Blood River over his head, Bill Carmody's brain received a confusion of flashlike impressions: The futile shouting and waving of arms upon the man-crowded bank of the river; the sudden roar of the rapid; the tense face of Fallon; the set jaw of big Stromberg as he stood ready to shoot out the line; and, above all, the leering eyes and sneering lips of Moncrossen.

The accident happened a scant sixty feet from the side of the straining bateau, and the features of its occupants were brought out strongly in the clear morning light.

As he disappeared beneath the surface Bill drew a long breath and, opening his eyes, looked upward. A couple of swift strokes and his head emerged where a small patch of light showed an open space.

Reaching out he grasped the rough bark of a log, shook the icy water from his eyes, and reviewed his situation. His first thought was of the bateau, but a shoreward glance revealed only the swiftly gliding trunks of the forest wall with the bateau and the gesticulating crowd but a blur in the distance.

Near him floated smoothly a huge forked trunk from whose prongs protruded the stubs of lopped limbs. Releasing his hold, he swam toward the big log which floated butt foremost among its lesser neighbors, and, diving, came up between the forks and gripped firmly a limb stub.

On every hand thousands of logs floated quietly, seemingly motionless as logs on the bosom of a mill-pond. Only the rushing walls of pine on either side of the narrow river-aisle spoke of the terrific speed of the drive.

Suddenly, as the great forked log swept around a bend, the peril of his situation dawned upon him in all its horror. The dull roar changed to a mighty bellow where the high-tossed white-water leaped high among the submerged rocks of the rapid, and above its thunder sounded the heavy rumble of the shock and grind of thousands of wildly pitching logs.

Only for a moment did he gaze out over the heaving forefront of the drive. His log shot forward with the speed of a bullet as it was seized in the grip of the current; the next moment it leaped clear of the water and plunged blindly into the whirling tossing pandemonium of the white-water gut.

Bill clung desperately to the stub, expecting each moment to be his last. Close in the fork he was protected on either side from the hammering blows of the caroming timber. All about him the air was filled with flying logs which ripped the bark from each other's sides, while the shock and batter of the wild stampede threatened momentarily to tear loose his grip.

It seemed to the desperate man that hours passed as he clung doggedly to the huge trunk which trembled and shivered and plunged wildly at the pounding impact, when suddenly it brought up against a half-submerged rock, stopped dead, grated and jarred at the crash of following logs, poised for an instant, and then slanted into deeper water, while up the man's leg shot a twisting, wrenching pain, sickening--nerve-killing in its intensity.

His grasp relaxed and his whole body went limp and lifeless as the big log overrode the last rock barrier and was caught in the placid, slowly revolving water of a shore eddy.

* * * * *

Half concealed by the naked tangle of underbrush on the verge of a low bluff where the rock-ribbed rapid broke suddenly into smooth water, an old Indian woman and a beautiful half-breed girl of twenty crouched close, watching the logs plunge through the seething white-water.

The dark eyes of the girl shone with excitement, but this was no new sight to the eyes of the older woman who in times past had watched other drives on other rivers. As she looked her frown deepened and the hundred little weather wrinkles in the tight-drawn smoke-darkened skin showed thin and plain, like the crisscross cracks in old leather.

The shriveled lips pressed tight against the hard, snag-studded gums, and in the narrow, lashless black eyes glowed the spark of undying hate.

The sight of the rushing logs brought bitter memories. These were things of the white man--and, among white men, only Lacombie was good--and Lacombie was dead.

Young Lacombie, who came into the North with a song on his lips to work for the great company whose word is law, and whose long arm is destiny. Lacombie, who, in the long ago had won her, Wa-ha-ta-na-ta, the daughter of Kas-ka-tan, the chief, who was called the most beautiful maiden among all the tribes of the rivers.

The old crone drew her blanket about her and shuddered slightly as she glanced from her own withered, clawlike hands, upon which dark veins stood out like the cords of a freight bale, to the fresh beauty of the young girl at her side who gazed in awed fascination upon the rush of the pounding logs.

Lacombie was dead, and Pierre, his son, who was her first-born, was dead also; and his blood was upon the head of the men of the logs. For he had left the post and gone among white men, and she, the mother who bore him, and Lacombie, his father, had seen him no more.

Years slipped by, bringing other children; Jacques, in whom the white blood of Lacombie was lost in the blending, and the girl who crouched at her side.

Long after, from the lips of a passing _Bois brûlé_, she heard the story of Pierre's death--how, crazed by whisky and the taunts of a drunken companion, he had leaped upon a passing log and plunged into the foaming white chute of the dreaded Saw Tooth rapid through which no man had passed and lived.

_Sacré._ He was brave! For he came nearly to the end of the rapid, standing upon his log--but, only nearly to the end--for there he was dashed and broken upon the rocks in the swirl of the leaping white-water, and here was she, his mother, gazing at other logs in the rush of other rapids.

She started at the sudden clutch at her blanket and glanced sharply at the girl who strained forward upon the very edge of the bluff and stared, not at the rapid, but straight downward where a few logs revolved lazily in the grip of the shore eddy.

The girl was pointing excitedly with a tapering white-brown finger to the fork of a great log where, caught on a sharp limb stub, was the striped sleeve of a mackinaw, from the end of which protruded a hand, while after the log, trailing sluggishly in the V of the fork, was the lifeless body of a man.

As she looked a light of exultation gleamed in the sharp old eyes. Here was vengeance! For the life of her son--the life of a white man.

She noted with satisfaction that the body was that of a large man. It was fitting so. For her Pierre had been tall, and broad, and strong--she would have been disappointed in the meaner price of a small man's life.

Suddenly she leaped to her feet and ran swiftly along the bluff seeking a place to descend.

Even among the men of the logs, who are bad, one man stands alone as the archfiend of them all.

And now--it is possible, for he is a big man--she, Wa-ha-ta-na-ta, the mother of Pierre and of Jeanne, maybe is permitted to stoop close and breathe upon the dead face of this man the weird curse of the barren lands--almost forgotten, now, even among her own people--the blighting curse of the "Yaga Tah!"

In the telling, the _Bois brûlé_ had mentioned the name of the drunken lumber-jack who had baited her Pierre to his death, and in the old woman's brain the name of Moncrossen was the symbol of all black deviltry.

After the death of Lacombie, Wa-ha-ta-na-ta had stolen Jeanne from the mission that she might forget the ways of the white man, and returned to her people.

Jeanne, whose soft skin, beneath the sun tan, was the white skin of Lacombie, and who was the most beautiful among all the women of the North, with her straight, lithe body, and dark, mysterious eyes--eyes which, in color, were the eyes of the wood folk, but in whose baffling, compelling depths slumbered the secrets of an alien race.

Jacques, she could understand, for in thought and deed and body he was Indian--a whelp of her own breed. But the girl, she did not understand, and her love for her was the idolatrous love with which she had loved Lacombie.

Through many lean years they lived among the tepees of the Indians, but, of late, they had come to the lodge of Jacques, who had become a trapper and guide.

His lodge, of necessity, must be pitched not too far from the lumber camps of the white men, whose laws make killing deer in winter a crime--and pay liberally for fresh venison.

Swiftly she descended a short slope of the bluff, uttering quick, low whines of anticipation. For Jacques, Blood River Jack he was called by the white men, had told her that Moncrossen was boss of the camp at the head of the rapid.

All through the winter she had kept the girl continually within her sight, for she remembered the previous winter when this same Moncrossen had accidentally come upon their lodge on the south fork of Broken Knee, and the look in his eyes as he gazed upon the beauty of Jeanne.

She remembered the events that followed when Jacques was paid liberally by the boss to make a midwinter journey to the railroad, and the low sound in the night when she awakened to find the girl struggling in the bear-like grasp of the huge lumberjack, and how she fought him off in the darkness with a hatchet while Jeanne fled shrieking into the timber.

Now she stood upon the brink, and beside her stood the girl in whose dark eyes flashed a primitive tiger-hate--for she, too, remembered the terror of that night on the south fork of Broken Knee.

And, although she knew nothing of the wild death-curse of the Yaga Tah, she could at least stoop and spit upon the dead face of the one worst white man.

Almost touching their feet lapped the brown, bubble-dotted waters of the river, and close in, at a hand's reach from the bank, the logs passed sluggishly in the slow swing of the shore eddy.

The eyes of the pair focused in intense eagerness upon the great forked log which poised uncertainly at the outer edge of the whirl.

For a breathless moment they watched while it seemed that the great log with its gruesome freight must be swept out into the main current of the stream. Sluggishly it revolved, as upon an axis, and then, in the grip of a random cross-current, swung heavily shoreward.

The form of the old woman bent forward and, as the log drifted slowly past, a talon-like hand shot out and fastened upon the bit of striped cloth, and the next moment the two were tugging and hauling in their efforts to drag the limp body clear of the brown waters.

Seizing upon the heavy calked boots they worked the body inch by inch up the steep slope, and the dry lips of the old squaw curled in a snaggy grin as she noted the shattered leg and the toe of the boot twisted backward--a grin that deepened into a grimace of sardonic cruelty at the feel of the grating rasp of the shattered bone ends.

After frequent pauses they returned to their task, and at each jerk water gushed from the man's wide-sprung jaws.

At last, panting with exertion, they gained the top of the bank. With glittering eyes the old squaw stooped swiftly and turned the body upon its back. The unseeing eyes stared upward, water ceased to gush from the open mouth, and the lolling tongue settled flabbily between the mud-smeared lips.

A cry of savage disappointment escaped her, for the face into which she looked was not the face of Moncrossen!

The curse of the Yaga Tah died upon her lips, for this curse may be breathed but once in a lifetime, and if, as Father Magnus said, "God is good," she might yet live to gaze into the dead face of the one worst white man, and chant the curse of the Yaga Tah.

So she stifled the curse and contented herself with gloating over the battered body of the man of logs which the churning white-water of the Blood River rapid had tossed at her feet, even as the seething white-water of the Saw Tooth had tossed the body of her Pierre at the feet of the white men.

At her side the girl gazed curiously at the exanimate form. In her heart was no bitterness against the people of her father--no damning of the breed for the sins of the individual.

Lacombie, she knew, was good--the one good white man--old Wa-ha-ta-na-ta called him. And Moncrossen was bad.

Between these two extremes were the unnumbered millions of whom Lacombie used to tell her in the long Northern twilight, when, as a little girl, she would creep upon his knees as he sat before the door of the log trading-post, and his arms would steal about her, and a far-away look would creep into his blue eyes.

Often he spoke of beautiful women; of mighty tepees of stone; of bridges of iron, and of trains which rushed along the iron trails at the speed of the flight of a bird, and spat fire and smoke, and whose voice shrieked louder than the mate-call of the _loup-cervier_.

And she would listen, round-eyed, until the little head would droop slowly against the great chest, and the words would rumble softly and blend bewilderingly with the wheezing of the black pipe and the strong smell of rank tobacco.

Sometimes she would wake up with a start to hear more, and it would be morning, and she would be between the blankets in her own little bunk, and Wa-ha-ta-na-ta would come and laugh, and pinch her fat legs, and croon strange Indian songs in low minor keys.

There were stories, too; stories of Kas-ka-tan, the chief; of the Crazy Man of the Berry Moon; of Zuk, the lost hunter; of the Maiden of the Snows, whose heart was of ice, and whose voice was the splashing of tiny waters, and of the mighty Fire God, whose breath alone could move the heart of the Maiden of the Snows, so that in the springtime when he spoke to her of love, her laughter was heard in the tiny rills of the woodland.

But it was of Lacombie's tales she thought most. Only she could never stay awake to hear the end, and the next night there would be other tales of other wonders, and all without end.

So in her heart grew a strange unrest, a wild, irrepressible longing to see these things in the wonderful country of the white men, to whom, in time of sickness and death, came smiling, round-faced priests, with long black clothes and many buttons; instead of hideous medicine-men, with painted faces and strings of teeth and shriveled claws.

As she gazed upon the form of the white man, a soft wistfulness stole into her eyes. Unconsciously, she drew closer, and the next instant threw herself upon the body, tearing frantically at the shirt-front.

Sounded the tiny popping of buttons and the smooth rip of flannel, and a small, white-brown hand slipped beneath the tattered cloth and pressed tight against the white skin of the mighty chest.

For a long moment it rested there while the old woman looked on in wonder. Then the girl faced her, speaking rapidly, with shining eyes:

"He is not dead!" she gasped. "There is life in the heart that moves! See! It is not the face of Moncrossen, but of the great _chechako_ of whom Jacques told us. The man who is hated of Moncrossen. Who killed Diablesse, the _loup-garou_, with a knife.

"The man whom Creed fears, and of whom he spoke the night he came whining to the tepee with his heart turned to water within him, and told Jacques of how this man lay helpless in the flames of the burning shack, and the next day walked unscorched into the store at Hilarity.

"He is The-Man-Who-Cannot-Die. Quick! Help me, and together we will bring him to life!"

The old squaw held aloof, scowling.

"Lacombie is dead," she muttered. "There is no good white man. The men of the logs are bad. Where is Pierre, thy brother? And where are the fathers of the light-skinned breeds of the rivers?

"Who bring sorrow and death among the women of my people? Whence comes the whisky that is the curse of the red men of the North? Would you warm the rattlesnake in your bosom, to die from its poisoned tooth? All men die! Lacombie, who was good, is dead. And this one who, being a man of logs, is bad, will die also. Come away while yet there is time!"

The girl sprang to her feet and, with uplifted hand, faced Wa-ha-ta-na-ta, and in her eyes was the compelling light of prophecy.

"Is it not enough, O Wa-ha-ta-na-ta," she cried, "that Moncrossen, the evil one, hates this man? He is M's'u Bill, The-Man-Who-Cannot-Die. Neither by wolves nor fire nor water can he die, nor will he be killed in the fighting of men. But one day he will kill Moncrossen, that thou mayest lay upon the head of the evil one the black curse of the Yaga Tah! And then will the blood of Pierre, thy son, be avenged."

At the words, the smoldering black eyes of the old squaw wavered, they swept the limp form upon the ground, and returned a long, searching gaze into the blazing eyes of the girl. With a low guttural throat-sound, she dropped to her knees, and together they bent to their task. At the end of an hour the breath fluttered irregularly between the bearded lips and the gray eyes closed of their own accord.

As the two women rested, the sound of shouting voices was borne to their ears. The old woman started, listening.

"Back from the river!" she cried, "soon will come men who, with long, sharp poles, will push out the logs from the eddies, and from the still waters of the bends, and, should the men of Moncrossen find this man they will kill him--for all men die! Did not Lacombie die?"