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Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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West, 5 February 1926, with "Two Drops Of Blood"
Two tell-tale drops of white blood on his new capote, two drops of white blood in his Cree Indian veins. These were the disturbing factors that made of Pete Lareau, first a trapper with a vision, and second a fugitive from the grim, indomitable Royal Northwest Mounted Police.
FROM a white man's viewpoint Pete Lareau was a fool, absolutely. Viewpoint is much a matter of heredity plus the dollar sign, however. Among the Crees Lareau was a prophet—an insane kind of dreamer who did the things other men dared not do. So, in his own time, the Hebrews named Elijah, say those who know.
Pete Lareau had brought in a few—a very few—beaver pelts; a few more mink; a few more marten, and a scattering. But in the scattering was a silver fox. On his way in to the post he had stopped at the independent trader's and found exactly what he could get for that "dark fox," then he had come on and waited until Jim McBean's offers reached one notch above. The upshot of this matter was that Lareau had a pan of bullets to trade out. Each bullet represented a "skin." Formerly the beaver skin had been the standard unit of value in the north; now the beaver was practically gone, the name remained. Money was of course unknown. Pelts were brought in to the post and traded out on the spot.
Had not Pete Lareau fallen in with a party of white hunters that fall, staying among them three weeks, he would have gone about his trading in the way of his fathers and his name would be forgotten today. But he had listened to the talk of the white men and the two drops of blood from some far white ancestor were pulsing beneath his swarthy skin.
The trouble began when old Jim McBean made mention of the debt remaining from the previous winter. He got down his hooks and began to take bullets from the pan.
"How much?" asked the Indian quickly. McBean shot a pained look over his iron-rimmed spectacles. He was not accustomed to having his honor impugned.
"Ninety skin." He continued counting out the bullets.
The other watched, motionless. How many bullets went out he did not know or care, for the figure ninety was beyond his comprehension. It was a debt, and debts are things to be paid first of all. A simple philosophy, and one ground into the Hudson's Bay country since Groseillers brought the first H.B.C. flag into the great bay.
Lareau could count up to ten, so, while McBean took the bullets from his pan, Pete Lareau calmly reached over the counter and sorted them out in tens. McBean stood back, scandalized. After getting three tens made up, the Indian paused in much perplexity and finally shoved the lot across the counter in childish petulance.
"Mebbeso him right," he grunted, angered at himself for trying such a thing. "Me pay 'um plenty debt, huh?"
"Oh, that's it!" The factor repressed his anger. Being pure Scotch, and Presbyterian Scotch at that, his mind resolved the problem very simply. Pete had not doubted his honor—had merely wished to pay the debt with his own hand.
"All right, Pete. You're a good hunter. Now, you want grub? How about this silk handkerchief?"
It was a mistake. Lareau's eyes glistened at sight of the gaudy purple silk, but there was a lowering anger in his high-boned face. He had heard those white men talk about how the Company made its profit by selling hunters what they did not want.
"Mebbeso. Want grub first. Plenty grub, plenty ca'tridges, moose-gun."
Now McBean turned to his barrels, and for a space Lareau took no thought for his pan of bullets. He wanted to make up a small and very complete pack, and he got flour and tea and bacon, grease and peas and tobacco—each cupful and piece taking a bullet from the pan. All this mattered nothing until the factor was measuring out the sugar.
"Take 'um thumb out," Lareau said stolidly, the two drops of white blood creeping farther through his brain.
McBean glowered up from his sugar barrel, thunderstruck. Of course he had measured with his thumb inside the Cup—had it not been done always?
"Say!" he snapped, straightening up. "What's the matter wi' you, hey? Mebbe you think I'd cheat you?"
This probability had not occurred to Lareau. He had merely objected to paying for the thumb.
"You take 'um thumb out," he reiterated. Very dimly, the two drops of white blood were reflecting on the suggestion of cheating. He could not quite comprehend it, but he was making a very hard effort.
"See here," and McBean showed his anger, which was another mistake. "If you want sugar, you'll take it the way I measure it. Nobody else makes a kick and you won't neither, see? If you don't want to trade, you know what you can do."
"A'right."
Pete struggled for a moment, though he gave no outward sign of it. Then, with never a thought of intimidation and in absolute sincerity he pushed away the pan of bullets, left his purchases, and turned to his furs farther down the counter.
"Mebbeso I make 'um trade up-river," he said stolidly.
"Huh?" McBean had visions of that silver fox-pelt going to the independent trader, and sweat broke out on his forehead. The Indian continued to bundle up his furs, and in desperation McBean shoved a plug of tobacco over the counter.
"Hold on, Pete Lareau—you take 'um gift."
Pete hesitated. His swart hand closed over the plug.
"You take 'um thumb out?"
"Sure!" The factor turned back to his sugar barrel.
A blind wave of triumph surged up in Lareau, with those two drops of white blood on its crest. He had done a thing no man had dared hitherto—forced the factor into compliance with his will!
McBean cursed beneath his breath on detecting that veiled exultation, for he realized that he was in Lareau's hands. He was far from understanding what had come over the breed, but he was helpless. When flour and sugar had been measured out, Lareau affected to examine his scrawny coat, then turned to a red slashed blanket capote on the wall.
"How much?"
"Twenty-four skins."
"Huh! Mebbeso get 'um up-river twenty skin."
Thus Lareau staggered the factor anew. Asking prices—comparing them with those at the independent post—why, the thing was unheard of! McBean's wrath rose anew.
"Me want heap plenty ca'tridges." Abandoning the capote for the present, Lareau traded for thirty-thirty cartridges for his moose-gun—'four at a time, four to each bullet that the factor took from the pan.
Half an hour later Pete Lareau was a changed man. He had all things necessary for a long hunting trip, and there were still plenty of bullets in his pan. But the two drops of white blood had receded momentarily, and he had not secured the red slashed capote he coveted so fiercely.
Once again he struggled with himself. McBean craftily got down the capote and spread it on the counter. Then Lareau remembered that triumph in the matter of sugar. Again the two drops of white blood reached out amid his brain cells; having asked a price, having compared it, he vaguely asked himself why he should pay the Company more than he would pay up-river.
"Got plenty bullet left?" he asked heavily.
"Sure—plenty." McBean glanced idly down at the pan. "You're a good hunter, Pete. I'll give you a good debt; say, four hundred skins, if you want to trade it all out now. You haven't got any handkerchiefs yet."
Lareau began to grow angered, away down deep in his heart. Why should be trade out a debt when he still had bullets? Why should the Company always want him in its debt? The question was not at all clear-cut in his mind, but it was there—born of those two drops of white blood.
"Got 'um how much?" he asked suddenly.
The factor stared, then repressed anger and counted the remaining bullets.
"Ninety skin."
"Huh!*
McBean lovingly caressed the red slashed capote with his horny hands, but Lareau paid no heed. He was grappling with a tremendous problem, and slowly the answer was coming. He looked at the capote, at the bullets in the pan, at his purchases, and then at his pile of furs. Once more he turned to the latter and shoved his goods across the counter. He guessed shrewdly that McBean wanted the silver fox skin.
"Mebbeso me go up-river," he said stolidly, speaking this time with cunning mind. "You take 'um beaver, mink, marten, pay 'um debt. Mebbeso me take 'um dark fox up-river for trade."
This was absolutely square. He would pay his debt because it was a debt, and if his threat failed he would go up-river with his best skin. But the threat did not fail. McBean positively gasped—and gave in.
"Good Lord! Here, come back—you can have the capote for twenty skin, man!"
Lareau affected to hesitate. Then the wave of exultation throbbed into his brain once more, he flung the factor a contemptuous look, and reached out for the capote. When he had it on, the two drops of white blood had conquered him absolutely—had swept away all the rest in a wild burst. Instead of taking out a debt, he would carry off what bullets remained and trade them out when he came back to the post again!
Without a word of explanation he began stowing the remaining bullets in his pockets. The dumbfounded factor stopped him abruptly, more furious with himself than with Lareau.
"Put them bullets back! What's the matter with you, Lareau?"
"Huh?" The other stared, insolent. "Mebbeso I get drunk, come back tomorrow, trade 'um out."
That was pure insult, for he could buy no liquor upon which to get drunk. The thought behind it, however, was past McBean's comprehension, and his anger burst all bounds.
"You will, eh? Confound you, who do you think you are? You'll do nothing o' the kind—mebbe you'll put more bullets back, eh? Mebbe you cheat, eh?"
Lareau gazed at him blankly, trying to understand. Such a thought had been far from his mind, for of course, he had meant to keep those bullets religiously apart.
"Cheat?" he repeated. "How?"
McBean laughed scornfully and started to gather up the bullets. Lareau must be drunk, he concluded, though where the whisky could have come from was a mystery. Not to leave the "debt" in the Company's hands, not to trust the Company's honor, was a thing beyond all comprehension. So he merely laughed, being still furious with himself for his own weakness, and not perceiving his danger.
"Make 'um cheat? How?" A little flame flickered in Lareau's deep eyes.
"Mebbe you put more bullets back than you've got now—see? No, no, Pete Lareau! You can't come that over Jim McBean!"
"Huh?" Light glimmered into Lareau's brain—light due to the two drops of white blood which now had reached out to all his brain cells. "Den—den me leave 'um here, mebbeso you put 'um more bullets back, huh?"
He could not clearly express it, yet he had actually grasped the converse of the idea. If he might cheat, why might not the factor cheat? So tremendous was the thought that it staggered him. If he could not be trusted, why should he trust?
"Bah goss!" he cried swiftly, the flicker growing in his eyes. "Bah goss!"
McBean laughed again, harshly.
"You're a sly dog—you're a sly dog!"
He intended no insult—he was merely exulting over having pierced to the heart of Lareau's cunning, as he thought. He could not know how Lareau had seen one white man half kill another for using some such term.
McBean laughed again—then groaned and sagged down beneath the counter, choking. Lareau wiped his knife, jerked down a pair of blankets, and made up his pack. He then put out twenty-four bullets carefully—the price of the blankets—and left the post. He had paid his debt His conscience was quite clear in this important matter.
IT was not yet winter, although there had been a light fall of snow which was too light even to gather between the dogs' toes. None the less, it soaked Lareau's moccasins and made him curse under his breath. That was another sign of the two drops of white blood which had reached out and touched all the rest, even as leaven leavens the whole lump. Two weeks before he would merely have grunted heedlessly.
He was out in the hills now. on his own grounds, and would meet the first group of his own people that night. He had ten very good dogs, each carrying a small load of ten pounds, so that he had traveled hard and fast, bearing nothing but his moose-gun. There was enough grub in the dogpacks to last him and them a long time, and he hardly reckoned on doing much trapping that winter. The two drops of white blood had finished their work. Pete Lareau was a new man—a man with a vision.
Of pursuit he did not think. Of course it would be inevitable—the red-coated trooper was as certain as the frost; but it would be slow. Two weeks earlier Lareau would have cringed at the prospect of that relentless fate, but now he merely laughed and flicked at the dogs with his hand. He was a man with a vision. His father had been with Louis Riel, and had been shot by a trooper, but wavering and uncertain though the vision was Lareau felt it driving him onward.
Fired by the thought of rousing his people to revolt, of making them hold back all furs from the Company and force the independent traders to raise prices, he came that night into the little village where a dozen families had met at the falls and were making canoes to take their furs down-river to the post. His business had been finished early; the others would not be ready to start for their hunting grounds until the real snow was at hand. That silver fox pelt had been a lucky accident for Lareau.
Getting out his tent skins, with the help of a distant cousin he was settled soon after dark. Then it was that he made a mistake. Any other man would have held feast and used up his substance, confident in its abundance. Two weeks earlier Lareau would have done it, but now he was looking ahead. By a curious intricacy of the law of compensation, the tremendous vision which inspired him had lost him his focus on his own people, on the very ones to whom he brought his vision, at the very moment when he needed all his Cree blood to back up that vision. So, resisting his first impulse to throw open his packs, he merely opened tea and tobacco when the men crowded in to visit him.
Lareau still wore his new blanket capote, of white slashed with red. It was a fine capote and drew many glances. In fact, it drew too many; finally old Jean-Marie Alexander, disappointed at getting only tea and tobacco from this Croesus, put the glances into words.
"Pete Lareau has killed a rabbit coming up-river, huh?"
"No," answered Lareau.
He looked down. There, beside the gaudy sash where hung his knife, were two flecks of blood. He had not noticed them before, since his vision had driven him onward to the exclusion of all else. He filled his pannikin with hot water.
"It is blood," he stated calmly. "White blood."
Something like a shiver passed around the circle. Lareau did not observe it, for he was gazing into the depths of the fire, absorbed in his vision.
"I killed the factor at the Company's post three days ago," he went on slowly. "He called me a dog."
Uneasy glances passed around. It seemed quite certain that the Great Spirit had laid his finger on Pete Lareau's brain. It was no insult to be called a dog, except among white men. Lareau, as everyone knew, had only the two drops of white blood which had come down to him from six generations back. Old Jean-Marie Alexander cleared his withered throat, filling his pipe carefully.
"That is not good," he declared sententiously. "There will come a red-coat and he will ask questions. Did any man see?"
Lareau shrugged his shoulders carelessly, for he was thinking of other things. More uneasy looks passed around; something was certainly wrong with his brain! He was acting more like a crazy white man than an Indian.
Gradually Lareau's mind cleared, for the sudden association with his people and the influence of their presence had clouded his vision somewhat. Now the great scheme reasserted itself and he remembered what he had meant to say. With that remembrance the law of compensation smote him again; he said his thought in white fashion and not in the way of the Crees, who do not blurt out words and thoughts together.
"My brothers, I have discovered something. I do not call the factor my great father any longer. I have discovered something."
He flung back the blanket capote and rose in all the glory of his outer rags and inner vision. Blank silence dwelt around him.
"My brothers, I have been a fool. We have been fools like our fathers, because we trusted the great company. This summer I heard white men talking and they also said that we were fools. They told how the Company cheated us. We buy things by the skin, but white men buy things by what they call dollars. At the post I bought one cup of flour for one skin. I was cheated. The flour is not worth one skin."
At this amazing statement there was a general frown of perplexity. It was true that the skin, a standard of value primarily based on a beaver pelt, varied considerably among different posts; but this was a thing for white men to bother about. To a Cree, a skin was a skin. After a thoughtful pull at his pipe, old Jean-Marie took up the rebuttal.
"I do not understand, Pete Lareau. A cup of flour is worth one skin. In the days of our fathers it was also worth one skin. Long ago I have heard that it was worth two skins, three skins. I do not understand."
It was the old cry of the red man who had no prophet.
"But I will open your eyes, my brothers!" flashed out the other, heedless of the nods drawn forth by the old man's speech. "We go to the post and we trade for things. We pay two skins for a pound of powder. We pay five skins for a handkerchief. These things are not worth so much. The factor buys them for, say, a skin each. He cheats us!"
Jean-Marie waved his pipe with a shake of the head. The others exchanged puzzled glances. Lareau's thought was too complex and involved.
"Our fathers paid three skins for a pound of powder, Pete Lareau. We pay two skins. That is all I understand. We must have powder. A skin is a skin. Our fathers paid three skins. We pay two. The Company does not cheat us."
Sucking noisily at his pipe, the old man relapsed into silence. The others nodded.
"My brothers, a cup of sugar is worth one skin." Lareau licked his dry lips, a little staggered by the finality of that counter argument. He made another mistake in jumping abruptly from powder to sugar. "But what is this skin? The white man says it is made-beaver. He says a bullet represents a skin, a beaver pelt. A mink or marten is not worth a skin; a dark fox is worth many skins. Explain this, Jean-Marie Alexander!"
The old man shook his head.
"A skin is a skin, and a cup of sugar is worth a skin. I do not understand what you are saying. Our fathers had many beaver and we have few, but a skin is a skin."
Lareau was not quite sure now that he understood himself. He was losing his grip on his vision. Abruptly he took up another trend of thought.
"But the debt! My brothers, the factor sells us things we do not want. They make us go into debt for our outfit. When we come back we pay our debt first, which is right. But always we are in debt; every winter it is the same.
"My brothers, the Great Spirit made the animals for his red children. He did not make them for the white men. Yet we kill them and sell the skins to the white men."
Now indeed was he reaching the heart of his vision, and it led him onward in a swirling flame of enthusiasm. He was even beginning to understand it, and did not heed the muttered word that passed around the awed faces. He thought that they were awed at his vision, for he was out of focus. In reality they were awed at him, on whose brain the Great Spirit, Kisamunito, had laid a finger.
"Is this right, my brothers? What does Kisamunito think when we take his gifts and trade them to the Company? It grieves him; his heart is sorrowful because we do not keep them and use them as our fathers did; because we do not follow the ways of our fathers. We should take no more pelts to the Company for a winter, two winters; we should keep them until—"
Taxed beyond all self-control, old Jean-Marie came to his feet with a snarl.
"Pete Lareau! Listen to me. I do not know what you are talking about. I know that if I need food or powder or blankets, the Company gives me a debt. I know that unless I have powder I cannot kill a moose. I cannot get powder from the Great Spirit. I cannot take a dark fox skin to Kisamunito and get powder, blankets, food, for it. I do not understand."
Two drops of white blood do not go very far, or last very long. Lareau saw his vision torn into shreds of a sudden: he knew absolutely that it was a vision to be followed, but under the concentrated influence of the red men around him he felt oddly perplexed and doubtful. He could not carry his argument out to its logical conclusion, because red blood can not do this. Yet he made a brave effort.
"Your eyes are darkened. Jean-Marie Alexander! I say that the Company cheats us as it cheated our fathers. There are black tobacco posts where the Company does not want our furs to go. What we must do is to—see—to visit these posts, to visit the post up-river from the Company's post, and say that—that no more pelts—that we—"
He came to a floundering stop as his vision was rent down the wind of irresolution. He groped after it feebly in the darkness and found it not. What was it that his conquest over Jim McBean had taught him—something about the Company needing furs? What was the great vision of all his people holding back their furs for a season, not trading on their debt, forcing the Company to—it was lost, lost! He could not find the trail.
He stood there licking his lips, sweat standing out on his face, swaying pitifully as he wrestled with himself and struggled to make those two drops of white Hood rise again in clarity to his brain. But his cousins were all around him, concentrating their thought on him; the influence of the many dominated and drove back the two drops of white blood.
None the less he still groped after his vision desperately, his features tight-drawn in agony. With a little grunt of disgust old Jean-Marie Alexander stepped into the outer darkness, not forgetting to fill his pipe from Lareau's tobacco before he went. After him passed the others one by one, compassionately pitying this straight-gazing hunter on whose brain Kisamunito had hid a finger. But Lareau did not know they had gone.
He was fighting, fighting with all his soul for the vision which had gone from him, staring with unseeing eyes at his tent. What was it? How were his people to force the Company to do right, as he had forced McBean to take his thumb from the cup? Little by little he picked up the trail, now that he was alone and unhindered. He remembered the thumb in the cup, he remembered the blanket capote, he remembered the whirlwind of exultation that had settled upon him when the factor was beaten. Finally his clenched fingers relaxed, his head came up, and he glanced around him in confident poise, for his vision had returned to him.
Then he saw that he was alone, abandoned.
In stubborn determination he stepped to the tent door, resolved to force the thing through. He paused suddenly, catching a faint muttered whisper that murmured among the lodges—"Kisamunito has touched the brain of Pete Lareau!"
It was the voice of his people, and it smote his heart with coldness and emptiness. He felt as though a force had suddenly gone out of him. After all, had his reasoning been good? His people had not understood. They called him crazy, and perhaps he had been crazy. Surely the Great Spirit had smitten him when he killed Jim McBean—had marked up a debt against him!
Standing there and looking up at the stars, all the greatness of his vision waned and sank away to some far depth beyond his ken. All about him were the hills, the stars, the tumbling waters rose up from the river and sang the two drops of white blood into peace. Once more he thought with the red man's mind; his thought was that beyond the sentence of these his own people there was no appeal. A white man would have spurned these folk who deemed him crazy and would have taken his vision to others through the length of the land; but Lareau was an Indian.
In the silence of the night the stars told him that a red-coat was coming—somewhere, sometime, yet coming as certainly as the snows were coming. He left the tent standing as it was. Dumbly he put the packs on the dogs, picked up his rifle, donned his capote with its two spots of blood, and went forth into the night.
A MAN was tramping through the silences of the hills—a white man with fur hood and fur-trimmed parka, a revolver belt around his waist. He had six dogs and a sled laden with provisions. For two months he had been getting deeper into the silences, while behind him had spread apprehension and fear and wonder. Before him had gone a whisper after the manner of the hills—a slow wisp of smoke fading into the sky. Pete Lareau had caught that message and had fled. He was a Cree, and following him was the Law.
Behind Lareau was all the dumb force of his people's thought. The scattered hunters talked of him, the men who came in for the Christmas trading talked of him, the girls and squaws talked of him. They wished him well because he was a Cree of their own blood. They did not understand why the Great Spirit had touched his brain, but they sent out their thoughts to him, and Lareau felt the impulse to flee again.
His vision had departed from him utterly, and he knew only that smoke wisps told of snowshoes upon his trail. It was only one man. with six dogs, but the fur trimmed parka stood for relentless, implacable justice. Traditions, old tales, fearsome stories of what other men in such parkas had accomplished—these drove Lareau to flee onward into the silences of the hills.
Once or twice at odd times of night, it occurred to him to kill the man who followed, to kill the others who would come, to flee hence into the north and find new lands where there was no law. This was when his two drops of white blood would rise faintly and feebly. Out in the sunlight and the snowglare it was different. His Cree blood told him that the Great Spirit had marked up a debt of life against him; it was marked up in those two flecks of blood upon his capote.
He tried to cover the trail and fled onward, for wolves following an old caribou trail will go off upon the newer scent of a fresher kill. But there had been no elusion. His food was gone, and thirty-thirty bullets do not kill rabbits in such a way as to leave much for food. There was no time for trapping, wolves had driven the caribou to the east, and Lareau faced facts. Also, there were his dogs.
The law of compensation, which is really far better understood by Indians than by white men, is the most irresistible thing in the northland—even more so than the mail or the law, those two terrible facts which are merciless. It works in queer ways. In the case of Lareau it worked through the dogs. They had come with him to the post, a valuable asset; that same night they had left the post with him, having had no rest to speak of.
There were seven left—gaunt, half famished things, still bearing the shrunken packs. Now there was no food left to give them, yet they were absolutely essential to their master's well being. His white blood told Lareau that he might eat these dogs, but his Cree blood warned him off. He fought out the question in his camp in the gully between two hills.
What should he do? Gradually he felt a cold hand tightening on his heart. He realized that he could not shake off the law, that his only hope lay in meeting it and overcoming it, yet it was something which his larger nature shrank from. While he hung wavering in the balance, the dogs swirled into a fight. Instantly his hand went out to his whip and he was among them—but he did not strike. He merely kicked them apart as a white man would have done. It was the decisive thing, and Lareau flamed up with all the outraged anger of a white man.
"I will face him," he muttered, counting his cartridges. "I will stay here and trap, and when he comes I kill him. Then I will go on."
With this, he gave over completely to the dominance of his far white ancestor. Building up his camp that night, he went after meat in the morning. He carried his rifle. He did not make deadfalls for mink and marten and fox, or set rabbit snares down in the sapling-filled gullies, as his cousins would have done; he shot valuable bullets in quantities which would have broken an Indian's heart. He got game, plenty of it.
Having secured meat enough for the present, his white strain counselled him to store up some against the future. So he left camp and returned after three days with a caribou frozen on its travois behind him. With each day he was losing his Indian ways, and when at length he detected a faint thread of smoke against the southeastern horizon he took his blankets and rifle and dried meat and went forth to meet the law.
How completely the white blood now dominated him may be inferred from the fact that instead of shooting the policeman down, he merely halted him two hundred yards away by dropping a bullet into the snow.
Lareau's position was good—hidden in a clump of scrub pine at the brow of a hill, the policeman and his dogsled out in the clear open basin below. The parka-clad figure stood looking up at him, carbine holstered on the sled, and the Indian's finger itched on the trigger. Then the impulse born of Cree blood died out. He swiftly cased his rifle, slung it under his arm. and started down the hill.
The policeman waited quietly, his hood rimmed an inch deep with frosted breath. He was a gaunt, hard mouthed man, but he knew the Indian mind better than had McBean, for that was his business in life.
"I am Pete Lareau." The Indian halted four yards away, warily. He gave no salutation, which sprang from the two drops of white blood pounding in his soul. "I am Pete Lareau, Have you come after me?"
"I arrest you in the King's name for the murder of Jim McBean," returned the policeman in English, taking a step forward. Lareau's rifle slithered from its case.
"Mebbeso you stop," he said thickly. The policeman paused and spoke, but did not stop. His hand rested on his revolver.
"Lareau, you owe a debt."
With those words he struck into the Indian's heart, as he intended. "Yon have killed a man. You have his blood on your capote. You must pay the debt you owe."
The thirty-thirty went up in line with the policeman's eye, halting him.
"Mebbeso you stop!" Lareau's voice was thicker than before. This talk of debt confused him, broke his resolution. "You plenty fool. De Company, he's make 'um cheat, make 'um cheat Injuns, make 'um debt!"
"Debt?" The white man began to perceive why Lareau wavered. His hand fell from his revolver, his other hand held out a pair of jingling handcuffs.
"Debt? You owe a debt which must be paid, Lareau. You killed a man. You owe the Great Spirit a debt of your life for his!"
"Are you the Great Spirit that I should pay you?"
Lareau lowered his rifle slightly and fell into the Cree tongue.
"No, but the government is His agent. You must pay your debt. Your life for the life you took. It is a debt that you owe."
That magic word "debt" sent a wave of blackness over Lareau's brain. He gazed silently into the blue eyes of the policeman. He was fighting to glimpse his vision again, but the word "debt" was paralyzing to him, A debt was a debt, and he was a man of honor. Vaguely he felt the other was right.
"Mebbeso," he muttered, struggling for light. "I—I do not understand!"
The dumb agony of his face fascinated the white man. Lareau lowered his rifle, all things forgotten in the conflict that swayed him. Suddenly he looked up, gripped at the prayer-sticks in his belt. He was once more a Cree, his mind as simple as that of a child in its dealings with affairs of honor.
"Mebbeso you stop here," he said confidently. "I make 'um talk wid Great Spirit, two smokes. Mebbeso I come back, make 'um pay debt."
The other would certainly have agreed, for he knew the Cree mind; but at that instant his dogs snarled and leaped into a fighting mass behind him. He had been on the trail for two months; he was worn to the bone; his nerves were on edge, and his white reason drove the knowledge of things Indian from his head. It was maddening to have this Cree go back to his own camp when he was here for the taking. He stepped forward again, hand on revolver.
"No. You come with me. You make 'um pay debt now."
The thirty-thirty flashed up, but the policeman shot from his hip and leaped forward. Lareau felt the bullet tear through his arm. As his rifle touched the policeman's breast, he pulled the trigger.
"Bah goss!" he ejaculated slowly, staring down at the motionless fur-trimmed parka and the crimson snow around it. "Bah goss!"
This account was settled, The policeman had fired first, and here his conscience was absolutely clear. But he owed the Great Spirit for the life of Jim McBean; he still had a debt to pay! That was indisputable, and he leaned over to pick up the policeman's service revolver. He was wounded, though not badly, and he had paid for the wound with death. Now he must pay his own debt, as he had been quite ready to do upon remembrance of it.
He calmly strode up the hill to his place of waiting under the trees. Stripping a little new birchbark, he set it upon the clean snow and placed his new made praying-sticks on the bark. Then he stood up, erect and confident.
"Kisamunito, it is Pete Lareau who calls you!" he said, looking at the blue-white sky. "Why should I pay my debt to the white man, when I owe it to you? I do not understand! I do not understand!"
He wailed out the words, the old words which his people had muttered helplessly through so many generations. Then he gathered himself together and held up the revolver, for he was speaking with the Great Spirit and must show no weakness.
"Kisamunito, Pete Lareau has always paid his debt honestly. He would not cheat you, Kisamunito. It is the white man who said, 'Pay me instead of Kisamunito,' for the white man wished to cheat you of your debt. Pete Lareau does not cheat, Great Spirit. Pekoohum oo missinuhikun—he pays his debt!"
A queer bursting crack rang out, for the frost had gone into the steel and it gave way beneath the shot. Quietly, Pete Lareau sank down to rest over his praying sticks; down across the two drops of blood on his capote crept a crimson-black stream. The white blood was washed out. The debt was paid.
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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