THE DISTANT DRUMS
War broke out in August, 1914, as everyone knows. In the October of that same memorable year, Garry Redmond, descending from the Far-alone country to the comparative civilisation of the All-alone, found in the possession of John Akkamuk a bottle, with a scrap of newspaper stuck to it.
Squatting in the thick murk of John Akkamuk’s winter house, Garry lifted the bottle to the lamplight, and read the paper.
“You give me this, John?” he suggested.
John thought his white friend had gone mad; but then, he often thought so.
“Yes,” he said, “you have him. You good feller.” He had just struck an excellent bargain with Garry over a loon-skin rug, and felt generous.
Garry pulled out of his pocket a tiny canvas bag, from which he shook into his broad palm a glittering fairy pyramid of gold dust.
“Where you get that?” asked John, leaning forward.
Garry grinned at him, happily.
“Ne’er mind, my simple heathen,” said he. “I’ll get lots more of it next summer. This is just a free sample; but I’ll give it to you right now if you can find me the bit that’s tore off this paper.”
“No go,” said John, gloomily. He had never had any more of the paper than that piece stuck on the bottle. Garry took the bottle and the loon-skin rug home with him, and when he had gone, John turned to and beat his wives, one after the other, out of sheer vexation.
Garry’s home that winter was a one-roomed shack, lined with skins, buried to the roof in earth, gravel, turf—anything that would keep the winds out. It was built on the clean rock, because if you built on the earth, the whole thing was likely to collapse in sludge, after the stove had been lighted long enough to melt the ice under the earth. There was not room in the shack for much but the stove, two bunks, and some soapstone lamps that the Inniut use.
Kob Smit was lying in one of the bunks. He turned his head, with a dim smile, as Garry entered. The whole of him was dimmed, sapped, whitened, like a plant that’s been away from the light too long. Weeks earlier he had fallen on the rocks, and had been ill since. He had a hard time of it, fighting out from the Far-alone. Now he was “resting up,” in the midst of every luxury to be had north of sixty-five; for next summer was to bring the partners luck at last.
“This is for you, Kob,” said Garry, flinging the lovely feather rug over his feet. “It’ll keep you fine and warm.”
“It’ll keep me fine and warm,” agreed Kob, nodding and smiling. He had a gentle, docile voice, like a big child’s. “You’re a good feller, Garry. Always white to me.”
“What d’you make of this?” Garry wished to change the subject, and thrust the bottle forward where Kob could see it. Kob frowned at the blurred words, reading them out almost letter by letter.
“Eng—land De—clares War—” he read. Then, with a sudden, mild brightening: “Well, say, Garry, that’s quite interesting, ain’t it?’ England Declares War.’ But it don’t say who with, eh, Garry?”
“No, it don’t,” said Garry. “You wait now, Kob; I’m just goin’ to fix you up some broth.”
“You’re awful good to me, Garry.”
Garry took the bottle away and hid it under his bunk. But Kob talked a lot about the scrap of newspaper.
“My father,” said Kob, “he fought in a war over there, somewheres. He’d got a wound, too.”
Garry did not talk of it again. But, sometimes when Kob was asleep, he pulled the bottle out from under his bunk, and read the message on it over and over. Once Kob woke in the night, and saw Garry standing over him.
“What’s your real name, Kob?” said Garry.
“Yawcob Schmidt, I guess. But are you crazy, Garry?”
“No,” said Garry. “Hush up! Sleep!”
“Well,” Garry told himself, “I’ll know in the spring. Maybe it ain’t anything, either.”
He settled down to the interminable monotony of wintering north—not his first experience. What to another and softer breed of men would have been a hardship and desolation unspeakable, he half-unconsciously enjoyed. It was in this environment in which all his qualities of body and soul, having freest range, came to their finest, stoic fruition. He loved the first storms out of the Arctic, heralded by their clanging clouds of wildfowl; the rare days of clear sun, when the sky was a turquoise, and the poudre played its magic with the hills; track of wolf and hare and caribou among the low birch scrub for his following. And the nights—above all, the nights—when the earth was a star glittering under the icy fires of the universe unveiled. All these things he had loved, without knowing. That winter he began to know.
One night, he went swinging home on snowshoes, carrying a string of fish frozen stiff as platters. He’d been fishing through the ice on a small lake, sitting in the buckle, as he had been taught by the natives of a yet farther north. It was so cold the air seared like heat, but he liked it. He liked such a murderous night, that he might battle with it; he liked to pit the heat of his generous blood against that cold; the courage of his generous heart against the loneliness more fatal than hunger; the strength of his limbs against those aching distances—and win. He had been satisfied with those noble, homely endurances. He was so no longer.
On the way he turned into John Akkamuk’s.
“You got the rest of that paper yet, John?”
“Me no got’m,” said John, sourly.
Garry turned to go, but paused, and asked idly after the dogs. Were there any good dogs to be had—say, round the Backs? No, only pups. All the grown sledge-dogs were dead of the sickness. Maybe the Montagnais at Moon River might have some. Garry crawled out, not stopping to argue that the Montagnais only had curs.
Once home, he thawed out the fish in the frying-pan. He was silent and very thoughtful. After he had served Kob and helped himself, he brought out the bottle, and sat holding it in both hands, reading and re-reading that unfinished message. At last, he stood up with a long sigh, stretching both arms above his head. He held them so a minute, still thinking. When he lowered his arms, he had made up his mind. He went slowly to the bunk.
“Kob!”
Kob blinked up at him, full-fed and kindly.
“Kob, I got to find out about this here—about this war.”
“Why, you’ll know when things open up in the spring, Garry.”
“I can’t wait so long. I have to know now, Kob. I guess I’ll have to make Fort Scarlett and—and find out.”
Kob lay motionless, staring up at him, and into his mild, pale eyes fear suddenly leapt, alive and vivid.
“You’d go to Fort Scarlett—go an’ leave me here like this—”
“No,” said Garry, gently; “no, I won’t leave you, Kob, and you know it. I’ll take you along.”
“You’re crazy, Garry!”
“No, I ain’t crazy. I—I got to know, Kob. There’s a nice hospital at Fort Scarlett, Kob, where you could lay up.”
“You’ll never get me there—”
“Yes, I will, Kob; I’ll get you there. I got to go—”
After a long silence, Kob said, fretfully:
“Well, if you got to go, I’ll have to go, too.” He waited for the brief grip of Garry’s hand, which he somehow expected. But Garry was looking at him from a mental distance, very kindly. Seeing Kob’s vexed, inquiring face, he said only, “I guess maybe it’s them Boers again,” and went out to the cache behind the shack.
Quietly, for four days, he made his preparations for the biggest job he had ever undertaken in his life—the job of getting Kob to Fort Scarlett, single-handed and without dogs. Like most of the very strong, he was ruthless in his purpose, but he was tenderly careful of Kob.
They started on the fifth day. Garry had left as little as possible to chance. The sledge was loaded with many things besides Kob, including two sealskin sleeping bags, a tiny canvas shelter, a big lamp for cooking and heating, and food for ten days. He reckoned they could make Fort Scarlett in ten days. Kob was well below his normal weight, but even so, the load was over the two-hundred and fifty pounds, which is about the limit that a man can pull.
Daylight only lasted about five hours, but there was a moon half-way to the full; the weather was clear and still—so still that there was not a sound to be heard save the shrieking runners as the sledge put out from the shack, like a small ship putting out from a familiar harbour into a trackless sea; Kob whimpering a little under the furs, the strange late sun gilding the south, and the great stars lighting the rim of the grey northern snows.
That sea was not trackless to Garry. His young eyes, weather-wrinkled at the lids like an old man’s, picked up this mark and that; the wrinkle in the vast white plain that was a river-bed, and the low hills like a rampart, the wedge of spruce that drove to meet them like the vanguard of an army fronting the implacable north. He knew it, was at home here, soul and body. But now he felt a sudden pang of desolation at the thought of the trodden snow about the shack; that ahead was untouched, unmarked. The north receives no impress from man but a few foot-prints in the ever-changing, eternal snow. For all his strength, that was the only mark he had made on this land.
“You quite warm, Kob?”
Kob’s voice came, weak and muffled.
“Well, I ain’t exactly warm.”
“You c’n feel your hands ’n’ feet, Kob?”
“Oh, yes, I feel ’em!”
“That’s all right.” Garry slackened an instant, and shifted the sealskin band that ran from the traces around his chest. It would cut him, eventually, he knew, with that weight behind, in spite of the dried moss he had stuffed into his shirt. The sledge sped on again, swiftly; the miles were marked by no more than the imperceptible advance of the spruce-belt and Garry’s monotonous, careful questions; “You all right, Kob? How’s your feet, Kob? Do you still feel your hands?”
They made the edge of the trees that night under an electric-white moon. The slope of the land had been in Garry’s favour, and the going easy. He set up the tiny tent, packed Kob into the back of it, started the lamp, made tea and cooked pork; then himself slept across the opening, shielding Kob with the warmth of his own body, grimly satisfied. He wondered if he had not set up a new record for single-sledge travelling. Likely enough he had.
The next day was also clear and fair. Kob seemed stronger, and was remarkably cheerful; he sang, under the muffling furs, sang of “Rosalie, the Prairie Flower:”
“Fair as a lily,
Joyous and free;
Light of the prairie
Home was she-ee.”
But they made slower progress among the trees, thin though these were. They saw fox-tracks, and sighted a wolf in the distance. The second night was colder, but Garry collected dead wood, and coaxed a fire, and they were content. They woke to find that snow had fallen while they slept, to the depth of a couple of inches—no more. The clouds had gone, and the sun rose at last on a dazzling world. Before the second hour of daylight they had emerged from the narrow belt of trees and were once more in rolling, open country.
The third day was absolutely uneventful, still, brief, radiant. But the temperature dropped, and Kob’s spirits seemed to fall with it. He complained of pains in his limbs; twice Garry had to stop, set up tent and stove, and warm him back to life. In Garry himself there was no change beyond a certain rigidity, a grim and watchful silence, that told the fight was on. He set up the tent that night in a hollow, scooped in a drift of deep snow. They were warm. But in the morning, tent and sleeping-bags were stiff as boards, all but impossible to stow on the sledge. The temperature was nearly forty below zero.
Again, there was no wind, not a cloud in the almost violet sky; nothing but a vast, white circle that enclosed them, seeming to move as they moved. Kob was quiet and drowsy. Garry’s attention was focussed on him; so intense was his care of Kob that there seemed to be some mysterious physical sympathy set up between them; so that Garry knew when Kob’s left foot was frozen before Kob did himself. It took Garry two hours to bring the foot round. They travelled on under a moon rounding to the full. Sometimes their shadows streamed ink-black behind them; sometimes these shadows shot suddenly to the front, as the aurora blazed and shook gigantic spears that dimmed the moon. The rigidity in Garry became more noticeable. He went on untiring, but bought every mile at the price of that intense watchfulness. He did nothing but pull the sledge and care for Kob, in a single monotony of effort. And all the time he was fighting—fighting for all he was worth.
They camped for their fourth night under an outcrop of rock. Garry was very silent. He slept restlessly, and once or twice groaned in his sleep. Clouds rolled up from the south, covered the moon and the great arching stars, and the temperature rose immediately. But the North had struck at them.
They started in a soft, grey twilight, under those merciful low clouds, for the fifth day of Garry’s fight. Kob was cheerful again with the rising temperature, sat up among his furs, and talked of Fort Scarlett, and how nice it would be to lie up in hospital.
“You does your best for me, Garry, and you’re as white to me as a feller could be, but there’s lots you can’t do, stands to reason. Not but what you always does your best.”
“Yes,” said Garry, slowly, “I does my best for you.”
“I know it, Garry. But there’s lots you can’t do. You’re tired, Garry?”
“No, Kob, I ain’t tired.”
Kob glanced at the great fur-clad limbs, tireless as machinery; at the great shoulders bent to the yoke. A certain uneasiness stirred in him.
“You’re going mighty slow, Garry——”
Suddenly, with a great, slow sigh, Garry stopped. He stood, arms folded on the yoke, head turned to the south, still as a rock.
“Kob!”
“What’s gettin’ you, Garry?”
“Kob, there should be a hill to the west, not a mile away—a hill breaking out o’ the level like a cliff. Look and tell me if it’s there.”
As his voice ceased, the terrible silence closed in on them like iron, so that all the senses ached to its grip.
“Garry!”
“Yes, Kob?”
“Garry! . . . . My God! . . . . You don’t mean—”
“I’m a’most blind, Kob. It’s the sun and the new snow. I can make shift to see my feet—in a kind of red mist. No more. Is the hill there, Kob?”
The silence took them again, broken now by Kob, who screamed out like a woman.
“Oh God, oh God, we’re done! You blind, and me sick! We’ll die here. You’ll never get me to Fort Scarlett! Oh, why didn’t I stay at the shack, and die there?”
When he had done, Garry spoke, gently, almost gaily. Kob could not see the grey granite of his face.
“I passed you my word I’d get you to Fort Scarlett, Kob. You ain’t found me break my word yet. I’ll get you there. I ain’t quite blind. No more’n a horse in blinkers. You’ll have to be driver, Kob, and tell me where to go.”
To all Kob’s cries and curses, to all the wild utterances of a sick man’s despair, he answered the same thing:
“I’ll get you to Fort Scarlett, Kob, if you tell me where to go.”
Noon, and a vast sun showing momentarily through the fleeing rack: found them going forward slowly, but steadily, Kob sitting erect in the sledge and shouting to the blinded Garry as a man shouts to his dog-team. Once and again Garry stopped, to feel Kob’s flesh with his own bare hands, in fear of frostbite, to feed him, to wrap him more closely in the soft seal fur. He was fighting every foot of the way. Kob watched him, fear in his hollowed eyes; later, more than fear. He whispered:
“If it had not been for him, I’d ’a’ been home now, I’d ’a’ been safe.”
“Can you see a big rock nor’-by-east, Kob?”
“Yes, I see it, not half of a mile away, Garry, hang you!”
“Then we’re running true. Don’t you worry, Kob. I’ll get you to the Fort. I passed you my word, Kob, didn’t I? And have you ever known me go back on it?”
That day passed.
In the night Kob moaned and cursed. Garry said, “He’s ill,” and felt no blame for Kob, nor for himself. He crawled out of his bag and rubbed Kob’s feet for an hour. Once he stopped suddenly; he thought the entrance to the tent darkened, and that John Akkamuk stood there, holding the torn bit of newspaper. He grabbed at it, and it was gone. The intense pain that accompanies snow-blindness was making Garry light-headed. But he took care of Kob just the same. He always had taken care of Kob.
The sixth day came, and Garry fought through it.
The sixth night he had no sleep. He wanted none. He was comforted with visions as with rest. The visions were always of himself and Kob; not the Kob who cursed and cried, but the old comrade Kob; they were washing gold together away back in the Far-alone; or speeding south to spend it, behind the finest team of huskies east of the Slave; or advancing together, shoulder to shoulder, to some unknown victory or unfeared defeat. But always together.
The seventh day Garry began to see this old Kob, pulling beside him on the trace, as he had pulled a thousand times before. The new Kob, in the sledge, cursed him horribly, and threw bits of ice at him to make him go faster. In the night, Garry got up and heated tea for Kob, and softened bits of pork in it, and fed him. Kob complained of pains in the stomach, and Garry wrapped him in some of the blanket-strips he wore in his own larrigans. All the time the vision went on—strange, nameless events, and peopled starry spaces. But always Kob and himself together.
The eighth day, Garry could barely see his own feet. He began to stumble and fall frequently. After one of these falls and slow recoveries, Garry thought the sledge ran light. He turned back to it, felt it over, and it was empty. On hands and knees he felt his way back along their trail; found Kob where he had fallen off in the snow, half delirious; carried him back to the sledge, wrapped him up, and tied him on with a spare trace. Blood was on Garry’s parka; under it, his chest was cut to the bone, where the trace pressed. But after this, he ceased to be conscious of even suffering.
He knew nothing until he found the sledge running light as a feather; it might have been hours after, or days, or years. In a brief glimmer of sight, he saw a man beside him, pulling. A tall man, not Kob. His face turned to Garry, seemed gentle in the shadow of the parka hood. Old tales, old legends of lovely faith, returned to Garry Redmond; like a child he leaned on the stranger.
In a certain blue-covered volume issued from Ottawa you will find, should you care to look, the report of Brant Durgan, Sergeant, R.N.W.M.P.
“I have the honour to report,” wrote the sergeant, laboriously, among other things, “that on December 6th inst., coming into Fort Scarlett with Patterson, trooper, from the Southern Moon, I encountered a sledge party ten miles east of the Go-Soak, and about the same distance from the Fort. There were two men and one sledge. It was apparent, from a distance, that they were in difficulties. When I overhauled them it was to find one man ill and tied to the sledge, and the man who pulled it suffered from snow-blindness. Both being—(‘batty’ was crossed out in the original)—both being delirious from exhaustion and exposure, we assisted them to the Fort.”
That is all you will find. Some while after the report had gone in, Garry opened his eyes. He was in a comfortable room, in a comfortable cot, under a red H.B.C. blanket. There is an H.B.C. post at Fort Scarlett, and a medical mission, and nearly twenty houses. It’s a great place. The medical missionary, who had been busy for three weeks saving Garry’s sight, and his feet, and his life, came in and looked at him; Garry grinned anxiously.
“I got him here?” he said.
“You did,” said the missionary, who was a man of few words, but those generally the right ones. “You got him in on your own, except the last few miles. He’s all right. Like to see him?”
“No, not yet,” answered Garry, after a silence. “I’d like to see the latest paper you got first, please.”
“For five minute,” said the missionary, looking at his eyes. But when the paper came, it only took Garry about two seconds to find out. He knew. Like a man of old, he turned his face to the wall.
He knew that never would he and Kob march shoulder to shoulder to any defeat or victory. Kob would never pull beside him on any trace; never work with him, drink with him, quarrel with him. It was all over. The great gulf was fixed. The war reached out and touched him already, to his hurt. He would not be taking care of Kob any more. Never again would Britisher and German share the same shack.
In the spring, when he was healed, Garry went down to Winnipeg, and enlisted. Away back in the All-alone, the sun melted the trodden snow about the shack. And a little mouse got in and nibbled all the morsels of newspaper off the broken bottle.