The wolves were clamouring in the distance. They had caught the game that they were chasing. He could just hear them as he fell asleep.
The sun broke with the glory of a new world over the white wilderness. The wolf howls ceased—and all was still.
X[ToC]
THE PENALTY
For some reason Micmac John could not sleep. A little while he lay awake voluntarily, trying to contrive a plan to follow should he be found out. If, after he returned to the tilt for the pelts, there should not be sufficient snow to cover his trail, for instance, before the searching party came to look for Bob—and it surely would come, headed by Dick Blake—he would be in grave danger of being discovered. Why had he not thought of all this before? He was afraid of Dick Blake, and Dick was the one man in the world, perhaps, that he was afraid of. Would Dick shoot him? he asked himself. Probably. If he were found he would have to die.
Life is sweet to a strong, healthy man brought face to face with the reality of death. In his more than half savage existence Micmac John had faced death frequently, and sometimes daily, and had never shrunk from it or felt a tremour of fear. He had held neither his own nor the life of other men as a thing of much value. The fact was that never before had he given one serious thought to what it meant to die. Like the foxes and the wolves, he had been an animal of prey and had looked upon life and death with hardly more consideration than they, and with the stoical indifference of his savage Indian ancestors.
But for some inexplicable reason this night the white half of his nature had been awakened and he found himself thinking of what it meant to die—to cease to be, with the world going on and on afterwards just as though nothing had happened. Then the teachings of a missionary whom he had heard preach in Nova Scotia came to him. He remembered what had been said of eternal happiness or eternal torment—that one or the other state awaited the soul of every one after death. Then a great terror took possession of him. If Bob Gray died, as he certainly must in this storm, he would be responsible for it, and his soul would be consigned to eternal torment—the terrible torment to last forever and forever, depicted by the missionary. He had committed many sins in his life, but they were of the past and forgotten. This was of the present. He could already, in his frenzied imagination see Dick Blake, the avenger. Dick would shoot him. That was certain—and then—eternal torment.