But if the gods were angry at the Indian, why should Sergeant Gellatly only sway to and fro, and now laugh recklessly, and now fall sleepily forward on the neck of his horse; while the Indian rode straight, and neither wavered nor wandered in mind, but at last slipped from his horse and walked beside the other? It was at this moment that the soldier heard, “Sergeant Gellatly, Sergeant Gellatly,” called through the blast; and he thought it came from the skies, or from some other world. “Me darlin’,” he said, “have y’ come to me?” But the voice called again: “Sergeant Gellatly, keep awake! keep awake! You sleep, you die; that’s it. Holy. Yes. How!” Then he knew that it was Little Hammer calling in his ear, and shaking him; that the Indian was dragging him from his horse ... his revolver, where was it? he had forgotten... he nodded... nodded. But Little Hammer said: “Walk, hell! you walk, yes;” and Little Hammer struck him again and again; but one arm of the Indian was under his shoulder and around him, and the voice was anxious and kind. Slowly it came to him that Little Hammer was keeping him alive against the will of the spirits—but why should they strike him instead of the Indian? Was there any sun in the world? Had there ever been? or fire or heat anywhere, or anything but wind and snow in all God’s universe?... Yes, there were bells ringing—soft bells of a village church; and there was incense burning—most sweet it was! and the coals in the censer—how beautiful, how comforting! He laughed with joy again, and he forgot how cold, how maliciously cold, he had been; he forgot how dreadful that hour was before he became warm; when he was pierced by myriad needles through the body, and there was an incredible aching at his heart.
And yet something kept thundering on his body, and a harsh voice shrieked at him, and there were many lights dancing over his shut eyes; and then curtains of darkness were dropped, and centuries of oblivion came; and then—then his eyes opened to a comforting silence, and some one was putting brandy between his teeth, and after a time he heard a voice say: “‘Bien,’ you see he was a murderer, but he save his captor. ‘Voila,’ such a heathen! But you will, all the same, bring him to justice—you call it that? But we shall see.”
Then some one replied, and the words passed through an outer web of darkness and an inner haze of dreams. “The feet of Little Hammer were like wood on the floor when you brought the two in, Pretty Pierre—and lucky for them you found them.... The thing would read right in a book, but it’s not according to the run of things up here, not by a damned sight!”
“Private Bradshaw,” said the first voice again, “you do not know Little Hammer, nor that story of him. You wait for the trial. I have something to say. You think Little Hammer care for the prison, the rope?—Ah, when a man wait five years to kill—so! and it is done, he is glad sometimes when it is all over. Sergeant Gellatly there will wish he went to sleep forever in the snow, if Little Hammer come to the rope. Yes, I think.”
And Sergeant Gellatly’s brain was so numbed that he did not grasp the meaning of the words, though he said them over and over again.... Was he dead? No, for his body was beating, beating... well, it didn’t matter... nothing mattered... he was sinking to forgetfulness... sinking.
So, for hours, for weeks—it might have been for years—and then he woke, clear and knowing, to “the unnatural, intolerable day”—it was that to him, with Little Hammer in prison. It was March when his memory and vigour vanished; it was May when he grasped the full remembrance of himself, and of that fight for life on the prairie: of the hands that smote him that he should not sleep; of Little Hammer the slayer, who had driven death back discomfited, and brought his captor safe to where his own captivity and punishment awaited him.
When Sergeant Gellatly appeared in court at the trial he refused to bear witness against Little Hammer. “D’ ye think—does wan av y’ think—that I’ll speak a word agin the man—haythen or no haythen—that pulled me out of me tomb and put me betune the barrack quilts? Here’s the stripes aff me arm, and to gaol I’ll go; but for what wint before I clapt the iron on his wrists, good or avil, divil a word will I say. An’ here’s me left hand, and there’s me right fut, and an eye of me too, that I’d part with, for the cause of him that’s done a trick that your honour wouldn’t do—an’ no shame to y’ aither—an’ y’d been where Little Hammer was with me.”
His honour did not reply immediately, but he looked meditatively at Little Hammer before he said quietly,—“Perhaps not, perhaps not.”
And Little Hammer, thinking he was expected to speak, drew his blanket up closely about him and grunted, “How!”
Pretty Pierre, the notorious half-breed, was then called. He kissed the Book, making the sign of the Cross swiftly as he did so, and unheeding the ironical, if hesitating, laughter in the court. Then he said: “‘Bien,’ I will tell you the story-the whole truth. I was in the Stony Plains. Little Hammer was ‘good Injin’ then.... Yes, sacre! it is a fool who smiles at that. I have kissed the Book. Dam!... He would be chief soon when old Two Tails die. He was proud, then, Little Hammer. He go not to the Post for drink; he sell not next year’s furs for this year’s rations; he shoot straight.”