“No, Jeff, I’ve not come back for that, and I did not leave you yesterday: it is three days and more since we parted. The book has brought us luck, and the best. We have found our man; and they’ll be here to-night with him. I came on ahead to see how you fared.”
In that frost-bitten world Jeff Hyde uncovered his head for a moment. “Gaspe Toujours is a papist,” he said, “but he read me some of that book the day you left, and one thing we went to sleep on: it was that about ‘Lightenin’ the darkness, and defendin’ us from all the perils and dangers of this night.’” Here Gaspe Toujours made the sign of the cross. Jeff Hyde continued half apologetically for his comrade: “That comes natural to Gaspe Toujours—I guess it always does to papists. But I never had any trainin’ that way, and I had to turn the thing over and over, and I fell asleep on it. And when I wake up three days after, here’s my eyes as fresh as daisies, and you back, sir, and the thing done that we come to do.”
He put the Book into Hume’s hands and at that moment Gaspe Toujours said: “See!” Far off, against the eastern horizon, appeared a group of moving figures.
That night the broken segments of the White Guard were reunited, and Clive Lepage slept by the side of Jaspar Hume.
VI
Napoleon might have marched back from Moscow with undecimated legions safely enough, if the heart of those legions had not been crushed. The White Guard, with their faces turned homeward, and the man they had sought for in their care, seemed to have acquired new strength. Through days of dreadful cold, through nights of appalling fierceness, through storm upon the plains that made for them paralysing coverlets, they marched. And if Lepage did not grow stronger, life at least was kept in him.
There was little speech among them, but once in a while Gaspe Toujours sang snatches of the songs of the voyageurs of the great rivers; and the hearts of all were strong. Between Bouche and his master there was occasional demonstration. On the twentieth day homeward, Hume said with his hand on the dog’s head “It had to be done, Bouche; even a dog could see that.”
And so it was “all right” for the White Guard. One day when the sun was warmer than usual over Fort Providence, and just sixty-five days since that cheer had gone up from apprehensive hearts for brave men going out into the Barren Grounds, Sergeant Gosse, who, every day, and of late many times a day, had swept the north-east with a field-glass, rushed into the chief-factor’s office, and with a broken voice cried: “They’ve all come! They’ve come!” Then he leaned his arm and head against the wall and sobbed. And the old factor rose from his chair tremblingly, and said his thank-god, and went hurriedly into the square. He did not go steadily, however, the joyous news had shaken him, sturdy old pioneer as he was. A fringe of white had grown about his temples in the last two months. The people of the fort had said they had never seen him so irascible, yet so gentle; so uneasy, yet so reserved; so stern about the mouth, yet so kind about the eyes as he had been since Hume had gone on this desperate errand.
Already the handful of people at the fort had gathered. Indians left the store, and joined the rest; the factor and Sergeant Gosse set out to meet the little army of relief. To the factor’s “In the name of the Hudson’s Bay Company, Mr. Hume,” when they met there came “By the help of God, sir,” and he pointed to the sled whereon Lepage lay. A feeble hand was clasped in the burly hand of the factor, and then they all fell into line again, Cloud-in-the-Sky running ahead of the dogs. Snow had fallen on them, and as they entered the stockade, men and dogs were white from head to foot.