“Oh! you’ll see me again, never fear,” Shawe said lightly, to cover the other’s concern. “I’m a bad penny. So long!”
He let himself out into the night, closing the door speedily, and with as little noise as possible; but quick as he had been, a blast of the nipping air filled the room. Jerome hurriedly drew the blankets closer about his little charge; then he stooped to the fire, coaxing it into a brighter glow.
“Fer a bad penny,” he mumbled, as he went back to his place, “Shawe rings oncommon true. There ain’t nary of us ez would ha’ thought o’ doin’ what he’s a-doin’—nary a blessed one of us. I swan he’s dif’runt somehow—kinder apart, but square—square. Never knowed nothin’ ’bout Shawe; hed to take him on his face value, so to say; he ain’t a gabbler ’bout himself, but gen-i-al—gen-i-al—an’ oncommon quick-witted inter the barg’in. We’d a-waited till Kingdom come afore we’d thought ’bout fillin’ them stockin’s ef he hedn’t started the game; an’ ’twas him ez heerd her callin’ when the rest of us was deef ez postses. Hmm! mebbe—” but praise and conjecture alike were silenced as the grizzled head dropped forward and the old chopper fell into a heavy doze.
Shawe, meanwhile, oblivious to both, thrust his hands deep into his pockets, and started off on his lonely errand. It might prove fruitless, but results were not for him to consider; his was to do the duty of the moment, and by the moment. Nor did it seem to him that he was doing anything to be especially commended. He had been driven out into the night by his thoughts of the distress in the child’s home, and once they had taken possession of him it was impossible to stay warm and comfortable in his bunk. He simply had to go—he could not wait. Besides, he told himself, it wasn’t much; he had been out on nights to which this, bitter as it was, was balmy by comparison. He had faced gales, terrible as that chill wind which the old Moslem fable says will blow over the earth in the last days, and yet had come safely through. There was no air stirring at this time; the intense silent cold of the North wrapped everything close. He was guarded against it, however, and while he could keep in rapid motion he had little to fear from its searching tooth.
He drove his hands deeper into his pockets and strode on. The way had been broken through some weeks earlier and was well defined; there was no chance of missing it. In the clearing the night was as bright as day; under the light of the moon the snow lay like an immense silver shield across which the trees threw bars of shadow; but as the road wound through the woods the brightness retreated in great measure, shimmering only here and there through the high trunks, striking off a gleam from this snowy head and that, or shivering down like a lance of steel as if to pierce the deeper blackness which crouched beyond.
Shawe knew no fear. He passed on silently and as swiftly as possible, casting a wary glance around occasionally; but he seemed to be the only living creature abroad that night. The deer, if there were any, were not stirring, or his eyes, perhaps, were too sceptical to witness the simple spectacle of their adoration. There was no sign of life anywhere. It was almost as if it were the end of the world, and he the last man—the last of creation—left on earth, so wide and empty were the spaces about him; the great vault overhead, in which the moon and stars rode calmly, was out of his pygmy reach.
Presently, as the trees grew sparser and the road showed its slighter depression through the plain of snow lying beyond like some frozen sea, he became conscious of life and motion close at his side. With the instinct of the woodland creatures, he held himself perfectly tense, and waited. Then right across his path there lumbered a huge, clumsy shape, its breath showing like smoke on the moonlit air. Suddenly great drops of moisture stood out on Shawe’s face as if it were mid-summer, and his weight of furs had become intolerable; he had never felt fear before, yet now panic gripped him. It was not the thought of physical hurt that appalled him, but rather the sense of the utter futility of his endeavor. So the end had come; and over there, still very far away, a little child’s mother was sobbing—he could almost hear her moans.
He stirred his hand from his pocket to his belt, and grasped the butt of his pistol, drawing it forth swiftly. It might not be too late! His finger was firm as iron as it touched the trigger; but the next instant the beast slouched noisily into the shadows beyond. There was no other sound—had been no other sound; the cartridges lay unused in their chambers. Shawe lowered his hand. He had not been dreaming, he told himself; he could swear to that. And the animal was no creature of fancy; he had seen it quite plainly, had felt its breath as it passed, had met the dull stare of its eyes. It was real,—as real as he was at that moment, yet he had not fired because there had seemed no need—the beast had simply disregarded him. Then suddenly Shawe laughed aloud, not boisterously, but very gently,—the way you do sometimes when something has happened that seems almost too good to be true, and the quick tears rush into your eyes,—I think, perhaps, they were in his also.
“It’s the peace of God,” he said softly to himself, “the peace of God—”
For on the moment he remembered the old tradition he had heard in many lands, that on the night before Christmas, from the day’s close to the day’s coming, there is no slaughter anywhere among the beasts; that the fiercest and most savage of them all are as harmless as doves to one another, and even to their natural enemy—man. He put his pistol back into his belt, unspeakably glad that no shot of his had broken the holy truce. It was useless to try to account for what had happened. To believe in the legend, or to laugh it away and attribute the animal’s indifference to some natural cause. The whole experience—dream, or reality—left him throbbing with a sense of gratitude that nothing had interfered with his mission. The thought seemed to lend him greater activity, as if his moccasined feet had suddenly become winged. There could be no loitering anywhere while the mother mourned for her little one, her voice crying vaguely, vainly, through that wonder-space of time when, because of another Little Child, God’s peace wrapped the earth close.