But one thing quickly became clear to Cyrus, and then to the Farrar boys,—less accustomed to tragedy than their comrade,—that this strange personage, in whose veins the blood of white men and red men met, carrying in its turbid flow the weaknesses of two races, was singing his swan-song, the last chant he would ever raise on earth.
At their first entrance, as their bodies interfered with the broad light streaming through the cabin-door, Chris had lifted towards them a scared, shrinking stare. But, apparently, he took them for the shadows which walked in the dreams of his delirium. Not a ray of recognition lightened the blankness of that stare as Herb’s big figure passed before him. Letting his eyes wander aimlessly again from log wall to log wall, from withered bed to mouldy rafters, his lips continued their crooning, which sank with his weakening breath, then rose again to sink once more, like the last wind-gusts when the storm is over.
Suddenly his shrunken body shivered in every limb. The humming ceased. His yellow teeth tapped upon each other in trouble and fear. He raised himself to a squatting posture, with his knee-bones to his chin, the wisps of hair tumbling upon his naked chest.
“It’s dark—heap dark!” he whimpered, between long gasps. “Can’t strike the trail—can’t find the home-camp. Herb—Herb Heal—ole pard—’twas I took ’em—the skins. ’Twas—a dog’s trick. Take it out—o’ my hide—if yer wants to—yah! Heap sick!”
Not a ray of sense was yet in the half-breed’s eyes. An imaginary, vengeance-dealing Herb was before him; but he never turned a glance towards the real, and now forgiving, old chum, who leaned against the wall not ten feet away. His voice dropped to a guttural rumble, in which Indian sounds mingled with English.
But the flame at Herb’s heart was quenched at the first whimpered word. His stiffened muscles and lips relaxed. With a gurgle of sorrow, he crossed the camp-floor, and dropped into a crawling position on the faded spruces.
“Chris!” he cried thickly. “Chris,—poor old pard,—don’t ye know me? Look, man! Herb is right here—Herb Heal, yer old chum. You’re ‘heap sick’ for sure; but we’ll haul you off to a settlement or to our camp, and I’ll bring Doc along in two days. He’ll”—
But Cross-eyed Chris became past hearing, his flicker of strength had failed; he keeled over, and lay, with his limp legs curled up, faint and speechless, upon the dead evergreens.
“You ain’t a-going to die!” gasped Herb defiantly. “I’ll be jiggered if you be, jest as I’ve found you! Say, boys! Cyrus! Neal! rub him a bit, will ye? We ain’t got no brandy, I’ll build a fire, and warm some coffee.”
It was strange work for the hands of the Bostonian, and stranger yet for those of young Farrar,—son of an English merchant-prince,—this straightening and rubbing of a dying half-Indian, a “scum,” as Herb called him, drunkard, and thief. Yet there was no flash of hesitation on Farrar’s part, as they brought their warm friction to bear upon the chill yellow skin, piebald from dirt and the stains of travel, as if it were the very mission which had brought them to Katahdin.