“This is a reindeer farm. It’s a sort of crazy notion in a way, but it’s handed us a living ever since Marty Le Gros, who started it up, was murdered by the Euralian toughs. Will I hand you the story of that? Or maybe you’re heard it? Most folks in the North have.”
Wilder nodded.
“Don’t trouble to tell it, mam,” he said quickly. “It’s bad med’cine that I’ve heard all about. And it’s not likely to hand you comfort in the telling. So this was his farm?”
“Sure it was. He started it reckoning to build it up for his little baby, Felice, who we call the Kid, and the Indian man, Usak, who was his servant, ran it for him. Well, after he was done up and his place was burnt out, Usak came along from here and found his little kiddie flung into the bluff to die, or get eaten by wolves and things. Usak was nigh crazy. But he claimed the Kid and raised her on this farm, which he went on building for her. When the Kid was about twelve my man Jim took ill and died, and I came along right over from the store with my bits and my kiddies, and just live with ’em. It helped me and mine, and it helped the Kid and Usak some. And that’s all ther’ is to it. I’m sort of foster-mother to the Kid. And we all scratch a living out of Usak’s trading the trail-broke caribou with such Eskimo as the Euralians have left within reach.” She laughed, shortly and without mirth. “It’s nothing much to tell, sir, but there it is, and you’re welcome to know it.”
The woman’s brief outline contained the whole drama of the past eighteen years told without emphasis, almost as though it were a simple matter of everyday occurrence. Years ago it might have been different, but now—why, now only the present seriously concerned her, and that was the preparation of food and the execution of those many duties which were demanded by the young lives who looked to her mothering.
For some moments Wilder offered no comment. He was concerned, deeply concerned. This woman’s homely trust and courage affected him deeply. But more than all else was a superlative thankfulness that Providence, through George Raymes, had sent him on what had first looked to be a hopeless pursuit of something completely impossible of achievement. He remembered the Superintendent’s final summing up of the work set for him to accomplish.
“Does it get you?” he had asked, “there it is, a great gold discovery, somewhere up there on the Hekor, I suppose, and the mystery of this people filching our trade through a process of outrageous crime. Somewhere up there there’s a girl-child, white—she’d be about nineteen or twenty now—lost to the white world to which she belongs. But above all, from my point of view, there’s a problem. Who are these Euralians, and what becomes of the wealth of furs they steal?”
The whole of the work was well-nigh completed. He is had completely satisfied himself on the problem of the Euralians. He had recovered the plans of Marty Le Gros’ gold “strike” and it only remained for him to follow their directions to complete the re-discovery of the find itself. And now—now he had at length discovered the “girl-child, white,” who, to his mind was heir to the things her dead father had left behind.
Yes, the end of his task looked to be drawing near, but he could not resign himself to the fact. Somehow it seemed to him that he was only approaching the threshold. That the drama of the whole thing was still in being. That there were scenes yet to be depicted that would deeply involve him. There was the blind Japanese man and his panic-stricken woman. There was the terrible Usak whom he had yet to meet. Then there was The Kid.
The Kid. What was her real name? Felice. Yes. That was the name Mrs. McLeod had told him. Felice. It meant happiness. It was a good name. But the irony. Poor child. Raised by the terrible Usak. Fostered here on the barren lands of the North, without a hope beyond the hard living these poor folk were able to scrape with the crude, uncultured assistance of an Indian. The whole thing was appalling. He loved the Northland. But to be condemned to it without hope of better things left him wondering at the amazing courage which Felice and this gentle mother must possess.