So far, my lady had been amused, but when Buckie unpacked his baggage, he gave her a wedding present, an old Spanish poignard, its Toledo blade mounted in ivory and tarnished silver. I thought the toy a most unlucky gift, but to Rain it was a perfect revelation, the first entirely useless thing she had ever owned, a possession for pleasure only, and therefore priceless. We spent the rest of our wedding-day hunting the village stores for objects of perfect uselessness.
It was mid-afternoon next day before my lady, Buckie and I left, our canoe loaded to the gunwale with treasures. Till dusk, we paddled gently along shore, then on to midnight in glassy starlit waters. An hour's nap refreshed us for a pull against the tide, then dawn broke above the splintered ice of the coast range, day kindled the Vancouver Alps until they glowed like flame, and the sun melted the hills into the cloudy air. Then mighty whirlpools spun our canoe like a top between a tide of eleven knots and a backwater running eight. Dark forest closed in on either side of the tide-race, and we spurted across the back-sluice into our tiny bay.
A bevy of children were skirting like gulls as we landed, a cluster of laughing women hauled the canoe aground. We were hailed by our one-legged Japanese cook, our three-legged dog, our lame wild goose, an old blind siwash crone, and all the mixed assemblage of our tribal pets. Many Horses, Owl-calling-"Coming" and their young son, Bears, Left Hand and Bear Paw, the hunters, two darling old scare-crows, who called themselves my wives because they were Rain's attendants; yes, the whole Blackfoot tribe came clown to greet our chief and make her welcome home out of the Valley of Death. Then all together we attended Rain through the dim naves of that stupendous forest, until we came to a fire of cedar-wood, with its blue film of incense. There the clamor ceased, while our chief, as priestess, burned sweet grass upon the altar fire, and offered thanks for her recovery. Then came hymns and sacred dances, prayer and reading of the Bible in our own Blackfoot language. Buckie went fast asleep standing, and Bears gave an imitation of that performance, which broke up our service into roars of laughter.
During the weeks of his furlough, Buckie, with grave enjoyment, shared our hunting in the forest, our fishing by torchlight in channels phosphorescent as liquid starlight, the bathing, the feasts, the dances, the matins at the dawn, the evensong at dusk. But most of all, he liked to sit with me within the portico of our forest temple, whence one looked out between colossal pine trunks to the sea channel, the far white Alps and the great pageantry forever marching across the summer sky. The humming-birds, the bees, the woodland perfume, sunbeams athwart vast shadows and the strong music of the winds and seas, made that place sacred in its loveliness.
At times we were driven into our teepees by riots of the weather, when the women dressed skins and made clothing, while Many Horses kept an eye on the fire, and his other eye on the children.
But into that great peace there came foreboding. Buckie and I knew well that cancer is incurable, that soon or late the inevitable pain would warn my wife of death which science could only delay, which prayer could only ease, and which no power on earth could possibly avert. She seemed to sense death, and at times would jest with Buckie, telling him that he must take her to the plains, or muttering in her sleep she would speak of the Blackfoot camps, or during matins would pray looking toward the East. She wanted to go home, and I must take her back. God would preserve me from my enemies.
I think it was in that camp I first began to notice how often the dogs howled, as they do when they sense ghosts. I have seen Rain frequently stop on her way through camp to speak to her father, to her mother or to friends long dead. She saw them plainly, she said, and spoke to them familiarly, as we do to living people, without the slightest sense of fear. And her own spirit-power seemed daily to gain in strength. It was her custom to make magic for our amusement. On the last evening of Buckie's visit, a steady drizzle had driven us to make our fire inside the teepee, and half the tribe had gathered for a feast of berries. Then the children asked Rain to call Wind-maker.
"Come, Wind-maker," she whispered into the hearth-smoke, and as she threw some sweet grass into the fire, we heard a sigh in the air far off. Bears gathered the younger children about him, snuggling for protection, and all their eyes glowed in the firelight, as though they were a wolf-pack besetting our winter camp in the Moon of Famine. "Wind-maker hears!" they whispered. "Wind-maker comes! Oh, Rain, don't let him come too near us!"
For answer, we heard a distant muttering of thunder.
A gust shook the rain-drops out of the trees above us, a seething of fine rain swept along the tent wall, and sudden little breakers lashing on the beach sent us a splash of spray. The smoke hole let in a swirling down-draft filling the lodge with smoke, while the wind sighed through the timber like hands upon a harp. Then the deep storm notes volleyed, thundered with blaze after blaze of lightning, crash upon rending crash, and wailing flute-notes lifted to a hurricane-screaming blast, thrashing three-hundred-foot timber like a whipping reed-bed, rocking the teepee until the children skirled and the women huddled together in their fright. I saw Many Horses revealed in a livid blaze of lightning, his iron hard face set rigid, his teeth clenched, his crossed eyes glittering as though he rode into battle.