His son, Bears, was standing exultant, shouting with triumph. And all about my wife arose a mist of human spirits and vague animals, while the rain roared, the cyclone yelled, the thunder crashed and volleyed. Then my wife's hands swept slowly downward, while in obedience, the hurricane rolled away, and the rain eased and steadied, until a last throbbing of thunder like ruffled drums muttered among the echoes of the coast range.
Our lives are such illusions as that. Our lives are God's dreams in which we drive, like storm-swept ships, upon a sea of terror. We suffer and go to wreck, supposing our tragic miseries all real, while God is dreaming the world-storm in which He trains our courage.
CHAPTER XII
INSPECTOR BUCKIE'S NARRATIVE
I
I am the Inspector Buckie mentioned in the foregoing text, and to me is entrusted the editing and completion of this biography. I feel that in this conventional world so very unconventional a man as Don José needed a friend in his biographer. A hostile witness, for example, might bias the gentlest reader by setting forth bare facts of bigamy and homicide which, taken without their context, would seem offensive and unpardonable. So facts may be told as lies.
To strangers, my friend may have seemed an incredibly complex personality. One saw him by turns as the grave courtly Hidalgo of old Spain, as the rollicking Irish trooper, as the red Indian saint, and at the end as a very dangerous outlaw. Yet these were only the moods of a sincere and simple gentleman, unusual only in his terrific strength of character, which lacked the guidance of strong intellect.
I who was his comrade saw, in my dim official way, only the humdrum duties of the police, and the squalor of Indian decadence. But here in his memoirs, I realize for the first time the breadth and splendor of the regimental service, the spirituality of the Indian character, and the tremendous majesty of our wilderness. Don José had eyes to see that we were living an epic life in the homeric age of Canada. While I went blind, he saw with heroic vision.
So having tamed his spelling, cleared his grammar, and composed his chaotic chapters into narrative, I leave my humble task as editor, to take up the duties of biographer.
From his camp on Valdez, La Mancha took me back by canoe to Comox, the terminal of the Vancouver Island Railroad. During this thirty-six-mile passage, I found occasion to warn my friend against an act of folly on which he had set his heart. However unselfish he might be in taking Rain home to die among her people, he had no business to risk a visit to the Canadian plains. There, at any moment, he might be recognized by people who had known him in times past, even by Inspector Sarde or Red Saunders, his mortal enemies. The sequel would be his arrest.